The Charleston
ADVISOR Critical Reviews of Web Products for Information Professionals
ISSN: 1525–4011
www.charlestonco.com
Contents
Volume 22, Number 2
October 2020
Advisor Reviews in This Issue
▼ ADVISOR INTRODUCTIONS
▼ ADVISOR REVIEWS––STANDARD REVIEWS
Licensing for Libraries During the Pandemic by George Machovec........................................................ 3
Academic Video Online (AVON) by Thomas J. Beck........................................................... 5 American Archive of Public Broadcasting by Warren Bareiss and Lizah Ismail..................................... 8 American Sermons, Series 1 & 2, 1652–1819 by Robert H. Ellison and Larry Sheret................................ 14 Calgary Herald Newspaper Archive by Jane C. Duffy.......................................................... 18 Catholic News Archive by Sharon Kabel........................................................... 21 CINAHL Complete by Dawn Behrend......................................................... 26 Discography of American Historical Recordings by Sarah Holmes.......................................................... 30 Human Kinetics Library by Pamela R. Dennis..................................................... 34 Nineteenth Century Literary Society: The John Murray Publishing Archive by Marisa Scigliano....................................................... 39 ProQuest Coronavirus Research Database by Marcia Salmon......................................................... 43 Public Health: Global Origins of Modern Health Policy and Management, 1957–1995 by Elisabeth Leekley...................................................... 48 RetroNews by Jennifer Dekker......................................................... 51
Advisor Review Elements............................................... 4 Advisor Rating Guidelines.............................................. 4 ▼ ADVISOR SCOREBOARD TCA Scoreboard............................................On the Web
Unsub by Grant Hardaway....................................................... 55 ADVERTISERS Accessible Archives.................................................................. 60 Association for Computing Machinery.................................... 63 Brepols Publishers.................................................................... 38 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press...................................... 64
Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries................................... 61 International Monetary Fund................................................... 54 Modern Language Association................................................. 59 Unsub..................................................................................... 62
Subscription information on pages 33 and 50. Scoreboard on the Web.
The Charleston Advisor / 6180 E. Warren Ave., Denver CO 80222 / www.charlestonco.com
The Charleston Advisor Editorial and Corporate Offices 6180 E. Warren Ave., Denver, CO 80222 (303) 282-9706; Fax (303) 282-9743 E-mail: rlenzini@charlestonco.com President, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief: Rebecca T. Lenzini Managing Editor: George Machovec Executive Director The Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries george@coalliance.org Senior Editor and Editorial Advisor: Charles Hamaker Associate University Librarian for Collections and Technical Services Emeritus University of North Carolina at Charlotte cahamake@uncc.edu
Chair of the Board: Katina Strauch Assistant Dean for Technical Services and Collection Development Emeritus Addlestone Library, College of Charleston kstrauch@comcast.net
Research and Conference Editor: Judy Luther President, Informed Strategies judy.luther@informedstrategies.com
EDITORIAL BOARD (in alphabetical order)
Dennis Brunning Associate University Librarian for Academic Programs Emeritus Arizona State University brunning@asu.edu
Tom Gilson Head of Reference Emeritus Robert Scott Small Library College of Charleston gilsont@cofc.edu
Natyra Pancsofar Resource Acquisitions Librarian, O’Neill Library Boston College pancsofa@bc.edu
Rick Burke Executive Director SCELC (Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium) rburke@scelc.org
Michelle Jeske City Librarian Denver Public Library mjeske@denverlibrary.org
Bonnie Parks Collections Technology Librarian Clark Library University of Portland parks@up.edu
Jill Emery Editor of Heard on the Net Collection Development Librarian Portland State University jemery@pdx.edu
Elizabeth R. Lorbeer Library Director, Homer Stryker M. D. School of Medicine Western Michigan University Elizabeth.Lorbeer@med.wmich.edu
Jolanda-Pieta van Arnhem Editor of Mobile Apps for Libraries Instructor and Training Coordinator Robert Scott Small Library College of Charleston vanarnheimj@cofc.edu Anthony Watkinson Publishing Consultant anthony.watkinson@btinternet.com Mary Wilke Member Liaison and Outreach Services Director Center for Research Libraries mwilke@crl.edu
Copyediting: Sarah Gremillion
Masthead and Art: Jack Thames
TCA Design and Graphics: Anne Flanagan/Anne’s Books adfbooks@mac.com
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The Charleston Advisor, Critical Reviews of Web Products for Information Professionals (ISSN: 1525-4011) is published in paper quarterly (July, October, January, and April). The online edition (ISSN: 1525-4003) is continuously updated on its site on the World Wide Web <www.charlestonco.com>. The Charleston Advisor references are supplied by authors and reviewers. We regret any oversights that may occur. Opinions expressed by the authors are their own, and are not necessarily those of the Publisher or editors. The Charleston Advisor is published by The Charleston Company, 6180 E. Warren Ave., Denver CO 80222. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2020 The Charleston Company.
The Charleston Advisor / October 2020
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ADVISOR INTRODUCTIONS
From Your Managing Editor Licensing for Libraries During the Pandemic doi:10.5260/chara.22.2.3
George Machovec (Managing Editor, The Charleston Advisor)
L
ibraries and the publishing community have a symbiotic relationship. For many years, the two were in somewhat of a steady state relationship where purchasing and licensing were being driven by local needs, available funding, changes in technology, and competition in the marketplace. The 2020 pandemic has caused a major upheaval for all library types with local needs and available funding radically changing. In academic libraries, the move to digital resources has been expedited as faculty and students have limited access to print material. Funding for both academic and public libraries has taken a dramatic turn as materials budgets are being slashed, causing havoc for not only renewals but also new subscriptions. Most libraries are not licensing new journal, book, or database packages due to limited funding and the need keep existing resources available. At the same time, substantial cancellations are taking place as libraries try to survive the downturn. This is affecting not only local libraries but also consortia as these cancellations are affecting group purchases with many libraries exercising financial exigency clauses to remove themselves from unaffordable subscriptions. Since most libraries are experiencing some level of budget cuts, the annual inflation rates historically expected for most products and services are currently not tenable. At minimum, most libraries would like to see zero percent inflation rates on renewals for the next few years, if not downright reductions in base costs. Publishers and vendors must realize that this request is not to be difficult but libraries may not have the funding and are often being forced to spend additional money on pandemic related expenses, often being pulled from the collections budget. Vendors and publishers are also feeling the financial squeeze as libraries cancel or reduce their spending for subscriptions and one-time expenses. New products or services, which often took years to develop, are seeing very little uptake in the library community unless they are crucial to an organization or perhaps related to managing the downturn. Pandemic related products are being introduced by many vendors and publishers. Those that are offered for free or low cost are welcome and appreciated (see review of the ProQuest Coronavirus Research Database in this issue as an example). Many publishers have provided custom portals to articles related to Covid-19 and the pandemic and made them Open Access. This move is not only welcomed by researchers and scholars but also the general public who might want to view research that has not been filtered through the lens of politics and interpretation by others. Google Scholar (<https:// scholar.google.com/>) has provided links on its home page to many of these free publisher portals as well as doing its usual indexing.
<george@coalliance.org>)
Librarians are employing many different tools to help in determining what to cancel or purchase in the downturn. Unsub (<https://unsub.org/>), formerly called unpaywall, has been developed by non-profit Our Research (<https://ourresearch.org/>) to help librarians make better decisions on how to cancel or cut back on big deal journal packages (see review in this issue). The software has loaded subscription information from major publishers (e.g., Elsevier, Wiley, SpringerNature) and a library can upload usage data and perpetual access information to model costs for ILL if a subscription were reduced or eliminated. This can be done at the individual library level and the company has recently added a consortia dashboard for those that want to do group modeling. This software was originally developed for those working on negotiating transformative agreements to move publishers towards Open Access, but has found additional utility in the economic downturn if a library or consortium just needs to cut back or cancel. A very low cost service well worth the money. Gold Rush Decision Support (<https://www.coalliance.org/software/ gold-rush>) was developed by the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries and has a journal comparison module. The service has over 1,700 title lists covering publishers, aggregators, and abstracting/indexing services to allow libraries to do title-level comparisons between packages. A unique feature is that it also includes abstracting and indexing services. It is possible to quickly model what would happen if a product were cancelled in comparison to other related products. Once again, Gold Rush is a very low cost solution being offered by a non-profit organization. ProQuest and some other vendors have also developed similar tools but these are often only accessible as part of larger packages to which a library must subscribe. The Charleston Advisor (<http://charlestonco.com/>) and its sister database, ccAdvisor (<http://ccadvisor.org/>), are also useful tools in determining what to acquire, cancel, or retain. In addition to providing detailed objective reviews by experts in the field, each review provides a related products section where readers can be directed to other similar services, some of which may be Open Access. Many economists have suggested that the return to “normal” will take many years or even fundamentally change how society operates. The economic impacts on libraries will continue to be a major issue with federal, state, and local funding being altered for years to come. As libraries economically struggle and alter their services to meet patron needs, the fundamental nature of what can be realistically licensed will adjust with lower expectations. n
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ADVISOR INTRODUCTIONS
Charleston Advisor Review Components Title of Product or Resource: The official product name.
Product Description: A narrative description of the product and its content.
References: Citations for other reviews of the product or related materials.
Reviewed by: Name, affiliation and email of the reviewer
User Interface: A detailed examination of the user interface, navigation and searching within the product
Score Box: The composite “score” for each resource is based on four elements—Content, Searchability, Price, and Contract Options.
Original Date of Review: Date of the initial Charleston Advisor review of the product. Date Last Updated: If the product has been reviewed before this is the date of the latest version Composite Score: The arithmetic composite average of all of the elements in the score box Abstract: An executive summary of the key points of the review Pricing Options: Pricing options available to subscribers.
Critical Evaluation: Examination of the strengths and weaknesses of the product. Competitive Products: A brief description of other products or services that compete with the product that is being reviewed Contract Provisions: Detailed description of the options and features of the standard contracts offered by the vendor. Authentication: Description of the authentication and security options available to subscribers.
Contact Information Box: Corporate address, phone, fax, e-mail, and URL. Metadata Box: This box includes elements assigned to each review for creating facets and better searching in the online Choice Charleston Advisor. Included are Free Text Keywords, Primary Category, Secondary Categories, Type of Product being Reviewed, Target Audience, Access (purchasing model) The Charleston Advisor © Copyright 2020
Charleston Advisor Rating Guidelines As a critical evaluation tool for Web-based electronic resources, The Charleston Advisor will use a rating system which will score each product based on four elements: content, searchability, price and contract options/features. A Composite Score averaging these elements will provide an “at a glance” rating which will be prominently displayed near the top of each review. The rating system will be based on a five-star model (with one star being the lowest and five being the highest). As each of the four elements are rated they should be assigned a ranking with granularity no finer than one-half star (e.g., 3.5 stars). These will then be equally weighted and averaged for an overall Composite Score. It is realized that any ranking system is open to personal opinion and interpretation; however, it is recommended that brief evaluative comments be made following each ranking, especially in cases where a product or service receives less than the highest value in a category. TCA is meant to be a critical evaluation tool—not just a descriptive review of a product. Our reviewers are tough! They take great care in the ranking section of the review since this will be one of the most visible yet controversial components of TCA. The following brief guidelines will help in understanding the ranking process.
Content Special attention is paid to the intended audience for which the product is targeted—does the product meet the intended user needs? The content should be compared with competitive products in the marketplace and any major omissions or special strengths will be factored into the rating.
Searchability The user interface and search engine are evaluated in terms of meeting the intended purposes. Is the product intuitive and easy-to-use? Are advanced searching features available if the product warrants it? Are graphics and other screen design features in keeping with the intent of the product and its audience? Is the search engine reliable and
does it provide consistent results? Are there special features, installation requirements, plug-ins or other special software requirements? If so, is the product easy to use or more of a nuisance?
Price The value of the product in relation to its cost must be assessed. A high price alone does not necessarily mean a low ranking, but the product is evaluated in terms of content, user interface and value added features. However, vendors who resell duplicative content in different “packages,” with enough difference to force libraries into acquiring these different packages, may be marked down. Vendors who are flexible (or inflexible) in their pricing options will be noted.
Contract Options/Features The contract provisions that accompany a service will be viewed in terms of accepted national guidelines (e.g., those adopted by major organizations such as the International Coalition of Library Consortia, Association of Research Libraries, ALA). Factors which might be considered include: definition of acceptable users, archiving provisions (when appropriate), lease/ownership of data, Interlibrary Loan provisions, redistribution of information provisions, or other peculiar or interesting issues.
Composite Score This overall score will be calculated based on an averaging of the above four elements with equal weighting for each element. The Composite Score has been rounded up to the next highest quarter star when necessary (e.g., 3.625 stars). In the case of Opposing Opinions, an Opposing Composite Score will be calculated, yielding a Combined Composite Score. Not all reviews will have an Opposing Score. n The Charleston Advisor © Copyright 2020
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ADVISOR REVIEWS—STANDARD REVIEW
Academic Video Online (AVON) Date of Review: August 12, 2020
doi:10.5260/chara.22.2.5
Composite Score: HHH 1/4 Reviewed by: Thomas J. Beck Auraria Library, University of Colorado Denver, Denver, Colorado
Abstract Academic Video Online (AVON) is an Alexander Street database. It presents an extensive collection of videos on a variety of topics and from numerous sources. Some of the most popular topics are American History, Anthropology, Black Studies, Counseling and Therapy, Music and Performing, and Science and Engineering. Popular sources include BBC Landmark, CNN, Film Platform, PBS, and Sony Classic Pictures. Many other topics are also available in this database, ranging from Art and Architecture to Fashion Studies to World Music, and from World History to Hawaiian Studies to Cooking. Additional sources include CBS, Third World Newsreel, Mayo Clinic, American Academy of Pediatrics, Nippon News, and FilmRise. The visual and audio qualities of the videos on offer here are excellent, they are easy to navigate, and include transcripts. Videos can be browsed by topic or source, or searched for using a single search bar, which allows the user various filtering options. The search and filtering options here produce useful results, though the number of those can vary considerably depending on the search done. However, the search options available can be confusing to the user, due to the unexplained separation of the database into groupings of videos, Channels, and Collections (see User Interface/Navigation/ Searching for more information). As a consequence, users may not be able to use the database most effectively, and/or appreciate the full scope of material available here. Pricing for this database can vary considerably, as it is based on FTE, budget, and the number of prospective users. No more specific pricing information is available from the vender. The licensing agreement for this database, on the other hand, is relatively standard in its length, structure, and content. The quality and quantity of AVON’s content is high and should appeal to a wide variety of students and faculty in various disciplines, though users will have to learn AVON’s search idiosyncrasies, which can cause confusion.
Pricing Options Pricing is determined by institution size (FTE), budget, the number of prospective users, and the number of sites served. Consortia pricing is also available. Please contact the vendor for pricing specific to your institution. Individual titles can be purchased from this database (instead of subscribing to the entire database content) in most instances, but not all, depending on publisher restrictions.
Product Overview/Description This database is a grouping of approximately 67,000 streaming videos on a wide variety of subjects. These videos are grouped into Channels, which can be films from a publisher or that deal with specific topics, events, or persons. Alexander Street, the vendor for this
<thomas.j.beck@ucdenver.edu>
database, refers to all of its databases as Collections, and AVON subscribers can access a number of other Alexander Street databases in addition to AVON itself. This may be confusing to users, in that a grouping of videos within the database can be a Channel, or an entirely different database, i.e., a Collection. These other databases include American History in Video, American Newsreels in Video, and several others, and all are automatically included in a subscription to AVON (i.e., they don’t need to be subscribed to separately). As already mentioned, channels can relate to topics, persons, or events, such as LGBT Studies, Anthropology, Science & Engineering, Dance, George Washington, Harriet Tubman, American Civil War, and many more. Others are source (i.e., publisher) or category based, including Documentary, A+E Networks, Annenberg Learner, and 360VR video (i.e., films where, per the database, “a view in every direction is recorded at the same time, shot using an omnidirectional camera or a collection of cameras”). Windows users will find AVON works best with Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Microsoft Edge. For Mac users, Firefox, Chrome, and Mojave will work best. It won’t support DRM playback on iOS devices or in Safari (which at this time only effects their titles from Sony Pictures Classics). Using VR headsets such as Google Cardboard or Daydream to playback 360 VR videos is only supported on Android devices. This database offers unlimited concurrent access to authorized users. Those researching any variety of subjects can make use of it, including high school and college/university students and faculty.
User Interface/Navigation/Searching The landing page for this database is bright and engaging, but can be somewhat confusing to use. There is a single search bar in the upper right-hand corner of the page. From there the user can search using one or more key words, and narrow the search to Current Channel, All Videos, or All Channels. A search for “criminal justice” limited to All Channels, for example, will produce a list of 192 channels (as of August 12, 2020). The channels are sorted by relevance, and the results list displays the name of each, as well as the number of videos there. Results found at the top of the list are on point for criminal justice, with channels like Criminal Justice Studies, Criminal Justice and Public Safety in Video, American Justice, and Scenes of Crime. Those farther down the list, however, are not so obviously relevant, such as Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., Latin America Studies Collection, and Chemistry, though it’s possible to envision a situation in which these might relate to the topic in question. If this search is resubmitted with the limitation changed to All Videos, it produces 2,496 videos (again, as of August 12, 2020). These were on point for the subject queried, throughout the results list, with video titles like History of American Criminal Justice, Criminal Justice Professionals, The Battle for Justice, and Criminal Court Process and Procedure. Resubmitting the
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above search with the limitation Current Channel would of course produce various results, depending on the channel selected. Once a results list is produced it can be sorted in a variety of ways, depending on whether the original search was limited to All Videos or All Channels. The sorting options for the former are subject, publisher, person, content type (e.g., documentaries, performances, interviews, etc.), language, and release date. The options for the latter are subject and channel type (e.g., series, field of interest, organization, genre, etc). If a search is limited to Current Channel, the sorting options will be the same as those for All Videos. In addition to the search bar, the user can find videos by browsing. The Menu tab in the upper left-hand corner of the database’s landing page presents these options. Users can browse by Channel or Collection. Both are listed alphabetically, by subject for the former and by collection name for the latter. Lists of channels can be sorted by popularity, channel type, subject, publisher, person, content type, language, and release date. Channels themselves can also be sorted by all of these, with the exception of popularity and channel type. The collection listing can’t be sorted at all. The various channels on offer cover a wide variety of topics, ranging from American history to supply chain management, and from education to sport. These channels are clustered into broad subject groupings, like Art and Architecture, Fashion Studies, Psychology, Theatre, and several others. Within each grouping are a number of channels, each containing multiple individual films. For example, the subject grouping Cooking includes the channel Cooking Techniques and Utensils, which contains over 400 videos, such as Cooking Fundamentals, Chef vs. Science: the Ultimate Kitchen Challenge, and Cake Decorating. When a film is selected, either by searching or browsing, its picture will generally be clear and its audio quality good. Once selected, a video will start playing automatically in full screen mode, with English closed captioning on. At the bottom of the screen, the title of the video is clearly visible. From various points on the screen the user can select one or more of the following options: adjust picture quality (to 480p, 360p, 270p, or 240p) and audio quality (240p-1080p); turn full screen view on/off; turn closed captions on/off; make clips from the film (and/or view those already made); share via social media, a permalink, or embed code; imbed the film in an LMS or other website (by copying a permalink or an embed code); or generate a full citation of the video (in APA, MLA or Chicago). Also available are the full details of the film, including an abstract, release date, director, genre, discipline, and much more. Users can also access a keyword-searchable transcript of the film.
Critical Evaluation Current Channel, All Videos, or All Channels searches are all relatively effective and provide useful results. However, those results can vary greatly from one to another, as is the nature of searches that target individual titles (videos), as opposed to those that target groups of titles (channels). These are all basic searches, in that they apparently assume a Boolean AND search for all terms entered. No advanced search option is available, though several sorting options are accessible after a search has been executed. The problems these three searches present has less to do with functionality and content, than with confusion on the part of the user as to what a Channel is versus a Collection. Most users won’t know this difference, and because the landing page defaults to a Current Channel search, those users may understandably assume that whatever search they do in that channel is all AVON has to offer! Alexander
Street needs to rework this landing page to better present and explain these search options. That aside, AVON’s video content is extensive, varied and of high quality, and its search mechanisms can be effective once understood. After a search is performed, the user can sort results in variety of ways, depending on the type of search done. These can include sorting by subject, person, publisher, channel type, content type, language, release date, popularity, relevance, or title. Once a film is selected, the user can adjust its picture and audio quality, change screen size, insert or remove closed captions, make or view clips from the film, and share, cite, and/or imbed it in an LMS or other website. The picture and sound quality of these films is generally good, if not excellent. Despite AVON’s above-mentioned search idiosyncrasies, it often produces useful results and can potentially be of use to students and faculty working at different levels of study and in a wide variety of subject areas.
Competitive Products Films on Demand, from Infobase, offers thousands of streaming videos on a variety of subjects, as does Kanopy (though this resource has a reputation for being high cost). Other multidisciplinary options with extensive collections include New Day Films, Docuseek, and Filmakers Library Online (also from Alexander Street). Per Alexander Street, Films on Demand has some of the same providers as AVON, including PBS, BBC, CNN, A+E Networks®/History Channel, Dow Jones/WSJ, California Newsreel, Bloomberg Media, Annenberg Learner and others. However, AVON has many other publishers not found in Films on Demand, like FILM PLATFORM, Sony Pictures Classics, Milestone Films American Counseling Association, Stanley Milgram Experiments, 60 MINUTES, Microtraining Associates, Juno Films, for Dummies, Cine Ojo and more. Regarding Kanopy, Alexander Street maintains they share the providers PBS, Shout! Factory, Pragda, Collective Eye, California Newsreel, Cinema Guild, Giant Pictures, Monument Films, Oscilloscope, Music Box, Documentary Educational Resources (DER), and some others. However, they maintain AVON’s collection is over two times the size of both Kanopy and Films on Demand, and as such is a better resource. They also maintain that AVON has no overlap with New Day Films or Docuseek, and that 100% of the content in Filmakers Library Online (also their database) is already in AVON. Of course, this overlap analysis it provided by Alexander Street about its competitors, so potential subscribers to AVON should feel free to reach out to those competitors to confirm the information above is correct!
Purchase & Contract Provisions The vendor for this database is Alexander Street, and it uses the same licensing agreement for all of its resources. This agreement is slightly more than 4 pages long, and its conditions are fairly standard. Authorized Users for public libraries are library staff, residents of the library’s “reasonably defined” geographic area, and walk-ins. For schools/ academic institutions, those users are currently enrolled students, faculty, staff, visiting scholars, and walk-ins. Access to the database must be made via a secure network and with authentication, and remote access is allowed. Access to non-subscribing institutions or users is prohibited. Also, the ever popular Limited Warranty and Disclaimer of Warranty and Limitation of Liability clauses are present, as well as standard sections on termination for breach and remedial action. In addition, there’s a section on audio and video files (something especially relevant to this database). These files are (naturally enough) delivered to authorized users via streaming ser-
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AVON Review Scores Composite: HHH 1/4 The maximum number of stars in each category is 5.
Content:
HHHH
This database is an extensive collection of multidisciplinary, closed captioned, streaming videos. Users can a adjust a film’s picture and audio quality; adjust screen size; make and/or view clips from a film; share it via social media, a permalink, or embed code; imbed the film in an LMS or other website; or generate a full citation of it. The video and audio qualities of these films are generally excellent.
User Interface/Searchability:
HHH
The browse functions in this database are straightforward, and the search functions can be effective if used properly. However, the latter are not necessarily intuitive and can be confusing to new users.
Pricing:
HHH
Pricing varies substantially, as it is based on institution size (FTE), budget, the number of prospective users, and the number of sites served. A subscription to this database will most probably be more economical for institutions with low FTEs, and less so for those with high ones.
Purchase/Contract Options:
HHH
This contains a number of standard provisions found in other such agreements and offers no apparent cause for concern.
vice, and the customer and users are prohibited from downloading or otherwise copying them. The customer must ask the permission of ProQuest’s licensor and/or the copyright holder for any public presentation of these, other than reasonable classroom and educational use. There’s also a clause that isn’t always found in other like agreements, U.S. Government Restricted Rights. This deals with U.S. Government rights to use, modify, reproduce, perform, release, display, or disclose computer databases or software, or technical data. All of the above-mentioned provisions are, as already mentioned, generally standard ones, and where not standard are not a reason for concern. Nevertheless, potential subscribers should read this agreement with care before signing it, and if at all possible, with the assistance of an attorney.
Contact Information
Primary Category: Multidisciplinary (or interdisciplinary) Type of product being reviewed: Streaming video Target Audience: Secondary; General public; Undergraduate (including community colleges); Graduate/Faculty/Researcher Access: Subscription
Authentication This database can be authenticated in a variety of ways, including IP, Proxy, Shibboleth, Open Athens, username/password, and library barcode.
Alexander Street, a ProQuest Company
About the Author
99 Canal Center Plaza, Suite 200 Alexandria, VA 22314 Phone: (800) 889-5937 E-mail: <https://support.proquest. com/#submitcase?prod=Alexander%20 Street&cat=Authentication> Producer URL: <https://alexanderstreet.com/> Product URL: <https://alexanderstreet.com/products/academicvideo-online>
Thomas J. Beck is a Teaching & Learning Librarian at the Auraria Library, at the University of Colorado Denver. He provides library instruction to students in a classroom setting and in-person reference to library users. He also develops subject research guides for assigned subject areas and is one of his library’s liaisons to campus faculty working in the said areas. Prior to working at the Auraria Library, he was a reference librarian at the Englewood Public Library, Englewood, CO from 1996-2000. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts Degree in History from the University of Colorado at Denver in 1985 and his MLS from Emporia State University, Emporia, KS, in 1995. n
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ADVISOR REVIEWS—STANDARD REVIEW
American Archive of Public Broadcasting Date of Review: September 10, 2020
doi:10.5260/chara.22.2.8
Composite Score: HHH 7/8 Reviewed by: Warren Bareiss University of South Carolina Upstate, Spartanburg, South Carolina
Lizah Ismail Limestone College, Gaffney, South Carolina
Abstract The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) features almost 40,000 hours of audio and video recordings produced among noncommercial broadcasting stations across the United States from the late 1940s to the 2010s. All 40,000 hours of broadcasts are accessible at WGBH in Boston and at the Library of Congress. A large portion of those hours—about 7,000 programs—is directly available via online streaming at no cost via <https://americanarchive.org/>. Data pertaining to the entire collection is also accessible via the website. AAPB offers a wealth of audio and video programs for teaching, scholarship, and entertainment in a user-friendly interface that makes browsing and searching AAPB relatively easy for novice and expert searchers.
Pricing Options AAPB is freely accessible.
Product Overview/Description The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) is a collection of nearly 40,000 hours of audio and video recordings produced among more than 100 public broadcasting stations across the United States. All 40,000 hours of broadcasts are accessible at WGBH in Boston and at the Library of Congress. A large portion of those hours—about 7,000 programs—is directly available via online streaming at no cost via <https://americanarchive.org/>. Some of the collection not available online can also be accessed on a limited basis for research. Data pertaining to the entire collection is also accessible via the website. This review will focus primarily on programming and information freely available to any online users. Public broadcasting in the United States was initially envisioned as a decentralized system of local stations that would produce much of their own content and drawing the balance from other stations in the network (Engelman, 1996, p. 2, 63-106, 165-187). This arrangement meant that archiving of programs, if conducted at all, was left to hundreds of local radio and television affiliates and scattered archives. Most programming has been lost forever and whatever was preserved was stored in less-than-ideal facilities, according to AAPB project directors, Alan Gevinson and Karen Cariani (personal interview, July 7, 2020). In 2007, the Association of Public Television Stations (APTS) proposed to Congress that a national archive be funded to preserve tens of thousands of radio and television programs in a publicly accessible, climate controlled facility. Congress was initially supportive, and a pilot project was undertaken in 2009. Between 2010 and 2012, the American Archive Content Inventory project was underway; howev-
<wbareiss@uscuspstate.edu> <iismail@limestone.edu>
er, funding was drastically cut in 2011. Fortunes changed again in 2013 when the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) which distributes Congressional funding throughout the U.S public radio and television systems contracted with Crawford Media Services to digitize 35,000 hours of programming. WGBH in Boston and the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. were selected as permanent stewards of the collection (“A Brief History of the AAPB”). Today, the entire collection is available for study at both sites, and a large portion is available online. The collection continues to grow as programs are digitized (Alan Gevinson and Karen Cariani, personal interview, July 7, 2020). The online collection is expansive, to say the least. Ranging from news broadcasts, to arts programming, to talk shows and children’s programming, AAPB provides a seemingly endless amount of information about life in the United States across eight decades. Sampling a few items, we started with a discussion program featuring the oddly mixed pairing of William F. Buckley and Groucho Marx. Once started, the program was hard to turn away from. Clearly, the two men had widely divergent political perspectives, and yet each clearly respected each other. The discussion crackled with insightful, profound, spontaneous, and sometimes cleverly barbed repartee rarely seen in television today. Another program we sampled was an interview with Muhammad Ali who had just been stripped of his title, and like the previously mentioned program, dialog between Ali and the show’s host was more than thoughtful. It was rich with nuance and references to culture, religion, politics, and history. While some of the terminology spoken has changed over the decades, both programs that we initially sampled touch upon topics that are as fresh today as they were when recorded: racism, intolerance, potentially offensive humor, and mediated representations of cultural groups. Unlike most broadcast and cable offerings today, however, these programs share a characteristically generous notion of time— time to really think and talk things through, time to respectfully disagree, time to let thoughts flow in multiple directions in a tempered, respectful meeting of the minds. The interviews are heavy on thoughtful discourse and light on staged performance. Rather than a slash and burn approach to issues of the day, these discussions leave the viewer with things to consider. This sense of patience might be said to be the hallmark of public broadcasting, and one can sense it in all kinds of programming throughout the online collection. Dozens of programs in the collection are sorted into topics titled Exhibits and Special Programs, both of which feature audio and video programs illustrating significant themes, topics, and events (see Figure 1). Among the 11 current Exhibits, for example, one focuses on the Black Power Movement from the mid-1960s into the early 1970s.
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FIGURE 1 AAPB Examples of Exhibits and Special Programs
content, and AAPB’s contact information. Users can also discover specific content (namely Special Collections and Exhibits) via this dropdown menu, thus providing users with two additional access points to AAPB’s main content attractions. A link labeled For Participating Organizations providing information for organizations interested in contributing content and a link labelled Donate round off the navigational tools at the top right of the page.
This Exhibit features entire documentaries from the era, plus fulllength episodes of programming produced by and for Black audiences: Black Journal and Soul! Detailed contextual information for each featured program, and a bibliography lists sources for further reading. Other exhibits include such topics as climate change, historic preservation, and protest in America. Similarly, 50 Special Collections organize video and audio files based on specific topics. Some Special Collections tend to be more focused than Exhibits, with content sometimes limited to specific series. For example, Freedom Riders Interviews consists of 124 raw interviews used in the production of an American Experience documentary, Freedom Riders. Other Special Collections are more similar to Exhibits, drawing from many different sources pertaining to a single topic. The Jewish American Heritage Collection, for instance, includes almost 400 radio and television programs about Jewish life in the U.S. produced between 1945 and 2017, and the LGBT+ Collection includes more than 500 programs produced from the 1950s to 2018. Each Special Collection also features links to other collections in the AAPB related to the respective topic or to collections housed elsewhere. For example, a collection of interviews from the series, Vietnam: A Television History, links to the Vietnam War page of the National Archives, among other sources of information. Other links featured on the AAPB home page provide background information on the main collection, current projects pertaining to expansion of the collection, funding sources, and participatory organizations.
Users who first land on AAPB’s home page will likely be drawn to the single search box in the top and middle of the page and perhaps more specifically to the interactive carousel images of AAPB program highlights below it. A photo in blue tint featuring a studio camera operator in action forms the backdrop for all of this, adding a splash of color to the page. Scrolling down, AAPB’s home page employs a variety of colorful backdrops for the content currently showcased. For the more skilled user, the Advanced Search option link directly below the search box and the navigation links (to Organizations, Special Collections, Exhibits, Help Us, Browse, and Our Story) directly above the search box provide additional and easy access points to the variety of content that AAPB offers. The Advanced Search option allows users to go beyond a keyword search with the ability to search for “All of these words,” “The exact phrase or words,” “Any of these words,” and “None of these words.” The user can also choose to search by title when using this search option. Whether using the simple keyword search or the advanced search option, users will be taken to AAPB’s search results page which includes options to filter retrieved results and options for viewing search results. The results can be filtered in a variety of ways: ■
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User Interface/Navigation/Searching AAPB’s home page provides a variety of gateways to the content on offer. A link at the top right clearly directs users to information About AAPB via a dropdown menu which includes access to the vision, mission, and history of the AAPB and also to FAQs, search help, new
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Media Type permits visitors to limit their search to just video with audio or to just audio. Genre sorts by programming subject categories such as Children, Debate, News Report, Radio Theater, and Public Service Announcements, to name just a few options. Topic sorts programs according to 48 topical categories such as LGBT, Global Affairs, Parenting, and Philosophy. Asset Type offers viewing options such as Episode, Segment, Raw Footage, and Clip. Contributing Organizations sorts content according to source categories such as local PBS stations and other content providers, for example, Pacific Radio Archives and the Library of Congress. Producing Organizations distinguishes among specific originating media sources such as CSPAN, producers such as Ken Burns, PBS affiliates, and institutions of higher education Georgetown University and Purdue University.
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Date provides options to search for an exact date or a range of dates.
International (see Figure 2). Unfortunately, some links to external sources might end up as broken links.
In addition to these filters, options to view content by format type are featured. Content material in AAPB are categorized into the following areas:
The main attraction is the audio and video collection from which Exhibits and Special Collections are derived. Users can choose to view the whole collection or search within the collection. Choosing to view the whole collection takes the user to AAPB’s search results page populated by all items in that collection. For example, for the BirdNote collection, all 272 records or content items are displayed with filtering and viewing options (described above). For the Exhibits collection, users are able to explore topics via an overview of the topic as well as individual sections within that topic, each of which contains a wealth of information via links to both internal and external resources, including digital clips where available.
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Available Online is the default where video or audio content can be accessed freely via the Online Reading Room, AAPB’s online viewing/listening gateway. All Digitized is video and audio content available online as described previously as well as content available only at the Library of Congress and at WGBH PBS station in Boston. All Records are both digitized and not yet digitized content. This category totals 2.5 million records. Therefore, when users choose to view All Records in the search results, they will also see content records that only contain metadata information without the accompanying digitized audio or video content.
Users can choose to view search results in list format with accompanying description, in a gallery style format, or as a short list consisting only of program titles. Also, search results can be viewed 10 to a page up to 100 to a page. These options are found in the top right corner above the results page. AAPB employs the scroll down feature to highlight content areas that are also accessible elsewhere on the site as described above, akin to what other digital streaming platforms such as Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Films on Demand are doing. Scrolling down the home page, users first see the About content and news from the AAPB blog with links to AAPB social media platforms on Twitter and Facebook. Next, AAPB’s Special Collections content greets visitors with a dynamic background of moving images consisting of monochromatic newsreels from various programs. This forms the backdrop for the interactive carousel of images highlighting this collection. The carousel is employed in a similar fashion for the Exhibits collection which is the next content area as the user continues to scroll down the page. Here, the backdrop features a photo from the 1980 PBS election coverage in a reddish-orange hue. Under each of the Special Collections and Exhibits carousel of images, users will find a link to view all programs in each of those options. Clicking on this link displays these programs in gallery fashion listed in no particular order. For example, in Special Collections, the PBS Newshour program is juxtaposed next to BirdNote which is an audio nature program. Choosing a program in Special Collections takes the user to a page full of relevant resources including information on the collection’s background and links to the Featured Items highlighting specific content and/or individuals featured in that collection. Users must agree to the terms of use of the Online Reading Room prior to playing digital content. The link to Other Resources takes visitors to outside websites and archives. For example, the BirdNote collection links to National Audubon, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and Bird Life
FIGURE 2 BirdNote Content Available via AAPB
For example, for the Exhibit topic Voices from the Southern Civil Rights Movement, all 34 records in that collection are listed. Also included in Exhibits are Research Notes directing interested users to related sources for further exploration. Each record contains all tags (search fields) which are the search filters described earlier in this section (Media Type, Genre, etc.). Additional tags can include Duration, Subjects, Credits, and Citations (APA, MLA, and Chicago style formats are provided). A welcome feature is the transcript which accompanies the AAPB record (where applicable) and is optional for the user. A further bonus is the ability to search within the transcript. Continuing to scroll down AAPB’s home page reveals donating information, a graphic display of browsable Topics (see Figure 3), an interactive map of participating organizations, and finally, a five-minute video introducing “the treasures of public broadcasting.” All have colorful backdrops consisting of selected photos from AAPB’s archives. Additional access points to content described above plus other information including terms of use and how to obtain metadata (export records from AAPB) are at the bottom of AAPB’s home page.
Critical Evaluation CONTENT Writing a thorough content evaluation of such a vast collection is challenging. The wide range of topics and immense number of audio and video programs defy cursory review, and that is arguably the collection’s foremost asset. Even limiting evaluation to what is freely accessible online, the sheer number of local, regional, and national programs addressing issues in science, health, religion, politics, music, history, and a host of other general topics over a span of 70 years is boundless.
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FIGURE 3 AAPB List of Browsable Topics
Second, researchers will not only be interested in what is said among the programs, but how it is said. The collection is like an archeological excavation of communication through time, demonstrating how people communicated about topics from one year to the next. This includes not only the words that people spoke, but the ways in which topics were framed, and perhaps most significantly, how such speech and framing changed over time. For example, a quick search for “pollution” links to discussion programs and news coverage from the 1950s all the way to 2019.
The easiest place to start is with technical quality. Most of the thousands of audio and video selections offered by AAPB have been in storage at local public and radio stations for decades. Usually, “storage” simply means the audio record being shelved and stacked in closets and whatever other spaces happened to be available amidst modestly funded broadcasting facilities where space is always in demand (Alan Gevinson and Karen Cariani, personal interview, July 7, 2020). Video and audio tapes deteriorate over time, and even the best video from decades ago can seem blurry when contrasted with today’s digital standards. Storage conditions, age, and recording technologies are important factors to consider, especially considering that the quality of the files offered by AAPB is excellent. Sometimes, video images are somewhat blurred or distorted around the edges, but given the circumstances of their initial production and subsequent storage, they are well-preserved and clear. Audio, too, is almost always crisp, apart from rare audio dropouts and minor distortions. A second way to evaluate content is by considering potential uses of the collection. With this question in mind, the value of the AAPB cannot be underestimated. The collection offers a number of possible uses that come readily to mind. First, the files are informative on a seemingly endless range of topics. One could argue that decades-old educational programming has become outdated; however, examination of the files reveals a tremendous amount of material that remains fresh, even when produced decades ago. At the very least, the files can provide a starting point for further learning. Educators building online courses will find the collection to be particularly rewarding. Short audio and video clips go a long way toward enlivening online instruction, and this collection offers a treasure trove for teachers in search of material to add depth, illustration, and variety to their online lessons. Specific topics that can be used for instructional purposes are limited only by teachers’ and students’ willingness to explore. An issue that many college and university classes will be discussing this year, for instance, is about the symbolism of historical monuments. AAPB features a radio discussion program on that very topic, explaining that “memorials often tell us more about their creators than what or whom they memorialize.” Just listening to the first few minutes, we learned that, in the United States, controversy and contradictory public sentiment about specific monuments is as old as the nation itself.
Taking the archeological metaphor a step further, AAPB is not just about discourse through time, but also across space. This is yet another promising dimension of the collection. While the PBS programming such as The PBS NewsHour offers a national network perspective, most of the programs were produced among small, local radio and television stations all across the country. These local perspectives cannot be underestimated for researchers looking for nuanced differences in the ways that topics have been covered and stories have been told among different cities and states. Finally, the collection is valuable simply for its entertainment value with hundreds of dance, music, and theater performances to choose from. Some are short performances lasting a few minutes, while others include full concerts and plays. For example, one of us is a radio theater enthusiast, and he found a deeply moving drama about a former concentration camp prisoner wracked with guilt for having participated in the camp symphony. Other visitors looking for examples of music, dance, theater, and documentary will almost certainly find something to pique their interest. SEARCHING AND NAVIGATION Searching AAPB is relatively easy. Simple keyword searching using the single search box allows inexperienced users to explore desired content without much effort because search results are presented with numerous filters, as described in a previous section of this review. These filters help in not only identifying the type of content available within the desired search (by genre or topic), but also by the format (moving images or sound) and date range, among other options. We attempted a keyword search for “food” which retrieved 14,430 results at the time of this review, our intention being to look for cooking shows made popular by public broadcasting. By utilizing the available filters, the search results revealed that 11,794 records were of moving images and 2,636 are audio. “Food” was distributed throughout almost all of the available Genres and Topics choices ,with 76 results under the Instructional genre and 632 results under the Food and Cooking topic. Without these filters, users would need to sift through records with the word “food” in it, including such terms as “food stamps” and “food drive.” AAPB does provide links to Searching the Website and searching help in their FAQs if instruction is needed. Judicious use of the Advanced Search options would reduce the amount of filtering in the search results (for example, choosing to
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leave out words “food stamps” and “food drive” in the search results when searching for the key word “food”). A possible challenge when deciding on filters is understanding what constitutes a particular genre. For example, why are some cooking shows tagged as being in the Magazine genre while others are tagged as Instructional and others still are tagged as Documentary? One would think that all cooking shows would be categorized as either Instructional (strictly how to cook) or Magazine (cooking instruction, plus additional social/cultural content such as visiting a farmer’s market and interviewing a restaurant owner), but not both.
debatable drawback, however, is the incorrect citation formats provided for the Chicago, MLA, and APA style formats, an unfortunate recurring issue in many other academic research databases as well.
Results can be narrowed using one or more filters, and users are able to navigate their chosen filters by following the breadcrumb trail at the top of the page which is a helpful feature that may appeal to more advanced searchers. Filters can be cleared or edited this way instead of via the filter column on the left side of the page. It is important to note that AAPB indicates that cataloging is still in progress and available tags do not represent all of AAPB’s content.
AAPB is unique in its expansive emphasis on U.S. public broadcasting, particularly in providing access to local and regional content produced by the public broadcasting stations of small and medium-sized cities, bringing their perspectives to a global audience. This is in addition to the national programs such as PBS NewsHour and Frontline that are also accessible in AAPB. Another unique feature of AAPB is its listing of programs that are not yet digitized, but available onsite at WGBH in Boston and at the Library of Congress. Additionally, AAPB provides access to thousands of metadata records of programs that are not available in either the online format or at a physical location.
When clicking on an item in the results page, the user is taken to the item record which is clearly tagged, allowing for easy navigation to hyperlinked resources embedded in the record. For example, the file titled American Experience; John Brown’s Holy War; Interview with Bruce Olds, 1 of 3, contains a Series tag that provides a link to all episodes in the American Experience series. Not all item records contain the Subjects tag, but all should contain the Topics tag with hyperlinks to those topics. These topics are broad and will not help users narrow down their search, whereas information found in the Subjects tag does provide search terms that would allow users to focus on specific content. A case in point: the American Experience item record described above contains the hyperlinked topics Biography, History, and Race and Ethnicity, while the Subjects tag consists of the following (not hyperlinked): American history, African Americans, Civil rights, Slavery, Abolition–i.e., a more precise representation of what this particular program is about. Diligent users would need to jot down these search terms if they wanted to pursue this specific content further. Item records containing a video or audio program allow users to fast forward (or backward) among the content with the option to share a segment by copying the URL or by embedding it. Many users are unlikely to have problems utilizing this feature because digital streaming media is now ubiquitous in many households. The accompanying transcript, where available, is optional and when chosen, is displayed next to the program with the added bonus of the transcript being searchable. We searched for “Julia” within the transcript for the program episode “Julia Child” from the series Words on Words, and each occurrence of “Julia” in the transcript was highlighted. AAPB provides various access points to the same content (see the User Interface/Navigation/Searching section above) which some may see as redundant, but we find that such variety is helpful in catering to the different skill levels and preferences of users. A necessary additional access point, however, is the ever-present search box at the top right of the page with the accompanying Advanced Search link whenever the user lands on the search results page or an item record page, so the back arrow need not be utilized. The arguably cluttered home page with the different colors and moving images may be not to everyone’s preference, but it does arguably bring educational programming to life. AAPB states that they are “actively cognizant of accessibility.” In addition to tools such as transcribing the video content described above, AAPB’s accessibility statement can be found at <https://www.wgbh.org/foundation/accessibility-statement>. A less
Overall, AAPB offers an abundance of audio and video programs on a vast array of topics useful in teaching and scholarship. It is offered in a user-friendly interface that makes both browsing and searching relatively easy and accessible for both novice and expert searchers.
Competitive Products
A resource that features a range of media programming content similar to AAPB (programming that includes theater, children’s programs, cooking shows, documentaries and news reports, just to name a few) is Infobase’s Films on Demand <https://www.infobase.com/tag/ films-on-demand/>). Films on Demand does, in fact, include content from public broadcasting stations (such as Rick Steve’s travel shows, for example), but that is really where the similarity ends. Another resource, the Internet Archive (<https://archive.org/>) might be the closest to AAPB in terms of media content offerings (offering both video and audio content) but again, the similarity is limited. This is because the Internet Archive is far more expansive in terms of media genres and other content. It not only provides access to millions of media texts (movies, music recordings, and television shows), it also provides access to millions of books, images and other content that is unique to them including thousands of items in its software collection. Other resources providing searchable video archives include the Moving Image Archive (<https://libraries.indiana.edu/moving-image-archive>) and the C-SPAN Video Library (<https://www.c-span. org/about/videoLibrary/>).
Contact Information Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation 19053 Mt. Pony Rd. Culpeper, Virginia 22701-7551
WGBH Educational Foundation One Guest Street Boston, Massachusetts 02135 Phone (617) 300-3300 (WGBH Audience and Member services) E-mail: <aapb_notifications@wgbh.org> Producer URL: <https://www.wgbh.org/> Product URL: <https://americanarchive.org/>
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American Archive of Public Broadcasting Review Scores Composite: HHH 7/8 The maximum number of stars in each category is 5.
Content:
HHHH
AAPB offers an abundance of audio and video programs on a vast array of topics useful in teaching and scholarship.
User Interface/Searchability:
HHH 1/2
AAPB has a user-friendly interface that makes both browsing and searching relatively easy and accessible for both novice and expert searchers.
Pricing: N/A Purchase/Contract Options:
HHHH
AAPB’s Online Reading Room Rules of Use and Terms of Use outline policies that include authorized use of content, copyright, authorized users, as well as privacy.
Purchase & Contract Provisions
About the Authors
This is a freely available product. AAPB does require users to comply with their Online Reading Room Rules of Use (ORR Rules of Use) which ensures that the freely available content AAPB provides is in accordance with copyright, including the fair use doctrine. The ORR Rules of Use outlines, among other things, information on authorized users and authorized uses of AAPB content. Refer to <https://americanarchive.org/legal/orr-rules> for more information. AAPB’s Terms of Use <https://americanarchive.org/legal/tou> includes information on infringement of copyright and submission and withdrawal of content by contributors.
Lizah Ismail is Associate Professor and Director of the A.J. Eastwood Library at Limestone University in Gaffney, SC. She was formerly the Outreach and Instruction Librarian where she oversaw and coordinated all outreach efforts with distance students as well as oversaw and conducted library instruction for both traditional and distance students. Prior to coming to Limestone, Lizah was Coordinator of Public Services at Marywood University in Scranton, PA and Head of Reference and Information Literacy at Misericordia University in Dallas, PA. She is a member of the PASCAL (Partnership Among South Carolina Academic Libraries) Board of Directors and serves on the Editorial Boards of ACRL’s College and Research Libraries, and the Journal of Library and Information Services in Distance Learning. She has presented her research on non-traditional students, Net Generation students, and the use of Course Management Software in library services at several conferences. She has also published on these topics. She received her MS in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and her MA in Communications from the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. n
Authentication This is not applicable for AAPB.
Author’s References “A Brief History of the AAPB.” Retrieved from <https://www.scribbr. com/apa-examples/cite-a-website/>, August 18, 2020. Engelman, R. (1996). Public radio and television in America; A political history. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Free Text Keywords: Educational television | Library of Congress | Public broadcasting | Public radio | Public television | Television history | United States broadcasting history | WGBH Boston Primary Category: Multidisciplinary (or interdisciplinary) Secondary Categories: Other Type of product being reviewed: Streaming video Target Audience: Secondary; General public; Undergraduate (including community colleges); Graduate/Faculty/Researcher Access: Open Access (OA)
Warren (“Wren”) Bareiss is Associate Professor of Communication at the University of South Carolina Upstate. He has taught courses and conducted research pertaining to communication and culture for over twenty years, most recently specializing in relationships among narrative, culture, and health. He is the creator and coordinator of the Health Communication minor at Upstate. Wren has published research in SAGE Research Methods Cases, The Journal of Medical Humanities, Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness & Medicine, and Popular Music and Society among other publications. Most recently, he edited a book (forthcoming, 2020) on communicative aspects of non-suicidal self-injury for which he wrote a chapter on self-injury narratives. He teaches courses in research methods, health narratives, and health messaging campaigns, and related topics. Wren earned his PhD in at Indiana University and his master’s at the University of Pennsylvania. He earned a post-doctoral graduate certificate in heath communication from the University of South Carolina in 2014. n
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ADVISOR REVIEWS—STANDARD REVIEW
American Sermons, Series 1 & 2, 1652–1819 doi:10.5260/chara.22.2.14
Date of Review: September 9, 2020
Composite Score: HHHH 1/3 Reviewed by: Robert H. Ellison Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia
<ellisonr@marshall.edu>
Larry Sheret Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia
<sheret@marshall.edu>
Abstract American Sermons is one of the latest offerings from Readex, which describes itself as a publisher of “many of the most widely used collections of primary source research materials in academic libraries” (<https://www.readex.com/who-we-are-what-we-do>). This database contains over 8,000 sermons and tools to analyze quickly across multiple original source documents. There are a handful of other sermon indexes and full-text databases, both Open Access and subscription-based; this product offers several robust and unique features that help to set it apart from others of its kind.
Pricing Options Readex states that American Sermons, 1652-1819, is available to institutions of all kinds via a range of purchase models. Pricing is based on multiple factors. Purchase models include perpetual license, rentto-own, and subscription. Contact a Readex representative for pricing by calling 800.762.8182 or e-mail <sales@readex.com>.
Product Overview/Description The company states that this collection—nearly 8,000 works in all— contains “nearly every printed work, including sermons on politics, society, religion, and family life” (<https://www.readex.com/content/ american-sermons-series-1-2-1652-1819>). The database includes every sermon digitized from the authoritative bibliographies by Evans and Shaw-Shoemaker, as well as every additional sermon digitized from the holdings of the American Antiquarian Society, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and many other institutions.
FIGURE 1 American Sermons Home Page
This scope represents a broad definition of the term “American sermons.” The database includes all sermons printed in America, regardless of where they were actually delivered. There are sermons by preachers who spent most or all of their careers in America; by figures such as George Whitefield, who lived elsewhere but spent some time visiting the United States; and even sermons originally preached outside America but re-preached from an American pulpit by a second party. A range of faith traditions is represented as well. The majority of the sermons in the database—some 85% to 90%—are by Protestant preachers: Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Quakers, Unitarians, Universalists, and others. There are no Islamic sermons, but Roman Catholic and Jewish discourses are also included. A few manuscripts are in French or German.
User Interface/Navigation/Searching American Sermons is divided into two parts: Series 1, covering the years 1652-1795, and Series 2, spanning from 1796 to 1819. The parts can be searched separately or as a unit. The collection’s home page presents users with several options. They can consult “How to use this database” for a helpful overview of its scope and features, begin a search of their own, or use an innovative feature called Suggested Searches (see Figure 1). The menu has 15 categories, and each is subdivided. It is a very useful feature, especially for the novice, because it presents a quick orientation to the topics, events, and individuals that are available in the archive. A few of the main categories are Bible; The Church and Its Mission; Historical Events; Indian and White Relations; Politics; Slavery and Abolition; and Women and Children. Each subject category is subdi-
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FIGURE 2 American Sermons Search Results
American Sermons Explore Results
FIGURE 3
vided. For example, The Church and Its Mission is subdivided into Church dedication; Freemasonry; Hymns and religious songs; Missionaries and religious conversion; Non-English language; Ordinations; and Revivals.
Revolution (1764 to 1774); and Early Republic (1790 to 1811). If no era is preselected, the results page places the era with the most hits at the top, followed by eras with fewer hits. This makes it easy to associate hot topics with a particular era.
Once a search is performed, options on the left side of the screen allow the results to be further refined by historical era, decade, or year (see Figure 2). If a preacher’s biography is available, it can be accessed directly from the list of results as well.
The Advanced Search page looks and functions like EBSCOhost, with multiple search boxes that allow Boolean searching by key word or phrase, and allows truncation. Proximity word searching can be done using both NEAR and ADJ. Researchers may also download and save copies of the manuscripts.
The era filter is especially useful to provide context. The nine options include Early Colonial Era (1607 to 1729); Development of Colonial Societies (1730 to 1753); Seven Years War (1754 to 1763); Prelude to
Users interested in “distant reading” and other digital humanities projects will also be interested in the Explore button (Figure 3) that
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appears at the top of the search results. Checking the box to left of one or more of the results and clicking Explore will create a corpus that can be analyzed via Voyant Tools (<https://voyant-tools.org/>), a free, Web-based tool which allows users to quickly analyze various features of large blocks of text. Details of those features are provided in “How to use this database.”
Critical Evaluation The American Sermons website says this about itself (<https://www. readex.com/products/american-sermons-series-1-2-1652-1819>): “…sermons are widely regarded as the earliest and most enduring literary form in America—passionately delivered, keenly argued and concerned with both spiritual questions and reflections on civic duty. Almost any topic was fair game, from local gossip to slavery to witchcraft. As such, the sermons offer intriguing research opportunities for not only religious scholars and historians, but anyone interested in the daily life, politics, society, child-rearing and educational systems of early America. Additionally, these sermons provide contemporary cultural commentary on a range of important historical events, from the American Revolution to the abolition movement to immigration debates.” Sermons are indeed a very important source of primary documents for study in several disciplines. One of the greatest needs in sermon studies is a body of robust tools that will help scholars readily locate the texts they need for research projects. American Sermons is an important step in that direction. If there is any weakness in the product, it lies in the quality of the scanned texts available in the database. The archive’s digitized documents retain much of the appearance of the originals, including smudges and faded letters. Early typesetting and printing presses lacked the sharpness required for accurate OCR enabled PDFs (see Figure 4). Many of the documents use the long S, which may appear as ſ, f, or ∫. OCR usually recognizes the long S as an f, but sometimes as a j or an i, or something else. A search in all time periods for the term
“sanctification” produces 487 hits and fanctification 105. Given how many words use the long S within most of these documents, research is more complicated because OCR software is considerably less than 100% effective. To see how problematic this is, here are the results for “Christ” (5,254 hits): Chrift 4,381; Chriist 1,606; Chrijt 349. A wildcard search for “Chri?t” yields 7,412 and truncation “Chri*t” yields 7,418, which only represents about 80% of potential hits. Text recognition problems are compounded by spelling variants. A search for “complete” (2,303 hits) would need to include “compleat” (728 hits) in order to be “compleet” (1 hit). Although this site is ADA compliant, the manuscripts themselves are not because the manuscripts are in PNG format. Ctrl-F will not work on the PNG images; however, a search box enables searches within single or multiple documents. The keywords within manuscripts are highlighted, but this option may be toggled off. PNG is excellent for the digital preservation and presentation of old manuscripts, but it is not a friend to accessibility. This would only be resolved if the database were to undertake an expensive manual cleanup of manuscripts running in the background as OCR enabled PDFs. Users may download PDFs of every manuscript, but they are not OCR enabled. These limitations, however, are hardly a fatal flaw. The documents may not be in perfect condition, but they are important primary documents nonetheless; by making them available to scholars who cannot travel to the American Antiquarian Society or the Library Company of Philadelphia, Readex is providing a valuable service to scholars working on various aspects of seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century America.
Competitive Products There are other options for accessing some of the materials in American Sermons. Jonathan Edwards, who has 53 sermons in the database, is also the focus of The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University (<http://edwards.yale.edu/>). The site is robust and user-friendly, offering not only browsing and searching capability, but also an encyclopedia, a peer-reviewed journal, and opportunities to volunteer as an editor of Edwards’ sermons. Other resources encompassing multiple preachers vary widely in their scope, features, and stages of development. The most similar in terms of chronology is Transcribing Early American Manuscript Sermons, or TEAMS (<http://earlyamericansermons.org/>). It has definite potential, but only 34 transcripts had been posted as of May 15, 2020. A much more extensive manuscript project, at over 17,000 records, is the Gateway to Early Modern Manuscript Sermons (<http:// gemmsproject.blogspot.com/>). It covers the UK, Ireland, and North America from 1530 to 1715, but it is a finding aid rather than a database, providing information about where the manuscripts can be found rather than transcripts or scans of the texts themselves.
FIGURE 4 Original Text Sample from American Sermons
The largest project of which we are aware is the Classic Sermon Index (<https://classicsermonindex.com/>), a subscription-based reference work that correlates 60,000 sermons to the verses they reference in the Bible and provides links to these resources on the open web if they are available. American Sermons is a database with several entry points to search for sermons according to topic, American culture, history, subject and author/preacher, with the ability to search and parse between and within documents and to run word usage anal-
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American Sermons Review Scores Composite: HHHH 1/3 The maximum number of stars in each category is 5.
Content:
HHHHH
American Sermons provides access to the full corpus of extant sermon manuscripts for the period covered.
User Interface/Searchability:
HHHH
Search options range from basic, for the general public, to moderately advanced, for scholars. Integration with Voyant provides robust text-analysis tools. OCR is often inaccurate due to the condition of the original texts.
Pricing: N/A Readex does not publish pricing which is based on multiple factors and customized for every institution.
Purchase/Contract Options:
HHHH
Multiple options. Text and data mining rights can be secured through the execution of an additional license agreement. The vendor is willing to consider any and all contract options.
Free Text Keywords: American History | Religion | Preaching | Sermons Primary Category: Philosophy & Religion Secondary Categories: History & Area Studies; Humanities; Multidisciplinary (or interdisciplinary); Philosophy & Religion; Sociology, Education, Anthropology, Psychology Type of product being reviewed: Primary source digital content Target Audience: General public; Graduate/Faculty/Researcher Access: Subscription
ysis. In other words, Classic Sermons Index and American Sermons are not competitive, but complementary products. Targeting different audiences and serving different needs, each of these is a valuable resource. None, however, is as feature-rich as American Sermons; among other things, this collection’s integration with Voyant Tools, author biographies and suggested search paths for
Contact Information Readex, a Division of NewsBank 5801 Pelican Bay Boulevard, Suite 600 Naples, Florida 34108-2734 Phone: (800) 762-8182 E-mail: <sales@newsbank.com> Producer URL: <www.readex.com> Product URL: <https://www.readex.com/content/americansermons-series-1-2-1652-1819>
easy browsing and discovery make it a welcome addition to the sermon studies marketplace.
Purchase & Contract Provisions Interlibrary Loan is allowed in accordance with CONTU guidelines. COUNTER compliant use statistics are available. MARC records are not available for this specific collection from Readex. Text and data mining rights can be secured through the execution of an additional license agreement. Archiving or ongoing availability is made possible should Readex go out of business.
Authentication American Sermons and all Readex databases, support authentication via IP address, student/library barcode (with patterned IDs), referring URL, user ID with password, and embedded ID, in addition to cookie, OpenAthens, Shibboleth, and HTTPS authentication. There is no limit on the number of institutional users; remote access is limited to authorized users.
About the Authors Robert H. Ellison is Associate Professor of English and director of the Center for Sermon Studies at Marshall University. His current projects include curating the Library of Appalachian Preaching (<https://mds.marshall.edu/sermons/>), an online collection of sermons preached in Appalachia, or elsewhere by preachers with ties to the Appalachian region. n Larry Sheret is the Scholarly Communication & Open Educational Resources Librarian at Marshall University. He serves on the board of the Center for Sermon Studies located on the Marshall University campus and helps to maintain Marshall’s OAIR. n
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ADVISOR REVIEWS—STANDARD REVIEW
Calgary Herald Newspaper Archive Date of Review: September 5, 2020
doi:10.5260/chara.22.2.18
Composite Score: HHHHH Reviewed by: Jane C. Duffy MacEwan University, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Abstract The Calgary Herald Archive is a primary resource that makes accessible the full text of this newspaper from its founding in 1883 through to 2010. Freely accessible to residents of the province of Alberta, the CHA is their oldest available news resource. The CHA was produced in collaboration with several Albertan public and academic libraries. These institutions digitized the full text content for ProQuest’s Historical Newspapers. Capturing unique historical, political, social, and regional information about Alberta’s largest city, the CHA is a highly specialized resource for Western Canadian researchers.
Pricing Options The Calgary Herald Archive is accessible free of charge to all residents of the province of Alberta. Access is provided through The Alberta Library, the province’s consortium, in partnership with ProQuest’s Historical Newspapers. For those educational and public institutions, external to Alberta, who wish to purchase access to the CHA, details about subscription options are not publicly available. By contacting <sales@proquest.com>, external users are provided with pricing numbers for academic libraries based upon factors such as enrollment numbers, and for public library systems based on factors such as their catchment numbers.
Product Overview/Description The intended audiences for this database are all citizens of Western Canada as well as researchers in Alberta’s social, political and cultural history. One of ProQuest’s Historical Newspaper’s suite of standalone titles, the Calgary Herald Archive is a special collaboration between ProQuest and libraries, both academic and public, in the province of Alberta, Canada. The entire contents of the Calgary Herald’s publishing from 1883-2010 were digitized and organized by the province’s library professionals, and then made accessible and searchable through ProQuest’s interface, storage, and information control designs. Each number of the CHA are offered in full-page as well as article images in PDF format. Users require Adobe reader to access this format. In addition to the Calgary Herald’s articles, researchers may access photos, classified advertisements, editorial cartoons, obituaries, and other auxiliary content are downloadable. All content is both browsable and searchable through a linked suite of access points, including free text. As a ProQuest partnership, the Calgary Herald Archive search experience is similar to that afforded by other ProQuest products. Some rich media content is available through the archive; therefore, the researcher is advised to keep JavaScript enabled throughout the search session. Animated features and video require the FlashPlayer plug-in and one of the following video player software: Windows Media Player, QuickTime, RealPlay-
<duffyj@macewan.ca>
er. Graphics, such as illustrations and photographs that are part of the original text include captions and are enlargeable by clicking on it. The Calgary Herald Archive is fully indexed with links to limited fulltext by the Canadian Business and Current Affairs (CBCA) database.
User Interface/Navigation/Searching The CHA interface is familiar to all ProQuest Historical Newspaper subscribers. In addition to traditional access points such as subject, key word, article title, author, date, wildcards and truncation, etc., the CHA offers advanced search aids such as field codes, source type, document type, and language. Of special interest to Indigenous researchers is the ability to limit searches to documents that contain words in those languages. Mnemonics are offered for specialist searches. The combination mnemonic, such as the TISU mnemonic which searches specifically title and subject fields, are shortcuts to mining particular fields. Applied to the terms “women” and “stampede,” the TISU mnemonic instantly yields access to articles and supplementary materials that predominantly feature these topics. ProQuest mnemonics are a time-saving feature for CHA users, especially academics. Navigation is quite simple as the interface is designed to highlight, and draw the researcher’s attention to, salient points of access and storage features with minimal scrolling, usually on one screen (see Figures 1 and 2). The Calgary Herald Archive is aligned with the ProQuest standard of product accessibility: There are site links at the top of each page of the CHA’s search results. Additionally, there are commands that assist with navigation, permitting users to by-pass site-wide links to go straight to content, if desired. TAB key and Accesskey8 can focus, frame, and direct users’ search experience as well. Changing the visual display as well as text, ProQuest background, and link color combinations are also very simple to adjust should the user wish to change or over-ride them. These accessibility features are compatible with all browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari. The CHA is fully ADA-compliant and meets the most recent versions of WCAG.
Critical Evaluation The CHA is a highly specialized standalone database that will be of interest almost exclusively to those who are already familiar with Albertan and other Western Canadian history. As such, its search experience is not particularly complex nor is it difficult to navigate. The stream-lined quality of the search page advances the researcher’s ability to find precise and relevant information with a minimum of scrolling or flipping back and forth from link to link. The ability to limit searches to those containing words in different languages supports new and emerging streams of research in native culture, de-colonialization and reconciliation studies, as well as other streams of In-
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FIGURE 1 Calgary Herald Archive Search Results
digenous inquiry. That there is no comparable database that captures and controls within one tool the full content of the CHA. This makes the collection a valuable resource for all sectors of Alberta’s citizenry. Genealogists, historians, high-school students, reconciliation researchers, and journalists will all find information within this archive which is available nowhere else. Perhaps a future development for ProQuest could be making their currently “standalone” newspaper archives, including the Calgary Herald, searchable across each other. Such inter-searchability would make the primary research experience, afforded by full-text newspaper access, even richer for subjects that extend beyond the province of Alberta.
Competitive Products There are no products which compete directly with the Calgary Herald Archive. However, limited access to content from the Calgary Herald may be found in: (i) the Canadian News Index (print index to the Calgary Herald from 1980-1991), (ii) the Calgary Herald microfilm collection (1939-2017), and (iii) the Canadian Newspaper Index (print index to the Calgary Herald from 1978-79).
Purchase & Contract Provisions As stated elsewhere in this review, this is a freely accessible database made available by ProQuest in partnership with The Alberta Library, whose members produced and curated both the digital and digitized content. Within the province, there are no institutional or regional limits to Albertans. The contents are subject to Canadian Copyright Fair Dealing. All that is required is an in-province IP address. As with all their databases and other library products, ProQuest will negotiate with potentially interested external subscribers on a caseby-case basis for availability of contents for document delivery, course reserves, and inter-lending. While these case-by-case inquiries and negotiations are generally welcome, no detailed contract information for potential Calgary Herald subscribers beyond Alberta is publicly available.
Authentication No authentication is needed other than an Alberta IP address to access the full collection within The Calgary Herald Archive.
FIGURE 2 Historical Document Example from Calgary Herald Archive
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Calgary Herald Archive Review Scores Composite: HHHHH The maximum number of stars in each category is 5.
Content:
HHHHH
The content is unique, well-curated, and accessible via standard access points throughout the search experience.
User Interface/Searchability: HHHHH The interface is excellent and is enhanced by customizable visual display and rich media content.
Pricing: N/A The Calgary Herald Archive is a ProQuest collaborative project with taxpayer funded libraries and other institutions. This standalone product is offered as a free service to its intended Alberta audience, although access may be purchased by groups outside Alberta.
Purchase/Contract Options:
N/A
Access is open freely to all residents of the province of Alberta, Canada. Access to this product outside of Alberta may be negotiated on a case by case basis.
Contact Information ProQuest Historical Newspapers & Canadian Business and Current Affairs 365 Bloor St. East Toronto, Ontario, M4W 3L4 Canada Phone: (877) 779-6768 E-mail: <sales@proquest.com> Producer URL: <https://www.proquest.com/> Product URL: <https://go.proquest.com/ AlbertaHistoricalNewspapers/>
Free Text Keywords: Calgary Herald | Alberta | Canada | historical newspaper archive | complete full text | general periodicals Primary Category: History & Area Studies Secondary Categories: Business & Economics; Humanities; Multidisciplinary (or interdisciplinary); Other Type of product being reviewed: Newspaper or news source Target Audience: Secondary; General public; Undergraduate (including community colleges); Graduate/Faculty/Researcher Access: Hybrid (some OA)
About the Author Jane C. Duffy, BA, MA, MLS is an academic librarian at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Her professional areas are in mathematics and engineering librarianship, and her research interests are in digital literacy and new media communications. Jane is in the final stage of her Master of Arts in Communication and Technology (MACT) program at the University of Alberta. n
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ADVISOR REVIEWS—STANDARD REVIEW
Catholic News Archive Date of Review: September 10, 2020
doi:10.5260/chara.22.2.21
Composite Score: HHHH 1/2 Reviewed by: Sharon Kabel Independent Researcher
Abstract The Catholic News Archive (CNA) is a freely available unique digital collection of American Catholic Newspapers. With an impressive range of advanced search options and search filters, and a friendly mobile layout, it encourages serious research as well as easy browsing. Every newspaper page is scanned with optimal character recognition (OCR). The lack of export options is a serious hindrance to heavy-duty research, which is unfortunate given how extensive and interdisciplinary the content is. The uncorrected OCR is counterbalanced by powerful search options, diverse result display options, and user-corrected OCR.
Pricing The CNA is open access, with the exception of commercial use which requires permission from the copyright holder(s). At the time of publication, users will be required to create a free account if they wish to download full-text PDFs.
Overview The CNA is a unique, fully searchable, full text digital collection of American Catholic newspapers, an overlooked and underrepresented content area. Every newspaper page, including the masthead, is scanned with OCR—something that could be useful for newspapers that have gone through several title changes. The website has been developed with researchers in mind, with easy mobile use, and free accounts where users can save results to private lists (maximum 50 articles/list, 10 lists/user).
<sharontherese2@gmail.com>
Currently, there are 17 newspaper titles (including the Catholic News Service, which more correctly is a news feed) that covered both national (The Catholic Worker) and regional/local (The Voice).1 Broadly, the date coverage is October 1831 to December 2016. Each of the 17 newspaper titles is given its own page, with a brief biography of the newspaper and the issues available in the CNA. Most titles do not have complete runs. They range from Shepherd of the Valley (which appears to be a complete run, from 1832-1854), to the Catholic Commentator (which carries only 45 weekly issues from 1963). The CNA is part of a broader project within the CRRA: the Catholic Newspapers Project. Digitization projects within the Project, including scanning newspapers for the CNA, are funded by member and partner institutions, fundraising campaigns,2 and grants.3
User Interface The CNA has a clean interface with several options for browsing content, such as by date, by tag, by diocese, and by title. Advanced searching offers several features that more prominent subscription databases do not even carry. Users can do wildcard searching, as well as proximity searching with any number of words in between—two powerful tools to counterbalance uncorrected OCR. Users can filter results by decade, and can also set a custom date range, down to the day. CNA will facilitate mass downloads for users (see Figure 1). More detailed tutorials for advanced search are available under the Help/question mark button to the right of the search bar (Figure 2).
FIGURE 1 Catholic News Archive Search Results for “ecclesiastical year” Search
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FIGURE 2 Catholic News Archive Search Bar and Advanced Search Buttons
FIGURE 3 Catholic News Archive Advanced Search Options
FIGURE 4 Catholic News Archive Results Page (Showing Images) for “missal” Search
Under the advanced search options, users can choose when, in what field, and in what newspaper to search (see Figure 3). They can customize how they view their results as well. The default is Text, but Images can be extremely useful when sifting through large amounts of results, to see quickly where and how a search term was used. The search filters are of varying usefulness. Some metadata fields, like author, are not standardized, so one may see many variations of one author name. Category, or type of work, is a curious one. The options are Article, Advertisement, Illustration, the newly added Letter (which does not appear to apply to already-added content), and Page. Page is typically the largest category, because the Catholic News Service is a news feed, and is therefore indexed on a page level, not type of work. However, there are compensations for this. Users can filter by word count (less than 50, 51-1000, and greater than 1,000), which can give a rough idea of what the type of work is, at least between an advertisement and a full-length article. Just as interestingly, under Advanced Search, users can change search summaries (i.e., how
results appear). The default is Text, but one can also select Images, which will show where your search terms appear on the page (see Figure 4). Users can save search results to a private list, but 1.) the lists have a cap (50 results per list, 10 lists per user), and 2.) saving a link to a list removes valuable (and unique) metadata (see Figure 5). A unique feature of the CNA is that the URLs from search results contain the newspaper title, issue date in ISO format (making spreadsheets of links easier to manipulate), your search terms, and any search filters users may have applied. if this link is shared, such as via copy/pasting, the inclusion of the search terms in the URL will mean that the recipient can open the link to find the exact terms highlighted - rather than a bewildering, oversized newspaper page. All of this information, which makes research more transparent, replicable, and shareable, is lost if a result is saved to a private list. In the provided example, the URL is: https://thecatholicnewsarchive.org/?a=d&d=-
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FIGURE 5 Catholic News Archive Example of Results Saved to a User List
FIGURE 6 Catholic News Archive Example of a Newspaper Article with Search Terms Highlighted
ca19650506-01.2.72&srpos=1&e=------196-en-20--1-byPU-txt-txIN-”new+mass”-ARTICLE---1965--. “ca” is The Catholic Advocate, the issue date is 1965-05-06, “byPU” shows that the searcher’s results were sorted by publication title, the search terms were “new mass,” category was filtered to “article,” and date was filtered to “1965” (see Figure 6). Once users have selected a result, the CNA makes it easy to skim the article in question, with highlighted search terms and with the article itself highlighted. Users can use arrows over the article to browse previous and future issues of the newspaper in question, or to return to their results. Along the right-hand side is a snipping tool, which, if used, takes the user to a new page with their selection, and with easily copy/paste-able citation information (see Figures 7 and 8). Considering that the CNA claims to be designed for researchers, there is a glaring omission: there is a lack of exporting results. Users can save results to a private list, but 1) the lists have a cap, and 2) saving
a link to a list removes valuable (and unique) metadata—your search terms and any filters you applied that typically appear in each result will disappear. Users can also share results on social media. However, there is no ability to export the results. If users wish to save results to a reference manager, they will have to do so manually. Zotero offers the option to “capture” web pages, but the result is some random metadata that ends up in the title field, so users would have to manually edit the entire record anyway. The CNA does not have a public policy or statement on accessibility. According to a report from Veridian Software, which manages the database’s content, accessibility to the CNA is consistent with needs and best practices as expressed by the American Foundation for the Blind for people with low or no vision. Newspapers are available as scanned images, PDFs, and HTML.
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FIGURE 7 Catholic News Archive Clipping Tool Demo, Before
FIGURE 8 Catholic News Archive Clipping Tool Demo, After
Critical Evaluation The CNA is a powerful, freely available tool with wide usefulness. Of course students of Catholic history will find much to benefit, Catholic newspapers covered much more than just Church politics. There is
Free Text Keywords: newspapers | Catholicism | history | religion | education | interdisciplinary | multidisciplinary Primary Category: Philosophy & Religion Secondary Categories: General Reference; History & Area Studies; Multidisciplinary (or interdisciplinary); Sociology, Education, Anthropology, Psychology Review Type(s): Newspaper or news source, Primary source digital content, Website Target Audience: Secondary, General public, Undergraduate, Graduate/Faculty/Researcher Access Type(s): Open Access (OA)
much grist to be made for students of history, religion, theology, philosophy, education, liturgy, and more. Its advanced search features outshine many more prominent and well-acclaimed digital resources, and its uncorrected OCR is nicely counterbalanced by ongoing user corrections and several ways to view results. The major drawback of the site is its lack of export options, a serious hindrance for serious researchers. Because the CNA shows continual growth of content and development of its tools, one hopes that this feature will be included one day.
Competitive Products Catholic newspapers are chronically underrepresented in newspaper collections. The most obvious competitor is Newspapers.com. which carries none of the seventeen titles in the CNA. Newspapers.com lists only a dozen titles with “Catholic” in the title, none of which is open access. Chronicling America carries very few Catholic titles. Internet Archive has a few issues of scattershot titles, Readex ARDN carries several Catholic titles, but for most, there are only a few issues. Internet Ar-
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Catholic News Archive Review Scores Composite: HHHH 1/2 The maximum number of stars in each category is 5.
Content:
HHHH 1/2
The content is clearly described, neatly arranged, easily browsable, and always growing. Because it is always growing, it would benefit researches for more notice on when new content is added.
User Interface/Searchability:
HHHH 1/2
The interface, both desktop and mobile, are robust and user friendly. The one significant drawback is the lack of export options.
Pricing: N/A Purchase/Contract Options:
N/A
chive has a few issues of scattershot titles, Readex ARDN <https:// chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/newspapers/> carries several Catholic titles, but for most, there are only a few issues. The California Digital Newspaper Collection has no Catholic titles at all. Newspapers.com of course boasts many Catholic titles, but the content is not Open Access. In terms of topic, scope, breadth, and access, there is no comparable product to the CNA.
Purchase Contract Usage of and account registration with the CNA is free to the user. Commercial use is not permitted without permission.4 CNA will facilitate mass downloads for users upon request.
Authentication The CNA does not share user search history or account information, and IP addresses remain anonymized.5
Author’s References 1. “Browse by Title.” Catholic News Archive, <https://thecatholicnewsarchive.org/?a=cl&cl=CL1&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------> 2. “CRRA Volunteer Recognition.” Catholic Research Resources Alliance, <https://www.catholicresearch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=133>
Contact Information Catholic Research Resources Alliance (CRRA) 230 Washington Avenue Extension, Suite 101 Albany, NY 12203 E-mail: <jyounger@catholicresearch.org> Producer URL: <https://www.catholicresearch.org/> Product URL: <https://thecatholicnewsarchive.org/>
3. “Fundraising.” Catholic Research Resources Alliance, <https:// www.catholicresearch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=77> 4. “Terms of Use, Copyright.” Catholic News Archive, Updated July 12, 2018, <https://thecatholicnewsarchive.org/?a=p&p=tou> 5. “Privacy.” Catholic News Archive, Updated December 1, 2017, <https://thecatholicnewsarchive.org/?a=p&p=crraprivacy>
About the Author Sharon Kabel is an independent researcher, currently working as a science librarian. She has published research on Catholic data and historical sources in New Liturgical Movement, OnePeterFive, New Oxford Review, and Catholic Herald. n
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ADVISOR REVIEWS—STANDARD REVIEW
CINAHL Complete doi:10.5260/chara.22.2.26
Date of Review: August 14, 2020
Composite Score: HHH 7/8 Reviewed by: Dawn Behrend Lenoir-Rhyne University, Hickory, North Carolina
Abstract The Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) Complete is subscription aggregate health and allied health sciences database own exclusively by EBSCO and available via the EBSCOhost platform. CINAHL Complete is the premier product in the lineup of five tiered versions including CINAHL, CINAHL Plus, CINAHL with Full Text, and CINAHL Plus with Full Text. The product has a wide audience of users including students, instructors, researchers, and practitioners. This robust collection indexes over 5,600 journals beginning in 1937, with 1,200 journals being offered with full-text and the large majority with no embargo. CINAHL Complete is valued for its substantial indexing of publications core to the nursing field, use of MeSH subject headings, and numerous options for advanced searching unique to the health sciences. Value-added features include accredited continuing education modules, evidence-based care sheets, and quick lessons. While the database is not an e-book aggregator, it includes a relatively small collection of e-books with most titles being rather outdated. A potential drawback for those considering the addition of CINAHL Complete to their library is the lack of sharing of metadata between EBSCO and other commercial vendors which may complicate the reliability of linking to records for those libraries using a discovery service other than EBSCO Discovery Service. While much less sizeable in its holdings, ProQuest’s Nursing & Allied Health Source may be another possibility, particularly for those seeking a database for use with an academic population. EBSCO’s MEDLINE Complete may also be an option, particularly for those seeking historical publications in addition to current research.
Pricing Options Access is by annual subscription. Pricing for academic institutions is based on a variety of factors including but not limited to FTE, existing EBSCO databases, consortium agreements and/or buying groups. Libraries should contact EBSCO for a customized quote.1
Product Overview/Description The Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) is a well-known and highly respected subscription aggregate database serving the research needs of nurses and allied health professionals, health sciences students and instructors, and clinical researchers that will be of value to any academic library supporting health sciences programs and essential to medical libraries supporting professionals in the healthcare field. With its origins in 1961 as the print index, Cumulative Index to Nursing Literature, CINAHL has been owned by EBSCO Industries since 2003, and offered exclusively on the EBSCOhost platform since 2006. There are currently five tiered versions available: CINAHL; CINAHL Plus; CINAHL with Full Text; CINAHL Plus with Full Text; and CINAHL Complete.
<dawn.behrend@lr.edu>
Described as “the definitive research tool for nursing and allied health professionals,” CINAHL Complete indexes a vast assortment of publications.2 The most recent coverage list indicates holdings of 5,649 journals with more than 1,200 of these being full-text and with indexing dating back to 1937. The database offers searchable cited references for over 1,500 of its titles beginning in 1985. In analyzing the coverage list, the majority of holdings are academic journals at 73% of the total collection, followed by magazines which comprise 24% of the collection. Most titles are identified as core, at 88% of the holdings, with the remainder being denoted as priority. While not present in substantial numbers, CINAHL Complete does include trade publications, reports, books, newspapers, and other publication types. Book publication dates range from 2007 to 2017 with less than 20% having been published in the last 5 years. The selection of dissertations is considerable at over 25,000 items. The collection is diverse in its inclusion of publications from 66 counties, with the top two countries represented being the United States (44%) and the United Kingdom (29%). Full-text for most publications is immediately available with 96% of titles having no embargo. Those publications with an embargo range from 1 to 18 months. The collection contains over six million records covering 50 nursing specialties as well as such popular health science disciplines as speech and language pathology, nutrition, and general health and medicine. In addition to research publications, CINAHL Complete includes such value-added features as 170 continuing education modules accredited by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Accreditation Program and the International Association for Continuing Education and Training, 133 evidence-based care sheets, and 169 quick lessons which provide overviews of diseases and conditions. It should be noted that these features are also available in CINAHL Plus and CINAHL Plus with Full Text. EBSCO offers a number of “point of care” standalone products designed to assist medical and allied health professionals in making patient care decisions, such as DynaMed and Nursing Reference Center, which are compatible with CINAHL Complete. CINAHL Complete is fully compatible with EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS), and is purportedly compatible with other commercial discovery services, such as ProQuest’s Summon. However, the lack of sharing of metadata by EBSCO with non-EBSCO vendors and vice versa results in differences in metadata and record formats across vendors and platforms which can cause difficulties with OpenURL linking. Thus, libraries using discovery services other than EDS should keep in mind that linking to content in CINAHL Complete may be somewhat unreliable and that searching the database individually will often be more effective. MARC records are available and comply with MARC21 standards. Usage statistics can be monitored by administrators through COUNTER-compliant reports. Additional administrative features include custom branding, ability to configure search results and display preferences, language settings, and creating and managing local collections.
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FIGURE 1 CINAHL Complete Basic Search Box
FIGURE 2 CINAHL Complete Advanced Search Options
Regarding accessibility, the EBSCOhost platform is WCAG 2.0 Level A compliant and is working towards WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance. EBSCOhost meets and/or exceeds Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. Technical support is provided via EBSCOConnect 24/7 by e-mail or telephone. EBSCO provides a number of tutorials for effectively using the product from their website.
User Interface/Navigation/Searching CINAHL Complete is available via the EBSCOhost platform which can be cross-searched with other EBSCO databases. The product is accessible with any web-enabled device, including desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Compatible browsers include the latest versions of Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, and version 10.0 or later of Internet Explorer. The Microsoft Edge browser is not supported. The database can be searched on a mobile device through EBSCOhost which auto-detects when users are connecting from mobile devices and sends them to the most appropriate version of the interface. EBSCOhost mobile is fully optimized for Apple iOS 7 or higher, Android 2.3 or higher, and Kindle Fire OS 4.5.1 or higher. Users can set up a My EBSCOhost Account which will enable them to save searches and results to their folder as well as to create an alert for publications on topics of interest. The utility toolbar provides the options of a New Search, Publications, CINAHL Subject Headings, Evidence-Based Care Sheets, Quick Lessons, and More which provides the option to search cited references, images, and indexes. From the main search page, users can choose to conduct a basic search or
advanced search, view their search history, or create an alert. Create Alert remains present next to the search box as the user navigates the database (see Figure 1). When a basic search is performed, enabling the option Apply Equivalent Subjects expands the search to include the exact terms for that concept when a search term matches a known concept in the mapped vocabulary. The search can be limited from the basic search page by such standard options as date, full-text, peer-reviewed, English language, and publication type, as well as clinical queries, gender, and image. Once a search is performed, additional limiters are available on the left hand navigation bar of the results page including publisher, language, subject heading, age, and geography. When performing an advanced search, users have an array of options for refining and limiting their results. There are 47 fields from which to choose including major and minor subjects, author affiliation, named person, legal case, and MEDLINE Info. Alternatively, or in addition to field search, users can select limiters from the advanced search page such as evidence-based practice, CE module, first author as nurse, special interest, and various patient criteria. Users can also choose to exclude MEDLINE records and to either include or exclude pre-CINAHL records. For both basic and advanced search, results default to sorting by relevance but can be changed to sort by date, source, or author. CINAHL Complete supports Boolean, wildcat, and truncation operators as well as searching by proximity and with parentheses. Figure 2 demonstrates a selection of available search limiters.
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FIGURE 3 CINAHL Complete Database Search Result Options
CINAHL Complete uses a controlled vocabulary with subject headings based on the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), with additional specific nursing and allied health headings added as appropriate. The subject headings are arranged hierarchically. Users can select Explode to locate all references indexed to a search term as well as all references indexed to any narrower subject terms. Subject headings can also be restricted to the Major Concept of the record which restricts results to publications in which that subject heading is the main idea. Both Major Concept and Explode can be selected which will include results that include more narrow concepts when they are the main focus of that publication (see Figure 3). Once selected, a result can be printed, e-mailed, saved, or exported to a number of reference management tools such as RefWorks, EndNote, or EasyBib. Users can also obtain a permalink for the record or send it to Google Drive. Evidence-based care sheets and quick lessons can be searched alphabetically or by means of relevancy ranked with results being downloadable as a PDF. In order to access CEU modules, users must first register with the CINAHLeducation program.
Critical Evaluation For those academic and medical libraries seeking a comprehensive database geared to students, educators, researchers, and health and allied health practitioners, CINAHL Complete has much to offer. The aspects of the product that add to its value are the depth and breadth of indexed journals, substantial holdings of publications core to the field, integration of MeSH into the database’s subject headings, and ease of navigation by means of the familiar EBSCOhost platform. Perhaps the product’s greatest advantage lies in the plethora of advanced search options that are not similarly available in competing products. Further, the inclusion of continuing education modules, evidence-based care sheets, and quick lessons along with compatibility with EBSCO’s point-of-care products provide added benefits for healthcare professionals. While there are few negative factors to this database, one potential drawback is that the e-books in the collection tend to be rather outdated which is also the case with Nursing & Allied Health. However, as CINAHL Complete is not primarily an e-book aggregator this issue is of relatively minimal concern. The product feature that might be most potentially problematic is the lack of sharing of metadata by EBSCO with other discovery services which can pose potential challenges for those libraries that do not use EDS. Finally, while CINAHL Complete offers continuing education modules these are PDFs with Nursing & Allied Health offering continuing education video clips which may be more appealing to providers on the go.
Competitive Products In considering alternatives to CINAHL Complete, ProQuest’s Nursing & Allied Health Source and EBSCO’s MEDLINE with Full Text are potential options. All three databases are subscription based and
make use of MeSH in their indexing. Whereas CINAHL Complete is proprietary to EBSCO and Nursing & Allied Health Source is proprietary to ProQuest, MEDLINE is available from a number of vendors, including the freely available PubMed. The databases differ primarily in the breadth of coverage, user interface, and availability of value-added features. Nursing & Allied Health Sciences uses the ProQuest platform and is likely the most direct competitor the CINHAL lineup of products. This database seeks to differentiate itself by being largely academic in its focus by specifically meeting the needs of “those preparing for a career in healthcare, teaching patient care, or engaged in nursing research.”3 The coverage is quite broad, spanning 576 subjects. The collection indexes over 1,900 sources, of which the majority (74%) are scholarly journals, and many of which are full-text. The collection also offers access to over 29,000 dissertations. As with CINAHL Complete, there are relatively few e-books in the collection and range in date from 2002 and 2017 with most titles not being published within the last 5 years. A review of the publication list indicates titles dating back to 1933. A value-added component of Nursing & Allied Health Sciences is the inclusion of over 1,200 training video clips from MedCom which provides online continuing education courses. The product website states that “core nursing journal coverage is augmented with elite medical publications,” but does not indicate which titles are core publications in the published title list. Users can opt to utilize the ProQuest thesaurus or MeSH for searching by subject heading. MEDLINE is a renowned biomedical database from the NLM to which free access is available through PubMed. MEDLINE is also licensed to a number of commercial database vendors, including EBSCO whose suite of products are MEDLINE, MEDLINE with Full Text, and MEDLINE Complete. MEDLINE Complete as the premier product in the collection can be compared to CINAHL Complete. This database is considered a full-text companion to MEDLINE and as such indexes over 2,200 full-text titles with nearly all (96%) being academic journals and with over 1,200 active full-text, non-open access journals with coverage dating to 1916. As CINAHL Complete
Free Text Keywords: EBSCO | CINAHL| Nursing | Allied Health | ProQuest Nursing & Allied Health Source | MEDLINE | National Library of Medicine | Health Sciences | MeSH Primary Category: Medicine, Nursing & Health Secondary Categories: Sociology, Education, Anthropology, Psychology Type of product being reviewed: Aggregator database Target Audience: Undergraduate (including community colleges); Graduate/Faculty/Researcher Access: Subscription
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CINAHL Complete Review Scores Composite: HHH 7/8 The maximum number of stars in each category is 5.
Content:
HHHH
A substantial collection of core health sciences and allied health sciences journals dating to 1937.Value-added features include continuing education modules, evidence-based care sheets, and quick lessons. Including video continuing education modules in addition to PDFs may be desirable, as well as increasing the currency of e-books.
User Interface/Searchability:
HHH 1/2
The interface is easily navigated via the EBSCOhost platform. Holdings are expertly indexed using MeSH. The abundance of options to refine an advanced search are a definite advantage of this product. The product is compliant with accessibility standards. The lack of sharing of metadata between EBSCO and other commercial database vendors may complicate the ability to reliably link to records for those not using EDS as their discovery service.
Pricing: N/A As a direct quote was not provided by EBSCO, it is difficult to assess this area. Pricing for academic institutions is based on a variety of factors including but not limited to FTE, existing EBSCO databases, consortium agreements and/or buying groups.
Purchase/Contract Options:
HHHH
Contract provisions are standard for the product allowing for remote access and interlibrary loan within the scope of copyright laws.
Contact Information EBSCO Information Services 10 Estes Street Ipswich, MA 01938 Phone: (978) 356-6500 E-mail: <information@ebsco.com> Producer URL: <https://www.ebsco.com> Product URL: <https://www.ebsco.com/products/researchdatabases/cinahl-complete>
includes records back to 1937 and Nursing & Allied Health Sciences to 1933, MEDLINE Complete may be a more appealing option for those engaged in historical clinical research. Unlike CINAHL Complete and Nursing & Allied Health Sciences there are no e-books, dissertations, videos, or other value-added elements such as continuing education materials.4
Purchase & Contract Provisions Purchase and contract provisions are outlined in the EBSCO License Agreement. Terms and conditions are standard to the product. Libraries may use content for Interlibrary Loan (ILL) as long as they abide by copyright law. EBSCO prefers for content to be faxed rather than provided electronically. Remote access is permissible to a library’s patrons with security procedures in place to prevent access from nonauthorized users.
Authentication Access to the product is granted through a number of authentication methods including: IP address; referring URL; user ID and password; Open Athens; Single Sign-On; Google Sign-In; and Shibboleth.
Author’s References 1. Karena Donnelly (Senior Communications Specialist), e-mail message to author, July 2020. 2. CINAHL Complete. Accessed August 3, 2020. <https://www.ebscohost.com/nursing/product/cinahl-databases/cinahl-complete> 3. Nursing & Allied Health Database. Accessed August 7, 2020. <https://about.proquest.com/products-services/pq_nursingahs_ shtml.html> 4. MEDLINE Complete. Accessed August 7, 2020. <https://www. ebsco.com/products/research-databases/medline-complete>
About the Author Dawn Behrend is an Instruction and Outreach Librarian at Lenoir-Rhyne University. Ms. Behrend holds a B.A. in Psychology, M.A. in Clinical Psychology, MBA, and MLS. She has over 20 years of experience as a psychologist who continues to work part-time in private practice and is a second career librarian where she serves as Lenoir-Rhyne University library’s liaison to the departments of business and economics, mathematics, computer science, psychology, and counseling. n
30 Advisor Reviews / The Charleston Advisor / October 2020 www.charlestonco.com
ADVISOR REVIEWS—STANDARD REVIEW
Discography of American Historical Recordings Date of Review: September 10, 2020
doi:10.5260/chara.22.2.30
Composite Score: HHHH 1/4 Reviewed by: Sarah Holmes Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois
Abstract The Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR) is an open-access database that has information on over 314,000 matrixes or master recordings from the early period of recording with recordings that date back to the late nineteenth century. The recordings come from a variety of companies and are composed of a large variety of styles and genres. The database not only includes information on recordings that were published but also on all known takes. The information provided comes from a variety of sources, including primary sources, all of which are verified if possible. The website is uncomplicated and easy to understand. DAHR is a comprehensive tool for researching recording artists of the time, recording practices, and the recordings themselves.
Pricing The DAHR is Open Access.
Overview The road to the 2013 launch of the Discography of American Historical Recordings was long. The collection of information began in the early 1960s with pioneers of the discography, Ted Fagan and William R. Moran. Prior to their work, there was no publicly accessible accounting of classical music recordings. Their work focused on the Victor Talking Machine Company and its successor, RCA Victor Records. They realized that people might be interested in all takes, not just those published, and genres beyond classical music. They planned to publish books with this information. They were granted access to Victor’s records, and with the help of Stanford University Library’s Archive of Recorded Sound, they published the first volume in 1983, and the second in 1986. Fagan died shortly thereafter, but Moran and Stanford continued the work. When Moran’s health began failing, he asked University of California Santa Barbara to take over in 2003 and provided an endowment for the continuation of the project. The project developed over time and was awarded funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and in 2008 the Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings Project went live on the internet. UCSB realized the scope of the project didn’t need to be limited to Victor, and melded with the American Discography Project and partnered with Packard Humanities Institute to develop a more encompassing discography that would also support the Library of Congress’s digitization and online access of the recordings. Other labels featured are Berliner, Columbia, OKeh, and Brunswick. In 2013 the Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR) was launched and is continuing to research and update information with funding from the Packard Humanities Institute, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The DAHR uses a variety of sources to verify the information. These sources include sheet music and
<sholmes@niu.edu>
other publications, library databases, copyright registration records, trade catalogs, and the published recordings they are documenting. The product contains a large variety of recordings from spoken stories to folk performances from a variety of countries, American popular music, to classical. The Victor series includes domestic and overseas recordings, which include recordings from Mexico, Argentina, Havana, Trinidad, Puerto Rico, Lima, Columbia, and more. Some of these are recordings of locals, while many are recordings of Victor’s label orchestra on “field trips.” The Berliner series includes their domestic recordings, and the DAHR has no plans to include their overseas series. The Columbia series includes recordings issued in the U.S., while recordings made or published in other countries will only be recorded when the disc is digitized. The OKeh includes acoustic and electric masters from 1918-1931. The Zonophone series contains recordings made from 1902-1912, including a Hawaiian set. This project is not complete, and some series are in progress.
User Interface The Discography of American Historical Recordings’ home page is clean and welcoming. A brief introduction to the database is the main focus, along with a summary of what is currently available (314,000 master recordings), and what is in process. On the right-hand side of the screen, a feed of news keeps users updated on the most recent changes and updates, such as the recent addition of linked data. Every page, including the home page, includes a featured artist with an On This Date historical blurb. Every time the page refreshes for any reason, a new one is loaded. At the very top right and corner, static links for Home and Help appear on every page. The Help link includes links to a bibliography of sources, a glossary of terms, FAQs, a DAHR-to-MARC Cataloging Tool, and notes on the information in the DAHR. The DAHR uses primary sources whenever possible and always tries to verify information if possible. The Bibliography includes all the sources consulted with links either to the WorldCat record or to the website. The Glossary is as expected, with in-depth definitions of terms used throughout the database. The FAQs include a variety of topics including how to submit a correction, the frequency of updates, how to place a value on personally owned recordings, among other topics. The DAHR-toMARC Cataloging Tool is helpful to catalogers at the few institutions that hold the 78 RPMs within this database. Other institutions can use these records with minimal modification, thereby saving significant time and effort. The DAHR also encourages communication from institutions that hold 78 RPM recordings, as they are few and far between. The notes section only contains information on Columbia and Berliner takes and issues. It describes why the interpretation of information may not be straight forward. The static menu bar allows users to navigate the site in a variety of ways. The About tab gives information on how the database came to
The Charleston Advisor / October 2020
be and what is included. The News tab is an extended list of what can be found on the home page dating back to 2009. Researchers will find the Resources tab beneficial as it has links organized by company with information such as essays, discographies, historical documents, and listening guides. Some of these links lead to publisher websites for the items that are in print, while others have been reprinting by DAHR and are fully accessible on the site. The two tabs that will be used most often are the Browse and Search tabs. The Search tab gives you four options: Basic, Titles, Discs, and Names. A basic search is essentially a keyword search that searches the entered terms in the names, titles, places, catalog numbers, and matrix numbers record fields. The results are broken down by field, showing only the number of results for each field. The user has the option to pick a specific result or see all results. The Titles search is much more advanced. The search can be limited to only those titles with streaming audio, or by marketing genre, matrix number, name (with addition limits to name type: primary performer, composer, etc.), date range, company, category (instrumental, spoken, sound effects, etc.), language, place and whether the masters are published, unpublished, or trials. There is also the option to add additional searches with an AND/NOT option. If one wanted to find recordings of a banjo rendition of Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever,” one could easily do so with the title search, limiting to available audio, with “banjo” in the description box. The Disc search gives many of the same options as the Titles search did. It adds a box for catalog number, does not include matrix number, and exchanges marketing genre with marketing target. The only major difference between the two is how the results are presented, and interestingly how many results there are. When conducting a search for “Stars and Stripes Forever” in both search formats, the Titles search returns 83 entries, while the Disc search returns 158. The Titles search focuses on matrix number, and also shows the company, size, first take date, title, primary performer, and description. The Disc search focuses on the label name and number, format/issue series, issue date, and title/artist, and will give the user a list of the matrixes that were released to that catalog number. Each of the matrix links will take the user to the record’s page, which is directly where the Titles search goes. Essentially the Titles search is best for those who are researching individual pieces/performances, while the Disc search is best for those researching the recordings as items themselves. The Names search option is just that; it searches the name fields and can be limited by title words. The results list shows each variation of that name, how many times each variation occurs in the database, the date range of the recordings, the roles attached to that variation, and of course, whether any are streaming online. This has recently been improved with the recent Linked Data upgrade. A search for “Pryor” returns seven variations: “Arthur Pryor’s Band” with 1,263 occurrences; “Arthur Pryor’s Orchestra with 199 occurrences; Pryor’s Trombone Quartet with 6 occurrences; “Pryor, Arthur” with 1,374 occurrences as conductor, trombonist, composer, director, arranger, and pianist; “Pryor, H.R” and “Pryor, Martha” each with one occurrence; and “Pryor, Walter” with 20. Each name will take you to an information page that begins with a brief bio and picture from Wikipedia, if available. The vital statistics are Recorded, Recording Date Range, Roles, and any Notes attached to the name. A list of records should follow; though, possibly due to the recent adoption of Linked Data, the list doesn’t always populate. When populated, each result links to the re-
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cording page. There is a citation builder, a persistent identifier URI, external sources (such as Wikipedia), and Discogs, linked open data sources such as Library of Congress Name Authority File, Wikidata, and Virtual International Authority File. Every profile page and recording page has a link to e-mail the editors about the page. The Browse tab is also very functional. The first option is Matrixes. A matrix number can be assigned by the publisher to track recording sessions or takes. There is not a set standard for recordings, nor were they always consistent throughout a company’s history. In this database, a matrix number is mostly the unique number assigned to a recording or set of recordings by the company. Victor’s matrix numbers consist of a letter prefix, a serial number, and a take number, while another company’s unique identifier was a catalog number. The Matrix Browse list shows the company, matrix number, size of the record, date of the first take, title, primary performer, description, and if there’s streaming audio, known recordings issued, or no issue. There are facets on the left that will guide users through the database. The user can limit by Company, then Matrix Series, and Subseries, Multilevel or Individually by Recording Series, Primary Performer, Category, First Take Date, or Language. Browsing by disc shows the label name and number, series, issue date, title/artist, and if there is streaming audio. The only facet available to limit the search is the label name. The Name Browse option gives the Name, Recording Date Range, Occurrences of the name, and Roles associated with the name, and if there is streaming audio available. There are links to each letter of the alphabet at the top of the page that then sub-categorizes into the first two letters. The facets on the left allow limiting by Company, Role, and Audio Availability. Date Browse enables the user to search by specific dates and lists all recordings made on those dates. The information given is Company, Matrix Number, Size, First Take Date, Title, Primary Performer, Description, and if there is streaming recording, known issued recordings, or no issue. The top of the page provides back and advance buttons for Year, Month, Week, and Day. The lists can also be limited by company via the faceting tool. Four options are given to users to navigate through most of the various search result lists. A slide bar will jump the pages forward quickly, or the user can type in the desired page number. The options to click next to advance individual pages or jump to the first or last page are also present. Other searches off alphabet links or simple page numbers and view all options. Each matrix record gives all the information the editor could find on the specific recordings. Primary info such as title and its source, composers, personnel all with any related notes if applicable. Description, category, and size of the master recording along with notes relating to the recording as a whole. Edison matrix 18657: The third alarm march performed by the Goldman Band, conducted by the composer, Edwin Franko Goldman, was “recorded simultaneously as lateral ‘Needle Type’ master N-365” with a link to said recording’s record. Take dates and places, take identifier, status (master, or reprint), label name and number, format, and any related notes are all given for all takes, not just the published ones. A citation builder is also present, along with the option to message the editors about the record. If there is an option of streaming audio, an embedded player is included, either from the Library of Congress, the University of California at Santa Barbara’s streaming collection, among others. Links given at the bottom of the page allow the user to find the master on WorldCat, share via Facebook, or e-mail, add to your browser’s favorites or print the page.
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Discography of American Historical Recordings Review Scores Composite: HHHH 1/4 The maximum number of stars in each category is 5.
Content:
HHHH 1/2
The DAHR has the most comprehensive collection of data available on early recordings. The database is being added to. It also includes streaming audio where available, which accentuates its content.
User Interface/Searchability:
HHHH
For the most part the DAHR is very easy to navigate, and search. Though it does take a small bit of adjusting, and there are a few bothersome oddities.
Pricing: N/A Purchase/Contract Options:
N/A
Contact Information UC Santa Barbara Library Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9010 Phone: (805) 893-2478 E-mail: <victor@library.ucsb.edu> Producer URL: <https://www.library.ucsb.edu/> Product URL: <https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php>
The page’s note on accessibility instructs the user to contact the web services librarian by phone or e-mail, and they will “either resolve the issue or provide alternatives.”
Critical Evaluation The user interface is uncomplicated and straightforward, making it easy to navigate the database. It is relatively easy to move around the different search types and results. The search options for titles and discs can be a bit overwhelming at first with all the search options, but can be run with only one field filled out and it can be any of the fields. It would make the learning curve a bit easier if each of the search and browse types were briefly explained, but it is manageable without this. The facets that are available for limiting results lists can be a bit frustrating. When looking for a specific matrix number the user must choose the company, matrix, and sometimes sub series. If the user wants to limit by another company, each facet needs to be reset to Show All. The matrix series are unique to the company so if the user set the Company to Show All, and not the Matrix Series, only one company will show. This means undoing all set facets, which can be frustrating. Having a facet for Primary Performer is great, but results are ordered by number of recordings on which each performer appears. Looking for a specific performer takes longer using this list than if it were in alphabetical order. The First Take Date and Language facets show in chronological and alphabetical order, respectively, and still indicate the number of recordings that fit into each option. The plethora of information provided in a straightforward manner makes researching with this database a joy.
Competitive Products While the Discography of American Historical Recordings is a unique source, some similar products may be complimentary. The University of California Santa Barbara also has the Cylinder Audio Archive, which is very similar to the DAHR, but deals with cylinders whereas DAHR deals mostly with records. There is overlap and some of the recordings from the Cylinder Audio Archive are embedded in the DAHR for streaming. The purpose of this site is to make the digitized collection of the Library’s 10,000+ cylinders available to the public, while the DAHR’s purpose is to index recordings made by the companies that began producing recordings. The website is free and is available at <http://cylinders.library.uscsb.edu>. The Database of Recorded American Music is similar in how it focuses on American music, and it also collects music from labels, but its focus is on more recent recordings than the DAHR. There are many living composers featured, and many who lived in the latter part of the twentieth century. This product is also a subscription product <http:// dramonline.org>. The Global Jukebox is similar to the DAHR in a way that it documents the history of music, but does so in a very different way. It, too, is the result of a research project, but while the project that be-
Freetext Keywords: historic recording | 78rpm record | LP records | long-playing records | discography | database | streaming audio | vinyl records Primary Category: Music, Theater, Film Studies Secondary Categories: History & Area Studies; Humanities Review Type(s): Bibliographic tool, Publisher or Organization content /repository, Website Access Type(s): Open Access (OA) Target Audience: General public, Undergraduate, Graduate/Faculty/Researcher
The Charleston Advisor / October 2020
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gan DAHR focused on documenting and cataloging recordings, The Global Jukebox uses data sets that are analyzed and grouped to find relationships between music, speaking, dance forms, and culture. The interactive website allows users to find music that is related to specific locations and cultures. It is an Open Access resource that requires registration <http://theglobaljukebox.org>.
Purchase Contract
About the Author Sarah C. Holmes is the Music Catalog Librarian and the Interim Music Librarian at Northern Illinois University. She holds a master’s degree in Library and Information Science from Kent State University, and a master’s degree in Flute Performance from The Hartt School of Music at the University of Hartford. Her professional interests include the history of piccolo music, women in music, library outreach, and information literacy. n
The Discography of American Historical Recordings is Open Access.
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ADVISOR REVIEWS—STANDARD REVIEW
Human Kinetics Library Date of Review: August 14, 2020
doi:10.5260/chara.22.2.34
Composite Score: HHH 5/8 Reviewed by: Pamela R. Dennis Gardner-Webb University, Boiling Springs, North Carolina
Abstract Human Kinetics Library is a subscription-based database that allows students, researchers, and instructors access to a bundled collection of electronic textbooks, supplementary monographs, and videos previously available only as individual titles (labeled by the company as “a digital hub for sport and exercise studies”). The database is easy to navigate through its indexing and search tools. It is updated twice a year and includes an excellent help module. The many videos and images benefit college students and professors, personal trainers, rehabilitation specialists, athletes, coaches, physical educators, nutritionists and more.
Pricing Options Human Kinetics Library is available via subscription ($3,805 to $10,115) or perpetual access ($17,795 to $47,335) with hosting fees of $200 to $600 accompanying perpetual access purchases. Content updates will be available for separate purchase or included in the subscription price. Future modules will have a separate subscription/purchase price. Pricing is based on institution size and type. Consortia discounts may apply (supplied by company).
Product Overview/ Description Human Kinetics includes cross-searchable digital access to over 150 “market-leading” e-books as well as 200 videos, whose material covers all types of content and disciplines, including active aging, coaching, exercise science, ethics in sport, strength training, and more. All are published by Human Kinetics/Bloomsbury. While the mission of the company is to provide a “growing collection of cross-searchable e-books and videos from the world’s leading educational publisher,” the guidelines and research use measurements based on United States sports and fitness. Results can
FIGURE 1 Human Kinetics Library Home Page
<pdennis@gardner-webb.edu>
be cited, shared, printed, e-mailed, and saved through personal account log on. At launch, there were 30 topics and 30 sports/activities. No additional plug-ins or special software are needed for access.
User Interface/Navigation/Searching On the home page, the user encounters a search box conveniently located at the top of the page. Below the search box is an image banner that links to more information about the product. The page features a brief, captioned overview video with upbeat (exercise-conducive) music. Topics covered include information about the subscription; a list of members of the editorial advisory board; featured content; detailed instructions on how to navigate the resource; help (frequently asked questions about content, accessing the site, and functionality); and contact information. Brightly colored tiles in the next section assist the user in exploring the content (e-books, videos, sport/activity, and topics). Clicking on
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FIGURE 2 Human Kinetics Library Search Results
A footer appears on every page, detailing company information, help, accessibility, and contact information, as well as social media links, subscription terms/conditions, and the privacy policy. The user may easily navigate to the top of the page by clicking on the up arrow in the bottom right. SEARCHING To conduct a search, the user simply types the term into the search box and hits the enter key or clicks on the magnifying glass button. There is, however, no spell checker for mistyped search terms so accuracy is essential for successful searching.
the tiles produces lists of books and videos available. Or the user can select the Topic in Focus or Sport in Focus tiles and choose from material in several content areas (see Figure 1). The articles currently displayed are inclusive, and include emphases on physical activity for older adults and wheelchair basketball. Finally, there is a slider at the bottom of the page that displays a revolving list of recently added titles. These titles explore the history of American sports, using music to exercise, dealing with sport law, and ethics, among other topics. Clicking on a book cover generates publishing information about the book as well as a table of contents with navigational links to the content.
Results are presented in order of relevance, though they may also be sorted by title (ascending or descending) or date (ascending or descending). The number of results (or pages) appears next to the search box. While the default number of results per page is 10, it may be reduced to 5 or expanded to 20 per page (see Figure 2). Results give chapter and book title and type of resource as well as a brief snippet from the text with the search term in bold. Details may be hidden to enable more results to fit on the screen. In the left navigation bar, numbers of results by content type, sport/ activity, and topic appear in parentheses. In a simple search for the term “exercise,” the results included 2,024 results (203 pages), with 1,829 being e-books and 195 videos. Topically, the top five were kinesiology and exercise science (585), physiology of sport and exercise (548), psychology of sport and exercise (395), fitness and health (238), and exercise prescription, instruction, and assessment (211) The top five sports included cycling and mountain biking (69), triathlon (66), basketball (55), swimming (51), and baseball (48), with expandable categories of racket sports, water sports, and track and field following shortly afterward. Clicking on the chapter title produces a cover photograph and linkable related content on the left. In the main screen there is a navigable table of contents followed by the chapter content. All instances of the search term are highlighted (see Figure 3). Hovering over the text displays page numbers at page breaks. Breadcrumbs allow the searcher to return to incre-
FIGURE 3 Human Kinetics Library Expanded Search Result
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FIGURE 4 Human Kinetics Library Advanced Search Screen
mental stages in the search for this book. ADVANCED SEARCH For more focused searching, the Advanced Search link allows the user to search anywhere, or limit by title, author/editor/creator, summary/abstract, category, or identifier. Additionally, the search might be limited by date (1992-2020) and type of resource (e-book or video). More search terms may be added by clicking on Add Field, and Boolean search functions (AND, OR, and NOT) allow for combined term searching (see Figure 4). Next to the Home tab is the Explore By tab, which allows the researcher to investigate by Sport/Activity or by Topic. Alphabetical lists display numbers of results in parentheses and link to books and videos when clicked. Limits can then be applied to the resulting chapters. The third tab is the Browse Content tab, which lists all e-books (151) and videos (209), with links to content. The remaining tabs give information about the company and provide librarians with information on purchasing, downloading MARC and KBART records, obtaining usage statistics and promotional materials, recognizing accessibility standings, seeking help, and contacting the company for more information. Personal accounts may be created to save the page URLs in folders and sub-folders. In addition to saving, items may be printed; cited in APA, MLA, or Chicago style; shared via e-mail, Google+, Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest; and exported as RIS files.
Accessibility Human Kinetics Library conforms to accessibility standards for most Level A (Priority 1) and AA (Priority 2) success criteria of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) developed by the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C). Any areas for improvement are clearly stated on the Accessibility page. All sites work well with keyboard-only operation, screen readers (including
FIGURE 5 Information on Human Kinetics Library For Librarians Tab
JAWS 18, NVDA 2018, Apple VoiceOver and Android Talkback), and other assistive software, and have been tested for color contrast compliance and correct rendering with browser controls zoomed to 200%. They have been reviewed by specialist accessibility testers at QA InfoTech, who employ a pair-testing methodology using combinations of sighted and non-sighted testers. Alternative text is provided for primary site content. The text is resizable and reflowable, and the color contrast ratio for all interactive elements meets the WCAG standard minimum of 4.5:1. Chapter-level PDFs are DRM-free and require no additional plug-ins or special software and are thus easily modifiable for accessibility.
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Human Kinetics Library Review Scores Composite: HHH 5/8 The maximum number of stars in each category is 5.
Content:
HHH
Provides access to e-books and videos that are updated twice a year. The resources are easily searchable and provide excellent material for students, faculty, and researchers in exercise science-related fields. From an academic perspective, having material updated more often would be vital since these fields of study are scientific in nature.
User Interface/Searchability:
HHH 1/2
No app is available to access the information, though the platform is adaptable to mobile devices. Otherwise, cross-indexing of resources by topic and sport/activity allowed for easy access to related materials.
Pricing:
HHHH
Because there is no other resource that collects e-books and videos in one place, the pricing is low to medium. With consortial pricing available, it would be affordable to small libraries. And perpetual access is available. The company offered free access during the Spring semester months of COVID-19.
Purchase/Contract Options:
HHHH
No contract was available, but information on the website appeared to be normal purchase practice.
Critical Evaluation I found this database easy to use for the most part. Criticisms were few but worth mentioning. Citations are not in the current styles for APA (seventh edition) and MLA (eighth edition). Neither of these citation styles requires publication location in their current editions. Also, capitalization is not correct for APA style titles. Sentence capitalization should be applied, rather than capitalizing each word. This database only includes books and videos, which forces a library to subscribe to additional databases for scholarly articles. Upon viewing A-Z database lists at other libraries, I found that libraries that subscribe to this database also subscribe to EBSCO’s SportDiscus. To its credit, upon checking our library against those e-books found in Human Kinetics database, I found only three books in common. Thus, as a compilation of e-books and videos, there appears to be no competition. But in an academic program, it would need to be used in supplement with a scholarly article database. It would be helpful in this type of research field if updates occurred more frequently. One place on the website stated that the database was uploaded once a year, and another said twice a year. Monthly or quarterly updates would keep instructors and researchers abreast of the most current books and videos on the market.
Competitive Products I found no comparable products. Access to these resources could only be attained by subscribing to individual titles separately. In my library, I found only seven of these e-books in my collection, and six of those were older physical books. It would be very expensive to replicate this list in single online subscriptions. While there are open-access resources in the field (through MERLOT and other sites) as well as YouTube videos (<https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kinesiology&sp=EgIQAg%253D%253D>), there appears to be
no other source that collects the resources in one place as does this database.
Purchase & Contract Provisions I did not have access to a contract but did find valuable information under the For Librarians tab on the main page (see Figure 5). Access is available to unlimited simultaneous users. There is support for outbound OpenURL linking from citations, and DOIs are provided both at the chapter and book level. SUSHI service is available for automatic harvesting of COUNTER usage statistics, and MARC records at the volume level are provided for all book titles. The site is customizable to include an institutional logo. Human Kinetics Library is available by subscription or perpetual access. MARC records are supplied as .mrc files. These are full RDA-compliant records in MARC21 format, and they include Library of Congress Subject Headings, book summaries, table of contents, accessibility information, related ISBNs, and DOI-based persistent URL links. KBART records are supplied in Tab Delimited Text format as specified by KBART recommendations.
Contact Information Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 1385 Broadway, Fifth Floor New York, NY 10018 Phone: (212) 419-5300 E-mail: <https://www.humankineticslibrary.com/ contact-us> Producer URL: <https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/> Product URL: <https://www.humankineticslibrary.com/>
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Free Text Keywords: exercise | kinesiology | nutrition | recreation | sport | strength training | sport management
company also provides promotional materials, including flyers, posters, and web and e-mail banners that can be downloaded directly from the website.
Primary Category: Medicine, Nursing & Health
Authentication
Type of product being reviewed: Ebook collection; Streaming video
Human Kinetics Library offers several different methods of authentication for users: IP Address; Proxy Server; Shibboleth Authentication; WAYFless URL.
Target Audience: Secondary; Undergraduate (including community colleges); Graduate/Faculty/Researcher Access: Subscription
The site is optimized for tablet and smartphone interfaces and has been tested using recent versions of iPad, iPhone, and Addroid smartphones and tablets. Human Kinetics Library has also been tested using Internet Explorer (version 10 onwards), Safari (version 6 onwards), and the latest version of Firefox and Chrome, on PC, Mac, and mobile operating systems. Personal Account log-ins may be used across Bloomsbury platforms. Any links from bibliographies of full-text books may be accessed if a library has a link resolver and subscribes to those resources. The
About the Author Dr. Pam Dennis is Dean of the Library at Gardner-Webb University, a position she has held for two years. Former library positions include University of Memphis (Learning Commons Coordinator), Lambuth University (Director), Union University (Information Services Coordinator and Archivist), and Ouachita Baptist University (Archivist). Dr. Dennis holds a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Memphis, a master’s degree in library science from Southern Connecticut State University, a degree in church music from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and a bachelor’s degree from Western Carolina University. In addition to her library work, she enjoys historical research, knitting, and playing piano and organ. n
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Broad coverage of publications related to Antiquity, including Late Antiquity More than 868,000 bibliographic records and 519,000 review references About 14,000 records added annually More than 1,000 journals indexed
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ADVISOR REVIEWS—STANDARD REVIEW
Nineteenth Century Literary Society: The John Murray Publishing Archive doi:10.5260/chara.22.2.39
Date of Review: June 15, 2020
Composite Score: HHHH 1/2 Reviewed by: Marisa Scigliano Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada
Abstract Nineteenth Century Literary Society is drawn from archive of the House of John Murray publishing company, held by the National Library of Scotland. The family-run firm, with Scottish roots, spanned seven generations and flourished in London from 1768 until 2002. John Murray is especially remarkable for publishing seminal English-language works of the 19th century, including those by Charles Darwin, David Livingstone, Charles Lyell, and Samuel Smiles, the father of self-help. The largest collection of Lord Byron’s private writings and manuscripts, assembled by the publisher, form a large part of the resource. Women writers feature prominently in the John Murray’s collection, including Jane Austen, Isabella Bird, Elizabeth Eastlake, and Caroline Lamb.
Pricing Nineteenth Century Literary Society is available for perpetual access or by subscription. Pricing is determined by a range of factors, including Carnegie Classification and full-time enrollment. Pricing is available by contacting the publisher.
Overview Nineteenth Century Literary Society (NCLS) is the archival collection of the House of John Murray publishers, held by the National Library of Scotland. The family-run publisher, spanning seven generations, was established in London in 1768 and stayed in family hands until 2002. John Murray’s establishment at 50 Albemarle Street in London was a hub of erudite nineteenth century society where the Four-o-Clock Friends convened, counting among its members Lord Byron, Sir Walter Scott, and Isaac Disraeli. In addition to publishing books, John Murray extended his reach by establishing the influential Quarterly Review (1809-1967) as a Tory rival to the Whig Edinburgh Review (1802-1929). At the time the business was sold, it was the oldest independent family-run publishing house in the world. The family maintained ownership of the archival collection, housed at 50 Albemarle in London. The publisher offered the archive to the National Library of Scotland, as the family had ties to Scotland. The bulk of NCLS are materials from the legacies of John Murray II (1778-1843) and John Murray III (1808-1892). An important and influential establishment in the literary life, particularly during the nineteenth century, during its existence the proprietors maintained meticulous records of the firm’s activities and all manner of correspondence, while building relationships with some of the greatest minds in the English-speaking world. For these reasons and more, this resource provides exceptional insight into book publishing and the corollary intellectual life of nineteenth century Britain.
<mscigliano@trentu.ca>
The digital resource has 1,400 items representing almost 250,000 digitized images. Where exclusions have been made from the print archival collection, this is due to specific collection criteria <http:// www.nineteenthcenturyliterarysociety.amdigital.co.uk/Introduction/ SelectionCriteria>. A full contents list with library collection name and National Library of Scotland manuscript number is available for download from the supporting materials link <https://www.amdigital.co.uk/primary-sources/nineteenth-century-literary-society>. This support tool can be especially useful before undertaking any research, as it may be worthwhile to scan the list for an insight of the scope of the collection. Discovery for each item is supported by extensive metadata in NCLS. Among the collection are documents that record firm’s daily operations such as sets of correspondence between author and publisher, ledgers, cash books, manuscripts, advertisements, photographs, illustrations, sales catalogues, and records of stock and inventory. There are also annotated drafts and corrected proofs as well as notes and revisions for new editions. Authors’ agreements with the publisher service as evidence of John Murray’s significant contribution to the establishment of copyright protection in the nineteenth century. Lord Byron’s papers, the largest surviving collection of his private writings and published works, feature prominently. Although John Murray II and Lord Byron may have had a sometime thorny relationship, the publisher held the copyrights for Byron’s works as well as his personal archive. NCLS unlocks the door to the evolution of works that are seminal to understanding of the modern thought through science and exploration. To great commercial success, John Murray II published the writings of mathematician and astronomer Mary Somerville. The Arctic expeditions of Sir John Franklin captivated readers in the 1820s. In the 1830s, John Murray published the influential three volume set Principles of Geology by Charles Lyell. In the next decade, the publisher issued the first of a number of works by Henry Austen Layard, documenting archaeological excavations of palaces of ancient Assyria, most notably the lavishly illustrated two-volume publication Nineveh and its Remains. The 1850s was a particularly important decade for publishing in the sciences as John Murray III oversaw the publication of David Livingstone’s Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa in 1857 and Charles Darwin’s “big book” On the Origin of the Species by Natural Selection in 1859. An excellent primary resource for the study of women authors of the nineteenth century, NCLS includes materials related to novelist Jane Austen, writer and social advocate Caroline Norton, and Caroline Lamb. John Murray capitalized on the popularity of domestic arts by publishing the work of Maria Rundell, author of A New System of Domestic Cookery. Travel literature figures prominently, with exciting
40 Advisor Reviews / The Charleston Advisor / October 2020
works by Isabella Bird, who explored far-flung places and documented her adventures, complementing these with her own photographs. Along with records of British works published in the United States, there is no shortage of material of interest to researchers of Americana, including the letters of Herman Melville and the letters and manuscripts of Washington Irving.
User Interface Nineteenth Century Literary Society is well-organized, complemented by extensive resources and tools to facilitate use. It benefits from the robust Adam Matthew platform that is often used for archival collections. From the landing page, there are clear options. Clicking on the three-bar menu under the banner on the far left displays a drop down with all six sections and sub-sections available from this page, with accessible alternatives for display in high contrast and/or large text. The six sections feature materials that should ideally to be explored before using the resource. The introduction leads to eight sections comprising Nature and Scope, Thematic Guides, Editorial Board, Byron Papers, National Library of Scotland, Selection Criteria, a Tour, and Copyright Information. Each of these is well-written and able to be read independently. Within this introduction section, the six thematic guides are especially useful in understanding how documents are organized by theme. The documents section shows the organization of material and provides easy browsing by theme, key figures, or document type. From here it is possible to browse the collection by theme, key figures, or document type and also to refine by eight possible document types (e.g., advertisement, correspondence, financial record, illustration) and/or among 30 key figures (e.g., Charles Darwin, Isabella Bird, Jane Austen, Lord Byron) by using the options in the left-hand bar. Refining invokes a nifty visual play whereby the thematic guide icons reorder or disappear according to the results found. Search results can be displayed in list view, showing results returned with a thumbnail image and brief description. Moving over to the key figures option displays a photo or placeholder for each of 30 persons, with additional individuals found through search. The research tools tab is rich with contextual information and includes a charming video with transcript featuring David McClay, Former Senior Curator of the John Murray Archive and topical essays by the specialist editorial board members. The highlight of this section is a set of five well-organized, in-depth essays on the life cycle—one for each of five significant books published John Murray, which can be used as examples for study of the history of publishing: Byron’s Don Juan, Bird’s Hawaiian Archipelago, Livingstone’s Missionary Travels, Layard’s Nineveh and its Remains, and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Each essay is thoughtfully constructed as it examines the genesis of these five seminal works, utilizing archival materials from the collection and incorporating specimens such as annotated proofs, notes or suppressed materials, author’s and publisher’s letters as well as related illustrations, advertising, and sales. These life cycles reflect the many aspects of publishing including the laborious task of editing and the evolution of complex relationships among author, publisher, critic, and reader. The research tools section includes a dense thematic chronology, illustrating the work of John Murray alongside a bar graph representing the number of archive item entries for each year. Search directories, available in the research tools and as a search option, returns material by key word. This is an excellent feature for researchers new to
the collection. There is also an introduction to the Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) technology that leverages a form of artificial intelligence using probably to assess handwriting in manuscript collections. While Adam Matthew offers dozens of digital primary source products, only a handful, including Nineteenth Century Literary Society, incorporate HTR for manuscript collections. Developed by an Adam Matthew Company, Quartex, HTR is marketed independently as a platform for organizations to transform their archival collections. Finally, a fulsome help page rounds out the options among other topics covering terms of use and other pertinent information. For search, there are three options available from the landing page: A default general search box in the middle of the page under the group portrait (or alternately from a search box in the upper right hand side), and advanced search and search directories from the top right hand side of the page. Discreetly available by clicking the plus sign next to the search directories are links to social media. Results for the general search show a list view incorporating thumbnail results with date and theme, while documents processed using HTR are identified with a pencil icon. Results can be refined in the list view by title, date, or theme/document type/figure. Likewise, filter options are available in the left hand-menu, where applicable, by primary or supporting secondary source and by date range. Documents can be further limited by those treated with HTR or by one or more of six themes, eight document types, and/or 30 figures (individuals). For clarity, unavailable filters are shadowed out. Advanced search facilitates an implied or selected Boolean search for up to five terms (or more by using the plus button) indexed as key word, title, author, or people, with previously used search terms displayed on the right. Additionally, advanced searches include a checkbox for word stemming (e.g., for plurals) a number for proximity searching and filters. From the list view, items can be selected for further inspection. Usually, multiple individual pages are linked to an item in the list view. Once an item is selected, a horizontal scroll of thumbnail links for associated pages displays in the image viewer. By clicking on an image, users can view single pages in the document in high resolution. Available from this display are options to add to my archive (details below), download the entire document or a range of pages in PDF. An image viewed in PDF can be enlarged, reduced, or rotated. At this point records can be exported or saved for citation for Endnote, Refworks, or Zotero. As well, results can be searched using HTR from a search box. Below the search box is a short description of the item which can be expanded to reveal metadata such as manuscript number. Underneath the description are snippets from each page in the collection showing the placement of the search term in the material. For handwritten documents, this feature demonstrates how HTR is used to delve into the collection. Search directories is a third search option and uses lists of key words, figures, and collections in the database. While not necessarily exhaustive, it may return different results than the other search options. Searching directories may be a useful starting point for archival research as terms are associated with documents. Research using archival materials requires a great deal of stamina and organization. Working with the materials in NCLS is facilitated by creating an account in my archive and using these tools. Among the features are my lightbox, where images can be downloaded in PDF and organized, shared, and viewed as a slide show. The six sections in the help section are extremely detailed, including a page by page guide and an FAQ which leave little room for ambiguity.
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Nineteenth Century Literary Society Review Scores Composite: HHHH 1/2 The maximum number of stars in each category is 5.
Content:
HHHH 1/2
Unique extensive archival content from the British publishing dynasty, John Murray, the firm renowned for publishing works and forging ties with Lord Byron, Jane Austen, Charles Darwin, David Livingstone, Isabella Bird, and numerous other luminaries.
User Interface/Searchability:
HHHH 1/2
Three intuitive search options, enriched by Handwritten Text Recognition technology and supported by excellent documentation and research tools.
Pricing: N/A Unable to score. Pricing available upon request.
Purchase/Contract Options:
HHHH 1/2
Purchase and contract options that support scholarly teaching and research and ensure perpetual archiving. Solid support to promote use of the resource.
Institutions that have access to other Adam Matthew collections can use the federated search tool at the footer of all pages, AMExplorer, to search across collections. Organizations often spend significant sums on the acquisition of excellent digitized primary resources, only to find that they are not heavily used by their constituents due to lack of visibility or promotion. To prevent expensive resources from languishing in obscurity and more importantly, to facilitate use, Adam Matthew has a mature outreach program for faculty, delivered by specialized staff, including a robust online teaching support hub with course alignment services.
Critical Evaluation Immense thought and effort has been put into the selection, presentation and description of materials that comprise Nineteenth Century Literary Society. The landing page is clear and well-organized, featuring the group portrait of the Four-o-Clock Friends. Behind this understated exterior is a faceted resource that captures not only the complexities of the burgeoning publishing business of nineteenth century Britain, but also provides an extraordinary insight into the broader intellectual life touching on learned matters from arts to zoology. In addition to excellent structure, search options and concise help throughout, the resource is buoyed by meaningful supporting documentation in the research tools through inclusion of specially commissioned essays by subject specialists and the life cycle of the book series, discussed above. Adam Matthew ensures that faculty can easily incorporate these materials into their teaching by providing clear instructions from the help page. In the end, a number of factors converged to make this impressive archive available for scholars: The fact that a publishing dynasty, active in intelligent society, scrupulously and deliberately collected and maintained its records in a local archive over generations; that the archive did not perish; that it was subsequently entrusted to the care
of the National Library of Scotland; and that a substantial portion of the archive is now digitized and available through the Adam Matthew platform, with all this has to offer. The supporting documentation, research tools and contract provisions around usage, discovery and archiving provide the underpinning to ensure broad use of these materials. Handwritten Text Recognition, while imperfect and not a substitute for the human eye, is a great leap forward in searching and discoverability. Perhaps in an attempt to capture a broader audience, the name of the resource, Nineteenth Century Literary Society, may unknowingly mislead scholars seeking out the John Murray archive or any other publisher’s archive. Nonetheless, this extraordinary digital resource is certain to be embraced by researchers and scholars from the comfort of their native environment for decades to come.
Competitive Products The author is unaware of other digital archives of private English language publishing houses. The closest digital archive in terms of scope is Adam Matthew’s Literary Print Culture: The Stationers’ Company Archive, reviewed in ccAdvisor in 2018. Publishers’ archives exist in
Contact Information Adam Matthew Digital Pelham House, Pelhams Court, London Road Marlborough, Wiltshire, SN8 2AG, UK Phone: +44 (0)1672 511921 (UK) E-mail: <info@amdigital.co.uk> Producer URL: <https://www.amdigital.co.uk/> Product URL: <http://www.nineteenthcenturyliterarysociety. amdigital.co.uk/>
42 Advisor Reviews / The Charleston Advisor / October 2020
archival collections and have been duplicated on microfilm, but even among these, few appear to be as extensive and all-encompassing as the John Murray archive.
Purchase Contract Users may download and digitally copy or print a reasonable portion the resource. Faculty and staff may download and print materials for course packs, to be distributed to students free of charge. A reasonable portion of material may be made available for electronic reserve
Free Text Keywords: John Murray | book publishing | literature | Romantic literature | poetry, travel | exploration | archaeology | geology | science | evolution | history of science | history of business and finance | politics | society | domestic life | cookery | self-help | nineteenth-century | English society | American literature | Lord Byron | Charles Darwin | Charles Lyell | David Livingstone | Caroline Lamb | Jane Austen | Isabella Bird | Samuel Smiles | Walter Scott | Austen Henry Layard | Elizabeth Eastlake | John Franklin | Mary Somerville Primary Category: Humanities Secondary Categories: Art & Architecture; Business & Economics; Ethnic, Gender, and LGBTQ Studies; History & Area Studies; Language and Literature; Library and Information Science (LIS); Multidisciplinary (or interdisciplinary); Philosophy & Religion; Political Science & Law; Science, Technology, Computers, Engineering (including Environment); Sociology, Education, Anthropology, Psychology Review Type(s): Primary source digital content, Publisher or Organization content /repository Target Audience: Graduate/Faculty/Researcher Access Type(s): One-time purchase, Subscription
for specific courses. No more than 5% can be shared with third-party colleagues for scholarly use. As per protocol, original archival material from the resource can be used with appropriate credit and copyright permission in the user’s scholarly and educational work. Text/ data mining may be authorized upon permission request. There are no restrictions on number of simultaneous users or downloads for perpetual access purchases, however, there are restrictions on downloads when the resource is acquired as a subscription. AMDigital uses Portico to enable dark archiving. Upon request and not less than 60 days before the expiration date of the current term of the license, one copy of the metadata may be requested and maintained. The license permits alumni users and walk-in users, the latter dependent on the type of institution.
Authentication Authentication is available by IP, OpenAthens, DFN and UK Access Management, depending on customer location. Discoverability is supported for Ex Libris, ProQuest, Ebsco, OCLC, and other services. Usage analytics are available for Counter Code of Practice (Releases 4 and 5) and SUSHI. Adam Matthew has an simple portal to access free MARC records <https://www.amdigital.co.uk/support/marc-records>. Records for each of the items in NCLS are in process and will be available in the near future.
Author’s References Bond, Geoffrey. “The John Murray Archive at the National Library of Scotland.” Studies in Romanticism, vol. 47, no. 1, 2008, pp. 91–99. JSTOR, <www.jstor.org.proxy1.lib.trentu.ca/stable/25602131>. Accessed 14 June 2020.
About the Author Marisa Scigliano is Scholarly Resources & Services Librarian at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. She holds a BA in Modern History from the University of Toronto, an MLS from Dalhousie University, and an MA in History from Concordia University in Montreal. n
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ADVISOR REVIEWS—STANDARD REVIEW
ProQuest Coronavirus Research Database doi:10.5260/chara.22.2.43
Date of Review: September 10, 2020
Composite Score: HHHH Reviewed by: Marcia Salmon York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Abstract Coronavirus Research Database is created and maintained by ProQuest. It is freely available to existing ProQuest customers and is an authoritative source of information on Coronavirus Disease pandemic (Covid-19) and past coronavirus epidemics such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). It has a robust search engine and a clean user interface. ProQuest Coronavirus Research Database has become a reputable and reliable research source for coronavirus research and the virus’s impact on public health.
Price ProQuest Coronavirus Research Database is available at no cost to existing ProQuest customers (ProQuest, 2020). This research database is made available at no cost by the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical (STM) Publishers such as Springer/ Nature, BMJ, and Taylor and Francis (ProQuest, 2020). There is no cost to searching this database for existing ProQuest customers however, accessing the full text of some of the content may require a subscription to that publication.
Product Overview and Description Coronavirus Research Database is created and maintained by ProQuest, an American information content and technology company. This research database is an authoritative resource for information on coronavirus outbreaks because it contains a curated collection of journal articles, preprints, conference proceedings, dissertations, and resources related to Covid-19 as well as other related infectious diseases (ProQuest, 2020). The Coronavirus Research Database includes comprehensive research background coverage of past pandemics and
<msalmon@yorku.ca>
epidemics, like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), to give researchers and students context around the current global crisis (ProQuest, 2020). The content in the ProQuest Coronavirus Research Database includes journal articles from the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical (STM) Publishers such as Springer/Nature, BMJ, and Taylor and Francis (ProQuest, 2020). It also includes selected content from leading medical journals such as Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, PLoS One, Virology Journal, and Journal of Travel Medicine. In addition to including content from Open Access repositories such as arXiv, conference proceedings and dissertations (ProQuest, 2020). ProQuest has voluntary product accessibility template conformance reports and general accessibility statements for many of their information products and databases but not the Coronavirus Research Databases (ProQuest, 2020).
User Interface and Searching The user interface for ProQuest Coronavirus Research Database includes both a basic search interface (see Figure 1) and an advanced search interface (see Figure 2). The basic search function for the ProQuest Coronavirus Research Database has a very simple search box that allows for searching by key words. In the basic search function, the key words may be only searched in the abstract/details of the resource, if the full text box is not selected. The abstract/details of the resource includes the following fields: Abstract, Identifier/Keyword, Title, Author, Publication Title, Publication Year, Publication Date, Publisher, Place of Publication, Country of Publication, Source Type, Language of Publication, Document Type, Publication History, Digital Object Identifier (DOI), ProQuest Document Identifier, Document URL, Copyright, Last Updated, and Database.
FIGURE 1 Basic Search Interface in ProQuest Coronavirus Research Database
44 Advisor Reviews / The Charleston Advisor / October 2020
FIGURE 2 Advanced Search Interface in ProQuest Coronavirus Research Database
FIGURE 3 Basic Search for Covid-19 Treatment
FIGURE 4 Basic Search Results for Covid-19 Treatment
If the full text box is selected in the basic search function, key words are searched in the full text of the article. There is also a peer review box that may be selected in the basic search function. If the Peer Review box is selected, only peer reviewed publications will be available in the search results. ProQuest Coronavirus Research Database allows for Boolean searching. The Boolean operators that are supported in the basic search are: AND, OR, and NOT. The operator AND search results contain all the key words; the Boolean operator OR search results contain either keywords, while the operator NOT is used to exclude key words such as “influenza pandemics” NOT Covid-19. The use of quotations provides exact phrase searching. The use of the question mark (?) for truncation indicates that it searches plural versions of the search word such as treatment and treatments. Figures 3 and 4 show an example of basic search for “Covid-19 treatment” and the search results.
The advanced search function allows keyword searching in the following fields: anywhere, anywhere except full text, abstract, all subjects and indexing, subject heading, company/organization, location, person, product, author, document text, document title, publication title, image caption, North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code, and section. ProQuest Coronavirus Research Database uses both Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and an internally created controlled vocabulary for subject access. The advanced search function (see Figure 2) has Boolean searching (AND, OR, and NOT) integrated into the search interface. The Boolean proximity operators such as NEAR and PRE may also be used in the advanced search interface. The Boolean proximity operator NEAR (Actual number of words apart), indicates that the search terms must be within the specified number of words apart in any order; for example, Covid-19 NEAR/3 Coronavirus. The proximity operator PRE (Actual
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FIGURE 5 Advanced Search for Covid-19, Coronavirus and Pandemic English Resources
FIGURE 6 Command Line Search Interface
Number of words apart), indicates that the first search term must be before the second search term within the specified number of words. Therefore, the Boolean proximity operator PRE indicates the order of the search terms, however for the proximity operator NEAR, order is not relevant (ProQuest, 2020). The advanced search interface includes search limits. Like the basic search, advanced search includes limits for Full Text and Peer Review. In addition, the advanced search includes limits by Publication Date, Source Type, Document Type, Language, and Creative Common Licenses. Figure 5 shows an advanced search for “Covid-19 NEAR/3 Coronavirus” AND “Pandemic” limited to English only resources. In addition to basic and advanced search the ProQuest Coronavirus Research Database also has a Command line search option (see Figure 6). This allows sophisticated searching by specifying the specific field and using Boolean operators (AND, OR, and NOT); proximity operators (NEAR and PRE) and operators (=, >, <, =>, >=) to connect multiple search terms. Figure 7 shows a search for Coronavirus >= SARS Virus. The command line searching also has search limits like the basic and advanced search; the search results can be limited by Full Text and Peer Review, as well as Publication Date. Sorting search results by relevance, oldest first, and most recent first are also available in the command line search interface. The command line search also has the following features: specifying the number
of search results on a page, excluding duplicate documents, spelling variants of search terms, form variants of search terms and show variants on the results page. The recent search interface allows combining search results using Boolean operators (AND, OR, and NOT), see Figure 8. This search interface permits the saving of searches if you have ProQuest account and exporting the search results in various formats.
Critical Evaluation CONTENT ProQuest Coronavirus Research Database is an authoritative source of information on outbreaks of coronavirus diseases such as Covid-19, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). This research database contains a curated collection of journal articles, preprints, conference proceedings, dissertations from reputable biomedical journal publishers and preprint repositories. Whereas ProQuest Coronavirus Research Database is an authoritative database, there are some weaknesses. Although this database includes gray literature such as conference proceedings, preprints and dissertations, a weakness is the lack of government documents on coronavirus diseases. Therefore, ProQuest Coronavirus Research Database does not contain a comprehensive collection of gray literature. Another weakness is that the ProQuest Coronavirus
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FIGURE 7 Command Line Search for Coronavirus, SARS Virus
FIGURE 8 Combining Searches in the Recent Search Interface
Research Database also does not have voluntary product accessibility conformance reports and general accessibility statements provided by ProQuest. There is also no availability to request alternative formats of content in the database.
Competitive Products There does not appear to be a single database that competes directly ProQuest Coronavirus Research Database. However, there are several
USER INTERFACE AND SEARCHING The user interface of the ProQuest Coronavirus Research Database is clean, intuitive and user friendly. However, the impressive part of this database is the searching capabilities. This database offers a search interface that meets the needs of users ranging from the novice to expert searcher. The Basic search features a simple search box that allows using Boolean Operators and simple search limits for the novice searcher to the Command line search interface that allows for the use of more complex operators such as Boolean and proximity operators for the expert searcher. The Command line search has the ability to include spelling variants of search terms. The recent search function permits combining searches to create complex search strategies that may be saved or exported. The advanced and command line search may be used to search specific fields. ProQuest Coronavirus Research Databases also includes the ability to use Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and a local controlled vocabulary for subject indexing.
Free Text Keywords: public health | infectious diseases | Coronavirus | Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome | Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome | Coronavirus Disease 2019 Primary Category: Public Health Secondary Categories: Disaster Medicine; Multidisciplinary (or interdisciplinary) Type of Product being Reviewed: Abstract index database; Aggregator database; Discovery tool; Library tool; Website Target Audience: Epidemiologists; Public Health Professionals; Researchers; Faculty; Graduate Students Access Type(s): Subscription Access
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ProQuest Coronavirus Research Database Review Scores Composite: HHHH The maximum number of stars in each category is 5.
Content:
HHH
This database contains biomedical journal literature, conference proceedings, dissertations and open access content from preprint repositories that are related to outbreaks of coronavirus diseases such as SARS, MERS, and Covid-19. The Coronavirus Research Database does not have accessibility compliance and does not contain a comprehensive collection of gray literature. There is also no availability to request alternative formats of content in this database.
Searchability:
HHHHH
Search interface is clean. The database has four different search interfaces: basic, advanced, command line, and recent searches. The different interfaces provide searching for novice and expert searchers. Boolean, proximity, and truncation searching are enabled in all search interfaces. ProQuest Coronavirus Research Database uses an internal controlled vocabulary and MeSH. Search limits and sorting search results are available in the advanced and command line search interface. Resent search interface allows the combining, saving and export of searches.
Price: N/A ProQuest Coronavirus Research Database is free for ProQuest customers. However, subscription cost may be required to access full text of some publications.
Contract Provisions:
N/A
ProQuest provides access to the Coronavirus Research Database for free with subscription to other ProQuest databases.
Contact Information ProQuest 789 E. Eisenhower Pkwy. Ann Arbor, MI 48104 Phone: (800) 521-0600 E-mail: <customerservice@ProQuest.com> Producer URL: <https://support.ProQuest.com/>
databases that cover various aspects of the content such as PubMed and PubMed Central index journal literature on virology, coronavirus diseases, and pandemic influenza. It should be noted that although Google Scholar is primarily a search engine it also indexes journal articles on Covid-19 and related coronavirus diseases. Disaster Lit: Database for Disaster Medicine and Public Health created by the U.S. National Library of Medicine also has some overlap of content regarding public health outbreaks such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), and Covid-19.
Contract Provisions The ProQuest Coronavirus Research Database is free with a subscription to other ProQuest databases (ProQuest, 2020). There is no cost for searching this database for existing ProQuest customers; however, accessing the full text of some of the content may require a subscription to that publication.
Authentication Authentication for this database supports a variety of methods including proxy service, IP address, username/password, and Shibboleth.
Author’s References PR Newswire. “Coronavirus Research Database Gives ProQuest Users No-Cost Access to Essential Coverage of COVID-19 and More”. PR Newswire 2020. <https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ coronavirus-research-database-gives-ProQuest-users-no-cost-access-to-essential-coverage-of-covid-19-and-more-301032680.html>. Viewed August 17, 2020. ProQuest. “ProQuest Accessibility”. ProQuest 2020. <https://about. ProQuest.com/company/ProQuest-ADA-Compliance.html>. Viewed August 17, 2020. ProQuest. “Coronavirus Research Database”. ProQuest 2020. <https://search.ProQuest.com/coronavirus?accountid=15182>. Viewed August 17, 2020. ProQuest. “Coronavirus Research Database Gives ProQuest Users No-Cost Access to Essential Coverage of COVID-19 and More”. ProQuest 2020. <https://about.ProQuest.com/about/news/2020/Coronavirus-Research-Database-Gives-ProQuest-Users-No-Cost-Access. html>. Viewed August 17, 2020. ProQuest. “Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19): Authoritative and Relevant Resources”. ProQuest 2020. <https://about.ProQuest.com/products-services/related/Coronavirus-Outbreak-Authoritative-Resources.html>. Viewed August 17, 2020.
About the Author Marcia Salmon is a Digital Scholarship Metadata Librarian and is an active member of the Health, Sciences and Engineering Disciplinary Cluster at the Scott Library at York University in Toronto Canada. She received an honours B.Sc. in Biology and Applied Educational Psychology from University of Toronto, and a MLIS (Master of Library and Information Science) from Western University, Ontario. n
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ADVISOR REVIEWS—STANDARD REVIEW
Public Health: Global Origins of Modern Health Policy and Management, 1957–1995 Date of Review: September 4, 2020
doi:10.5260/chara.22.2.48
Composite Score: HH 7/8 Reviewed by: Elisabeth Leekley <eleekley@gmail.com> Information Management Consultant for UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
Abstract Public Health: Global Origins of Modern Health Policy and Management, 1957-1995 from Readex is a sub-collection of Readex’s Joint Publication Research Services (JPRS) Reports, 1957-1995 which created reports for the U.S. government from translations of unclassified news, radio bulletins, journals, and reports from foreign countries and international agencies. The department responsible for these reports shifted during the years of 1957 to 1995, which also shifted the focus of these reports from Cold War interests to a more comprehensive global overview. Public Health: Global Origins of Modern Health Policy and Management, 1957-1995 contains health-related topics pulled from the larger collection of reports. Limited indexing and sorting features possibly obscure what might be rare translations from the Cold War era.
Pricing Public Health: Global Origins of Modern Health Policy and Management, 1957-1995 is available via a range of purchase models. Pricing is based on multiple factors. Purchase models include perpetual license, rent-to-own, and subscription. Contact your Readex representative for pricing by calling (800) 762-8182 or by e-mail at <sales@ readex.com>.
Overview Public Health: Global Origins of Modern Health Policy and Management, 1957-1995 from Readex is a sub-collection of Readex’s Joint Publication Research Services (JPRS) Reports 1957-1995, which created reports for the U.S. government from translations of unclassified news, radio bulletins, journals, and reports from foreign countries and international agencies. The department responsible for these reports shifted during the years of 1957 to 1995, which also shifted the focus of these reports from Cold War interests to a more comprehensive global overview. Public Health: Global Origins of Modern Health Policy and Management, 1957-1995 contains health related topics pulled from the larger collection of reports.
User Interface It’s unclear what metadata is indexed. The Advanced Search includes the search fields All Text, Full Text, Article Title, Article Date, Language, Source, Citation Text, and Author. Source is often whatever was translated or the report by the JPRS, which results in an unclear definition of resource. For instance, newspaper titles often incorporate city names or reports are titled by government departments, so a researcher must investigate historical geography to further identify what is referenced. There is no explanation for Citation Text. The only options for sorting search results are Best, Newest, and Oldest.
The records themselves include the following metadata fields: Database, which is always Joint Publications Research Service Reports (JPRS); Date, meaning the date published in JPRS; Published in, which is unclear; and Source, which is also unclear. Original Date refers to the date of the source translated or summarized for the JPRS report. Author appears to reflect the responsible person or entity for the report and not the translator. There is no explanation or example available for searching by Date, such as what format to use; though dates are written in American style (e.g., August 15, 2020). Search results will display the JPRS publication date, but if a researcher opens the View Details of a bibliography record, the original source’s publication date is revealed, as well as the number of pages in the record. The original JPRS reports are only found in microform at very few libraries, so the records are scans of typewriter pages, sometimes with editing marks, and the view of records is limited to paragraph lengths or partial pages, depending on the use of the zoom feature. The zoom and viewing features include a Help option, and there is no other such assistance built into the database. The only way to navigate a document is to page through. The viewing and navigation options are similar to a microfilm machine experience. The options to print, download, and e-mail include only the bibliographic details of the record and a hyperlink back to the database record. The home page includes a chart of Suggested Searches, which are broader topic terms linked to coded Boolean searches. For instance, under Social Aspects is a list of subtopics that include Health Education. Following this link, the search results display a query of “health education” NOT “welfare.” Rural healthcare, also a subtopic of Social Aspects, is linked to the search combination of “rural medical” OR “rural health” OR “(rural NEAR35 (doctor OR medical OR health OR clinic OR nurse)).” A researcher could take cues from these preloaded searches to discern the best search strategy. How to use this Database, which is linked from the home page, shows previews of the records with very basic searches but only contains a table of advice for search strategies, including “Find a focused result set,” “Find articles on an event as it unfolds,” and “Find a person” due to transliteration issues. This table does not demonstrate its recommended searches.
Critical Evaluation Public Health: Global Origins of Modern Health Policy and Management, 1957-1995 originates from microform of typewritten documents and attempts to recreate the retro experience with its viewing design. This is possibly unintended; however, the original documents were published in print and microform, and thus most likely lacked in-depth indexing. The presentation of this database is misleading.
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Public Health: Global Origins of Modern Health Policy and Management Review Scores Composite: HH 7/8 The maximum number of stars in each category is 5.
Content:
HHH
The potential for discovering translations of newspapers and other sources from the time period is very interesting, but the misleading presentation by the vendor makes it difficult to confirm. The advantage of this database should be the ease of proving what value the content is, but poor usability obscures this.
User Interface/Searchability:
HH
Lack of clarity regarding indexing and thus search capability, in addition to lack of sorting options, plus the cumbersome viewing setup, results in a low rating.
Pricing: N/A Purchase/Contract Options:
HHH 1/2
Standard contract options, though the lack of MARC records is a disadvantage.
There is an emphasis on primary documents and the intentional tracking of public health policy over time in its How to Use this Database document, but upon further investigation, the contents are a sub-collection of the larger database, Joint Publications Research Service (JPRS) Reports, 1957-1995. The explanation of JPRS illuminates the Cold War focus of documents, which could be inferred from the date ranges of the databases’ titles. Also misleading is the title of the database itself. The database home page is titled, Public Health: Global Origins of Modern Health Policy and Management, 1957-1995, with subtitle “Journal articles and reports covering modern Public Health policies during the second half of the 20th century,” but on the product advertisement page of Readex, the title is Public Health: Global Origins of Modern Health Policy and Management, 1957-1995, Global Perspectives from the CIA Archives. The bigger issue is that the design of the database overlooks the ability to filter or sort by nation, region, city, gender, or age groups, yet the emphasis in promotional material is a global perspective on public health. This is not a database for novice users, though the vendor emphasizes its preloaded searches on the home page as an advantage to undergraduate students. A possible advantage of this offering is its translated content and limited access beyond this database, since the original JPRS reports are only available at a few libraries in microform. However, the limited indexing and sorting features possibly obscure what might be rare translations of international publications and media from the Cold War era. This results in a recommendation for advanced, graduate-level researchers with a specific need for geo-political historical material, but institutions should consider trialing both the Public Health and the JPRS databases simultaneously to see which best suits potential user needs.
Competitive Products Global Health Archive from EBSCO offers abstracts of out-of-print journals from 1910-1983; and Global Health, also from EBSCO, offers indexing of journals from 1973. EMBASE from Elsevier is a biomedical bibliographic database that goes back as far as 1947. These databases appear to focus their content scopes on academic publications rather than government or news reports.
Purchase Contract Readex is compliant with WCAG AA standards. Archiving or ongoing availability is made possible should Readex go out of business. Interlibrary Loan is allowed in accordance with CONTU guidelines. COUNTER compliant use statistics are available. MARC records are not available for this specific collection from Readex. There is no limit on the number of institutional users; remote access is limited to authorized users. Text and data mining rights can be secured through the execution of an additional license agreement.
Authentication All Readex databases support authentication via IP address, student/ library barcode (with patterned IDs), referring URL, user ID with password, and embedded ID, in addition to cookie, OpenAthens, Shibboleth, and HTTPS authentication.
Author’s References Benoit, B. (2020). “White Plague, Black Death: Public Health as a Weapon in South Africa and the USSR, Readex Blog.” Readex. <https://www.readex.com/blog/white-plague-black-death-publichealth-weapon-south-africa-and-ussr>
Contact Information Readex, a Division of NewsBank 5801 Pelican Bay Boulevard, Suite 600 Naples, FL 34108-2734 Phone: (800) 762-8182 E-mail: <sales@readex.com> Producer URL: <https://www.readex.com/> Product URL: <https://www.readex.com/products/publichealth-global-origins-modern-health-policy-andmanagement-1957-1995>
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Freetext Keywords: history | political science | public health | translation | government reports | Cold War Primary Category: History & Area Studies Secondary Categories: Government Information; History & Area Studies; Medicine, Nursing & Health; Multidisciplinary (or interdisciplinary); Political Science & Law Review Type(s): Newspaper or news source, Primary source digital content, Reports, Other Target Audience: Graduate/Faculty/Researcher Access Type(s): Subscription
FAQS, Joint Publications Research Service (JPRS) Reports, 19571995. “Rare insight into geo-politics, global threats, foreign intelli-
Subscribe to The
gence and more.” (n.d.) Readex. <https://www.readex.com/products/ joint-publications-research-service-jprs-reports-1957-1995#faqs> Public Health: Global Origins of Modern Health Policy and Management, 1957-1995: “How to Use this Database.” (2020). Public Health: Global Origins of Modern Health Policy and Management, 19571995. <https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/product-help/topph?p=TOPPH>
About the Author Elisabeth Leekley is an information management consultant for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. Previously, she was the instruction librarian at Pine Manor College and the Vanuatu campus library of The University of the South Pacific. She has experience in community college libraries and the public library, and she earned a Master of Arts in Library and Information Science from the University of South Florida. n
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ADVISOR REVIEWS—STANDARD REVIEW
RetroNews doi:10.5260/chara.22.2.51
Date of Review: September 10, 2020
Composite Score: HHH 1/2 Reviewed by: Jennifer Dekker University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Abstract Launched in 2016, RetroNews is a dynamic and growing collection of historical French newspapers, magazines, and journals digitized by the National Library of France (BNF) and affiliated partners. It contains digitized primary media sources for French and European history, politics, and culture. The collection currently offers access to 700+ titles published between 1631 and 1950. Unlike some newspaper databases that do not include images, RetroNews includes all the original images accompanying articles.
Pricing Options RetroNews is sold on a subscription basis according to the size of the institution. Pricing requests can be made directly to the vendor. In the case of the institution where the author works—the University of Ottawa—a three-year subscription package for 42,000 full time equivalent students was quoted at €7,000.00 per year for three years. At the time of writing, this translates to $8,260.00 US. This price is high, but
<jdekker@uottawa.ca>
subscription revenue is reinvested directly in the database so that content is constantly expanding.
Product Overview/Description The first French newspaper, La Gazette, launched in 1631. It continued its publication of one to three issues per year until the 1770’s. But with the French Revolution and demand for freedom of the press in the late 18th century, newspapers radically changed. RetroNews allows students of French history, philosophy, and politics the opportunity to compare pre-modern versions of newspapers with those that emerged after the French Revolution and the Enlightenment period. In searching for a comparator, one thinks perhaps of a tool such as the Digital Public Library of America, a portal to digitized heritage collections in the US. However, RetroNews is without competition as a national, historical repository consisting of media content. This characteristic alone makes RetroNews valuable as a research resource in addition to its being a rich source for content about France and Europe from the seventeenth century through to the twentieth. Readers can see policy and legislative changes as they unfold; for example, in the post-Revolution period, the mass media pressured the clergy and King to make many changes demanded by the people. These early newspapers are sometimes coded in language that makes them seem less demanding or more civil than they really were. They are an incredibly entertaining resource for those seeking primary sources in a critical period of modernity. The editors of the database have made efforts to render historical content more accessible to a non-specialist audience, pairing historical sources with contemporary content such as videos and podcasts which help to explain or decode the primary source materials. However, two caveats make the content less available to students in North American institutions: all of the content is in French with no translations (see Figure 1), and although the quality of digitization is magnificent, ear-
FIGURE 1 RetroNews themed collection on the history of the guillotine, an interview, and a contemporary podcast on the topic.
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ly newspapers were printed in a typeface that contemporary readers, especially those new to historical sources, might find difficult. This is not a complaint specific to RetroNews though; many students have difficulty interpreting historical typefaces and primary sources in general. Newspapers are subject to serious degradation over time, and RetroNews—being essentially a digital preservation project—selects content largely based on the physical conditions of its print holdings. However, additional criteria, such as comprehensiveness and significance of the content to French history and the identities of creators, publishers or contributors in the primary sources, are also used to make digitization decisions. RetroNews furthermore ensures that newspapers from its former colonies and recognized historical publications are included in the database. The full list of titles is available at <https://www.retronews.fr/titres-de-presse>. Like Gallica, the BNF’s flagship digital library, RetroNews includes certain features for digital humanities research. One can easily perform term frequency searches to understand how a person, concept, event, or organization was covered in the media over a desired time period or across different publications and perform bulk downloads of the text files for personalized analyses. In describing the historical newspaper holdings of the BNF, Thouny & Manchette (2018) state that its collection spans 44 linear kms of library shelving and is increasing every year due to legal deposit. In 2016 alone, 16,000 newspapers were digitized and added to the database. The project is enormous, and RetroNews is the perfect vehicle through which to digitally disseminate such important sources.
User Interface/Navigation/Searching Like many databases that provide historical content, browsing is encouraged. Users can browse by daily content, time period (16311950), title or location of publication, type of publication, and theme. The themes for browsing include The Grand Century during the reign of Louis XIV, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the taking of the Bastille, Abolition, the Vienna Conference, Restauration, the Second Republic, and World War I, among others. There are also videos in addition to print texts, but they mainly consist of animated versions of articles with photos intended to display interesting headlines and images. Searching is highly efficient. During the writing of this evaluation, a researcher at the University of Ottawa required articles in the French press about the first heart transplant to have ever taken place. The keyword search phrase was “greffe de coeur.” The search engine picked up this phrase exactly, as well as related phrases such as “coeur greffé.” In addition to a smart search engine, RetroNews features sophisticated optical character recognition and a lexicon that translates historical to contemporary usages of terms (Thouny & Manchette, 2018). The lexicon allows historical place names to be located whether one searches for the historical name or its contemporary equivalent. The same applies to people, organizations, and events. RetroNews has also included the International Press Telecommunications Council Media Topics classification to categorize topics (see <https://iptc.org/ standards/media-topics/>) so that contemporary events can be linked to content in the database.
Accessibility Web content accessibility guidelines (2.0) specify that web content must be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, 2008). The requirement for websites to be perceivable means they should provide text alternatives for images displayed on screen. RetroNews does not include alternative text for images, and thus would not be compliant with this standard for web accessibility. The images are overlaid with related, readable text headlines, but the images themselves are not described. Videos are also not captioned even though there is a summary describing the video below the screen when not in full screen format. However, this also does not meet accessibility standards set by the WCAG. Overall, the design of the RetroNews site is intended to be aesthetically impressive which it has accomplished, but visually impaired users will not be helped by the beautiful design and images. Further, it is unclear how screen readers would function on the site. Library staff considering this database would be advised to evaluate the website for local standards of web accessibility.
Critical Evaluation No other newspaper database currently on the market offers such a well-designed, easily searchable collection of historical news content with such high-quality scans. RetroNews is unparalleled for its visually appealing access to digitized, historical newspapers. Its look, functionality, and content are the envy of countries struggling to digitize and offer broad access to their print news heritage. It is an incredibly useful tool for anyone studying French history, European history, the evolution of mass media, publishing, and reading in France and continental Europe, philosophy, political science, and related fields. However, the language barrier will automatically render this database difficult for undergraduate students in North America, though this concern should be less important for Canadian institutions. In addition, pricing will cause many universities in the US and Canada to study closely whether this is a useful addition to their digital holdings, especially when access is limited to subscriptions and not available for purchase.
Competitive Products RetroNews can work in tandem with the existing, free content available at <https://gallica.bnf.fr/accueil/en/>, though one does not need to use the Gallica site in order to find articles in RetroNews. Nonetheless, if you find a reference to a newspaper article in Gallica for which there is no full text access freely available, it will likely be accessible in RetroNews. RetroNews is produced by the BNF through a partnership with affiliated organizations and therefore stands apart from Gallica’s general online offerings. Subscription revenues are reinvested into the digitization of further titles. Unlike static news sources that are perhaps updated monthly or yearly, RetroNews adds hundreds of thousands of digital pages to the database each month. The editors also prepare a daily set of news articles that can be e-mailed to subscribers that link current events today with events from the digitized newspapers. For instructors who want to include more primary source content into their courses, this daily e-mail alert can be very useful because the editors find content that relates to contemporary news. It is also important to note here that even though the content is French and often focused on national or local events, the newspapers cov-
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RetroNews Review Scores Composite: HHH 1/2 The maximum number of stars in each category is 5.
Content:
HHHHH
The content is second to none. RetroNews is the best historical newspaper database the author has used in 15+ years as a history librarian.
User Interface/Searchability:
HHHH
The interface is pleasant and attractive. Searching is thoughtfully constructed. The indexing that provides links from historical vocabulary to contemporary word usage is an important feature. Intelligent searching helps find related terms without having to think of all possible alternatives. However, web content accessibility is lacking.
Pricing:
HHH
The cost of RetroNews is a serious barrier. Subscription costs help to fund the expansion and growth of the database, however.
Purchase/Contract Options:
HH
Subscribing to content instead of being able to purchase it will limit the appeal of this database for institutions with uncertain future budgets.
ered stories from all over the globe. During the Summer 2020 protests opposing police brutality of Black people in the US and around the globe, RetroNews pointed subscribers to articles that covered the Tulsa massacre in 1921 when 300 Black Americans were killed by armed white mobs who burned down entire Black neighbourhoods. Linking the past with the present in this way makes the database so much more useful and relevant to contemporary curricula. Gallica, the BNF’s original digital platform, is likely the main competition to RetroNews. The BNF has been extremely generous in sharing its print history through the original Gallica platform for nearly twenty years. While Gallica offers impressive content, it is not always easy to search and use. RetroNews is much more user-friendly, is easier for search and download (including whole images of articles), and far more media content is available through RetroNews than was ever available in Gallica. Moreover, RetroNews does not feel like a research tool; it looks and functions as though it was designed for a non-scholarly audience, somewhat like newspapers themselves. RetroNews’ audience includes historians, literary and philosophy scholars, and students, as well as those with an interest in France as an imperial and European power. As mentioned, all content is in French, so readers should be able to read and understand the language in order to benefit from the database. It would be useful for institutions with Master and PhD programs relating to the content of the database (history, political science, communication, linguistics, philosophy, literature, etc.). Depending on the program, advanced undergraduate students might also use this database. The interface and searching are such that anyone can execute browsing and searching, and the content is engaging enough to use it in a digital classroom at the third- or fourth-year level of an undergraduate program. However, the creators of RetroNews recognized early in their work that they wanted to reach an audience beyond specialists of archival sources
and consciously developed a database that would be useful and appealing to a general audience. They accomplish this well enough with editorial additions including what they call “échos” and “chroniques,” intending to create dialogue between contemporary readers and historical sources. In short, subscribers can choose to receive a daily digest of historical sources related to a topic selected by the editors.
Purchase & Contract Provisions The producers of the database use annual subscription revenue to reinvest in the product. Each month more content is added, increasing the breadth and depth of content. However, because the project is ongoing, purchase options are not currently available. Libraries or individuals pay an annual subscription cost. These revenues not only subsidize the digitization and marketing of RetroNews, but one as-
Free Text Keywords: Historical newspapers | Digitized newspapers | Historical periodicals | French history | French politics | French media Primary Category: History & Area Studies Secondary Categories: Multidisciplinary (or interdisciplinary); Other Type of product being reviewed:Newspaper or news source; Primary source digital content Target Audience: Undergraduate (including community colleges); Graduate/Faculty/Researcher Access: Subscription
54 Advisor Reviews / The Charleston Advisor / October 2020
sumes they would also be used to perform research regarding copyright of the content and seek out appropriate permissions for digitization. None of this comes without major investments. Yet, this is not a private business venture. The goal is not profit but instead greater access to some of Europe’s most interesting historical publications.
Contact Information BnF-Partenariats/Bibliothèque nationale de France Quai François Mauriac, 75706 Paris, France Phone: +33 1 53 79 59 59 E-mail: <info@retronews.fr> Producer URL: <http://www.retronews.fr/> Product URL: <https://www.retronews.fr>
Authentication IP authentication is available for institutional subscriptions. Individual subscriptions are also available, where a user name and password would be required to access the database. The vendor is considering providing COU’NTER compliant statistics, but for the time being, provides user statistics upon request.
“Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0.” Accessed June 9, 2020. <https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/>
About the Author
Author’s References Thouny, Nathalie, and Étienne Manchette. “RetroNews: Éditorialiser la Presse Ancienne.” Bulletin des bibliothèques de France (BBF), 2018.
Jennifer Dekker is a Research Librarian at the University of Ottawa, the largest bilingual university in the world, located in Canada’s capital city. She has supported access to historical newspapers in both French and English for the past 15 years as the History librarian. n
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The Charleston Advisor / October 2020
www.charlestonco.com 55
ADVISOR REVIEWS—STANDARD REVIEW
Unsub Date of Review: September 1, 2020
doi:10.5260/chara.22.2.55
Composite Score: HHHH 1/4 Reviewed by: Grant Hardaway Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas
<ghardawa@trinity.edu>
Abstract
Overview
Unsub is a browser-based decision making tool made for an academic library’s journal collection management team. The interactive data dashboard organizes journals by a carefully calculated cost per use number and allows users to visualize the potential savings of journal cancellations. While not comprehensive in its publisher coverage, Unsub effectively streamlines a typically arduous process.
Unsub is a browser-based decision making tool made for an academic library’s journal collection management team. The tool was created by the small non-profit organization Our Research in late 2019. Formerly known as Unpaywall Journals, Unsub was developed as a response to the complex decision making process necessary to assess the value of journal publishers’ Big Deal packages. Unlike Our Research’s open projects, such as Unpaywall and Impactstory Profiles, the Unsub service is solely supported by user subscriptions.
Pricing Unsub uses a yearly subscription model. The product provides a tiered pricing system based on the amount of a library’s materials budget. A yearly subscription ranges from between $500 for libraries with a materials budget between $0 and $500,000 to $3,000 for budgets that are $2,500,000 or more. If a consortium subscribes to Unsub, each institution is provided with a 10% discount on their subscription. At no additional cost, the consortium administrator will be provided with a personalized data dashboard that displays the data for the entire consortium. Our Research does provide the open source code for Unsub through GitHub (<https://github.com/ourresearch/get-unsub>).
Through a data dashboard, Unsub allows users to forecast potential journal cancellation and subscription decisions. COUNTER data is sent to the Unsub team and they create a personalized dashboard based on that data. Institutions may also send in their Backfile data and pricing lists to further personalize the data set. But, the only data that is necessary to create the dashboard is the institution’s COUNTER data. If institutions subscribe at the consortium-level, Unsub also provides a free consortium dashboard that compiles the data from all participating institutions. The goal of Unsub is to simplify the difficult process of evaluating the losses and savings of unsubscribing from a journal. The interactive dashboard organizes journals by a calculated cost per use (CPU)
FIGURE 1 Unsub’s Histogram Dashboard
56 Advisor Reviews / The Charleston Advisor / October 2020
FIGURE 2 Unsub’s Table Dashboard
and allows users to visualize the potential savings of journal cancellations. Significantly, the CPU calculation factors in data from a journal’s Open Access content (via Unpaywall), estimated ILL costs if the institution unsubscribes, and faculty authorship and citations within that journal (via Microsoft Academic Graph). After selecting which journals to subscribe to à la carte, the projected costs are then evaluated as a percentage of the cost of a publisher’s Big Deal.
User Interface When generating a data dashboard, users must first select which journal publisher they want to analyze. At the time of writing this review, Unsub only provides data dashboards for journals published by Wiley, Elsevier, and Springer Nature. Per e-mail correspondence with the Unsub team, other publishers will potentially be added later in 2020. Once a publisher is selected, users click New Scenario to generate a data dashboard of the journals from that publisher. The dashboard displays a sorted list of journals created from the institution’s COUNTER data, subscription history, and price lists. At the journal-level, users can toggle the display of the list of journals as either a histogram or table. The histogram display assorts journals by CPU. The table display can assort journals by a variety of factors including CPU, estimated ILL cost if the institution does not subscribe, number of downloads, and many more parameters (see Figures 1 and 2). For an overall forecast, the dashboard includes a stacked bar chart for the annual cost of the subscriptions and the percentage of articles that can be instantly accessed. The annual cost is calculated as a combination of subscription cost and estimated ILL cost.
FIGURE 3 Unsub’s Overall Forecast
The annual cost is also measured as a percentage of the Big Deal cost for that publisher. The percentage of instant fulfillment is calculated from a combination of subscription-based access, Open Access, and backfile access (see Figure 3). While the dashboard is based on what the institution initially sends to Unsub, data parameters can be customized within the forecast itself. Via the Parameters tab, users can customize ILL cost, Big Deal cost, the percentage of yearly subscription cost growth, and various other factors. A significant customizable parameter is the weight of an in-
The Charleston Advisor / October 2020
www.charlestonco.com 57
FIGURE 4 Unsub’s Journal-Level Analysis
be able to easily consider on their own. While a dashboard of this data could be created in-house, Unsub makes the process simple, effective, and relatively stress-free allowing teams to focus on the more pressing matter of budget management.
stitution’s citations and authorship for a journal. For instance, each faculty citation could be set to the equivalent of 10 article downloads while each faculty authorship could be set to 100 downloads. By customizing the weight of these factors to an institution’s needs, the true CPU value of a journal can become clearer. When a user clicks on an individual journal data entry, they will be able to view a breakdown of its annual usage and cost. Annual usage includes the subscribing institution’s faculty citation rate and authorship. Annual usage also takes into account the availability of Open Access articles and backfile access. In addition to the base subscription cost, the annual cost provides an estimate of the 5-year ILL cost of unsubscribing to a journal (see Figure 4). Once assessing these parameters, users can begin to select their journal subscriptions. Users can either have Unsub automatically select journals based on the CPU calculation (e.g., choosing 500 subscriptions will select the top 500 best CPU journals) or users can select each journal individually. Unsub provides a search bar to find specific journal subjects or titles for selection. Each time a journal is selected for subscription, the overall forecast is updated to include the new costs. Once finished with a forecast, there are various ways Unsub allows users to export their data. In order to share the results of a forecast with interested parties, Unsub provides a publicly viewable version of the dashboard. Forecasts can also be exported as a spreadsheet. The dashboard also includes API support by generating a personalized API key for the data set.
Critical Evaluation
With a relatively low yearly subscription cost, Unsub would not be a significant burden on the library budget, especially if it ends up helping them save money. The COVID-era has trimmed library budgets at an even faster rate than in the past for many universities. Unsub would be a very helpful tool to assist with the many difficult budget decisions that need to be made for libraries across the United States. At the time of writing this review, Unsub currently only provides forecasts for journals provided by Wiley, Elsevier, and Springer Nature. While the current options are some of the largest academic publishers, the lack of other major publishers such as Taylor & Francis and SAGE are significant blind spots. Depending on a library’s cancellation needs, not having access to other publishers’ information could lessen the value of an Unsub subscription. While using a simple design, Unsub does not include some basic ADA components such as text resizing. The site design does provide ample headings and labels for each item. While not egregious, these design considerations could have an impact on a users’ utility of the tool. Access to Unsub was consistent and reliable. While no issues arose during the review, Unsub’s help team was very responsive. Throughout the writing of this review, I was regularly provided with prompt answers to my questions. Since this review was based on the Demo version of Unsub, the efficacy and efficiency of translating an institution’s COUNTER data into a personalized dashboard was not observed. Based on the Unsub discussion forums (“Unsub Discuss”) and other reviews (Chawla 2020), there were no reports of difficulty with the data transitioning into the dashboard.
Unsub streamlines a typically arduous process for collection management teams. The user-friendly interface allows teams to interact with multiple data points to make well-informed decisions. By generating an easily readable and customizable forecast, teams can clearly report to administrators, faculty, and colleagues the cost savings of journal cancellations.
Freetext Keywords: collection management | academic journal | data visualization | academic library | budget management | Open Access | Big Deal
Unsub provides more than just a visually appealing dashboard. The inclusion of Open Access into the equation of instant fulfillment for articles provides an extra layer of analysis that many teams may not
Target Audience: Secondary
Primary Category: Library and Information Science (LIS) Review Type(s): Library tool
Access Type(s): Subscription
58 Advisor Reviews / The Charleston Advisor / October 2020
Unsub Review Scores Composite: HHHH 1/4 The maximum number of stars in each category is 5.
Content:
HHH 1/2
Unsub currently provides analyses for three of the major publishers, Elsevier, Wiley, and Springer Nature. While a good starting point, Unsub will need to add more publishers to become a comprehensive tool for collection management teams.
User Interface/Searchability:
HHHH
Interface is clean, customizable, and user-friendly. The overall design lacks some basic ADA features such as text resizing.
Pricing:
HHHH 1/2
The tiered pricing of Unsub is very reasonable. The value to institutions will vary depending on how many cancellations they plan on making to their subscription packages.
Purchase/Contract Options:
HHHHH
Simple, non-intrusive contract that retains the ownership of a user’s data and their privacy.
Competitive Products At the time of this review, there are no available competitors to Unsub. Depending on the UX experience of a team, they could create a similar data dashboard with their COUNTER data using most data visualization software available such as Tableau or Google Analytics. Ultimately, the value of Unsub is the work the team does in the background to create the dashboard.
Contact Information Our Research E-mail: <team@ourresearch.org> Producer URL: <https://ourresearch.org/> Product URL: <https://unsub.org/>
Purchase Contract Under Unsub’s Terms & Conditions (2020), an institution retains all ownership rights to their various journal data sets. This data will only be used by Unsub for the creation of the data dashboard.
Our Research. “Unsub.” Accessed August 14, 2020. <https://unsub. org/>
Authentication
“Unsub Discuss.” Google Groups. Accessed August 14, 2020. <https://groups.google.com/g/unsub-discuss>
Unsub uses standard username and password authentication. No IP filtering is used.
Author’s References Chawla, Dalmeet Singh. “This Tool Is Saving Universities Millions of Dollars in Journal Subscriptions.” Science, July 9, 2020. <https:// doi.org/10.1126/science.abd7483> Hinchliffe, Lisa Janicke. “Taking a Big Bite Out of the Big Deal.” The Scholarly Kitchen, May 19, 2020. <https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet. org/2020/05/19/taking-a-big-bite-out-of-the-big-deal/>
“Terms & Conditions.” Unsub, June 16. 2020. <https://unsub.org/unsub-toc.pdf>
About the Author Grant Hardaway is the Instruction Librarian for the Sciences at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX. At Trinity, Grant manages the science collection and provides students and faculty with information literacy instruction and research consultations. His scholarly interests focus on the Open Science movement and Open Access awareness. When not helping patrons, Grant enjoys watching movies on the Criterion Channel and playing with his cat Disko. n
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Gold Rush Analytics The Colorado Alliance has developed a sophisticated tool to assist libraries in understanding their library holdings either individually or in a group setting. This easy-touse analytics interface was specifically designed for librarians to support shared print programs, collection development, weeding, space planning, or ascertaining collection strengths and shortcomings. The service is very affordable and was developed by a non-profit library consortium to work across all platforms. This cloud hosted service features fast and straightforward implementations.
Features Include:
Graphical and textual display of comparisons Real-time results with regular updating allowed
Circulation analytics
Pivot tables
Easily compare your library with one or many
Export results in MARC, XML, Excel, or delimited formats
Can focus comparisons with many key elements in the MARC record
Sample Use Cases:
Shared Print Programs
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Compare your library with partners when adding new programs
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