Foreign Periodicals (Traditional and Electronic) inside Polish Libraries

Abstract

This article discusses the enormous changes that are taking place before our very eyes regarding access to world scientific literature. It examines the publishing activity of large publishers of periodicals - Springer Verlag, Academic Press and Elsevier Science Publishers - in Poland. It shows the dispersion and organisational affiliation of several dozen Polish scientific libraries belonging to these publishers, and also presents the activity of the international consortium EIFL Direct. Examples are given of search results in the Science Direct database located at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Warsaw University, which suggest a frequent use of foreign electronic periodicals. The possibility of using these periodicals not only makes up for the shortage of essential titles in libraries, caused by restricted funds, but also permits more effective searches and saves a lot of time.