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Review from: NetConnect/Library Journal, Summer 2003
Review from: The
Charleston Advisor, Vol. 4, No. 4, April 2003
NetConnect/Library Journal, Summer 2003
With OmniFile Full Text,
Mega Edition, H.W. Wilson delivers research-quality information in a
broad range of academic disciplines. OmniFile bundles the Education, General Science, Humanities, Readers' Guide, Social Sciences, and Wilson
Business Full Text databases with a full-text-only subset from
the Applied Science & Technology, Art, Biological &
Agricultural Index Plus, Index to Legal Periodicals & Books, and Library Literature & Information Science full-text databases. The math
is fairly impressive: 3,067 titles abstracted, of which 1350 are
peer-reviewed and 1,619 are available in full text. Retrospective coverage
goes back to 1982 for indexing, 1984 for abstracting, and full text
starting to appear in 1994.
The SFX-based WilsonLink
feature extends OmniFile's reach even further (and at no extra
cost) by enabling a searcher to connect to additional full-text titles in
any OpenURL-compliant resource to which the library subscribes. The
Library Holdings feature helps direct researchers into the library's print
and microforms journal holdings. The Wilson approach has always been to
reflect core library resources in its bibliographic products, so a Library
Holdings check will typically produce a successful and satisfying outcome
for the searcher. A built-in fee-based document delivery capability
provides the ultimate backup when other routes fail.
Searchability
Is bioethics indexed with
philosophy, biology, medicine, law, technology, or political science? The
beauty of OmniFile Full Text, Mega Edition is that the student
researcher can go right to work without having to make judgment calls.
Even though Wilson overhauled
the WilsonWeb interface in late 2002, we are impressed with its ongoing
efforts to enhance the system's capabilities. Searchers enter OmniFile in
Advanced Search mode where "All-Smart Search" has been installed
as the default in an attempt to steer the user to the most relevant
research material. WilsonWeb achieves this precision in All-Smart Search
because Wilson's own hierarchy of search rules is working in concert with
the previously introduced Verity Relevancy-Ranking Algorithm. Verity ranks
relevancy based on density (i.e., how frequently a term occurs relative to
the size of the document), the proximity of the search terms, and
completeness (which considers how frequently multiple search terms occur).
Wilson's new search rules take
advantage of the company's indexing practices and recalculate and further
refine relevancy based on the importance of the field where a search term
occurs. Terms appearing in a subject heading weigh more than the same
terms appearing in a title or abstract, or in the text.
Making the switch from keyword
mentality to All-Smart Search, though, does require a bit of study on the
part of the user. Boolean searches and truncation-longtime staples-are not
supported within the All-Smart Search text entry boxes. Wilson's online
advice for constructing a Boolean search-get out of Advanced mode and into
Basic Search- is somewhat counterintuitive.
Despite the merging of a
number of diverse databases, the thesaurus feature is still operational.
Some of the thesaurus headings, however, had no associated records, and
clicking on what looks like a perfectly legitimate link sometimes produces
a cryptic error message and no results. Searchers do have considerable
control over how results are sorted and displayed.
Price
Potential subscribers should
consult the company for pricing information.
A free 30-day trial is available.
Who Needs It?
Adding 1,600 full-text titles
gives most smaller academic libraries a nice shot in the arm. OmniFile
should serve undergraduate liberal arts programs—and particularly
humanities and social sciences students very well. Obviously, the emphasis
on research journals is also a big plus for this audience and some public
libraries as well. OmniFile comes in a variety of configurations.
The Select version of the product-which strips OmniFile down
to just the 1600 titles licensed for full-text delivery-may appeal to some
institutions. Losing indexing and abstracting coverage to the other half
of the database would be a big sacrifice given both the WilsonWeb holdings
feature and the likelihood of a good match with the core titles in your
periodicals collection. We favor Mega for libraries that can afford
it.
Reviewed by: Gail
Golderman & Bruce Connolly
Review
from: The Charleston Advisor, Vol. 4, No. 4, April 2003
“WilsonWeb contains cutting edge
technologies such as seamless linking to other vendors’ databases’ full
text titles, relevancy ranking based on meta-tags ascribed to records, and
natural language searching capabilities. It also is probably the database
with the largest variety of options for users and librarians when it comes
to searching, limiting, and customizing…."
H.W. Wilson is a long established indexing
and abstracting publisher, providing libraries with long-standing indexes
to magazines and journals for over a hundred years, including, for
example, the long-established Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature
and indexes that have benefited higher education institutions such as the
Humanities Index, the Social Sciences Index, the
Education Index, and the Biological and Agricultural Index….In
the Fall of 2002, H.W. Wilson launched its latest version of WilsonWeb, a
new, improved version that incorporates the latest in Web technologies.
The new version of WilsonWeb has noteworthy enhancements including
“WilsonLink SFX database linking technology,” natural language searching
capabilities, relevancy searching based on metatags ascribed to its
thousands and thousands of records, customization options,
database-specific subject thesauri with excellent cross-referencing, and
more….This review mainly focuses on OmniFile Full Text, Mega Edition,
WilsonWeb’s major, multisubject periodicals database….
Critical Evaluation
OmniFile Full Text, Mega Edition would work well in public
libraries with a large print collection and can be seen as a
supplementary, general database for academic institutions. The database
contains all indexing/abstracting and the full text of six of its
databases: Education Full Text, General Science Full Text, Humanities Full
Text, Social Sciences Full Text, Readers’ Guide Full Text, and Wilson
Business Full Text. Furthermore, it contains all full text titles
available from five additional periodical databases: Applied Science and
Technology Full Text, Art Full Text, Biological and Agricultural Index,
Index to Legal Periodicals and Books, and Library Literature and
Information Science Full Text. Indexing begins in 1982, abstracts in 1984,
and full text coverage in 1994, though start dates vary for individual
titles. This online version incorporates most Wilson print periodicals
indexes in online format and provides indexing for over the past 21
years….
Search Forms and search options
WilsonWeb sets the default search screen to Advanced Search. The Advanced
Search screen is perhaps one of the most sophisticated but also one of the
more clearly organized interfaces around. The top portion is where the
user selects the databases involved in the search. This is quite a
divergence from other vendors who often require the user to select
databases first on a separate screen and then go to a search form. By
making it part of the same screen, the user does not have to go back and
forth, selecting the desired databases and then going right into the
search. Each database name has a checkbox preceding it and the user can
select as many as he or she wants. Sometimes, though, if more than one
database is selected, some of the pull-down menus will not appear.
Below the database selection, there are
three search bars, followed by pull-down menus on the right to search All
or particular fields, and two Boolean pull-down menus to the left of the
second and third bars which include the choices, AND, OR, and NOT. The
fields pull-down menus on the right have a grand selection of fields the
user can search including All, Abstract, Source, Subject, Text, and Title,
as well as unique selections such as Books Reviewed; Author, Personal;
Author, Corporate; Country Publication; Language of Document; SIC Code;
Publisher, and more (a total of 29 individual fields the user can search!)
This example of many fields to search
demonstrates a key characteristic: WilsonWeb does not hold back in the
number of fields or limiters a user can search or the number of fields a
user wishes to have displayed in a record. In the Advanced Search mode,
pull-down menus provide numerous choices, providing many opportunities for
the user to have a well-focused set of results…..The first pull down menu
is Document Type, providing 48 individual selections in addition to the
default setting, All. Document Types include Book Review, Film Review,
Theatre Review, and Television Review in addition to some rather
sophisticated Review categories such as DVD Review, Ballet Review, and
even Rock Opera Review. Other selections include Autobiography, Biography,
Bibliography, Interview, Corporate Profile, Feature, Poem, Fiction,
Recipe, Speech, and Science Fiction. Clearly, the subcategories address
needs of all types and can take the user down to the precise publication
type he desires. While one wonders if the number of selections may be too
extensive, some of these choices are actually perfect to fit particular
users’ questions.
The next pull-down screen is Physical
Description, which allows the user to find two-dimensional items such as
drawings: Cover, Plate, Illustration, Map, or Table. There are 51
selections…The multitude of selections of the Advanced Search form may
seem overwhelming to some users, however, WilsonWeb does a pretty good job
and avoids making the screen seem cluttered. With a lot of the selections
simply hidden in pull-down menus, the well-organized screen can actually
delight a user who wants to have a focused search. By having most of the
pull down selections below the Start button, users who want to just
quickly search can simply select databases, enter search terms and click
on “Start.” If the user forgets to select a database a popup box will show
up, stating “Please Select at Least One Database.”
If the Advanced Search form seems to be too
much, the user could then go to Basic Search. In Basic Search, the
selection of databases appear on the top, but below is simply the command
in big letters, Search For: followed by only one search bar. No fields,
drop-down menus, or other selections follow, only the blue Start
button….The ability to provide such a search is unique in the library
subscription databases world, mimicking the search engines more users
these days use. WilsonWeb has the ability to look over stop words and be
able to search for the phrase or the main words as a group just like a
regular search engine. By default, Simple Search ranks results by
relevancy. Of course, the user can also enter a usual Boolean search….In
fact, there are over 30 different types of operators, including symbol
operators such as greater than and less than. In the Help screen,
WilsonWeb enumerates seven categories to operators: Concept Operators,
Proximity Operators, Relational Operators, Evidence Operators, Score
Operators, Natural Language Operators, and Modifiers. The different
methods of searching harkens to the days of DIALOG bluesheets with the
number of possibilities, especially with the number of fields a user can
then search or limit to. Chances are the user will enter a simple Boolean
or natural language search; the rest of the options will likely be used by
a librarian or an experienced command-driven searcher. These types of
searches also work in Advanced Search.
In addition to operators, truncation and
wildcards are also available, including the asterisk for truncation of
multiple characters and the question mark for a singular character. The
question mark can be inserted within a word and can be used more than once
such as “einst??n”. An operator for wildcard is also available….The other
screens for searching include Browse where a user can search for a term
and then browse an alphabetical list of results. The screen is one search
bar followed by one pull-down menu on the right, where the user can search
in one of sixteen fields. Relevant fields are given as choices such as
Subject (the default), Document Type, Publication Year, Journal Title, and
Author, Personal. By contrast, the separate Thesaurus Search allows the
user to enter a term and then be led to a proper indexed term. For
example, a search for “Death Penalty” will lead the user to “Capital
Punishment,” which appears in Red along with other possible subject
headings preceded by check boxes. The user can select one or more choices
and then click on Start.
Search History and Saving Searches
When the user clicks on the Search History button, a list of all searches
conducted during the current session appears. The user then can redo a
search or combine search statements. Buttons listed on the right provide
choices for AND, OR, and NOT. Users can also save a search (up to six
months) and call it up later with an ID the user has created for himself….
Display of Search Results
The WilsonLink screen leads to a page of links to other databases that are
likely to have the item in full text….The librarian can turn on and off
any of these links. The selections can include other databases that have
OpenURL to which the Library subscribes, such as EBSCOhost, Gale Infotrac
Expanded Academic ASAP, Project MUSE, Swetswise
E-Journals, and Dow Jones Interactive. Also
available are links to publicly accessible sites such as SearchEric and a
pull-down menu of a dozen search engines on the World Wide Web….While
other vendors charge the institution an additional fee to link to other
competing vendor’s databases, WilsonWeb provides WilsonLink at no
additional charge.
Intended Audience
The audience for this database would certainly be diverse and especially
helpful to public library users and undergraduate students….WilsonWeb has
managed to provide multiple options and features in its Advanced Search
screen and still achieve Section 508 compliancy. Disabled users can use
WilsonWeb, an admirable feat of web design.”
Reviewed by: Norman Buchwald, Chabot
College Library, Hayward, California
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