An Index to Jewish Life.

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Author: LaGuardia, Cheryl1 claguard@fas.harvard.edu

E-QUALITY OF LIFE My very subjective survey of a few colleagues brought a mixed bag of responses to the question: Do e-resources improve the quality of your life or affect it adversely? Those using e-resources affirmed their supremacy; however, those acquiring them reported some not-so-thrilling challenges. This bears more feedback, so I invite you to share your thoughts.

SUCKER FOR GOOGLE To say I am obsessed with the über-cool search engine is a bit excessive, but to say I'm a Google groupie may just be near the mark. I finally tried out Google Earth and those folks in Mountain View got me again! Go to http://earth.google.com and get the freebie version. It's a ten-second Disneyland ride right at your desktop.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK "Reference has gone self-service due to the popularity of Google, Wikipedia, and others. But as popular as these sites are they cannot…offer multiple ways to explore content; provide guidance to understand a subject; and help those who don't know where to start…. The future of reference is not in delivering the largest number of results but in…[creating] meaningful connections across library-vetted resources from multiple publishers that mirror the ways in which people learn. Librarians are uniquely positioned to meet this need."--John G. Dove, CEO of Xrefer

Index to Jewish Periodicals (IJP) indexes English-language articles, book reviews, and features on contemporary Jewish and Near Eastern affairs in over 180 periodicals published in the United States, Israel, England, Canada, South Africa, and Australia. These include AJS Perspectives, Contemporary Jewry, Feminist Theology, International Sephardic Journal, Jewish Journal of Sociology, Journal of Israeli History, Na'Amat Woman, Reconstructionism Today, United Synagogue Review, and Zeek. Dating back to 1988, many of the journals are not covered by other standard library indexes. Updated annually, this is the first web-based version of the index.

HOW DOES IT WORK? The EBSCOhost interface offers a Basic Search with a simple Find box and an Advanced Search that allows limiting to Full Text, dates, authors, and certain publications, as well as Expanders to search for related words, within the full text and Boolean operators. It is very easy to print, email, and download results to disk. I'm repeatedly on record admiring the spare yet effective design of these search screens.

CAN YOU AND YOUR PATRONS USE IT? My search for "west bank and gaza and settlements" returned 19 results, with citations ranging from a 2004 article in Tikkun to a 1996 article in Palestine-Israel Journal of Politics, Economics and Culture. They all looked relevant but slightly dated.

I then tried the same search in RAMBI, The Index of Articles on Jewish Studies from the Jewish National and University Library. This is "a selective bibliography of articles in the various fields of Jewish studies and in the study of Eretz Israel…in Hebrew, Yiddish, and European languages." My search returned eight citations, all appearing relevant but with spotty publication dates ranging from 1980 to 2005. Some even led to non-English-language material. When I tried the same search in EBSCO's Academic Search Premier (ASP), I got 236 hits, the latest of which was a September 19, 2005 article from Newsweek.

It was the overlap in coverage, or rather the lack of it, that I found most interesting among the three resources. RAMBI listed only one article from the Journal of Palestine Studies, from 1981, on this topic. IJP listed six, from Winter and Fall 2003. ASP listed 24 from spring 1994 to spring 2005. Other than that, there was almost no overlap between ASP and IJP; the ASP articles came mostly from the New York Times, New Republic, and USA Today. The IJP material appeared more focused and in-depth.

My next search in IJP, for "terrorism and women," found 17 articles published from December 1997 to September 2004, from a wide variety of sources. Likewise, a search for "christians and proselytizing" found items whose titles revealed a fascinating range of takes on the issue.

JUST HOW GOOD IS IT? What's best about this solid product is that you won't easily find its content indexed elsewhere and that it will be accessible to English-only reading researchers. The annual updating is a drawback, especially for research in contemporary Jewish thought. The lack of abstracts and minimal full-text links, along with very broad subject indexing, makes it less likely you'll find highly focused articles. However, given how difficult it is to locate these scholarly materials online, I rate this at 8.5.

WHAT'S THE COST? Pricing for a single site for a period of one year is quite reasonable, ranging from about $425 to $1200.

THE BOTTOM LINE IJP is a logical complementary file to RAMBI for academic and special libraries and a good substitute for it in public libraries serving general researchers in Jewish affairs.

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By Cheryl LaGuardia, Head of Instructional Services, Harvard College Library, claguard@fas.harvard.edu

Cheryl LaGuardia is the Head of Instructional Services, Harvard College Library, and author of Becoming a Library Teacher (Neal-Schuman, 2000). Readers and producers can contact her at claguard@fas.harvard.edu