Digging Deeper Still: Coverage of Archaeology from the United Kingdom and Ireland from 1950 to 2000+ in Discipline-Specific and Subject-Oriented Online Indexes

Unearthing Archaeology: A Study of the Recent Coverage of Selected English-Language Archaeology Journals by Multi-Subject Indexes and byAnthropological Literature

“…Two previous studies involving the index noted sharp downturns in its coverage for recently published volumes (Tyler et al 2006a(Tyler et al , 2006b, and the graphs in Figures 7 and 8 show similar downturns occurring around the coverage for 2002 and running to 2007. A close analysis of this study's raw data discovered 51 titles for which AL had provided regular indexing in the past whose current indexing was one to six years behind the most recently published volumes.…”

“…AL is an index for the Tozzer Library's holdings, and this tying of the index's coverage to the holdings of a particular library's collection has a deleterious effect upon its coverage in this instance. As has been noted elsewhere, almost all of the periodicals that comprise the UKI subgroup are or have been subscribed to by a library in Harvard's system, and AL's indexers could easily remedy the index's failings in this area by expanding the coverage that they offer to pertinent titles selected from Harvard's other libraries (Tyler et al 2006b). Fortunately for archaeology researchers interested in the archaeology of the British Isles, AL's deficiencies could likely be covered by a subscription to biab online: the british and irish archaeological bibliography, but not, surprisingly enough, by a subscription to the index of the Anthropology Library at the British Museum, Anthropological Index Online (Tyler et al 2006b).…”

“…In the third and fourth such studies, Tyler et al (2006aTyler et al ( , 2006b) examined the coverage provided to ninety-three archaeology and archaeology-related journals and magazines from the United States over a roughly fifty-year interval (1950-2000+) by twelve online discipline-specific and subject-oriented indexes: two that serve anthropology generally (Anthropological Literature On-Line and Anthropological Index On-Line); one that serves conservation and museum studies (Art and Archaeology Technical Abstracts On-Line); two that serve the geosciences and geography (GeoRef and GEOBASE); two that serve history (America: History and Life and Historical Abstracts); two serve art and art history (Art Abstracts) and Bibliography of the History of Art); one serves architecture (Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals); one that covers languages and literature (Modern Language Association International Bibliography); and, finally, one that serves the arts and humanities more generally (Arts and Humanities Search, an Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) product that provides access to ISI's Arts and Humanities Citation Index from 1980 onward). For the second study, the authors added a thirteenth index, biab online: the british and irish archaeological bibliography, and repeated the process with eighty-nine similar journals and magazines from the United Kingdom and Ireland (this second study also included several appendixes in which the authors repeated the study for a third time for a list of thirty serials from Australia and New Zealand, Canada, and the Republic of South Africa).…”

EBSCO'sCommunication & Mass Media Complete: An Appreciable Improvement Over Previous Communication Studies Indexing?

“…The authors discovered, regarding the British and Irish titles, that BIAB gave solid coverage to the most widely subscribed-to titles and comparatively exceptional coverage to the smaller association and county titles; that AL, AATA Online, Bibliography of the History of Art, and The Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals provided some worthwhile, if uneven, coverage, but that the rest of the indexes performed very poorly. The supplemental results suggested, again, that AL was the best source and that Anthropological Index Online, the Royal Anthropological Institute's index of the holdings of The Anthropology Library at The British Museum, was a close second (Tyler, Potter et al 2006b). …”

“…The study found that almost all of the indexes provided some worthwhile coverage, especially of the most widely subscribed-to third of the journal titles and of those journals designated as "core," but that the Tozzer Library's Anthropological Literature (AL) database was the only index that provided substantial coverage of the journals in almost all categories. AL's coverage, however, was also found generally to be gently moving down toward 50% coverage of the ninety-three titles over the fifty-year interval and "turning a bit more sharply toward 50% coverage over the past five to ten year interval" (Tyler, Potter et al 2006a). 2 A follow-up study, "Digging Deeper Still," which was available in the following issue of BSSL, by Tyler, Potter, Leach, Kreifels, and Turner examined the coverage given over the same fifty-year-plus interval to eighty-nine archaeology and archaeology-related journals from the United Kingdom and Ireland, and it added a thirteenth index, British & Irish Archaeological Bibliography (BIAB).…”