Database Alert: Wiley InterScience Becomes Wiley Online Library

Be advised, familiar database Wiley InterScience will transform into Wiley Online Library during the weekend of August 7th and 8th, 2010.

What's in a name? Well, perhaps Wiley wanted to rebrand because the word "InterScience" was not only vague, but also implied an overwhelming orientation towards the pure and applied sciences. But the fact is that Wiley has always covered everything from Business, Economics, Finance & Accounting to Communication & Media Studies. Now the database sounds more subject-neutral.

We have been advised that there will be a period of downtime over the launch weekend. Wiley InterScience will no longer be available from Saturday 7 August at 04:00 am New York EDT. Wiley Online Library is due to go live on Sunday 8 August at 12:00 pm New York EDT.

During this transition period, users will see a message explaining the reason for the unavailability and will be directed to an informational webpage for more details. This interruption in service is necessary "to facilitate a smooth transition to Wiley Online Library."

Once the change occurs, the publisher states that "Wiley Online Library will host the world’s broadest and deepest multidisciplinary collection of online resources covering life, health and physical sciences, social science and the humanities. Built on the latest technology and designed with extensive input from scholars around the world, Wiley Online Library will deliver seamless integrated access to over 4 million articles from 1500 journals."

While we have access to most of the Wiley Journals since 1997, we do NOT own all of the book content that Wiley is also loading into the database. We own some of their ebooks (both monograph and reference) but not even close to all of them. Therefore, since the most valuable material for academic research is peer-reviewed journal literature, you might want to do a keyword, author or other search on the Advanced Search start page and then, on your results page, filter the results in the right frame, clicking Journals to limit the list of citations. See the circled area in the example below:

To quickly see whether you have access to an article, chapter or entry, look for a padlock icon that is unlocked. Accessible materials will fall into three categories, as below.

Our crackerjack librarian team is going to try to stay ahead of these changes but we must wait, in some cases, for the Publisher to make their switchovers and for Web Services to update links. And with all the hundreds of records in the online catalog, we cannot guarantee that all OPAC links will work immediately. Our eJournal Locator company, Serial Solutions, has been working with Wiley during this preparatory period, so when trying to track a journal title, you might want to start by checking the Journal (not article) Title in the eJournal Locator.

We hope this transition goes smoothly. If you have any questions or problems with Wiley content, please stop by, call or email us and we will be happy to assist you.

For more information from Wiley, a page describing improvements and features can be found here. An descriptive flyer can be found here. And a PowerPoint intro to the new platform is available here. Even more tutorials and information should be available at the Online Library's homepage (just look for the turquoise link to the right of the page).