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Letter to the Editor...
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Dear Editor,
Science and technology are vital for the development of any country. This is also true for Turkey, and Bilkent University is one of the fundamental science and technology universities in the country.
I am a fourth year Molecular Biology and Genetics student. I think that the Bilkent library should provide online access to journals. Bilkent University does not even have online access to Nature journals which are usually highly ranked in the fields of biological sciences.
As a scientific researcher, I would like to have, online access to highly qualified journals - for example, Nature Press and Cell Press journals.
Best Regrds
Ali Ertürk (MBG/IV)
Response to the Letter:
Dear Mr. Ertürk,
The library does its best to provide essential materials for all sectors of the Bilkent community, which includes a great many individuals who are not in the science faculty. Nature is an expensive and difficult to deal with publisher, but the Anatolian University Libraries Consortium (ANKOS) ran a trial of Nature journals online at the end of 2002, which Bilkent joined. No feedback was received at Bilkent from users, but Bilkent still expressed its willingness to join the consortium. As no others that had joined the trial wanted to join a consortium arrangement, it did not materialize. Access for our university only was considered too expensive, but this can be reconsidered when organizing subscriptions for 2004.
On the other hand, we do provide online access to the Cell Press journals Cell and Molecular Cell and to the Nature journals Cancer Gene Therapy, Cell Death and Differentiation, and Heredity. A search in our electronic journals database on “molecular” gives 84 journals, on “genetics” 39. Others come in the “old-fashioned” print format.
The library provides electronic access to over 8,000 journals, including all Elsevier/Academic Press and Wiley titles plus many Springer and Kluwer scientific journals. Are you quite sure that none of them is of interest to you?
Phyllis Erdoðan,
Bilkent University Librarian
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