E-Views and Reviews: African American Achievement

By Cheryl LaGuardia -- Library Journal, 11/15/2006

On the search engine horizon I'm hearing about a new company called Powerset that is using natural-language techniques to build “a large-scale search engine that breaks the confines of keyword search.” Will it be another Google? Will it improve on Google search results? That remains to be seen, especially since the company remains a start-up “in stealth mode,” according to its web site, but it's worth watching.

Quote of the Week “There isn't much in publishing that's a sure bet these days, but Greenwood's American Mosaic [family of databases] feels...inevitable. Debates over immigration and ethnic identity are whipping everyone into a lather; ethnic populations are changing the political and cultural landscape before our eyes; and whether or not a 700-mile wall goes up on the Mexican border, it's increasingly hard to see the United States as a loaf of white bread. Customers have been buying almost anything that gets published on American ethnicity, past and present. Librarians everywhere [tell us] about the need for these materials, so it's a pleasure to give you what you need while also providing students with an offbeat and addictive learning experience.... If American Mosaic has an 'angle,' it's this: we're trying to let the groups that make America American speak for themselves.”—Gary Kuris, VP, Editorial, Greenwood Publishing

The African American Experience
Greenwood Publishing Group
www.greenwood.com/aae/trial.aspx

The wealth of material in The African American Experience (AAE) includes The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Literature, The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Folklore, Encyclopedia of Racism in the United States, Encyclopedia of Multi­ethnic American Literature, The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Civil Rights, African American Religious Experience in America, and Encyclopedia of Rap and Hip Hop Culture. There is also a backlist of reference books and monographs, hundreds of primary source documents, audio clips (interviews and music files), web links, lesson plans, and images—all indexed by subject specialists and accessible according to over 12,000 index terms.

How Does It Work? The inviting home screen offers both simple and advanced searches, a very sophisticated browse function, immediate access to a clearly identified set of primary source materials, the entire contents list, access to classroom resources, and very useful online help.

Quick Search is where it should be: near screen top, on the left. There's an option for Advanced Search, but even better, there's the list of 15 Subjects ready for Browsing. The bonus here is the expanding menus that pop up as you mouse over the Subjects: they constitute an outline both of the database and of research topics.

Can you and your patrons use it? The thoughtful design sets a new standard for attractive accessibility. I started with a Quick Search for Harriet Tubman, which yielded 180 items—a lot to wade through. Then I saw the tabs arrayed at screen top: All, Articles, Primary Documents, Images, and Other Resources. A click on Primary Documents found 30 items, Images yielded three, and Other Resources connected me to the African Americans in History web site at the University of Georgia.

In browsing the Icons Subject area, I found a list of 24 notable African Americans, from Muhammad Ali to Malcolm X, with links to subsections about each. Those subsections include Childhood and youth, Chronology, Contemporaries, Film and video adaptations, Political and social views, and more. Not surprisingly, the Primary Documents section was truly enthralling, including Antebellum Songs of the Underground Railroad, the text of The Black Man's Burden (1915) by William H. Holtzclaw and Booker T. Washington, the 1998 edition of African American Quotations, and recorded interviews of former slaves from the 1930s and 1940s.

How Good Is it? I recently reviewed the Oxford African American Studies Center (see LJ 7/06, p. 27). It merited an unprecedented 11 (out of ten) and was recommended for all libraries. AAE deserves a similar rating, within certain contexts. For school and public libraries, it's an 11 for its extraordinary combination of content and design. For academic libraries, it gets a 10—still outstanding but with not quite as much in-depth research content as the Oxford product. Frankly, it would be a boon if the two files were combined, but I'd serve them up the Greenwood way.

What's the cost? Pricing for most libraries, including multiple simultaneous users and remote access, ranges from $450 to $1200. If your institution serves a very large user population, contact Greenwood at gemsales@greenwood.com. Those subscribing to multiple Greenwood databases are eligible for discounts.

The Bottom Line The African American Experience is enthusiastically recommended for school and public libraries and strongly recommended for academic institutions.