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Choice, March 2006
School Library Journal, February 2005
NetConnect/Library Journal, Spring 2003

With indexing of 460 periodicals as far back as 1984 and full text of 131 journals from 1997, Art Full Text’s coverage of fine, decorative, and commercial art is international in scope for periodicals published in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Dutch. Users search the product using basic and advanced functions and a subject thesaurus developed specifically for Wilson’s art databases. Searchers may limit results by date, physical description, and document type (e.g., art reproductions); these options help researchers zero in on a single artist or an individual work. Searches may also be limited by full-text and PDF page images, and by whether an article is peer-reviewed. Daily updates make this product imperative for the student or scholar researching timely topic.

In Art Index Retrospective: 1929-1984, 55 years of art journalism are accessible to researchers. Also covering fine, decorative, and commercial art, this resource provides an opportunity for long-forgotten and underused information from print editions of Art Index to resurface and benefit students, educators, and art historians while stimulating use of older periodical collections as well. Like Art Full Text, this database offers articles in five languages in addition to English. Information is retrieved using WilsonWeb’s seamless interface, with its All Smart Search feature that rewards beginners with results comparable to those found by an experienced searcher. Wilson’s in-house indexing reconciles subject headings and name variants to ensure comprehensive results. The interface’s search utility automatically switches search terms like "action painting" to "abstract expressionism" so that users get results despite their lack of knowledge of preferred terminology. Art Index Retrospective is another indispensable resource for scholars.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Both databases: for lower-level undergraduates and above.

Reviewed by: R. Tolley-Stokes, East Tennessee State University

Review from: School Library Journal, February 2005

Grades 11 & Up: Scholarly and international in scope, Art Full Text offers indexing of 460 publications (1984-current) plus abstracts (1994-current) and full text of 131 journals

(1997-current) from periodicals published throughout the world. The abstracts range from 50 to 300 words and describe the content and scope of the source articles. In addition to Western art, AFT offers broad coverage of contemporary art around the world, including new artists, exhibition reviews, non-Western art, and feminist criticism. Topic coverage includes advertising art, antiques, archaeology, architecture and architectural history, art history, contemporary art, city planning, costume, crafts, decorative arts, folk art, graphic arts, industrial design, interior design, landscape architecture, motion pictures, museology, non-Western art, painting, photography, pottery, sculpture, television, textiles, and video.

Periodical coverage includes English-language periodicals, yearbooks, and museum bulletins covering film and television, fine arts, and design, as well as periodicals published in French, Italian, German, Japanese, Spanish, Dutch, and Swedish. In addition to articles, the database indexes reproductions of works of art that appear in indexed periodicals to assist users focusing on a single artist or individual works. There are links to Web sites cited in the articles.

Searching is accomplished quickly by selecting either the "Natural Language" search or "Boolean" search button. The results, displayed with full bibliographic information, are sorted first by relevancy and then in descending chronological order with the most recent entries shown first. Users who are unfamiliar with art terminology should search using the subject thesaurus developed specifically for Wilson's art databases. School library media specialists can use the "Customize Display" feature to make selections to fine how search result records should be displayed. The "Advanced Search" feature offers numerous options to customize a search. In libraries subscribing to multiple

Wilson databases, searches can be conducted in a single or multiple databases.

Art Full Text is a core database for art research. Its companion database, Art Index Retrospective, indexes back to 1929. These two databases are a major art and architecture research resource. AFT can be an invaluable resource for students and art lovers. It will enable school library media centers that have a limited collection of art periodicals to provide access to a broad range of art literature. School districts with strong art programs or creative arts school will benefit from a subscription.

Review from: NetConnect/Library Journal, Spring 2003

Content: Art Full Text provides coverage of the expected art design, folk art, industrial design, interior design, museum management, pottery, textiles, and motion pictures, television, and video.

Art Full Text has matured in stages-indexing coverage began in 1984, abstracts were added in 1994, and full text arrived in 1997. The database now contains over 400,000 records from some 400 international arts journals and periodicals, yearbooks, and museum bulletins. Roughly a third of the titles are peer-reviewed. Coverage has expanded to include the international arts scene as well as emerging scholarly areas such as feminist art criticism. Database contents are updated daily. Libraries serious about supporting arts scholars and students should consider adding Wilson's Art Index Retrospective: 1929-1984.

The Wilson web site does not state a figure for full-text coverage; sampling showed that about 25 percent of the titles were available online. The newly implemented SFX-based WilsonLink feature enables searchers to expand on this core by linking to additional full-text titles in any non-Wilson, OpenURL-compliant resource. A Library Holdings feature helps direct researchers into that "archaic" full-text format-the print journal collection-and there's a fee-based document delivery capability.

Searchability: In late 2002, Wilson upgraded the WilsonWeb interface, introducing full-text searching, a natural-language mode, and a database-specific thesaurus. On login, WilsonWeb drops the searcher straight into Advanced Search mode, with three search boxes with Boolean operators at the searcher's disposal. The default operator between the search template boxes is AND, with OR and NOT available as pull-down options. There are buttons for sorting results by relevancy or date, along with a "custom" pull-down menu to sort results by such fields as Artist, Title, Document Type, or Journal Name.

In libraries offering multiple Wilson databases, the user may conduct searches in a single database or in more than one. Checking off the Art Full Text box produces an expanded menu of limiting options. Users may search Any Year (the default setting), the past 12 months, or a specific range of dates. An auxiliary group of boxes permits limiting by full-text (or full-image) and peer-reviewed journals. Document Type and Physical Description (Illustration, Plate) round out the limits.

In Advanced Search mode, Wilson makes Sort by Relevance the default. This is a logical choice since the default search field ALL includes not just keywords from the bibliographic data, subject headings, and abstract but from the full text of the document as well. Besides displaying the relevancy percentage, the results list uses icons to indicate if an article is available online or in PDF format, if it is peer-reviewed, and if there are library holdings. Another icon indicates the presence of web links. WilsonWeb offers the accomplished searcher extensive tools for building precision into a search strategy. Truncation and the standard Proximity Operators just scratch the surface. Concept Operators integrate the ability to combine search terms with the ability to turn relevancy on and off; Evidence Operators perform "intelligent" word searches on homonyms, stems, approximate matches, and wildcards; and Score Operators enable the searcher to manipulate the factors used to compute the relevancy ranking. Natural Language search mode comes outfitted with an additional set of operators, including the ability to find similar records, a fairly standard feature of many web search engines. Finally, searchers can call on special Modifiers like case sensitivity and word order to further refine a search strategy.

Navigation in Art Full Text is somewhat awkward. There is no button for refining or modifying a search and no button for moving to the next or previous item in a results list when viewing a full record. Searching the Thesaurus for African masks we were instructed that Masks, African was the appropriate subject heading. Eleven general items resulted but more intriguing was the link to 61 Narrower Terms. Clicking here broke this listing down into headings from Baga masks to Zande masks.

There is an on-screen command within the Thesaurus, called Get Marked, which can create confusion. In some systems, marked subject headings are pasted directly into the user's current search strategy. In WilsonWeb, checking a subject heading box and clicking on Get Marked moves the selected heading or headings onto a static screen with no apparent relation to the current search, no links to search results, and no hint about what to do next. If the searcher happens to try the Search Marked Subject at this point, he or she will be rewarded with a screen of ORed search results.

To test the natural-language searching capability, we formulated the African masks search in Basic Mode: how are masks used in African cultures. The search produced thousands of hits, with relevancy rankings ranging from 96 % on down. The search found variant terms (masks, masked, masking), which indicates some sophistication. But some items seemed far less relevant than others with the same ranking. Second on the results list, with a 96 % relevancy ranking, was an article from 2002: "African-American self-portrait: a crisis in identity and modernity." Keywords like masks and cultures appear nowhere in the bibliographic information, abstract, or subject descriptors. Examining the text revealed Wilson's wisdom in linking full-text searching by default to relevancy ranking; the article contained a passage on the artist Malvin Gray Johnson's use of African masks in his paintings. Not precisely what we were searching for, but a dramatic indication of how deeply the system digs to retrieve information. Search terms (including, unfortunately, those that are usually "stop words") from the natural-language search statement are bolded for quick recognition.

Price: Consult the company for specific information on pricing and discounts. For comparative purposes, a site license for a college the size of Union College (with a campus population of approximately 2300 FTE) would be approximately $8000 annually. Wilson includes the SFX technology at no additional charge and offers a free 30-day trial of the database.

Complementing the current database with Art Index Retrospective: 1929-1984 would add a one-time fee of $10,495; budget an additional five percent for annual maintenance. Wilson also offers subscriptions to the AMICO Library and Union's cost would be $1150 annually.

Who Needs It? The relatively low percentage of full-text titles means that this resource must be backed up with a strong arts journal collection. That suggests a target audience of research libraries at institutions with commitments to arts and humanities programs. But the research material that is here plus the presence of the library holdings feature, links to external databases, and an integrated document delivery all conspire to make Art Full Text a highly viable arts resource. Couple it with subscriptions to Art Index Retrospective: 1929-1984 and possibly The AMICO Library of art images, and you will significantly enhance the lives of your serious arts researchers.

Reviewed by Gail Golderman and Bruce Connolly