12 minute read
Human Kinetics Library
doi:10.5260/chara.22.2.34
Composite Score: HHH 5/8
Reviewed by:
Pamela R. Dennis Gardner-Webb University, Boiling Springs, North Carolina Date of Review: August 14, 2020
<pdennis@gardner-webb.edu>
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 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
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.
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.
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 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.
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/>
Free Text Keywords: exercise | kinesiology | nutrition | recreation | sport | strength training | sport management
Primary Category: Medicine, Nursing & Health
Type of product being reviewed: Ebook collection; Streaming video
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 company also provides promotional materials, including flyers, posters, and web and e-mail banners that can be downloaded directly from the website.
Authentication Human Kinetics Library offers several different methods of authentication for users: IP Address; Proxy Server; Shibboleth Authentication; WAYFless URL.
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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