E-Views and Reviews: Archive of Black Experience

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Black Studies Center
ProQuest Information and Learning; www.proquest.com

Developed by ProQuest in partnership with the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Black Studies Center (BSC) is made available digitally for the first time. Its core is the Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, “commissioned essays detailing the Black Experience and other related materials.” These are academic studies on present-day and historical topics ranging from African American religion and black cinema to African Americans in the military, the African American family, and the history of slavery.

The essays are supplemented by full-text journal articles from the International Index to Black Periodicals (IIBP), bibliographies, primary source materials, a multimedia library, and links to related web sites. BSC comprises 30 volumes of contextual material, 150 publications, 2000 images, and 200 videos, as well as the full-run digital archive (from 1909 to 1975) of The Chicago Defender, an important African American newspaper.

How Does It Work? The file has a somewhat idiosyncratic design. Its homepage offers one toolbar of action options (Home, Search, View Contents, Information Center, and Help), with a Quick Search box at screen top. You can also View Contents via a right-hand frame that gives you direct access to the Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, journals indexed by IIBP, and newspapers. At screen top right is a My Archive tab that, via a login, lets searchers create a personalized repository within BSC, storing saved searches and records between online sessions. There is also a comprehensive time line.

Can You and Your Patrons Use It? I first browsed the center via View Contents and found 16 Schomburg Essays, ranging from Michael A. Gomez's “African American Religious Experience: An Overview” to Clint C. Wilson II's “The Black Press.” All were interesting and scholarly. Essay Key Resources are also available here, and these include articles from such journals as Western Journal of Black Studies and The Black Scholar, essays from books, and dissertations.

My quick search for “Althea Gibson” found three essays, 47 related resources, two time line matches, three multimedia matches, 37 journal matches, and 372 newspaper matches (many of which were not about Gibson). A quick search for “apartheid” located good results in all the categories of scholarly, pertinent research materials. A Boolean search for “activists and reprisals,” however, netted odd results: I was a little taken aback at the inconsistent numbers across the resources with this search. When I went back in and did a search for just “activists,” I got fewer results in several categories. How can that be? It seems like the Boolean searching is off here; browsing is the better way to go.

How Good Is It? Although the system needs some fine-tuning, the substance is unquestionable; scholarly content of materials here is nonpareil in the field. Searching leaves something to be desired, but since you can get at the content by using a combination of browsing and searching, this gets a 9.5.

What's the Cost? Depending upon size and type of institution, purchase price ranges from $13,000 to $50,000, while the subscription price ranges from $5000 to $15,000.

The Bottom Line Serious researchers in African American studies will need access to this file. Highly recommended to academic and research libraries serving them, with budgets sufficient to cover the not-inconsiderable cost.