E-Resource Elation

Of the many things to change at Harvard over the summer—including online registration, the new Mather-Dunster kitchen, and wireless Internet in dormitories—there is one new development that students may not have noticed but that come term-paper time will make a world of difference. That change is the switch from Harvard University Library’s (HUL) E-Resources website to the new E-Research @ Harvard Libraries website. HUL has done a tremendous job with the new easy-to-use site, and we applaud them for dreaming up such a helpful resource.

The new E-Research page puts a high-tech user interface on top of Harvard’s vast array of online subscriptions, making resources more readily accessible—whether users know the exact journal they are looking for or are just poking around for sources. But the best thing about the new e-research page is the plethora of features it provides that take full advantage of computers to make research easier.

The first and most obvious feature is the quick search, which uses a simple Google-like system to search Harvard’s HOLLIS catalog and a slew of other resources for books and articles. The website says that it is designed for “an initial search for articles and books in broad topic areas,” which makes it perfect for quickly finding sources to get an initial foothold for further research.

Then there are the more in-depth features, chief among which is the cross search, which lets you select multiple resources by name, category, or keyword and then search them all simultaneously. It’s like having a JSTOR search for Harvard’s entire e-resources collection. And the results are quite stunning—within seconds you can find what you are looking for, either in full-text online or a “Find it @ Harvard” button that tells you exactly where in Harvard’s huge library system to look. Our one qualm is that this cross search is currently only keyword based; we hope as the site grows and develops the HUL will add a more dynamic search.

To top it off, the My Research section lets you organize your research for future use and reference. You save search results, and links to books, journals, and specific articles that you find helpful. You can create your own groups of e-resources that you can then search with the cross-search. And everything you saved can be grouped for different research projects, making E-Research @ Harvard a term paper or thesis-writer’s dream.

The new website is a big improvement. While useful, the old E-Resources website was a pain to navigate and made it difficult to find particular online journals and periodicals. With a long list of online journals and a crude search tool, most students resorted to browsing a few large resources like JSTOR or EconLit before they made the trek into the stacks of Widener Memorial Library, leaving most e-resources underused.

The new E-Research page is a tremendous resource that will give students and researcher’s better access to Harvard’s extensive library system and all it has to offer. Its ease of use and depth combine to make it a surefire winner. HUL should be commended for not simply resting on its laurels as the largest private research library in the world, and we hope it continues to be so innovative in the future.