eReviews

Credo; www.credoreference.com

Credo Reference (formerly known as Xrefer) is an online library currently drawing on nearly 400 publications from 62 publishers, including ABC-CLIO, Cambridge, Debrett's, Greenwood, Houghton Mifflin, Macmillan, Marquis Who's Who, Routledge, Sage, and Wiley. New titles, as well as new publishers, are added periodically.

The main screen is clean and simple, with a "Search for" box midscreen, followed by an "in" drop-down menu that lets you search in all subjects, including Art, Business, Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, History, Literature, Technology, and the Related Resources: Library Catalog, Google Scholar, and Highwire. In a toolbar at screen top are buttons for Search, Find a Book, Advanced Search, Concept Map, Saved Results, Gadgets, Help, and Logout. Links for Find a Book, Advanced Search, Concept Map, and Help are repeated beneath the Search for box, and beneath these links are toggle links that let you search the file in English, Spanish, French, Polish, (simplified) Chinese, or Urdu.

My first search was for Viscount Samuel, first high commissioner for Palestine. The search for "herbert samuel and palestine" in All Subjects found five results: one for Palestine in The Encyclopedia of World History, which included a reference to Samuel becoming the first high commissioner; another mention of Samuel in an article on Jewish immigration in Greenwood's Immigration and Asylum from 1900 to Present; another result in the entry on Great Britain in The Encyclopedia of World History; a mention of Samuel's birthplace in the Liverpool essay in Brewer's Britain and Ireland; and from the Toxteth article in Brewer's Britain and Ireland came the information, "The Liverpool-born Liberal politician Herbert Samuel (1870–1963)…[who]…later took the title Viscount Samuel of Mount Carmel and of Toxteth." Just out of curiosity, I went back in and did a search for just "herbert samuel" and got 33 results. After browsing through them, I discovered that Samuel had served briefly as home secretary as well—something I hadn't picked up in the other resources I'd searched on this same topic. Nice.

Next, I tried an Advanced Search, which gave me the options to search for terms With all of the words, With the exact phrase, With any of the words, or Without the words and even via Sounds like the word. I was allowed to limit my search to Selected subjects or titles, Selected publication dates, and Entries with certain features (e.g., images, audio); I could sort results by Relevance, Publication date, or Length.

My Advanced Search With the exact phrase angostura bitters, searching only within headings, found six entries, including one from The Macquarie Dictionary that included the pronunciation, definition, and proper citation, offered in four toggling formats: APA, Chicago, Harvard, or MLA. Very nice. Meanwhile, over at screen left were links to Related entries, Related resource (including Library Catalog, JSTOR, Google Scholar, and Highwire), Adjacent entries, and Browse book, which let me browse the alphabetical contents of The Macquarie Dictionary. Very nice indeed.

I tried to use the Concept Map feature repeatedly to no avail, despite having consulted the Help guide. These instructions could be made a lot clearer in the next release, folks. Not a deal breaker, however. It took a second to learn the ways of saving results.

There's an "add-on" here that I went gaga over—the Gadgets feature. Once you click on it, it opens a column at screen right that lets you look for word definitions, search for people, find words for Crossword puzzles and Quotations, research Holidays and Festivals (the system suggested the correct spelling for me when I initially misspelled Kwanzaa), and do Conversions. I'm not a big fan of extraneous bells and whistles, but this is a feature of reference librarians' dreams—one-stop, ready-reference lookups galore.

The price depends on library type, the number of titles to which you subscribe, and the size of your institution. For example, the price for academic libraries ranges from $1,650 to $7,868 (the low price is for an FTE of up to 2500 subscribing to 100 titles; the high price is for an FTE of 10,000 subscribing to all titles, including any that get released during the time of the subscription).

This file's strong content, accessibility, and impressive scope earn it a resounding ten.

Credo will serve users of all ages and be a mainstay ready-reference tool in any library. It's a stable, reliable, and expert reference tool.