eReviews: The Gilded Age

THE GILDED AGE

Alexander Street Press, http://alexanderstreet.com

The Gilded Age (TGA) is a collection of full text, photographs, letters, cartoons, songs, video interviews of leading historians, and 25 document projects created by scholarly field experts (in which an interpretive question is posed and then "answered" by essays and primary documents). At present, the collection contains over 24,000 pages, with new content added biweekly. It is organized around 14 themes, which include Arts, Culture, and Leisure; Domestic Life and Families; Economics, Labor, and Commerce; Science, Technology, and Medicine; and War and Military Life.

HOW DOES IT WORK? The main page has four action buttons in its top tool bar: Home, Browse, Search, and Help, plus a simple Search box. Below these, arrayed along the left side of the screen, are links to the 14 historical themes listed above. Clicking any one of them takes you to a full listing of material indexed there, with the ability to refine your search within the theme. To the right of the themes are a welcoming introductory overview of the file and links to featured documents and media. At the time of this review these included the 1886 book Labor: Its Rights and Wrongs, the essay "Political Cartoons in the Gilded Age" by Samuel J. Thomas, a video interview with Maureen Flanagan on "The Founding of Hull House," and a delightful audio recording of the song "Let Us All Speak Our Minds If We Die for It" by William Brough.

CAN YOU USE IT? My first search, a Simple Search for "edith wharton" (who exemplifies the Gilded Age for me), returned no results. I thought I might have made a typo, so I tried it again, and then again through Advanced Search, and both times I got nothing. Hmmm. Next I attempted an Advanced Search for her friend and fellow author Henry James. No results again. Finding this hard to believe, I tried a Simple Search for "henry james" and did get five results. Next I conducted a Simple Search for "jay gould" and immediately got 56 results. At this point, I was intrigued to see both a "refine search" link and action buttons to limit my search by Historical Theme, Historical Event, or Document Type.

Next, I looked through the historical themes a bit, starting with "Immigration, migration, and expansion." There were 76 results grouped here, ranging from "Captaine John Smith, Sometime Governour in Virginia and Admirall of New England" to "War Path and Bivouac, or, The Conquest of the Sioux," but they were fairly randomly arranged. So, having caught sight of the familiar name Horace Greeley in several entries, I decided to "Search text within results" to get a closer look at the Greeley material. When I did so, it offered only one result, which made a passing reference to Greeley. What happened to the results I'd gotten in my list of 76? I went back and did an Advanced Search for Horace Greeley in full text and turned up 30 results, but when I limited my search by the "Immigration, migration, and expansion" theme, I got only the Miles reference again. Whuh?

Next I did an Advanced Search, looking in All Subjects and going into the "select terms" section, an A-to-Z listing that I had to hunt and peck within to find the Gs and the Greeley listing. When I pasted those terms into the Advanced Search, I found the results I'd seen back in the group of 76 earlier. But I doubt that most of the researchers we work with would have been that persistent.

I proceeded to browse through the 14 historical themes to get an overall sense of the material available here, and it is extraordinary—once you find it, that is. The document projects are substantial and scholarly; the cartoons, documents, and other media are interesting. But I'd like to see more here; frankly, the Gilded Age encompassed much more than American history, and I think the file needs to increase its scope to serve as a truly useful tool for researching the period.

WHAT'S THE COST? TGA is available by subscription or onetime purchase, with prices scaled by library type and budget and ranging from $319 to $2,095.

HOW GOOD IS IT? Although it needs to go beyond mostly covering the United States, the content here is very good; much of it will be of great use to American history scholars. However, getting at it is not as straightforward as one would like, and searching is downright glitchy at times. In its present incarnation, the file gets an 8.5.

BOTTOM LINE This is worth taking a look at—just about any Alexander Street product is—but at present it is recommended only for comprehensive e-collections in large libraries. It needs to grow in content and mature in search accessibility. And knowing Alexander Street's high standards, the odds are good that it will.