STEP - Science and Technology in the European Periphery

New Open Access to the Isis Bibliography
[from the Newsletter of the History of Science Society, vol . 40, no. 2, April 2011: http://www.hssonline.org/publications/Newsletter2011/April-news.html]
by Stephen P. Weldon, HSS Bibliographer
I am pleased to announce two new ways to access the Isis Bibliography, making large portions of the bibliography freely available to researchers worldwide. First, the HSS website now provides open access copies of the last several published bibliographies (from 2004 to 2009, reserving only the most recent volume for subscribing members). These are all searchable PDF documents that include all relevant front and back matter as well as bookmarks for easy navigation within the document.
Second, the Isis Bibliography data can now be accessed in database form through WorldCat.org, a free, open-access database hosted by OCLC. Currently, this data comprises that from CBs 2000 to 2009. The source of our data is noted in every record as "ISIS Bibliography of the History of Science; History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Database." Since the WorldCat.org database includes records from resources all over the world, having our records tagged this way means that anyone pulling up one of our records will know where it came from, and will see that the Society has contributed directly to this worldwide open scholarship initiative.
In addition, a particularly useful filter exists for historians who seek to look just at the Isis data. By adding "xisi2" in the keyword search box, in addition to any other search words, only Isis data will be returned. All of this makes WorldCat.org a perfect place for accessing bibliographical data for individuals who are neither Society members or who are unaffiliated with a library subscribing to the HSTM database. Those using WorldCat.org, will find that it is not as robust a search engine as OCLC’s subscription search engine — subject index terms, for example, are not displayed — nor does this database contain the most recent data; here again, the data from the most recent year’s bibliography is withheld. The WorldCat.org database, however, offers the great advantage of providing an open resource for researchers of all kinds to find peer-reviewed and scholarly citations.
Those who would like to try this search engine can go directly to the url: http://www.worldcat.org/ or they can go to the Isis CB website, where I have included a search box on the front page with a brief discussion of its use and limitations: http://www.ou.edu/cas/hsci/isis/website/index.html.