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Booklist - Reference Books Bulletin
School Library Journal, August 2004

Review from: School Library Journal, August 2004

Professional Tools—Each of the H.W. Wilson Standard Catalogs, cornerstones for collection development for decades, is a selective annotated list of recommended titles arranged by Dewey Decimal numbers. Librarians using specific evaluative criteria have chosen the books. Each catalog provides annotated entries for thousands of books and other resources, offering data valuable for collection development and maintenance, information verification, selection and purchasing, readers' advisory, and general reference. The standard catalogs can also serve as guidelines in weeding collections. An annual paperback volume containing approximately 600 titles supplements the basic, hardcover volume. A new master catalog is published every five years. Author, title, and subject indexes are included.

These additional online features make the catalogs even more valuable for collection development and curriculum support: Entries link to additional review excerpts from Wilson's Book Review Digest database. The review links in the Standard Catalogs online are to citations, review excerpts, and full text from Book Review Digest Plus, which incorporates all the book reviews in all the Wilson databases—at no extra cost.

• Retrieve records in machine-readable MARC format.

• Instantly check your library's holdings via a link to your OPAC.

• Search descriptive and critical annotations for specific words.

• Search simultaneously all subscribed Standard Catalogs or other Wilson databases.

At this time the MARC records can be viewed, but not downloaded. By the end of

2004 Wilson will have a new MARC record display that will allow customers to copy and save the MARC records. Hopefully the MARC records can be saved in a file type that can be imported into the popular school library media center automation programs.

The Children’s Catalog includes fiction and nonfiction, story collections, picture books and magazines for readers in pre-school through sixth grade. Both the Middle and Junior High School Library Catalog (grades 5-8), and Senior High School Library Catalog (grades 9-12) includes fiction, nonfiction, CD-ROMs, curriculum support materials, and professional aids for school library media specialists. Entries in all catalogs provide complete bibliographic data, price, subject headings, a descriptive annotation, and evaluative quotations from a review when available. The list of recommended Web sites includes both subscription databases and free Web sites, including the publisher's name and phone number, price, grade level, and URL.

Basic searching of the catalogs is by natural language or Boolean operators. Advanced searching combines Boolean searching with the option to narrow the term search to one of over 25 options such as: author, reading level, physical description, etc. In addition, you can limit advanced searching by dates (enter years) document type, and physical description (both drop down menus).

School districts with centralized processing should subscribe to the online versions of these databases. Individual schools would have to determine the extent to which the catalog(s) would be used. Some factors to consider might be extra funding to improve the collection, validation of the "worthlessness" of the existing collection, improving specific and weak areas of the collection, etc. The Catalogs are an established resource for evaluating a collection in general, for timeliness, coverage, etc. They are especially useful to schools with limited budgets—and pay for themselves easily—by assuring that you don't spend money on anything that's not good. As for weeding, just because a title drops out of one of the Catalogs doesn't mean it should be weeded. That depends on many factors. But the Catalogs can alert you to the existence of a newer or better book on the subject.

Reviewed by Terrence E. Young, Jr.

Review from: Booklist - Reference Books Bulletin
Date reviewed: April 15, 2001

Children's Catalog, Electronic Edition. [Internet database]. 2000. Wilson, pricing from $115 [http://www.hwwilsonweb.com]. 

In the past five or so years there has been an increasing tendency to convert our favorite print products to electronic form, not always to the benefit of the user or the products themselves. In addition, the cost of these products has often been prohibitive for the libraries that own the print versions. Wilson has recently converted its widely used Children's Catalog and Middle and Junior High School Library Catalog into slick Web products and at a price that should be affordable for most of the print subscribers: the price of $115 for one simultaneous user is the same as the cost of the print versions, although the online charge is an annual fee.

Children's Catalog, Electronic Edition contains records from 8,000 fiction and nonfiction works, story collections, picture books, and magazines for children from preschool through grade six, encompassing the seventeenth edition of Children's Catalog (1996) and its four annual supplements. Middle and Junior High School Library Catalog, Electronic Edition contains records for 6,000 fiction and nonfiction works and collections for grades five through eight from the eighth edition of Middle and Junior High School Library Catalog (2000). Both electronic versions will incorporate future annual supplements and new print editions.

Searching is available at several levels, including Browse, Search, and Search Plus (Boolean), with links to records in either citation form or full display. It is possible to limit and sort the records using a dozen different fields, including not just author and title but also Dewey number, subject, document type, language, series title, and year of publication, although it takes a sophisticated user to accomplish some of the possible limits. Searches can be conducted in just one of the catalogs or in both; in the latter case results are displayed in one combined list. All items include abridged Dewey cataloging for author, title, and subject, with links to MARC records. Where possible the records are also linked to excerpts of reviews of the books from Wilson's Book Review Digest. Links are also available to a library's holding at no additional charge. Records can be saved, e-mailed, and printed.

One of the best searchable features available in Children's Catalog is reading level, supplied by the book's publishers. Although not all the records contain this information, it is extremely helpful to be able to identify books by topic and age level at the same time.

The navigation bar is always available, with an option to view a search history and combine or refine a search. In addition, the user can open Adobe Acrobat versions of the print catalogs, allowing one to page through the Dewey classifications to identify specific subject headings. A minor drawback is that Wilson's Help index is not database specific, although one can find particulars by clicking on a Database Information icon.

The Board is not always excited about the advantages of an online product conversion over its print counterpart, but these databases are recommended to librarians and libraries at all levels. They are easy to use, economical, and make so much possible for anyone working with children's literature and collection development.