With the move to publishing scholarly journals online, much has been gained. But one thing has been made more difficult with the transition from print to online: the ability to physically browse journals organized by subject, on library shelves. This allowed for easy browsing and opportunities to serendipitously explore and discover journal content.
This is where Browzine, a web-based tool that can be accessed through the library’s website, comes in. Browzine brings browsing of scholarly journals into the digital age and adds features that only a digital tool can provide.
At the very basic level, Browzine allows you to visually browse journals to which the library subscribes by discipline, subject, and title. Within each title, you can view issues by year. Within each issue, you are presented with that issue’s table of contents. You can also seamlessly access the full text, when available.
It’s the added features that make Browzine even more useful:
- You can create bookshelves for your favorite journals. For example, if you’re a physicist of the quantum kind, you might add a shelf with the name Schrödinger (or, more seriously, “Quantum Mechanics”) and add to that shelf the journal, “Acta Physica Hungarica B) “Quantum Physics of Wave Phenomena,” and other titles that fit the bill.
- You can save articles too.
- There is also a Browzine App for iOS and Android devices. With the app, you can add new article notifications for titles on your bookshelves. With notifications—or by visiting your virtual shelves early and often—you will be able to keep up with the latest published research in your fields’ of study or interest.
FMI: contact Adam Rosenkranz, Arts & Humanities Librarian