Database access for student affiliates

By Gary R. VandenBos, PhD
Executive Director, Publications & Communications

1998 has been a watershed year for APA?s publishing program. In January, for the first time, APA became its own vendor of electronic products through the World Wide Web. These two comprehensive products included PsycINFO-111 Years and the APA Full-Text Article database. However, the 'for-fee' access was only available at the beginning of the year, to regular or 'full' APA members.

Access to student affiliates

In April, APA expanded the opportunity to access these electronic resources, on a 'for-fee' basis, to student affiliates. Student affiliates now can subscribe to a package of electronic products that includes both PsycINFO-111 Years and the APA Full-Text Article database for $59 for the remainder of 1998. Student affiliates who do not subscribe to these more in-depth products will continue to have free access to PsycINFO-Current for the rest of 1998.

Student affiliates may subscribe to PsycINFO-111 and the APA Full-Text Article database if they have paid their 1998 APA affiliation dues and if they subscribe to at least one APA print product. The $59 fee is a fixed access fee for 1998; it will not be pro-rated for student affiliates who choose to access later in the year. Online subscription forms are available at our Online Member Services welcome page (http://members.apa.org/welcome). Student affiliates may subscribe in one of three ways: Electronic subscriptions using a credit card are processed immediately. Phone subscriptions using a credit card are processed within 36 hours. Mailed subscriptions, with check payment, will take four to six weeks to process.

PsycINFO-111 Years contains more than 1.3 million records, representing the psychological literature from 1887 to date. However, the version of PsycINFO-111 Years on APA?s web site does not as yet cover chapters and books, dissertation citations, and technical reports. APA?s Full-Text Article database contains full-text versions of APA journal articles for three prior years (1995-1997) and 1998 articles from APA journals are released into the database as they are available electronically. These articles are searchable by search term and concept, as well as by journal, author, and so forth. PsycINFO-Current includes journal abstract records from psychological and behavioral publications from 1995 to the present.

Member feedback

APA seeks feedback from member users and student affiliate users on the two electronic databases. These are fully functional 'beta' test products, and we hope members will assist us in identifying 'bugs' in the program or potential enhancements.

Members who have used these electronic products like the ease of searching and its accessibility for home and office. Users of the full-text article database helped us identify missing material and made suggestions to improve the user interface. This month, a new upgrade to the search engine software will be available, allowing us to add new features, such as the ability to mark items in a search result list for printing without having to go to each record individually.

We are pleased to announce that the system has been performing wonderfully. Our servers have remained available 99.99 percent of the time, and the search engine has performed well under a moderate load. Users of our electronic database products can now search more than 1.3 million abstracts by key words or concepts in a few seconds. More than 8,500 users now regularly access these products on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

We experienced a few problems during the trial period. In January we encountered delays in processing subscription orders through our primary business systems because these systems were undergoing a major upgrade; this problem has been resolved. We also had isolated problems with the Internet (beyond our control) that made it difficult for a small number of users to access our servers for short periods of time. We also are slightly behind in updating the 'Full-Text Article Database.' However, we are working feverishly on this, and we hope to release all January through March 1998 records by the end of May.

Access to small institutions

We are also exploring another way of expanding access to these electronic products. Over the past two decades, APA has provided PsycINFO?s PsycLIT on CD-ROM to large four-year colleges and universities. However, the smallest colleges typically have been unable to afford the PsycLIT CD-ROM product. We hope that in time, APA might be able to provide electronic access to smaller institutions at an affordable rate. We are now working with four small institutions and a couple of internship centers to explore the technical details of doing this.