E-Views and Reviews: A Literary Love Match

TAKING ON GOOGLE? The relatively new search engine Accoona (accoona.com) now has a feature worthy of note: SuperTarget Your Search™ lets users highlight a keyword and then ranks search results by first displaying the pages for which the highlighted keyword is more important than the other words in the search.

My search for “Janet Evanovich” on Accoona got 40 hits, the first of which was a brief mention of Evanovich in the article “Boston Public Library Adds Download Stations for Audiobooks and Music.” Google, on the other hand, found 1,530,000 hits, the first of which was Evanovich's web site—much more along the lines of what I wanted. Judging from this, it doesn't seem like Google needs to worry yet.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK “EBSCO is proud to provide reliable, quality service to our library customers. We continue our commitment to product line enhancement and have licensed full-text rights for 1750 additional publications in the past six months. As part of our product expansion efforts, our Ipswich, MA–based staff is growing steadily.... We are also pleased at the response to our Customer Success Center (available at www.ebscohost.com), which now offers free access to the LISTA database, dozens of library success stories, funding guides, marketing tools, and more.”—Tim Collins, General Manager, EBSCO Publishing

MagillOnLiterature Plus
Salem Press & EBSCO; www.epnet.com

Produced by Salem Press and distributed by EBSCO, MagillOnLiterature Plus consists of “35,000 critical analyses of individual works of literature, 6500 biographical records, more than 1000 images, and a glossary of 1310 literary terms.” The work of more than 8500 fiction writers, poets, dramatists, essayists, and philosophers is covered, including plot summaries, critical essays, and character descriptions, as well as overview essays on literary genres and eras.

The database comprises the following print volumes: Critical Surveys, Cyclopedia of Literary Characters, Cyclopedia of World Authors, Magill Book Reviews, Magill's Choice: 100 Masters of Mystery and Detective Fiction, Magill's Choice: Notable Poets, Magill's Choice: Shakespeare, Magill's Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, Magill's Literary Annual 1990–2005, Masterplots, Masterplots II, and World Philosophers and Their Works. Although the file was previously reviewed (LJ 2/1/04), it merits a new look now that it has been significantly improved.

HOW DOES IT WORK? The omnipresent EBSCOhost search interface rears its delightful head once again in this file—with additional power to focus on literary studies. For an author search, you can limit by gender, or by author's national or cultural identity. You may also limit searches by literary character or locale, genre, or record type (Author Biographies, Topical Overviews, or Work Analyses).

CAN YOU AND YOUR PATRONS USE IT? The search for Ana Castillo produced six results: an essay on Castillo from Cyclopedia of World Authors and analyses of her works The Mixquiahuala Letters and So Far from God. The search for “Petrarch” produced 16 results, including entries on Boccaccio, Milan Kundera, George Chapman, Ugo Foscolo, and several lengthy essays on Petrarch himself. The entries were liberally peppered throughout with hyperlinked references to related authors, genres, and literary forms. Very nice.

The search for “postmodern” yielded 36 results, which seemed awfully small, so I tried searching with the wildcard (“postmodern*”) and got 751 results—more like it. Here users can click on “Biographies” to limit results to those records only, or, in a box at screen left, they are given the option to narrow the search by these Subjects: Fiction, Long Fiction, Short fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Drama, Murder or homicide, England or English people, Creative process, and Politics. Veeerrrry nice!

A search for the word “south” in the glossary brought up two terms at the head of the alphabetical list of glossary terms: “Southern gothic writers” and “Southern renaissance.” When I clicked both to include in a search and carried it out, I found 105 results ranging from Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Shelby Foote, and Truman Capote to Zora Neale Hurston, Erskine Caldwell, Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor, and Anne Rice. Author biographies are well done, including a list of works, detailed summary biography, and excellent bibliographies, as well as photographs in most cases.

JUST HOW GOOD IS IT? The EBSCOhost interface adds considerably to the appeal of MagillOnLiterature Plus. As for the content, it is substantial yet accessible, broad yet sufficiently in-depth. The file gets a 9¾ for the overall package.

WHAT'S THE COST? Depending on the size and type of library, the cost ranges anywhere from $500 to $25,000. Contact EBSCO for more details.

THE BOTTOM LINE This solid, well-implemented, truly useful, and practical product is highly recommended for all libraries.