Contents for free

Universities and colleges will have free access to the British Library's Electronic Table of Contents from September, saving individual institutions more than Pounds 1,000 per year.

Etoc lists the titles of about 15 million article and conference records. Researchers can search the contents pages of current journals and conference proceedings. Funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee of the UK Higher Education Funding Councils, the initiative is part of JISC's wider plan to create a national, quality assured, information resource online.

Lynne Brindley, the British Library's chief executive, said: "Researchers can now identify the materials they need and order them without leaving their desks, thus improving research competitiveness for UK plc."