The history and scope of the American Economic Association’sEconLit and theEconomic Literature Index

This paper discusses the coverage and history of the American Economic Association's electronic bibliographic databases,EconLit andEconomic Literature Index. The author briefly traces the origins of the discipline of economics and discusses the history and early print bibliographies of the association, which were later expanded into electronic media with the creation of theEconomic Literature Index andEconLit. Tables show the subject and geographic scope, as well as the coverage dates and number of records, for the different document types contained in bothEconLit and theEconomic Literature Index.     

InfoTrac's SearchBank Databases

Abstract

Since early 1995, the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) libraries have offered its user community a new and enhanced service through the InfoTrac SearchBank from Information Access Company (1AC). Available through the libraries' online catalog, this service offers useful features like remote access through the Internet, indexing and abstracting, fall-text access to 460 journal titles, as well as a powerful search engine. The service also provides access to a family of databases in areas such as, general reference, health, business and law information. The purpose of this article is to familiarize the business librarians and researchers with the business databases (General BusinessFile ASAP and Businesslndex Backfile) available through the InfoTrac SearchBank service.     

Improving access to the international coverage of reports of controlled trials in electronic databases: a search of the Australasian Medical Index

Introduction: Locating reports of trials from journals not indexed in the major databases presents difficulties to systematic reviewers, and may be a factor in improving the reliability of the reviews. Objectives: To identify and make available reports of controlled trials from the Australasian Medical Index (AMI). To measure the quality of indexing of trials in AMI. Methods: Using a highly sensitive search strategy consisting of methodology indexing and free‐text terms, records from AMI were read for reports of controlled trials. Trials meeting the criteria were submitted for inclusion in The Cochrane Controlled Trials Register (CCTR) and assessed for the quality of their indexing. Results: 3621 records were downloaded, of which 512 were identified as reports of controlled trials (317 RCTs; 195 CCTs) and submitted to CCTR. The precision of methodology indexing terms was 60%, but sensitivity just 18%. The quality of indexing of trials was generally poor with only 50 tagged with the RCT/CCT publication type term. 453 reports (88%) were not previously available in CCTR. Conclusions: The large proportion of trials found to be unique to the AMI database increases the pool of studies available to systematic reviewers, and helps ensure CCTR remains the most comprehensive source of trials.     

Comparing alternatives to the Web of Science for coverage of the social sciences’ literature

The Web of Science is no longer the only database which offers citation indexing of the social sciences. Scopus, CSA Illumina and Google Scholar are new entrants in this market. The holdings and citation records of these four databases were assessed against two sets of data one drawn from the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise and the other from the International bibliography of the Social Sciences. Initially, CSA Illumina's coverage at journal title level appeared to be the most comprehensive. But when recall and average citation count was tested at article level and rankings extrapolated by submission frequency to individual journal titles, Scopus was ranked first. When issues of functionality, the quality of record processing and depth of coverage are taken into account, Scopus and Web of Science have a significant advantage over the other two databases. From this analysis, Scopus offers the best coverage from amongst these databases and could be used as an alternative to the Web of Science as a tool to evaluate the research impact in the social sciences.     

Social Gerontology—Integrative and Territorial Aspects: A Citation Analysis of Subject Scatter and Database Coverage

To determine the mix of resources used in social gerontology research, a citation analysis was conducted. A representative sample of citations was selected from three prominent gerontology journals and information was added to determine subject scatter and database coverage for the cited materials. Results indicate that a significant portion of gerontology research, even from a social science perspective, relies roughly equally on medical resources as it does social science resources. Furthermore, there is a small but defined core of literature constituting scholarly “territory” unique to gerontology. Analysis of database indexing indicated that broad, interdisciplinary databases provide more comprehensive coverage of the cited materials than do subject-specific databases.     

Scopus™: The Product and Its Development

ABSTRACT

Scopus is a new all-science abstracting and indexing (A&I) database. It is the result of a two-year collaboration with librarians and researchers from all over the world. Scopus covers over 14,000 scientific, technical, medical and social science titles from 4,000 publishers. It offers new sorting and refining features so that researchers can easily find and access more than 27 million abstracts and citations stretching back to the mid-1960s.

This article recounts the development of Scopus from its inception in 2002 to its success in securing over 100 customers within weeks of its recent launch. The story is told by one of the librarians heavily involved in testing and shaping the product and by one of the Product Managers who built it.     

International Business Information Resources

Abstract

This study examines the extent to which full-text business databases support scholarly research in finance. A list of articles cited by finance researchers was compared to the title lists of three full-text business databases: ABI/INFORM (ProQuest Information and Learning), Business Source Premier (EBSCO Information Services), and General BusinessFile (Gale Group). The most comprehensive coverage was found to be offered by ABI/INFORM, which provided indexing for 76.0% of the articles and full text for 35.9%. The articles shown as full text in the title lists were then searched in the databases to provide a measure of reliability of the title lists.     

Literature searching for social science systematic reviews: consideration of a range of search techniques

Background: Literature for a systematic review on the student experience of e‐learning is located across a range of subject areas including health, education, social science, library and information science. Objectives: To assess the merits and shortcomings of using different search techniques in retrieval of evidence in the social science literature. Methods: A conventional subject search was undertaken as the principal method of identifying the literature for the review. Four supplementary search methods were used including citation searching, reference list checking, contact with experts and pearl growing. Results: The conventional subject search identified 30 of 41 included references; retrieved from 10 different databases. References were missed by this method and a further 11 references were identified via citation searching, reference list checking and contact with experts. Pearl growing was suspended as the nominated pearls were dispersed across numerous databases, with no single database indexing more than four pearls. Conclusions: Searching within the social sciences literature requires careful consideration. Conventional subject searching identified the majority of references, but additional search techniques were essential and located further high quality references.     

社会标签的规范性研究——学术论文标注

分析社会标签的特点,比较社会标签与主题词、标引词、关键词的概念,分析学术论文标注的作用与典型的学术论文标注系统,以图书情报领域为例,就用户的学术论文标注与学术论文数据库标引进行对比实验,显示出社会标签与受控的主题词的重合率不高的问题。详细分析实验结果,提出对学术论文标注进行规范控制的建议。     

Looking for love in all the wrong places: Accessing sexual and reproductive health information via the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature

The Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature has been described as a cultural barometer. It supports scholars of history and culture by providing access to ideas circulated via the mass media in earlier times, but its own coverage and indexing practices also reveal attitudes and values toward issues of the time. The Progressive Era (1900–1924) coincides with the founding and growth of the Readers' Guide. Examining how the Readers' Guide directed readers' attention to matters of sexual and reproductive health in its first quarter century demonstrates changes in social attitudes and has implications for scholarly work. The array of index terms required to locate information on this topic indicates both barriers to information access for contemporary readers as well as challenges for present-day scholars concerned with recovering information of the era.     

Current Trends in Research Resources from Russia,Eastern Europe,and Eurasia: Implications for Reference Services and Resource Sharing

ABSTRACT

In the last 20 years, national, regional, and academic libraries and other cultural institutions in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia have introduced subject portals, research databases, journal repositories, digital collections, research guides, and indexing resources, which scholarly communities outside these regions rely on to advance their research portfolios. In order to address the significant developments in scholarly communication and the proliferation of academic content, this article discusses recent trends in online research resources and strategies for incorporating these resources into research consultations. In addition, as these extensive networks of online resources continue to proliferate, possible models for collaboration with national and regional libraries are needed to strengthen existing partnerships with Slavic librarians outside these regions.     

The E-Journal Evolution

Abstract

There are a wide variety of Web-based periodicals available free of charge, including e-zines and scholarly journals. This column describes several useful Web sites that provide access to and indexing for online journals in the behavioral and social sciences.     

The Place of Library Science in the System of Knowledge: A Russian Perspective

ABSTRACT

The author examines the question of where library science fits in the general system of scholarly disciplines. He argues that it is a social science, and more particularly, a social communications science.