E-Views and Reviews: Communication at Last

Concerns from academic visual resources' librarians about ARTstor (LJ 9/15/04, p. 24ff.) keep coming. Comments note that "the lack of a controlled vocabulary significantly diminishes the usability of ARTstor…. It is bound to confuse and frustrate users and runs counter to best practices advocated by academic librarians for the searching of databases." Others mention the product's lack of interoperability and that "there are many existing models of viable functionality combined with excellent quality that are not plagued by…limitations on how images can be used in a protected academic environment." Some say that ARTstor decided what art historians and students need based on very traditional models. Others are concerned about the perceived inequity of pricing models (e.g., the treatment of multicampus systems) and the product's high cost. Expect another look at the file to see how responsive ARTstor has been to feedback.

www.epnet.com

Communication & Mass Media Complete (CMMC) is a "blended" index designed and developed by EBSCO, "combining multiple niche indices to create a single definitive index for a particular discipline," according to EBSCO's senior VP Sam Brooks. Contents include CommSearch (from the National Communication Association), Mass Media Articles (from Penn State), and supplementary journals relating to communication and mass media. CMMC indexes and abstracts over 300 journals cover to cover and selectively indexes 100 others for content related to communications and mass media.

Full text is included from over 200 journals. Significant publications in the field are indexed and abstracted (with PDFs and searchable cited references) from their initial issues (some going back to 1915) to the present. The file uses both controlled vocabulary and reference browsing of peer-reviewed journals. The complete list of titles is at www.epnet.com/TitleLists/pdf/uf.pdf.

How Does It Work? The EBSCOhost system continues to be one of the best interfaces on the market because it is so simple yet so powerful. EBSCO's designers obviously understand and anticipate the needs of multiple generations, from boomers to digitals. The screen draws your attention to what is needed most yet offers "add-ons" that allow you to do quite sophisticated searching just by filling in the blanks. You can immediately do either a Basic Search or Advanced Search, browse an alphabetical list of the publications indexed, consult (and add to your search) the Thesaurus for appropriate terms, browse one of the file's 18 indexes (from Author to Geographic Terms to Year of Publication), or search cited references within the database.

Can You and Your Patrons Use It? My first search was for "9/11" as a Basic Search, limited to full-text and scholarly (peer-reviewed) publications. I received 30 hits ranging from a November/December 2004 article in Columbia Journalism Review and a September/December 2003 article from Journal of Intercultural Communication Research ("Support for the Contact Hypothesis: High School Students' Attitudes Toward Muslims Post 9-11") to "Remembering 9/11 a Year Later" in the Spring 2002 issue of Australian Screen Education. Columbia Journalism Review is fairly accessible according to Ulrich's, but the other two items much less so.

Another search, for full-text, scholarly articles on "metanarrative" found six citations, ranging from "Desiring Resistance in the Age of Globalization" (New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, 2004) to a summer 1999 article from Journal of Popular Film & Television on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

A search for "web-based learning" retrieved eight results, with subject terms that led me to searches for distance education (200 results), educational technology (297), computer-assisted instruction (182), and web-based instruction (seven). The landscape covered by this database seemed to broaden as I searched, with substantial results.

How Good Is It? CMMC is a high nine based on its content—eventually, I'd like more journals indexed—but the searchability and full text push it up to a ten. This is one of the best interdisciplinary databases with which I have worked. It stretches effectively over a wide range of humanities and social sciences subjects, addressing a host of "between the cracks" issues.

What's the Cost? Subscription prices for academic libraries range from $3400 (for up to 2,499 FTE) to $8000 (for 20,000+ FTE). For public libraries, contact EBSCO.

The Bottom Line I'm often asked by vendors for products they should develop. Communication & Mass Media Complete is certainly one of them. Academic, large public, and school libraries serving serious researchers in the humanities and social sciences should acquire this file—and market it liberally.