EDINA: Edinburgh Data and Information Access

EDINA, based at Edinburgh University Data Library, is a JISC-funded national datacentre. It offers the UK tertiary education and research community networked access to a library of data, information and research resources. As a JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) national datacentre, EDINA is part of the Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER) and works closely with the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS), among others, in bringing together different JISC-funded services.

Since its launch as a national datacentre in 1996, EDINA has expanded steadily and now offers bibliographic and geographic services in all subject areas.

In the area of Arts and Humanities, EDINA offers H W Wilson's Art Abstracts and Art Index Retrospective and, newly launched, Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts, from Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, and the MLA International Bibliography, produced by the Modern Language Association of America. Also new is EconLit, which indexes and abstracts more than 550 international economic journals, and PAIS International, produced by the Public Affairs Information Services, Inc. In addition to these web-based services, EDINA will soon launch a web version of Palmer's Index to The Times.

EDINA's geo-spatial data services, relevant across all subject areas, include Digimap, which gives access to online Ordnance Survey map data, and UKBORDERS, providing digitised boundary datasets of census and administrative areas.

General reference databases are Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory, and SALSER, a freely accessible virtual union catalogue of Scottish academic libraries serials holdings.

All EDINA services are available free of charge to members of UK tertiary education institutions for academic use, although institutional subscription and end-user registration is required for most services.

More information on EDINA and all its services is available at http://edina.ac.uk