Internet Resources: October 2022 Edition

Selected reviews of digital reference resources from Choice.

Posted on October 10, 2022 in Internet Resources

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Advance: A SAGE Preprints Community. SAGE Publishing, 2021. Contact publisher for pricing.
https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/advance-a-sage-preprints-community

Launched in August 2018, Advance: A SAGE Preprints Community (Advance) joins the “growing number of Open Access repositories where researchers can post papers online for free prior to peer review, and thereby speed the dissemination of research,” as Margie Ruppel wrote for ccAdvisor. “An article-centric preprint repository,” Advance includes “original research, literature reviews, commentaries, and case studies.” It “does not post … papers that have already been published or accepted to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, unless the journal publisher allows it.” As a policy, SAGE “maintain[s] preprints in perpetuity … regardless of whether they are subsequently published in a journal or not,” Ruppel noted.

In its mission to support open science, Advance cites speed, collaboration, credit, feedback, inclusivity, and Open Access as the many benefits of its preprint service. As Ruppel detailed, “once a researcher submits a paper, Advance staff complete a ‘moderation check’” to ensure that it belongs on the platform before funneling it into one of two main portals (located under Sections): Social Sciences and Humanities, which contains preprints in several disciplines, and transportRxiv, which contains practitioner-focused transportation research preprints.

Users can navigate content by keyword searching, facilitated by a simple search box on the home page, or browsing by discipline (under Categories). Once selected, preprints are presented in a clear, concise format, containing bibliographic information and a toolbox to cite, download, share, embed, or export, among other features. Other helpful features include “support for multiple file formats[,] indexing in Google Scholar and CrossRef[,] and long-term access.” However, it is also notable that content on Advance is limited, and there are slight issues with web accessibility. Possible competitors may include the discipline-specific SSRN from Elsevier, the multidisciplinary OSF Preprints from the Center for Open Science, and MDPI’s Preprints.org. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers through faculty.

This review is a summary of a longer review by Margie Ruppel, University of Kentucky Libraries, originally published in ccAdvisor.org. Copyright © 2021 by The Charleston Company.—Abstracted from, ccAdvisor

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Himetop: The History of Medicine Topographical Database. Campus Bio-Medico University, University of Rome, 2021. Contact publisher for pricing.
http://himetop.wikidot.com/

“Himetop: The History of Medicine Topographical Database is a free access, collaboratively growing online database” compiling “information about the material culture of medical and health history,” wrote Sofia Fagiolo for ccAdvisor. It is “devoted to the collection of photographic and bibliographic documentation about places and material memories from around the world, including old hospitals, monuments, birthplaces, tombs, commemorative plaques, specialized museums and libraries, [and] botanical gardens,” she added. Though the database “covers many countries from around the world … [t]he majority of records are from Italy, with over 1,500 items,” Fagiolo added. Other European countries are generally well represented, while countries in Latin America, Africa, and parts of Asia are less represented. Notably, “Himetop uses free wiki software to allow scholars and researchers to add new items or improve an existing record,” and in fact users are encouraged to contribute, though as Fagiolo pointed out, collaborators “must be admitted by the administrators of the website and … activity is supervised to prevent or correct mistakes.” 

There are a number of options to search content through the home page, including the single search bar and several browse options that can be accessed through drop-down lists, such as the very helpful list of countries, all located at the top of the page. The interface is clean and intuitive, and items can easily be found. Fagiolo also highlighted “[t]he size of the collection [and] the quality of the content” as particular strengths of this resource, further noting the lack of comparable databases. As she concluded, with its specialized focus, Himetop is useful for researchers interested in medical history, or for anyone interested in the history of medicine. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers, graduate students, and faculty.

This review is a summary of a longer review by Sofia Fagiolo, AIB – Italian Library Association, Rome (Italy), originally published in ccAdvisor.org. Copyright © 2021 by The Charleston Company.—Abstracted from, ccAdvisor

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Music Index with Full Text. EBSCO Information Services, 2021. Contact publisher for pricing.
https://www.ebsco.com/products/research-databases/music-index-full-text

“Music Index with Full Text is an expansion of Music Index (formerly The Music Index Online), an EBSCO music periodical database that provides comprehensive coverage of the music field from 1970 to the present,” wrote Alyson Vaaler for ccAdvisor. Intended for “undergraduate, graduate, and faculty music scholars, particularly those with research interests in popular music, music education, pedagogy, or interdisciplinary topics,” the database indexes more than 800 journals covering various music styles and topics, Vaaler added. About 600 of those are considered “core” journals and are fully indexed and abstracted, including BBC Music, Guitar World, and Music Education Research. Another 200 journals are marked “priority” and may be more interdisciplinary in nature, including Reggae Report, Moravian Music Journal, and Early Childhood Connections. “About half of the full-text journal offerings are scholarly and peer reviewed,” while “the other half include magazines, newsletters, or trade journals,” like Rolling Stone, and all can be navigated fairly easily through the EBSCO interface, which will likely be familiar to many users. 

Ultimately, Music Index with Full Text “offers a healthy mix of scholarly and contemporary information,” with a wide offering of citations that will be beneficial to researchers, “as is the variety of information and formats,” which is unique to this database. “The interdisciplinary nature of the [resource] is also valuable to music scholars engaged in ethnomusicology or researchers from other disciplines who may include music in their research.” However, the platform may be less useful to “researchers focusing purely on historical music scholarship.”

Three prominent alternatives include ProQuest’s Music Periodicals Database and both Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM) and Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals (RIPM) from EBSCO, which vary mainly by the subjects and time periods covered. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.

This review is a summary of a longer review by Alyson Vaaler, Texas A&M University, originally published in ccAdvisor.org. Copyright © 2021 by The Charleston Company.—Abstracted from, ccAdvisor

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Screen Studies. Bloomsbury, 2022. Contact publisher for pricing.
https://www.screenstudies.com/home

Screen Studies consists of five collections of books, screenplays, and overview articles focusing on film studies, filmmaking, and screenwriting. The database has many helpful and relevant search options for film—including genre, movement, styles, decades, and themes—and the landing page also shows curated feature content (Queer Cinema, Sidney Poitier, The Works of Stanley Kubrick, etc.) to highlight key parts of the collection. Of the five collections, the most extensive is Bloomsbury and Faber Screenplays and Criticism, which includes full-text books, articles, and screenplays. BFI Film Classics has select titles from the book series of the same name. BFI Film Studies features books from BFI Publishing about film, filmmakers, and personalities. Topics for books and articles include The History of Hong Kong Cinema, Zombie Films Since 9/11, 100 British Documentaries, The Lost Worlds of John Ford, and Le Nuit Americaine. Screenplays are for films by the Coens, Christopher Nolan, Mike Leigh, and others. Though the aforementioned collections can be purchased or subscribed to separately, the remaining two can be purchased only with the entire bundle. The Filmmaking Collection contains “practical ebooks” for learning the craft (e.g., Writing for the Screen, Sound for Digital Video). The Auteur Collection includes books on broad topics or genres (e.g., anime, Bollywood, French cinema) and focused studies of individual films, e.g., Citizen Kane, When Harry Met Sally, and Pan’s Labyrinth. Entries for books and articles have book covers or other art, bibliographic data (including DOI), dates published in print and online, and summaries with clickable tables of contents. Content notes indicate which collections contain the item. For example, Bloody Hammer: British Horror Cinema Since 1970 is in both the books and auteur collections. Articles have references and suggestions for further reading. Screenplay entries have poster art, bibliographic data, and a table of contents. Screenplays are in “industry-standard studio format.” The site is easy to navigate, and searching is in Google or ProQuest style. Screen Studies aims for “compliance with Level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1.” Downloadable title lists are available for all collections except Bloomsbury and Faber. This resource is worthwhile for any university with a film studies, media studies, or cultural studies program. Summing Up: Recommended. Two-year technical program students, undergraduates, and researchers/faculty. —S. Clerc, Southern Connecticut State University

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