Central Medical Library keeps Journal App "BrowZine"!

After a trial-period -initiated by the Central Medical Library- the Libraries of the University of Groningen decided to keep access to this very useful so-called "Journal App" BrowZine for at least the next 12 months!
BrowZine will be accessable for all staff and students of the UMCG ánd the RUG.

After download of the App (iPad   | Android ):

• Staff of the University Medical Center Groningen can simply login with their CMB Proxy account!
• Staff and students of the University of Groningen can simpy login with their P- or S-number. 

BrowZine is an App for managing YOUR individual choice of academic journals to keep up with. It offers a new way of monitoring and reading scholarly journals across all disciplines, connected to your library's subscription, with seamless access to the fulltext, plus offline reading.
BrowZine is available for iPad and Android.

BrowZine, now also for Android from Centrale Medische Bibliotheek, Universitair Medisch Centrum Groningen (UMCG)

Read more on BrowZine at our Startpage about E-Journals

And what about the Medical Journal Apps?

The CMB keeps supporting the Medical Journal Apps included in the comparion/trial period:

• Docwise,
• Read by QxMD,
• Docphin

Comparison
I am writing a kind of comparion and use a number of criteria. We learned a lot. The apps are very different. Personally I love docwise ánd ReadbyQxMD the most. I love using he flipboard interfaces, the mix with medical news and the option to search & browse. (I will be writing a post on new updates of all the apps soon)
Basically the contact with all the App builders has been great!

Here are some criteria to be included in the comparison. If you have suggestions for additional criteria, please do not hesitate to contact me!

• Registration process
• User Interface
• Performance
• Access to full text
• PDF view + extra's
• Share options
• "Open In" other Apps
• Notifications
• Search Options
• Support

Here is the short version of the BrowZine score on these criteria:

• Registration process:
• BrowZine activated login with our proxy accounts or the University of Groningen Staff/Student accounts. No further registration is needed. Just choosing the right institution "University Medical Center Groningen / Univ Gron. Very pleasant is the saved login details ... no logins ever needed again, unless you reset the App.
• User Interface :
• With it's Bookshelf design it is simple and effective. In comparison with the Medical Journal Apps, BrowZine "JUST" offers ToCs based on the library's subscriptions with not too much fancy stuff, but they managed to do an excellent job in presenting that access with just very useful functionality.
• Performance:
• BrowZine is stable, takes just a moment on start-up to download the library content. Just a few patrons mentioned an app freeze or crash. Response time is fine, moving between the few pages/functions of the App (My Bookshef, BrowZine Library, Saved Articles, Institution Info and Settings)
• Offline: When articles have been saved, they are available for reading even when you do not have wifi or cellular access.
• Access to full text:
• We gave BrowZine a holdings file from our SFX-database, which they integrated in the access. "What you see is what you get" This Holdings file can be updated frequently to keep accurate with changes in our subscriptions via the special Holdings Uploading page
• Only journals for which we have fulltext access, are visible in the App, including a selection of Open access Journals.
• BrowZine is constantly working on getting as much Journals as possible actived for inclusion in BrowZine, but some Publishers do not release the needed metadata, and some do not assign DOIs to articles. See the current list of direct-subscribed Publisher BrowZine supports.
• Acces to not-directly -subscribed Journals for instance through an aggregator like EbscoHost, are an issue for us, which we hope to solve with BrowZine.


• Access to open Access:
• Without login in, the user just gets access to a number of Open Access Journals.
• Unfortunately BrowZine can not implement all journals in DOAJ, only some of them make metadata available and/or assign DOIs.
• PDF view + extra's
• The TOCs offer just the author, title information and start page of the articles. To read the abstract and the full article you always have to download the pdf. Pdf download however is fast. It's currently not possible to search the document or annotate, but BrowZine does offers a wide range of extra's.
• Share options
• Email
• Save Article (for offline reading)
• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter & more (Pinboard, Google Reader(this should be removed, as it no longer exists), Read it later, Instapaper, Tumblr)
• "Open In" other Apps
• you can open pdf's in a wide range of Apps you have installed on iPad or Android device, like Dropbox, Papers, Mendeley, Evernote etc.
• Notifications
• Push Notifications are announced, but not yet available
• Search Options
• There is no option to search in the BrowZne App
• Support
• Overall Support and response is very good and fast. BrowZine offers an excellent website for Feedback & Support via Uservoice, with a Knowledge Base ánd a great "I Suggest You...." platform, where anybody can drop (and vote for) ideas!

If you want to know more in detail, contact me. I'd like to exchange experiences with other (medical) libraries running BrowZine!