Robbins Library Notes

Good afternoon, all!

JSTOR is a very popular database for locating older articles*, and recently, they’ve made some cosmetic changes to the interface of the database.

However, having looked over the changes, they are just that — cosmetic — JSTOR has the same search strategies and options that have been available for the last several years, so you shouldn’t have any issues in locating articles from the journals that are available on JSTOR.

* Don’t forget! There is more to the world than JSTOR! And it may indeed exist if you can’t find it on JSTOR! Ask your friendly, neighborhood librarian for more information!

Good afternoon, all! While doing some other research this afternoon, I discovered that access to and the interface of Arts & Humanities Citation Index, which I reviewed in an earlier post, has changed. Some of the features about which I wrote before have changed, and much of what I wrote in my earlier post is now obsolete.

However, this is still the same content, and it remains a great database to use. Among the changes, there are several things to note:

• Access to the database is a bit dodgy at the moment, as the new proxy server IP address from HOLLIS to the database places the user in a doom loop. You will be unable to login, while the server keeps trying to establish a connection over and over again. The way around this is to hit the “stop loading this page” button on your browser until the database quits reloading. Then, click on the link: “If a new session is not started automatically in a few seconds, click to establish a new session” to finish the login process.  Update 2/6/2008: The access issues seem to have been resolved for now.  You should now be able to login into the database via HOLLIS without any trouble.
• The default search screen now defaults you to searching all seven of the ISI databases to which Harvard subscribes. To access only Arts & Humanities Citation Index, click on the “Select a Database” tab, and choose “Web of Science” from the options.
• The old command language searches (e.g., TS=philosophy of mind, AU=Dummett M) have been replaced by drop-down menus. This should eliminate some of the confusion and having to learn the command language. You still have the option of using the command language prefixes in the “Advanced Search” option.
• The types of searches remain the same. In the “Advanced Search” option, you can limit articles by language or document type at the beginning of your search, something that cannot be done in the basic search.
• In the default search option, you still have the option of limiting by year and by database — it is in the bottom portion of the search screen, right below the search boxes. (It’s not obvious if you aren’t looking for these limiters.)
• In the search results screen, you can filter out by document type and subject category, though apparently not both at the same time — i.e., you can filter out by subject category, but not so as to return only articles, e.g., in that subject category.
• You still have the option of combining several search strategies into one larger search, if you so choose.

I’m still taking some time to figuring out the quirks of this new interface, so if I have more information to report, I will do so.

Good morning! As long promised, here is a review of the database, POIESIS.

What it is

As the Web site description notes, POIESIS is “a subscription based reference and publishing service offering searchable access to the full text of hundreds of current, recent, and back issues of a growing number of philosophy journals and series…. POIESIS now contains over 2,400 issues and 350,000 pages of text from 55 journals and series, and most of these are not available in electronic format from any other service. Put another way, the project currently contains the complete content of approximately 36,000 articles and reviews. POIESIS will ultimately contain the fulltext of 100 journals and series, and more than 70 journals have already been licensed for the project.”

Strengths

• POIESIS contains current issues of journals like Philosophical Review, Hume Studies, Leibniz Review, and Philosophical Topics. These are journal issues to which Harvard has not previously had electronic access. Furthermore, there is access to the Table of Contents to current issues of the Journal of Philosophy, though not access to the full-text of articles.

Limitations

• Interface: One of the big limitations to POIESIS is the interface. It is not easy to read or navigate, nor is the full-text of articles formatted in an easy-to-read or easy-to-print format. In fact, full-text articles return only the words, not the formatting, of the original article.
• Printing: A further issue is that clicking on “print article” returns only a dark browser window with an error message. I’ve reported the problem to the database maintainers, but the matter has not been resolved as of the time of this writing. For now, to print off an article, you will have to copy and paste the text into Word or other word processing software, and clean up the formatting. Note that you may have to scroll through several pages and do this, depending on the length of the article.
• Searching: When you use the “Power Search” (i.e., advanced search), not all of the journals to which we have access appear in the “Select title to search” box. However, if you search using the other fields, articles in these journals will appear. So, don’t worry if you don’t see the journal you want listed — search by author or title instead. I’ll discuss this more in the next section.
• I’ve also noticed that, when searching after logging into the database, that you will occasionally reach a page where you get a message that you are no longer logged in, and cannot access the materials in question. I’m not sure why this happens. My recommendation is to document all these issues and send them to the POIESIS managers directly.

Using POIESIS

1. Go to the HOLLIS search page, and select the “Digital Resources” tab.
2. Set the “Search type” to “Title beginning with,” and the search terms to “poiesis.”
3. In the results list, scroll down to “POIESIS,” and click on that link. (You can also select “POIESIS : Philosophy online serials,” which is an alternate entry.
4. Clink on the Internet link in the record, and login with your ID and PIN.
5. Once you’ve logged in, I strongly recommend that you read the introduction to the database. There is also a blue information icon — — on most pages, which will provide guidance if you get stuck.
6. Searching. There are four search options:
   1. Keyword Search (default) – this is a standard keyword search, with the option to search all or one journal at a time.
   2. Power Search – this is the advanced search option. Here, you have the option to limit your search by keyword, word proximity (i.e., word x and word y within z number of each other), or journal title(s) — though not all journals are included in this list, as noted above. You also have the option of setting up a Boolean search strategy. This is helpful for searching the full-text of articles.
   3. Author/Title Search — this is an alternative advanced search option, which allows you to search by author and/or article title, and/or journal title(s), but, as with the Power Search, not all the journal titles are listed in the drop-down menu. You can set up a Boolean search with this option as well.
   4. Browse – this allows you to browse through a list of journal titles. In the left-hand frame, you should see a list of the subscribed volumes of the journal you select. Click on the “+” to the left of each volume to expand out the available issues. In the right-hand frame, the article(s) should appear. You’ll be able to navigate through the pages there.
   5. I’ve just noticed that a complete list of subscribed journals appears when you access the various search options other than Keyword Search under the heading “Subscription Journals,” which is on the left-hand side of the home page. I’m not sure why there are two different listings, but, to save yourself frustration, perhaps it’s best to access the search options from this area, rather than from the home page, so that you are not denied access for “not being logged in.”
7. Viewing and Printing. As I noted above in the Limitations section, the formatting of articles in POIESIS is not the best. There is no option to retrieve a PDF version of an article, and printing is, for the moment, clumsy, and does not preserve the original format and layout of the article.

Summary

In spite of its clunky interface and output formatting, POIESIS is a valuable resource to use in conjunction with databases like JSTOR, Academic Search Premier, and Project MUSE. It’s the only place to obtain articles from journals like Philosophical Topics, Philosophical Review, and the like. Hopefully, in the future, a much-better interface will be designed. Until then, it will have to do.

Do you have a database that you’d like to see me review? Please drop me a line or fill out a comment and let me know.

Good morning! There’s a new online clearinghouse for the humanities that is being sponsored by the Social Sciences Research Network.

The new clearinghouse is named the Humanities Research Network (HRN), and, according to the press release, the hope is that HRN will “become a comprehensive online resource for research in humanities, providing scholars with access to current work in their field and facilitating research and scholarship.” At present, the directors of the HRN Philosophy Research Network are Lawrence Becker (Hollins University) and Brie Gertler (University of Virginia).

HRN, like the Social Sciences Research Network, posts drafts of works-in-progress, along with finished papers, all of which can be downloaded for free. Furthermore, the coverage of philosophical topics is quite broad, which should suit the interests of many in the department. (To view the expandable taxonomy of topics, please go to http://ssrn.com.ezp1.harvard.edu/browse.) Finally, there is simply a lot of great stuff on this network, as well as the Social Sciences Research Network– I’ve been poking around the site this morning, and have found several items of interest which I’m planning on looking into in the near future.

More information can be found in this press release, as well as in this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education (Harvard ID and PIN required to access it.)

I’ll also post this link in the blogroll.

Please let me know if you have any questions.