I have just discovered what looks like all the issues of the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft online, for free, up to 2005, here:
http://menadoc.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/dmg/periodical/structure/2327
It includes indexes, supplements and all. You can’t download whole volumes, but you can download the individual articles you want. The scans are greyscale, and good quality.
This journal is very important for Syriac studies, I know. Probably for Arabic also. And it’s all here. Wow.
I’m deeply impressed, and I deeply approve. This is what we want to see from an academic journal. The fact that we don’t have the last few years doesn’t matter a bit, except to specialists. For the rest of us it’s a bonanza. It doesn’t really matter that you can’t download whole volumes — you don’t really need to.
This is the shape of the future.
The collection online also includes digital books which the publishers have given the OK to put online — specialised monographs from 20 years ago, which are out of print and so not earning a bean any longer. Well done, the publishers.
Who says that Germany doesn’t get the internet? (Me, that’s who — and I’ve said it pretty often) Not any more, it seems.
I hope these items show up in search engines, by the way…
(H/t AWOL)