New online resource showcases 10,000+ articles from 1990 to 2014

Australasian Dental Practice magazine is celebrating its 25th year of publication in 2014 and in conjunction with this, a new version of its popular online archive of articles is being launched.

"After 25 years of publication, the creation of an online archive of everything we have ever published has been an epic project," said Joseph Allbeury, editor and publisher of Australasian Dental Practice, Auxiliary and eLABORATE magazines.

"When it is complete, our subscribers will be able to access in excess of 10,000 articles from Vol 1. No 1. March/April 1990 through to present day. This effectively puts the history of dentistry in Australia for the past quarter century in a comprehensive, online database that is searchable down to word level.

"At present, we have completed about 15 years worth of content, starting at the present day and working back. When I first took on my role with the publications, Australasian Dental Practice was a 24-page quarterly and eLABORATE didn't exist. So the last 10 years will be processed a lot quicker, with the major hold-up being the need to manually process the articles from the pre-digital age."

Mr Allbeury said that the project had been a nostalgic journey over his two decades with the magazines and despite having a good memory, he is continually surprised to find great articles he had long since forgotten.

"Like everything we do, we have handcrafted the new online archive. Literally every article has been 'revisisted' before posting it. Other than for obvious reasons, we did this in order to 'tag' content to make the information more user-friendly and accessible.

"It is one thing to offer an archive of 10,000 articles. That's a really nice number. But this has taken an inordinate amount of time, money and effort to complete and it will all be for nothing if no one actually uses it. So we have endeavoured to add a lot of features to facilitate that."

Apart from users being able to browse the archive magazine by magazine, edition by edition or search by word, Mr Allbeury said that every article would also eventually be hard tagged with relevant related information.

"We have tried to make the archive useful and user friendly. If you're reading an article that is part of a series of articles, then there will be a link on the same page to all the other articles in the series for example. We have also tagged each article with a topic or topics, so you can quickly search for articles on the same subject. Also, there is a link to search for articles by the same author. The digital world has the unique ability to assemble everything you need in one place, so if you're researching on a particular subject, it makes the process far more efficient."

The new Article Archive is now available through the Dental Community website located at www.dentalcommunity.com.au. A unique Username and Password is required to access the section of the website containing the archive - there is no charge for this for registered dental practitioners. The archive can be freely searched. Any user can view any article designated as "News". The full text versions of "Feature" articles are only available to Paid Subscribers of the relevant magazine that the article appeared in. Paid Subscribers to Australasian Dental Practice can see all articles at any time.

"Access to the full capabilities of the Article Archive is restricted to our Paid Subscribers," Mr Allbeury said. "A subscription to Australasian Dental Practice is only $99 a year and this is one of the many benefits you receive. You are paying for one year, but you are really getting access to 25 years of content!

"We will continue to add Premium options to the Dental Community website like this for our Paid Subscribers so we encourage everyone to take out a Paid Subscription and enjoy the immediate benefits."

Visit www.dentalcommunity.com.au for more information. For your unique Username and Password, call (02) 9929-1900.