Robbins Library Notes

Good morning, readers!

There have been some additions and updates to the philosophy journals available on JSTOR:

• Synthese, 1936-2005.  You can also access the same range of back issues via SpringerLink.
• The full run of The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic is now available, with no moving wall.
• Linguistics & Philosophy, 1977-2005, and its predecessor, Foundations of Language, 1965-1975.
• Erkenntnis, 1975-2005, along with The Journal of Unified Science (Erkenntnis), 1939-1940, Erkenntnis, 1930-1937, and Annalen der Philosophie und philosophischen Kritik, 1925-1929.

Enjoy!

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. 

Breaking news for my Harvard readers: I have just been informed, and have confirmed, that back issues of American Philosophical Quarterly (from 1964-2002) are now available via JSTOR.

The HOLLIS record does not yet indicate this access, so, for now, you will have to login to JSTOR directly, then browse or search for the journal to locate the articles that you want.

Please let me know if you would like any help with this.  I’m happy to do so!

Good morning, readers, and welcome back after the weekend!

Breaking news: Back issues of the heavily-used and very important journal, Philosophical Studies, are now available to Harvard users via JSTOR.

At present, all back issues from 1950 (Vol. 1, no. 1) to 2004 (Vol. 121, no.3) can be accessed via JSTOR.

This means that we now have complete electronic access to the full run of the journal, through JSTOR, SpringerLink, and Academic Search Premier.

Let the rejoicing commence…

Good morning, readers, and welcome back from the weekend!

I had some final thoughts over the weekend about last week’s “It’s Not All on JSTOR” posts that I want to share with you this morning.

First off, I’m not picking on JSTOR in particular — indeed, I could have written “It’s Not All on Academic Search Premier,” or, “It’s Not All on Google Scholar,” or, “It’s Not All on [insert name of database or search engine one might use exclusively].”  My intention, rather, was to highlight the dangers of using one and only resource when trying to do philosophical research.

Secondly, as St. Thomas Aquinas said in the Prooemium to De Ente et Essentia, a small mistake at the beginning leads to major errors in the end.  Keeping this in mind, the real point of these posts is to focus on the how of searching, i.e., how you set up your searches, how you think about searching, how you formulate your research questions when you start, how you determine where to look, and so forth.  In other words, make sure your searches, even if for only one article, are set up properly right from the start. If you stop and take a few minutes to think about this process before you start searching, you may find that, over time, your searching becomes easier and less frustrating.  Following the guidelines that I’ve laid out, you will find that you will spend less time searching for materials in the wrong places, and more time find them in the right places.

The good news for my philosophically-trained readers is that we are trained to make sure we have our questions clearly stated and articulated right from the beginning.  So, it’s really just a matter of taking a skill we use in one context, and employing it in a slightly different one.

Thoughts?

Good morning, readers!

Yesterday, I published a post on the pitfalls of having JSTOR as the sole tool in your research toolbox.  Here’s the second part that post, wherein I offer a few tips to help you kick the JSTOR-only habit:

• First and foremost, repeat the mantra: “It’s Not All on JSTOR.” The number of resources to which Harvard has access, or owns, that can help you with your philosophical research is staggering.  Harvard has the largest academic library in the world, and the second largest library in the world, after the Library of Congress.  JSTOR is but the tip of the iceberg.  Don’t let it be the only tool in your research toolbox.

• Define your question clearly. Remember the first step of my Searching 101: Basic Guidelines post: ask yourself — “What exactly am I looking for?” and make sure that this is absolutely clear.  For, if you are absolutely clear what you are looking for when you start your search, then you will likely have an excellent sense of where to find it.

Thus, if it’s blueberries that you’re after, wonderful.  But don’t go looking in a pear tree for a blueberry bush.

Likewise, if you are looking for an older article among the 34 philosophy journals on JSTOR, then, by all means, go there to retrieve it.  But if it’s a more recent article, or if the journal isn’t on JSTOR, save yourself some time and frustration by trying another database or HOLLIS.

• Print out the list of philosophy periodicals housed on JSTOR. You might want to think about printing off the list of philosophy journals housed on JSTOR, and keep it near your computer for ready reference.  They have a nice chart up on the site now, listing the journal and years of coverage.  If the journal you want isn’t listed there, try HOLLIS to see if it’s available via another source or medium.  (See the next point.)

• Check HOLLIS.  HOLLIS can be a valuable tool for determining the online access and coverage (if any) of a journal.

Example: You want to determine the online coverage of the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.  Search for “proceedings of the aristotelian society” in HOLLIS, using the “Journal Titles” tab, and setting the search to “Journal Title Beginning With….”  In the results list, click on the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (Online) link.  In the record, you will see a “Internet Link” heading, with “Locations/Orders: Availability” under it.  Click on the “Availability” link.  On the page that appears, you will see a listing of the complete electronic coverage.  (In this particular case, the record has not been updated yet, to include the older editions held in JSTOR.)

I strongly recommend using HOLLIS’ “Expanded Search” screen, as it can save a lot of time and energy by targeting your search.  If you would like to learn more about how to really put HOLLIS through its paces, please let me know.  I’d be happy to show you how.

• For larger searches for papers, theses, and the like, combine JSTOR searches with searches on other databases. If you aren’t familiar with these databases, please feel free to contact me to set up a tutorial.

• If unsure, ask your friendly, neighborhood librarian, i.e., me. I am here to help, and I am very understanding about how daunting technology and searching can be, having been a Luddite in a former life.*  I like giving tutorials, to individuals, groups, classes, whomever.  So please, yes, bother me questions about this stuff.  Please request training sessions, or consider adding a bibliographic instruction component to your courses.  Also, I love reference questions — especially the difficult and complicated ones.  These are the queries I like to sink my searching teeth into, so send those along to me, as well, if you would like some help.

Are these tips of help, readers?  What do you think?  Any others that I should add in?

*This fact causes no end of amusement to several friends, who knew me back in those days, and who now see me using and promoting technology as part of my job.

Good morning, readers, and welcome back after the long holiday weekend!

I debated a bit on whether or not to write this post, “It’s Not All on JSTOR,” mostly because I don’t want to come across as being scolding or hectoring.  I hope that I won’t be such.  So, let’s give this a whirl…

I’ve been thinking a good deal about the topic of only using JSTOR for a few weeks now — mostly because I keep observing how frequently people go automatically to JSTOR for every research need, regardless of the question being asked.  I also keep hearing a great deal of frustration when something cannot be located via JSTOR.

This led me to wonder if there was a way for me to help.  Was there something that I could write that would encourage my readers to augment their use of JSTOR by tapping into the vast number of resources available to them at Harvard?  Furthermore, I want to help ease the frustration and irritation at not being able to quickly locate research materials by offering some tips, tips that include how to search as well as where to search.

Thus, it’s with these aims in mind that I am writing this two-part post.

From the start, I want to state that JSTOR is a great database for philosophical research — but only for certain kinds of questions.

As I have written elsewhere, JSTOR is a great database to use when you are looking for older, “classic” articles among the 34 titles that the database currently houses.  However, if you’re looking for more recent work, JSTOR will be of no assistance to you, as it is an archival database.  Its purpose and function is to archive older materials that are otherwise not available electronically or in hard copy.  It is not meant to house recent articles.

Also, JSTOR can only hold those articles for which the respective publishers have given permission to be housed in the database.  We are a long way away from having a good electronic repository of older philosophical journal materials, given that so many still fall under the purview of copyright.

Thus, if the only research tool that you are using is JSTOR, you may be setting yourself up for research headaches and difficulties.  Who needs that?

So, how can you break out of the “It’s All on JSTOR” mindset?  Stay tuned: tomorrow’s post will provide you answers!

[To be continued...]

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!

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!

As promised, I am writing my first weekly post that gives an overview of a database. The subject of this post will be JSTOR, as it is a popular database among faculty and students.

• What it is: “JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization with a dual mission to create and maintain a trusted archive of important scholarly journals, and to provide access to these journals as widely as possible. JSTOR offers researchers the ability to retrieve high-resolution, scanned images of journal issues and pages as they were originally designed, printed, and illustrated. The journals archived in JSTOR span many disciplines….” (From the JSTOR site)

• Strengths:

• Historical Coverage – JSTOR is a valuable resource, offering the user the ability to search back issues of journals in 47 disciplines, mostly in the humanities and social sciences, though there are collections in the empirical sciences as well. JSTOR offers high-quality PDF versions of articles from these journals, some of which go back to the mid-nineteenth century.

• Cross-disciplinary searching — JSTOR allows the user to search across several or all of its disciplines at once. This may be especially useful, for example, for those researching topics in philosophy and law.

• Weaknesses:

• Lack of currency — JSTOR is not a current issue database, as noted in its description: “Because of JSTOR’s archival mission, there is a gap, typically from 1 to 5 years, between the most recently published journal issue and the back issues available in JSTOR.” Users looking for current issues of journals should not, therefore, use JSTOR to see if these are available. It sounds obvious, but I get a number of requests for assistance in locating current issues and articles because patrons “couldn’t find it in JSTOR and wanted to know why.”

• Limited scope — The philosophy collection only contains 26 journals at present. While there are some big-name journals archived on JSTOR, such as the Journal of Philosophy, Mind, Noûs and Philosophical Review, there are other important journals that are not included, such as Philosophical Studies and Kant-Studien. In light of this, users may want to temper their expectations of what they will find archived on JSTOR, a complete list of which is located here.

• Searching — It is not always clear that JSTOR is searching both terms when using the Boolean operator “AND” in the Advanced Search option. If you are turning up multiple and irrelevant hits when searching, it may be more the result of JSTOR’s search algorithm than anything else.

• Using JSTOR:

• Search Options — There are three search options in JSTOR:

1. Basic Search – good for general searches to get a broad overview of a topic.
2. Advanced Search — good for more focused searching across or within disciplines.
3. Article Locator — good for locating specific articles by an author.

• Using JSTOR by itself — JSTOR works well by itself when you have a specific article that you are looking for. From the Search link, click on “Article Locator,” and enter in as much information as you know. Using this search screen will often take you right away to the article that you need, rather than having to scroll through the long lists that generally come back when using the Basic Search.

• Using JSTOR in conjunction with other databases — outside of locating specific articles, JSTOR is best used in conjunction with other databases, such as Academic Search Premier (ASP), Project MUSE, Synergy, and the like. Why? Given JSTOR’s lack of currency and limited scope, users will find their research results limited if they use it alone. Articles of potential interest that are not archived on JSTOR may never be located as a result. And, users will never locate current articles using JSTOR, though the database is now providing links to external sites providing electronic content of current issues.

A better strategy would be to use JSTOR in tandem with Philosopher’s Index and Arts & Humanities Citation Index, to develop a bibliography of potentially useful research. Once you have these, use JSTOR along with ASP, Project Muse, and other current databases to retrieve these articles for review.

None of this is to disparage JSTOR. It is a very useful database. However, given its limitations, it is generally a good idea to use it as one tool among many in your research toolbox, rather than as the sole tool.

Please let me know what you think of this post, and if it is helpful. Next week, I will give an overview of Academic Search Premier.