Full-text

From Library Instruction Wiki

Full-text is a term commonly used by vendors of online versions of periodicals. (EBSCO, HW Wilson, et. al.) What they want you to think is that the electronic version of the magazine has all the words found in the print version. Unfortunately, this is not so- I once discovered articles from the print version of JAMA that were not available in full text (some were not even cited) in the EBSCO Health database. When contacted the vendor came back with the memorable phrase, "Full-text does not mean full content." For EBSCO, what that seems to mean is, for articles that are indexed and for which there is a "full text" tab, you will get the words that were in the print version. But there is no guarantee that all the material found in the print version will appear in the electronic.

Full text can also vary in terms of supplying graphs and photographs. Some html full-text versions contain the images found in the print versions, but more commonly you will just find a note saying something like [graph] In these cases, to see the graph, you have to get the print version. This is one of the reasons I prefer pdf versions, which are a little slower and clumsier to use, (but not terribly so) but you are much more confident(compared to HTML) that what you are seeing is what originally appeared in print.

Tony Greiner Portland Community College August 10, 2005