EVALUATION OF INDEXES AND ABSTRACTS

Submitted November 13

ABSTRACT

Ready reference is a term used to describe the types of questions that can be answered with a singe sentence answer. It is just as important for a reference librarian to know where to find these types of answers as it is to know how where to find more extensive research resources. While some may prefer a quick search on Google, it is imperative to keep in mind that there is also an abundant amount of information readily available in print format – if one knows where to look for it. That being said, this assignment gave students in the course the opportunity to gain a better understanding of the type of ready reference resources that exist, both in print and electronic form.

Jennifer Turner and Susan Tidd collaborated to review the following resources. We communicated via e-mail and decided to share our reviews and observations. I reviewed the first half while Susan reviewed the last half. We emailed the results to each other and reviewed the research. Working together, we were able to gain insight into new resources which will serve as invaluable tools as we pursue our degrees in the field of library science.

Citation: Article 1^st. Dublin, OH: OCLC. (Online on FirstSearch).

Authority: OCLC (Online Computer Library Center is a nonprofit organization found in 1967, designed to help libraries access the most amount of information in the most economical way. Today, over 41,000 use its services.

Scope: Taken from over 16,000 sources, contains nearly twenty million records since 1990. Subjects include business, humanities, medicine, popular culture, science, social science, and technology.

Format: Accessed via FirstSearch. Can perform searches with multiple keywords, author term, title, publisher, etc. Ability to limit by year, full text, and subscriptions held by particular library. Choice of ranking by relevance and date.

Entries: Title is made clear by large blue text. Author and source of article is given below the title. Also included are the number of pages, the number of libraries (worldwide) that contain the material, and whether or not the library being searched from has the material. Selecting the individual entry provides users with even more information: holdings, ISSN number. Key search terms are highlighted.

Overall Evaluation: Having already been exposed to the FirstSearch database probably gave me a biased perspective of Article1st, since I was familiar with the database and its graphics, methods of searching, etc. Article1st covers a wide spectrum of information and is a valuable database to have available at a library, whether it is public or academic.

Citation: Doyle, C. (Ed.) (2005). Book review digest. New York: H.W. Wilson.

Authority: Founded by Halsey William Wilson, this publishing company has been in existence for over one hundred years. Other popular indexes include Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature, The Reference Shelf, Bibliographic Index, and Library Literature. Offers sixty four reference databases.

Purpose: To index reviews of books published on an annual basis.

Scope: Current juvenile and adult fiction and non fiction in the English language. Excludes government publications, textbooks, technical books in the sciences and law.

Format: Two columns per page. Alphabetically by author’s last name. If there is no author, alphabetically by title.

Entries: Complete citation, including number of pages and ISBN. Summary of work and any reviews. Some reviews contain direct excerpts.

Overall Evaluation: A must for any library. Up to date (published annually). Easy to interpret. Quick reference if you need to know if a book has been reviewed. Reviews with the excerpts are the most useful.

Citation: Ferguson, D. (Ed.) (2006). Book review index. New York: Gale.

Authority: Thomas Gale is a world-renown name in the field of reference publishing. Currently publishes over 600 databases in print, online, e-books, and microform. Other works include Macmillan Reference USA, Charles Scribner's Sons, Primary Source Microfilm, and Scholarly Resources Inc.

Purpose: To index reviews of thousands of books, including audio-books and e-books.

Scope: Reviews over 400 publications from the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia.

Format: Two sections: reviews alphabetically by last name of author whose books are being reviewed and reviews alphabetically by title. Reviews are classified as small, medium, or large depending on the number of words.

Entries: Complete citation, age code (ex. child versus young adult), publication code, volume, date, issue, page that review appears on, number of words in review.

Overall Evaluation: Succinct, difficult to interpret. No excerpts from reviews. Must devote time to looking up publication code. Does not appear as thought the author of the review is given. Two ways to search if the author of the work is unknown.

*Also available online:

Citation: Yang, H. (Ed.) (1999). Business periodicals index. New York: H.W. Wilson.

Purpose: To index English language periodicals with a concentration in the topic of business.

Scope: Over 1.6 million entries with over 96,000 added annually. The published takes recommendations from the votes of subscribers when choosing which articles to index.

Format: Arranged alphabetically by subject, author, or name of company (in bold lettering). Separate section for book reviews.

Entries: Include article title, author, and complete citation of periodical. Special “title enhancement” section gives the indexer the opportunity to further explain the meaning of the title.

Overall Evaluation: Usefulness would depend on the library. Not as necessary at a small liberal arts academic library, probably more useful for colleges that have a business school. Might be a better reference for a public library to have.

Citation: Children’s magazine guide. http://childrensmag.com

* I was unable to locate a print version of this, so evaluation is limited to the website version.

Authority: Registered trademark of Greenwood Publishing Group. Nationally accredited database for children’s magazine publications; top subject index of magazines for elementary and middle school aged children.

Purpose: To index magazines and websites targeted for elementary and middle school aged children.

Scope: According to the website, the selected magazines fall under the following criteria: useful for reference, contain accurate information, must have child appeal, and follow age-appropriate writing style. Demand also influences whether or not a magazine is included. That being said, over 65 magazines are indexed.

Format: Listed alphabetically by subject. Bold capital letters emphasize the subject.

Entries: Include the following information (in addition to the subject): cross references, title, author, website title, website address and annotation, magazine, date, page number, any additional notes.

Overall Evaluation: I found this to be very user-friendly. The color and overall theme of the initial web pages made me want to explore further. This database would be a must for any public library containing children’s sections and well as elementary and middle school libraries.

Citation: Hazen, E.P. & Fryer, D.J. (Eds.) (1990). The Columbia Granger’s index to poetry. New York: Columbia University Press.

Authority: Founded in 1893. Currently the fourth oldest university press in the country. Publishes over 150 titles each year in a variety of fields.

Purpose: To index poetry in a variety of ways: by title, by first line, by subject).

Scope: Over 100,000 poems from over 150 anthologies.

Format: Alphabetically by title and first line index, author’s last name, and subject.

Entries: Two columns per page for title/first line section. Three columns per page for author/index section. Does not give full citation. Title/first line index gives author and anthology code. Author index gives the title (which you then have to look up in the title section, in order to find anthology information). Subject index provides title and author’s last name.

Overall Evaluation: Limited information. Good for a quick reference or if you know the first line of a poem. Entries are not intimidating; succinct.

Citation: Greenfieldt, J. (Ed.) (2000). Essay and general literature index, 1995-1999. New York: H.W. Wilson.

Purpose: To index essays published in collections with a concentration on the humanities and social sciences.

Scope: Published semi-annually (paperbound edition in June followed by annual cumulation). Every five years, permanent cumulative volume. Indexes nearly 20,000 essays and articles in over 1,500 collections and miscellaneous works.

Format: Two columns per page. Arranged alphabetically by author’s last name, subject, or title.

Entries: In addition to citation, entries contain an “about” section, which includes information about the author’s life or discussion about the author’s work and an “about individual works” section, which refers to criticism on an individual work. Many subdivision which vary depending on the work and the author.

Overall Evaluation: User friendly. Author’s name and subject are bold. Indentations make for a very organized structure/flow. Subheadings are bold and centered. However, it does not provide the full citation nor ISSN, ISBN, etc.

* Online version is updated daily.

Citation: Ethnic NewsWatch. (I entered this database through the Wheaton College Library’s homepage, since my first try using the suggested link failed).

Authority: Copyright by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. A Google search of “ProQuest” revealed that it is a reliable resource of electronic collections.

Purpose: A bilingual database that provides points different from the mainstream.

Scope: Contains newspapers, magazines and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press from 1990 thru the present.

Format: Main page contains background information about the database, along with the following links: what’s new, timeline, publication information, subjects, and search tips.
Entries: Searches can be limited to Scholarly articles, magazine articles, and newspapers (or, not limited at all). There are three ways to sort the entries: most relevant, most recent, and oldest. Search results include the complete citations below which are two icons: one to select the full text of the article, the other to select the abstract. The “publication” tab allows users to search specific magazines, newspapers, etc. by issue.

Overall Evaluation: One element that I immediately found confusing was how to go about searching. While I could find information on searching tips, at first I failed to realize that I needed to click on the red box labeled “English” to begin searching. I think if the box had been labeled something similar to “search” it would have been clearer. Once I over came this hurdle, the actual search screen was very user-friendly, and search methods paralleled those of other databases I have used in the past. While I found this database to be very user friendly and informative, I am left with feelings of confusion regarding the purpose of the database. I do not see how the database provides different points of views. When I first read this, I was misled into thinking it provided slanted reviews of material: it appears to be no different from any other database in that it simply indexes articles. I do not see how the extreme opinions come into play, unless the sources themselves are controversial.

Citation: Howard, J.M. (Ed.) (1984). General science index. New York: H.W. Wilson.

Purpose: To index English language periodicals by subject with a concentration in the sciences.

Scope:

Format: Alphabetically by subject. End of the book contains a list of reviews (also alphabetically by author). Two columns per page.

Entries: Subject is bold and in capital letters. Indentation makes it easier to read. Under the subject heading, entries include title, author, if it has a bibliography and/or illustrations, periodical information (volume, issue, pages, etc.)/

Overall Evaluation: Need to read entries carefully – limited punctuation, no bold lettering or italics, quotation marks, etc.

Citation: Contents1st. Dublin, OH: OCLC.

Authority: OCLC (Online Computer Library Center is a nonprofit organization found in 1967, designed to help libraries access the most amount of information in the most economical way. Today, over 41,000 use its services.

Overall Evaluation: The following academic libraries were consulted in an effort to locate use of this database: The Madeleine Wallace Library at Wheaton College, the Bridgewater State College library in Bridgewater, MA, Stonehill College’s library in Easton, MA, and the Buley Library at Southern Connecticut State University. Similarly, the Attleboro Public Library was also consulted. None of these five libraries provided users with access to this database. The next step was search for information online. A google search for “Contents1st produced no useful results that would provide information as to the scope, purpose, type of entries, etc. available on this database. As a last result, a similar search was attempted on the OCLC webpage, but no results availed. Due to the apparent obscurity/ difficulty in locating this database, we can conclude that it is not among the top suggested reference databases for academic or public libraries. Perhaps Article1st is comparable and more prevalent.

Citation: Current Contents. Philadelphia: Institute for Scientific Information. (Online version is referred to as Current Contents Search)

Authority: The Institute for Scientific Information has been in existence for over forty five years. It is known worldwide.

Purpose: To index articles from scholarly journals by their table of contents. Topics include sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities.

Scope: From 1990 until the present. Entries come from over 65,000 journals. As of November 2003, database contained 13,707,664 entries. Updated daily.
Format: Seven “subsets”: Clinical Medicine; Life Sciences; Engineering, Technology and Applied Sciences; Agriculture, Biology, and Environmental Sciences; Physical, Chemical, and Earth Sciences; Social and Behavioral Sciences; Arts and Humanities.
Entries: Include table of contents, bibliographic record for each item (items are articles, reviews, letters, notes, and editorials). The use of all capitalized text makes it difficult to distinguish between the parts within an entry. Bibliographic information is at the top of each entry, followed by a breakdown by page numbers.
Overall Evaluation: I was not overly impressed with this database. Personally, I would not invest money into a database that gives such limited information as a table of contents. While some entries do include an abstract, I did not find the database to be very user-friendly. I have come across others throughout this course that have had more appeal.

Citation: Dissertation Abstracts Online. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International.

Authority: University Microfilms International accepts submissions from school institutions. Updated monthly.

Purpose: To index dissertations accepted by accredited institutions.

Scope: Includes every American dissertation since 1861. Also included in more recent years are dissertations from 50 British universities and European dissertations. Complete abstracts are included in entries from 1988 through the present. As of January 2006, there were 2,016,243 records in the following subjects: agriculture, astronomy, biological and environmental sciences, business and economics, chemistry, education, engineering, fine arts and music, geography and regional planning, geology, health sciences, history and political science, language and literature, library and information science, mathematics and statistics, philosophy and religion, physics, psychology and sociology.

Format: Multiple ways to search: keyword, author, advisor, title, institution, publication date, accession number. Title is bold.

Entries: Entries include full bibliographic information, including the degree earned by the author, the author’s advisor, and the institution awarding the degree. Also included are descriptors and descriptor codes.

Overall Evaluation: A must for college and university libraries, probably not so necessary for public libraries. A useful source offering multiple ways to search.