Looking for something good to read? Many of the world's great magazines are as close to members of the Duke community as their computers, available for free with no holds or due dates through a Duke Libraries service.
Without ever stepping out of home or office, Duke students, employees and alumni can read the latest and back issues of The New Yorker, The Economist, Nature, Science magazine, The Chronicle of Higher Education, New York Times Book Review, New York Review of Books, Consumer Reports and many others. The service also provides a pathway to international titles such as Paris-Match, The Spectator from the UK and India Today, all via PC or tablet. In all there are more than 104,481 e-journal titles, all found here.
All it takes is a Duke NetID. The A-Z list is long, so librarians suggest searching by typing in a title of a favorite journal. Once accessed, the magazine can be searched by topic or issue date, which provides a listing of available articles in text form.
Eva Bahnuk, a Duke senior who works part-time at the Gothic Bookshop, has embraced quick library access to journals and magazines, primarily for research, but sometimes for fun reading. She uses the FRANCIS and JSTOR search engines to stay on top of research about marijuana cravings for an independent study paper in psychology. "If it's off topic, I consider it pleasure reading," she says.
While many readers are using the service to catch up on current magazines, the service also helps Duke faculty in their research.
English professor Priscilla Wald uses the libraries' LexisNexis database and other digital media archives to explore material published in a certain historical period. She's recording what people heard in the mass media about a particular topic, such as the dropping of the atomic bomb in the first two weeks after Hiroshima. She is currently at work on a book about how the idea of the human came to change in the post-WWII years.
Wald, who teaches and works on U.S. literature and culture, as well as contemporary narratives of science and medicine, science fiction and environmental studies, also makes considerable use of digital archives, such as The New York Times -- with full page views -- for a more complete historical picture. Same-day coverage in the Times is also available through Factiva and LexisNexis.
Another library service helps Duke readers using iPads or Android tablets. The BrowZine app accesses academic journals from 61 academic publishers. From the Journal of Democracy to JAMA, any issue published since 2005 is viewable through the app.
A BrowZine user can check on title availability, although some journals can only be accessed through a magazine's main website viewable via laptop, but not via an app. Humanities librarian Sara Seten Berghausen says the eJournals tab is the quickest place to find those links. You'll be routed through the Duke proxy server and prompted to enter your netID and password.
With so many options and possible publication entry points, Berghausen says readers shouldn't hesitate to call or IM Research Services with questions. "It's constantly changing, so it's even hard for us to keep up," Berghausen said.
To browse library databases by subject, click here.