The Clemson University Libraries subscribe to more than 86,000 journals. The vast majority of these titles are available electronically. A good year to remember is 1996. If the events or information you seek happened after 1996, it is most likely to be found in electronic format. Prior to that date will be found in primarily print sources (see Print box below).
There are, of course, exceptions either way. We have some electronic access to materials from 1608 and some journals came only in printed form via the mail last week. The Libraries prefer electronic access for reasons of accessibility, ease of storage, and wide area availability.
More than half of our subscriptions are directly through the publisher of the electronic journal.
Take a look at the practitioner title Social Studies and the Young Learner in the catalog. Scroll down until you see "Full Text Availability" and note the link to IngentaConnect Journals.
IngentaConnect is the provider of the journal subscription. Other common providers include: SAGE, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, and Elsevier.
No one knows what is in every issue of every journal to which we subscribe. We depend on searchable databases of journal content from outside providers to locate specific articles. Examples of such databases for Education include: ERIC, Education Research Complete, and Education Full Text.
These databases are hosted by third parties such as EBSCO, Gale, and ProQuest.
As a method of adding value to schools which subscribe to these databases, many databases include full text content directly inside the database - no additional subscription needed.
Take a look at the catalog entry for Teaching Exceptional Children.
Notice that we receive access from a variety of EBSCO products, the second which is Education Full Text. Scrolling down further reveals that we also have a direct subscription via the provider SAGE. Also note that each provider has different dates of coverage.
If you are, say, a Provost, University Trustee, or student hit with a Library Fee, please note we do not generally pay for multiple access points. The EBSCO products are provided by the State of South Carolina to all universities, colleges, K-12 schools, and public libraries. We pay for the SAGE version because it covers all the way back to 1968 and that depth of coverage is a hallmark of University education.
Different access points may offer differences in formatting and these differences may enhance the user experience if accessibility devices are in use.
A recent article: Enhancing Support for Student Mental Health in Schools in various access points:
Database Full Text (HTML) (there is also a PDF version at this link)
Direct Subscription
We offer the largest number of access points in case one or more access points are offline or presenting technical difficulties to a particular browser, you may more easily route around the issue.
Most journals will offer a presence on the Internet. Frequently, there will be an ability to search the content of the journal. Understand that there will be some limits to this searching. The nature of practitioner titles is that they rely on membership in organizations to fund their operations. Free access to content will be limited. Sometimes, this will be select articles which are always available. Other examples will offer access to a limited number of articles and block access once the limit is reached.
The advantage of this access is in discovery of content which is not found in our standard databases and subscriptions.
The disadvantage of this access is that it may require an order through our (free to use) InterLibrary Loan service from another library. The time cost of this service is usually three to five business days.
Open access is a new and evolving arena of information. Content is openly available to any user. This can be the result of a philosophical decision of the publisher (or authors). Internet access has, in many cases, dramatically lowered the cost to publish information. Where the costs can be shifted to authors (who pay a publishing fee) or subsidized by some other income, materials remade open to all access.
An additional prompt to Open Access has come from the United States federal government. When journal content has been produced by public money - usually in the form of grants - it is becoming common practice to require (eventual) open access to this information. Typically, this is been in the occasional "open access" label within an ordinary journal.
More information is available:
Older issues of many current subscriptions are available in print. Select current titles may only be available in print. Still searchable within the Libraries Catalog, each title will have a Library on Congress Call Number. Patrons may retrieve the items themselves and scan the articles. Alternately, they may use our Scan and Deliver Service where we scan and deliver a PDF file - usually within 24 hours.
Items stored in the Library Depot (an offsite storage location) are best requested via Scan and Deliver.
If the Clemson University Libraries do not own what you need, we will, at no cost to you (other than time) request a copy from another school. We have access to more than 25,000,000 items from more than 50,000 other libraries.
More Information:
Use of ILL requires the creation of a free account on the Libraries Illiad software. Learn more at the link above.