Book Review Digest Plus Review

Review from: Choice, August 2003

One of the nine Wilson databases searchable through WilsonWeb, BRDP is a remarkable tool for locating review material. The user has more options than before as the architects of WilsonWeb strive to overcome the criticisms lodged over the years against other databases that artificially limited the ability of a user to customize a search statement and to take full advantage of the power of the computer to manipulate words, phrases, and fields. Seemingly every tagged field of any review is available as a search delimiter. The simplicity that many searchers will seek is found in the basic mode with its Boolean and natural language options; others will want the advanced mode with three boxes, each with a 20-item pull-down menu. There are 18 items by which search results may be sorted, 33 (including abbreviations) for physical description options, and six for document type, in addition to date. Searches can be limited to peer-reviewed, full text, and page image. Users get clear citations to reviews, which in turn lead to various options for viewing, saving, and e-mailing. Local managers can establish links to local OPACs; SFX technology is available. Collection development librarians will appreciate the capability to customize displays by such fields as LC or DDC, reading level, and language....Although this is clearly a work in progress, Wilson is to be commended for its great effort in design. Users will want to test the database thoroughly; because of the greater power and complexity, student users will need assistance to take full advantage of the database.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and higher; professionals.

Review Excerpts from: Online (O’Leary Online Column), July/August 2003

"Wilson is one of the great, traditional names in reference publishing, with over 100 years of service to libraries and a deserved reputation for quality in reference publishing and database design….Book Review Digest Plus, (BRD+) is a greatly expanded version of Wilson’s classic print title, Book Review Digest. For decades, Book Review Digest has been the first choice for quick reference on book reviews. As a database, it’s available on EBSCOhost, OCLC, and SilverPlatter. It indexes 109 principal book-review-containing periodicals, including major newspapers and general-interest magazines, as well as book review journals like Booklist, Choice, and Kirkus. In addition to citations, the Book Review Digest database contains selected excerpts, making it a reference source as well as a finding tool.

The Plus version, BRD+, multiplies its predecessor’s range by including book reviews from 11 other Wilson databases, including Applied Science & Technology Full Text, Art Full Text, Biological & Agricultural Index Plus, Education Full Text, General Science Full Text, Humanities Full Text, Index to Legal Periodicals & Books Full Text, Library Literature & Information Science Full Text, Readers’ Guide Full Text, Social Sciences Full Text, and Wilson Business Full Text. Reviews appear as citations, excerpts, or full text, depending upon their occurrence in the source database. This extends the database’s coverage from mainstream publishing into research, academic, and specialty publishing across every major discipline and brings the number of reviews up to 1,200,000, representing over half a million books. BRD+ is available exclusively on the recently updated and improved WilsonWeb online service….

[BRD+ does] a thorough job of reviewing best-sellers and other books that have received noteworthy public attention, with BRD+ specifically intent upon providing both positive and negative reviews and providing reviews for challenged books. BRD+ will also cover virtually every significant academic and technical book published in English….BRD+ dominates on retrospective coverage….BRD+ coverage starts in 1983, giving it 20 years of indexing. Excerpts and full text occur more frequently in recent years….

BRD+ has a complete, professional online service search system, including Boolean and relevance options, and subject indexing. Wilson also provides a library holdings indicator that links to individual library OPACs to inform patrons whether the library owns the periodical that published the review….

BRD+ is an excellent tool for obtaining professional reviews on nearly all significant popular, academic, and professional titles. —Mick O’Leary

Review from Reference Reviews, v. 17, No. 5, 2003

Book Review Digest Plus (BRD+) contains all of the content from H.W. Wilson's traditional Book Review Digest database (1983-present) and adds to it book reviews from 11 of Wilson's other indexes, covering arts, sciences, social sciences, business and the humanities. The expanded database now includes citations to more than one million reviews for over 700,000 books. In addition to the review citations, the database contains excerpts from over 129,000 reviews (as in the original Book Review Digest), as well as bibliographical records for books themselves. The existence of the book records allows citations for a given book to be grouped together, which is a great advantage to the searcher….

This and other WilsonWeb databases (all reissued in Fall 2002 with a new interface) offer some incredibly powerful retrieval features, including proximity operators, soundex ("sounds like") searching, case-sensitivity, synonym searching and many more specialized searches in addition to the usual array of Boolean, truncation and phrase options. Although the initial release of the new WilsonWeb interface had a problematic search syntax, the March 2003 update (released just before this review went to press) alleviated many of these problems. The new interface allows for simple, user-friendly Boolean and phrase searching as well as more syntactically intricate retrieval for sophisticated searchers. The improved relevancy ranking features also represent a significant advance. Those who were dismayed by earlier versions of the new interface will want to have a second look….

The content will be welcome at any academic or large public library.