News stand digimags loaded for academics

Exact Editions launches new service

Libraries at academic institutions are to be given the chance to subscribe to online versions of popular magazines for the first time.

Web-based magazine distribution company Exact Editions, which describes its aim as “bringing magazines into the digital age”, has launched a service that allows subscribers to view digital editions of the publications.

Unlike the websites run by the magazines, which typically contain related content, a digital edition is a replica of the current print edition available in the shops, complete with photographs and advertising, and allows the user to flip through the pages on screen.

It is the first time that popular magazines such as Prospect, The Ecologist and The New Internationalist have been offered in this way.

Literary Review, fashion magazine Dazed & Confused, music title Opera and art publication Art Monthly are other titles on offer.

Daryl Rayner, managing director of Exact Editions, said the service was the logical response to demand from libraries for online access to a broader range of publications in the fields of fashion, art and politics.

She said: “Universities are moving much more towards electronic resources. They started with the obvious academic journals and they are now building up their collections, so the time has come for these magazines to be included.”

The digital magazines can be read as a sequence of web pages, much like the paper versions of the magazines, or browsed by viewing a section of pages in browse mode. Individual pages can be printed, bookmarked or referenced.

The digital magazines are also fully searchable, and those institutions that subscribe to more than one can search for keywords or phrases across titles.

Most also come with access to an archive of digital editions going back several years.

Rayner said Exact Editions had responded to “strong demand” from libraries to launch institutional access, so that rather than logging in, users would have automatic access from all library or university computers.