Robbins Library Notes

Good morning, readers!

Today, I’ll outline the concept of “the literature search.”  Some of you may be wondering what exactly a literature search, or “lit. search,” is.

What is a literature search?

Basically, a literature search is a large search, usually over a broad range of resources and time period, to see what has been written about a particular topic.

The term “lit. search” is sometimes used when looking for one or two articles, but, properly speaking, lit. searches are, as noted above, broad searches for many articles, not targeted, focused searches.  If you are searching for a specific article, you are not doing a lit. search.

Here is an example to illustrate my definition.  Last fall, I was asked to do a literature search on the topic of “inner speech” in the database, MEDLINE. The patron was interested in the topic, and wanted to learn if any other research aside from the that being done by the one researcher with whom the patron was familiar existed.  Using just the phrase “inner speech” across the whole time period of the database turned up over a hundred articles going back to 1969.

When do you do a literature search?

Most often, a lit. search is performed when you want to get a broad background on a topic, e.g., when doing the preliminary research for a dissertation.  Another example would be for writing a book, or an article, to see what else has been done on a topic about which you are writing.

What databases would you use for a literature search?

For philosophical research, Philosopher’s Index and Arts & Humanities Index are two good places to begin.  However, the choice of database may vary with your topic; thus, it’s very important to establish at the start what exactly you’re looking for, since this will help guide you to the relevant resources.  (Remember the first guideline from my Searching 101: Research Guidelines post!)

As with my example above, of “inner speech”: both Philosopher’s Index and Arts & Humanities Citation Index would have been of limited help in answering this question, given its scientific and medical bent.  MEDLINE was the proper database to use, and was the one that the patron requested.  Likewise, for a literature search on philosophy of law or legal issues, LexisNexis is a relevant database, and perhaps the archives of law journals on JSTOR.

Speaking of JSTOR, it is useful for lit. searches of older materials.  However, I would not use it alone, unless your question is specifically looking at older research.  You are much better off combining it with other current database, so as not to miss more recent work.

Examples of Literature Searches

The list of potential literature searches is endless.  Here are four that I have been asked to do in my ten years as a librarian:

• All research on “inner speech” in MEDLINE
• All articles published on topics in early modern philosophy in the last 10 years
• All references to Alan Greenspan being “God” or “a god” in the popular press, from mid-1998 to late 1999.  (Yes, this was a real lit. search I was asked to do once.  How times have changed…)
• All literature on Hannah Arendt and research examining her project as being a phenomenological one

Hopefully, these examples give you some idea of what a literature is.

Summary

As I noted above, a literature search is a large search, usually over a broad range of resources and time period, to see what has been written about a particular topic.  There’s no trick to it, really, other than to dive in and start doing them.  As I’ve found, the more literature searches you do, the better you get at them, because you start to learn the quirks and tricks that will help you to define and refine your searches.  And if you get stuck, consult my searching guidelines post… or just ask me! I’m very happy to help. 

Good morning, readers!

During the first week of term, I’m going to revisit some of my earlier posts, to remind you of some useful tools for philosophical research.  Today, I’ll be looking at databases.  All of the following can be located and accessed via HOLLIS, using your Harvard ID and PIN.  I will organize the list according to the classification scheme that I outlined last year.

Citation Databases

• Arts & Humanities Citation Index (and a note about an update.)
• Philosopher’s Index

Full-Text Archival Databases

• JSTOR (and a note about an update.)
  

Full-Text Current Databases

• POIESIS (and an update.)
  
• Project MUSE (and a note about an update.)
• Social Science Research (which includes the Humanities Research Network and the Philosophy Research Network)
• Science Direct
• Wiley Interscience (which includes the former Blackwell materials)

Hybrid Databases

• Academic Search Premier (and a note about an update.)

This list makes no claims to be exclusive or exhaustive.  These databases are merely the ones that you will most commonly use when doing philosophical research.  Depending on your area(s) of interest and study, you may want to consider other, more specialized databases as well, e.g., LexisNexis Academic, PubMed, or the Science Citation Index.  If so, please let me know, and I’ll be happy to direct you to them, and show you how to use them.

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 promised, this week’s Database Overview will review Arts & Humanities Citation Index.

What it is

Arts & Humanities Citation Index is a citation database covering publications in all fields in the arts and humanities back to 1975. As the Thomson.com description, notes, “The Arts & Humanities Citation Index® (A&HCI ®) and Arts & Humanities Search® provide access to current and retrospective bibliographic information and cited references found in nearly 1,130 of the world’s leading arts & humanities journals. They also cover individually selected, relevant items from approximately 7,000 of the world’s leading science and social sciences journals.” It is a good database to use in conjunction with Philosopher’s Index, to cover any gaps or omissions that the former may have.

Strengths

• Multi-disciplinary searches. Arts & Humanities Citation Index allows its users to perform multi-disciplinary searches quickly.
• Comprehensive coverage. The database covers thousands of sources back to the mid 1970s, and even earlier, if combined with Social Sciences Citation Index or Science Citation Index.
• Article citations. Users can easily tell how many times an item has been cited in the database.
• Sorting and Filtering Results. Results can be easily sorted and filtered by source, subject, and author.

Limitations

• The advanced searching function is a bit tricky, as users must learn how to combine the two-letter code and Boolean search style that is used in this database. However, the search style is consistent across all of the five search options in the database, and examples are given in every search screen, so it is relatively easy to use, once you have developed some proficiency using it. Even better, if you use Arts & Humanities Citation Index’s sister databases, Social Sciences Citation Index or Science Citation Index, the search style is exactly the same, so you needn’t learn anything new.
• Like Philosopher’s Index, Arts & Humanities Citation Index is a citation database — thus, there is no full-text available from the database, though you will be able to link to full-text (where available) and HOLLIS records using the button.
• Also, like Philosopher’s Index, the database is not exclusive or exhaustive in coverage, so it should not be used alone, but, rather, in conjunction with another citation database. Don’t assume that, if you can’t find it here, that it doesn’t exist.

Using Arts & Humanities Citation Index

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 “arts and humanities citation index.”
3. In the results list, scroll down to “Arts and humanities citation index (Online),” and click on that link.
4. Clink on the Internet link in the record, and login with your ID and PIN.
5. There are five search options available to you in Arts & Humanities Citation Index when you get to the database home page. I will be referring to this attached file of screen shots as I go through each option to explain them.
   1. Quick Search. This is the default basic search, useful for large topics, where you’re trying to see what materials are available. As you can see on slide 3 of the attached file, you do have some options for limiters. I would recommend unchecking the boxes for the Social Sciences Citation Index and the Science Citation Index, unless you are doing research in those areas as well, e.g., philosophy of mind or psychology for the former, or philosophy of science or biology, for the latter.
   2. General Search. I recommend starting with this search option until you get a sense for using the database. Slides 5 and 6 show the default search features for this option. Note that examples of the database’s search format are included below each box, showing how terms are to be entered, what to use for wild card operators, and the like. You can also set the search to look only for research in specific languages, or of specific document types. One thing to be careful of in this search is entering in journal titles. The database is somewhat finicky about how it reads titles, and it’s not easy to locate the preferred format.
   3. Author Finder. Slides 8-12 outline this search option, which is useful for looking at what resources by a certain author are indexed in the database. Let’s look at an example:
      1. You want to see what articles written by Richard Moran are listed in Arts & Humanities Citation Index. So, logging into the database, you choose the Author Find link. From here, you will be walked through the four steps you need to generate a bibliography. On the first screen (slide 8), enter in the last name and first initial, i.e., “moran” and “r.” Click the “Next” button. On slide 9, you will see the option to expand or focus your search, by adding either a wild card operator (the “*”) or a middle initial, respectively. Since you don’t know his middle initial, and you don’t know if the database cites him with one, you decide to pick the wild card operator option — yes, the 618 sources look a bit daunting, but you’ll have the chance to refine the search a little more in the next two steps. In step three (slide 10), you can limit the results to subject categories. You limit the results to Arts & Humanities, with only 51 hits. Then, in step four (slide 11), you can limit the results by the institution(s) where the author is and/or was. Knowing that Moran was at Princeton before coming to Harvard, you check off both boxes, giving you ten results in total, some of which can be seen in slide 12. Note how you can see how many times his articles have been cited, and if full-text is available in the database, right next to the button.
   4. Cited Ref Search. This option, as slide 14 shows, is good for locating complete bibliographic information for a cited reference or author.
   5. Advanced Search. Slides 16-19 show an example of an advanced search. As I’ve noted, learning the search style takes a little work, but, once you’ve gotten the hang of it, you can stack terms with Boolean operators to make sophisticated and complex searches. Furthermore, you have the option of combining different searches into a larger “mega-search.” Slide 16 shows the default search options for the advanced search. Note that the code you’ll need to learn is always on the right side of the page. Furthermore, Boolean operators must always be capitalized — AND, OR, NOT, and so on. I’ve shown a search using the terms “kant” and “ethics” as topics. Note how I’ve set the search up: looking only at Arts & Humanities Citation Index, set to search as far back as possible for English-only articles. Slide 17 shows the initial results page, indicating that I have 96 hits. (Also visible here is the option to combine search strategies into larger searches by selecting the “Combine sets” option.) Clicking on the number 96, I get a list of results, as seen on slide 18. The default listing is 10 per page, but, since so few hits per page annoys me, I increase it to the maximum, which in this database is 50 per page — the drop-down menu to change this is just above the list of results. On the results page, you have the option of further refining the search, whether by subject category, source title, document type, author, and publication year. Clicking on any of the links (I’ve shown “Subject Categories” as an example) opens up a box menu, listing various items in descending order of occurrence, i.e., the number of articles in that category that came up from that search. You can check off any or all of the boxes, and click on the “View Records” button to see them, or “Exclude Records” to eliminate them. Slide 19 shows an example of some of the records from the search.
6. Log off. When you are finished using Arts & Humanities Citation Index, make sure to log off by clicking on the “LOG OFF” button in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. (Please see slide 21 for an example.) Why? Harvard only has a certain number of licenses to use this database, so, if you fail to log off, and the limit on users has been reached, another user will not be able to access the database until your cookie expires or you log off.

Summary

Arts & Humanities Citation Index is a good index to use when generating bibliographies and locating research on philosophical topics. Given that it is broader in scope than Philosopher’s Index, embracing all of the arts & humanities, and given that it is not exhausting or exclusive, it is a good idea to use this database in combination with Philosopher’s Index, and perhaps even Social Sciences Citation Index and Science Citation Index, depending on the topic or person you’re researching.