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<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <TITLE>What Serial Archives are listed in the Online Books Indexes</TITLE> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="olbp.css" /> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"> <style type="text/css"> h2 {text-align: center} p.ctr {text-align: center} </style> </head> <body> <header> <h1><a href="https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/" class="logolink">The Online Books Page</a></h1> </header> <h2>MAJOR SERIAL ARCHIVES LISTING CRITERIA</h2> Along with books, <A HREF="https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/">The Online Books Page</A> also lists major archives of <A HREF="serials.html">serials</A> (such as magazines, published journals, and newspapers). Serials can be at least as important as books in library research. Serials are often the first places that new research and scholarship appear. They are sources for firsthand accounts of contemporary events and commentary. They are also often the first (and sometimes the only) place that literary works appear. (For those who might still quibble about serials being listed on a "books page", back issues of serials are often bound and reissued as hardbound "books".) <p> The Online Books Page lists serials in much the same way as it lists ordinary books. Serials appear in a special <A HREF="serials.html">serials listing</A>, but they also appear in the <A HREF="titles.html">title</A>, <A HREF="subjects.html">subject</A>, and <A HREF="new.html">new items</A> listings intermingled with books. They also have listing criteria similar to <A HREF="book-criteria.html">the listing criteria used for books</A>. In particular: <UL> <LI> The serial archives must be <b>legitimately available at no charge</b>. That is, they must be either in the public domain, or online with the permission of the applicable copyright holders. There must be no fee (or other consideration) required to access the contents of the serials, though ads may be included in the archives. <LI> The serial must be <b>significant</b>. Serials listed must be carried and cataloged by a major library in order to qualify for listing. (Hence, most amateur 'zines do not qualify for listing here, unless they've made it into a major library collection.) <LI> The serial archives must be <b>accessible and reliable</b>. (Reliability here refers to the digital data and services, not to the content of the serial itself). Poorly done transcriptions, unreadable images, archives on unreliable Web servers, or archives that are too difficult for the average reader to navigate, may be omitted from our listings. Readers should at least be able to locate particular issues of serials, and then be able to go to any article in the serial. <LI> The serial archives must be <b>permanent</b>, like they are in a library. (Some sites have full copies of previous issues, but only for a limited time period, and the issues disappear after the time period expires. Such archives normally do not qualify for listing.) <LI> <b>Complete contents</b> of issues (or at least all of the major items in the issues) must be offered in the archives. (By this I mean the text of all the articles, not just table-of-contents listings.) <UL> <LI> Serial archives that omit syndicated or reprinted material because they do not have the copyright permissions to include them may, however, still qualify for listing, if the archive includes all of the serial's original material, and if this original material is the main content of the serial. (For example, a modern newspaper archive may be included for its original articles, even if the archive omits nationally syndicated columns, and stories provided by outside wire services, that appeared in the original print newspaper.) Omissions of this material will still be noted in a cover page I provide for the archive, though. </UL> <LI> There must be a <b>significant run</b> of the serial available online. I don't expect the entire run of a 150-year-old magazine to go online before I'll list it, but at the same time, it is not worthwhile to list single issues, for the most part. Generally, I require one of the following: <ul> <li> At least one continuous year (12 months, or 52 weeks, or 365 days) of full issues. <li> Or, for serials that ended before publishing a full year but meet our general significance criteria, the complete run of the serial. <li> Or, for historic serials that qualify for inclusion in our <a href="cce/firstperiod.html">first copyright renewals for periodicals listings</a> (generally, serials from the US that published between 1924 and 1963), at least one full issue. </ul> Serial projects with less than the required amount of material, but that have at least one full issue and are continuing to grow towards our minimum run requirement, may be listed in my <A HREF="in-progress.html">in-progress page</A> when suggested by readers. <LI> As with the books I list, serials generally need to be in a language I can decipher for me to give them a curated listing. (In practice, this means something that uses a European script, whether the Latin alphabet, Greek, or Cyrillic). English-language serials are the easiest for me to work with, but I can often work out other languages, though it may sometimes take me a while to process these. <LI> If there are multiple archives for a particular serial, I will generally link to all of the archives with significant amounts of material (under a single cover page), as long as the sum total of the archives' contents meet the criteria above. </UL> If a serial I list is still being published, I will include a link to its official site, if any, even if that official site does not itself maintain a qualifying archive, as long as there is <em>some</em> qualifying archive for that serial somewhere on the Net. <p> I hope the index of major serial archives is a useful service for the Net. If you find it useful, please <a href="suggest.html">let me know</a> when you learn of new major serial archives that I haven't listed yet. <hr> <p class="ctr"> <A HREF="https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/">Home</A> -- <A HREF="aboutolbp.html">About Us</A> -- <A HREF="faq.html">FAQ</A> -- <A HREF="getinvolved.html">Get Involved!</A> -- <A HREF="in-progress.html">In Progress / Requested</A> -- <A HREF="links.html">More Book Links</A> </p> <p class="ctr"> <A HREF="lists.html">Books</A> -- <A HREF="news.html">News</A> -- <A HREF="features.html">Features</A> -- <A HREF="archives.html">Archives</A> -- <A HREF="inside.html">The Inside Story</A> </p> <p class="ctr"> <i>Edited by John Mark Ockerbloom (onlinebooks@pobox.upenn.edu) <br> <a href="licenses.html">OBP copyrights and licenses</a> </i> </p> </body> </html>