Below my signature lines, with permission of the author of the post, is
the post from Mirriam Y Miller regarding research using internet sources
in general and in particular the Wikipedia. For purposes of context, my
posts related to this post are included. The list on which this
conversation occured is omitted. Also included below my signature lines
is a record of the Net-Gold post links for the posts pertaining to the
post by Mirriam Y. Miller and a link to a new post in this thread from
Donna Martinez as well as a URL link to a hyperlinked list of all of
Donna Martinez's posts to Net-Gold.
----------------------
Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 10:28:17 -0400 (EDT)
From: David P. Dillard <j...@temple.edu>
To: Miriam Y Miller <mymil...@uno.edu>
Subject: Re: Online sources
Databases Covering Medieval History
Re: Online sources
Databases Covering Medieval History
Thanks to Mirriam Y. Miller for her excellent comments.
I was a student and began my career when print and card catalogs were the
tools of research. One had to know exaxt author's names, exact titles to
and the correct Library of Congress Subject Headings to use the catalog
with any success, now we live in a blessed age of keyword searching. There
is hope of success if we only know that some critter named Smith wrote a
book with the word medieval in the title, or was it middle ages.
Medieval and Smith
<http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3Amedieval+au%3Asmith&qt=advanced>
Middle Ages and Smith
<http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3A%
22middle+ages%22+au%3Asmith&qt=results_page>
A shorter URL for the above link:
<http://tinyurl.com/25b7ua>
Despite the enormous availability of databases on a wide range of topics,
Dialog
<http://library.dialog.com/bluesheets/html/blf.html>
"Providing more than 15 terabytes of content from the world's most
authoritative publishers, and the tools to search every bit of it with
speed and precision."
Datastar
http://ds.datastarweb.com/datasheets/
OVID
<http://www.ovid.com/site/catalog/Catalog_DataBase.jsp?
top=2&mid=3&bottom=7&subsection=10>
A shorter URL for the above link:
<http://tinyurl.com/76y43>
EBSCO
<http://www.ebscohost.com/thisMarket.php?marketID=1>
<http://www.ebscohost.com/>
Cambridge Scientific Abstracts
<http://www.csa.com/e_products/databases-collections.php>
Which now owns ProQuest Direct
and others like H.W. Wilson, Gale Infotrac, First Search of OCLC and home
of Worldcat, Engineering Village, Science Direct, Acess News, Lexis Nexis,
Westlaw and more, as I was saying, despite this embarrassment of riches in
databases including JSTOR and MUSE, there are no databases devoted to
either medieval or ancient history that I am aware of from major
commercial vendors of databases, that makes researching these periods of
history far more difficult using tools taken for granted in other fields.
There is of course coverage of medieval history in quite a few general
databases, but there is also a handicap here in the field of history.
ABC-CLIO in its infinite wisdom decided to start Historical Abstracts and
American History and Life at the year 1492 and forward, that does little
for Ancient and Medieval Historians. Within the last week or two these two
databases have become available on the EBSCO search interface as a result
of the purchase of these databases from ABC-CLIO a couple of months or so
ago to complement EBSCO's own History Reference Center. There is coverage
of the medieval period in History Reference Center.
S5 medieval Limiters - Full Text
View Results (4086)
Revise Search
View Details
Interface - EBSCOhost
Search Screen - Advanced Search
Database - History Reference Center
S4 medieval Limiters - Peer Reviewed
View Results (3463)
Revise Search
View Details
Interface - EBSCOhost
Search Screen - Advanced Search
Database - History Reference Center
S3 SU medieval
View Results (1918)
Revise Search
View Details
Interface - EBSCOhost
Search Screen - Advanced Search
Database - History Reference Center
S2 TI medieval
View Results (1998)
Revise Search
View Details
Interface - EBSCOhost
Search Screen - Advanced Search
Database - History Reference Center
S1 medieval
View Results (4280)
Revise Search
View Details
I think it would be extremely safe to suggest that these numbers do not
reflect comprehensive coverage of the journal literature of the medieval
period, possibly up there for the understatement of the year.
Worldcat is a place that one can book for monographic coverage of the
medieval period, below an indication of the results for a search of the
word medieval, which, of course, is only a small part of the titles
pertinent to medieval history.
Results 1-10 of about 142,207
If one compares this number for books to the EBSCO number for journal
articles, one may have trouble discontinuing their laughter. EBSCO's
history database is clearly not very deep in medieval history, but more of
a soup starter kind of product.
Sample Worldcat Record:
Mysteries of the Middle Ages : the rise of feminism, science, and art from
the cults of Catholic Europe
by Thomas Cahill
Type: Book
Language: English
Publisher: New York : N.A. Talese, 2006.
ISBN: 0385495552 9780385495554
OCLC: 65820500
Related Subjects: Civilization, Medieval. | Women -- Europe -- History --
Middle Ages, 500-1500. | Science, Medieval. | Art, Medieval.
Editions: 6 Editions
Citations: Cite this Item | Export to EndNote | Export to RefWorks
Additional Info: Table of contents only | Contributor biographical
information
| Publisher description | Sample text
Displaying libraries 1-10 out of 956
1. Temple University Libraries Philadelphia, PA 19122 United States
< 1 mile
Book Services: Library Information Ask a librarian
2. University of Pennsylvania Libraries Philadelphia, PA 19104 United
States
3 miles
Book Services: Library Information Ask a librarian
3. Swarthmore College Swarthmore, PA 19081 United States
12 miles
Book
Services: Library Information
4. Cabrini College Library Radnor, PA 19087 United States
13 miles
Book
Services: Library Information
5. Delaware County Library Syst Media, PA 19063 United States
15 miles
Book
Services: Library Information
6. Neumann College Library Aston, PA 19014 United States
17 miles
Book
Services: Library Information
7. West Chester University W Chester, PA 19383 United States
24 miles
Book
Services: Library Information Ask a librarian
8. Mercer County Library Lawrenceville, NJ 08648 United States
31 miles
Book
Services: Library Information
9. University of Delaware Newark, DE 19717 United States
36 miles
Book
Services: Library Information
10. Atlantic County Library Mays Landing, NJ 08330 United States
44 miles
Other Formats: Compact disc
Services: Library Information
There are article listings related to medieval in these databases as well
amongst others:
Academic Search Premier
CAB
Francis
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine List of Records
[Formerly an RLG database, now on the First Search server]
IBSS: International Bibliography of the Social Sciences
International Medieval Bibliography Online
[This is not from one of the major database vendors]
JSTOR
MLA
MUSE
Periodical Abstracts (ProQuest)
Web of Science
Wilson OmniFile
There are others, but a field with this need to use more general databases
search tools due to such a limit in databases devoted to medieval history
can
use all of the help it can get from say internet search tools.
Such as Google Scholar
Scholar
Results 1 - 10 of about 573,000 for medieval
and Google Books
Books
Books 1 - 10 of 463600 on medieval.
not to mention Scirus
All of the words:medieval
Found:: :1,294,269 total | 24,563 journal results | 13,459 preferred web
results | 1,256,247 other web results
So since medieval history, pardon the expression, is in the dark ages of
commercial database availability of databases devoted to medieval research
publications, the internet specialized search tools certainly serve to
shed more light on the research publications in this field.
Sincerely,
David Dillard
Temple University
(215) 204 - 4584
j...@temple.edu
Net-Gold
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General Internet & Print Resources
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<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Educator-Gold/>
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<http://homepage.mac.com/neemers1/PhotoAlbum3.html>
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<http://tinyurl.com/36qd2o>
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===============================================
On Fri, 5 Oct 2007, Miriam Y Miller wrote:
> Quite a few years ago I read a science fiction story (can't remember
> the name) in which one of the SF elements was that everyone in that
> world had a cube on his/her desk by which he/she could instantly
> access any information desired. SF then, marvelous reality not to be
> sneezed at now.
> The fact is that there are many topics that can only be researched
> online and for which Wikipedia is the only or primary source. Try,
> for example, writing a review essay of all the film adaptations of
> Beowulf and see how far you'd get using only print sources in your
> local academic library. I'm betting that for most of the adaptations
> you would find the film reviews in a handful of major newspapers and
> that would be about it.
> A few years ago I wrote teachers' guidebooks for two historical
> children's films, an Icelandic film set in the early modern period and
> a Dutch film set in the early twentieth century. It would have been
> flat out impossible for me to research those films using only the
> academic library available to me. As it was, the information I needed
> for the Icelandic film was written in (at least) six different
> languages from a variety of sources, but it was all available to me
> with a few mouse clicks.
> Before I retired, my university (or perhaps it was my department--my
> memory about such administrivia is getting dim) required that students
> enrolled in certain courses attend a library class specifically on the
> use and misuse of online sources--students had to present a
> certificate of attendance to pass the course. Instructors in all
> courses could request a library session on online resources tailored
> to that particular course--and many did (among other things it was an
> excellent fill-in on days when the instructor was away at a
> conference).
> I required students to annotate their bibliographies. For every
> online source cited, the student had to indicate why this particular
> source was valid, worthwhile, reliable, etc. The library session had
> included ways to evaluate online sources and separate the wheat from
> the chaff, so students had, at least theoretically, the skills
> required to use the web wisely.
> IMO if there are still Luddites out there who absolutely refuse to let
> their students use online sources, they need to get over it. Google
> is your friend.....
> Mimi Miller (who is old enough to remember when research required
> handwritten index cards before the days of the copy machine and
> revision of your laboriously typed text was a literal cut-and-paste
> job)
======================================
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner- on behalf of David P. Dillard
> Sent: Fri 10/5/2007 6:06 PM
One of my biggest concerns is faculty members who demand that students not
use the internet, PERIOD. The problem with that is that print indexes are
disappearing from libraries at an astounding rate and being replaced by
databases found at website URLs on the internet. Then there are the tens
of thousands of journals, including peer reviewed ones, that are also
found on websites for which libraries are paying dearly for access. Then
there are quality websites that provide extensive high quality information
and guide users to additional high quality research resources on the web.
Indeed JSTOR and Science Direct are both on the web except for full text
content, for which institutions or end users must pay.
I have also found the Wikipedia to be a most useful tool and use it
extensively and often wonder how much faculty members who criticize this
tool spend actually looking at it or using it.
Wikipedia
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Net-Gold/
msearch?query=wikipedia&submit=Search&charset=windows-1252>
A shorter URL for the above link:
<http://tinyurl.com/kx44b>
More Wikipedia
Go to this EDTECH URL and search Wikipedia
<http://www.h-net.org/~edweb/>
or go to this URL:
<http://groups.google.com/groups/search?q=
edtech+and+wikipedia&qt_s=Search+Groups>
A shorter URL for the above link:
<http://tinyurl.com/26zxrc>
[As fate and a post about wikis would have it, there is much more action
below these signature lines including a link to a new post from Donna
Martinez, just posted in the last few minutes, as we know wikis are always
being edited, so please turn your attention to the content below. DD]
Net-Gold Posts in this thread prior to this post:
HISTORY: MEDIEVAL :
DATABASES :
RESEARCH: TECHNIQUES:
Finding Medieval History in Databases
<http://groups.google.com/group/net-gold/
browse_thread/thread/19d54fdab782f398>
A shorter URL for the above link:
<http://tinyurl.com/3c3nbd>
RESEARCH: TECHNIQUES:
If You Use Internet Sources for this Term Paper,
You Will Receive a Failing Grade!!!
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Net-Gold/message/20471>
and this one just in during the last few minutes:
Medieval Help Desk
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Net-Gold/message/20475>
Previous content from Donna Martinez posted to Net-Gold
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Net-Gold/msearch?query=%
22Donna+Martinez%22&submit=Search&charset=windows-1252>
A shorter URL for the above link:
<http://tinyurl.com/yrjby6>
Sincerely,
David Dillard
Temple University
(215) 204 - 4584
j...@temple.edu
Net-Gold
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/net-gold>
<http://listserv.temple.edu/archives/net-gold.html>
<http://groups.google.com/group/net-gold>
<http://net-gold.jiglu.com/>
General Internet & Print Resources
<http://library.temple.edu/articles/subject_guides/general.jsp>
<http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/ringleaders/davidd.html>
Digital Divide Network
<http://www.digitaldivide.net/profile/jwne>
Educator-Gold
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Educator-Gold/
K12ADMINLIFE
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/K12AdminLIFE/
Nina Dillard's Photographs
<http://homepage.mac.com/neemers1/PhotoAlbum3.html>
Nina Dillard's Photographs on Net-Gold
<http://tinyurl.com/36qd2o>
Net-Gold Membership Required to View Photos
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