By now you will have heard the terrible news. The RHS bibliography, that glorious free resource from which we all download heaps of books for research and teaching, is under threat. Very much the launch pad for historiographical enquiry in British history, this vital resource is under threat. Government funding has run out and the new provider is charging £750 or so for us to get it.
The Lab has immediately begun a petition, urging the library to subscribe, and we have already gained very many signatures. If you haven't yet signed it, you can add your signature by visiting Lucy Byrne during the week, or waiting until the Lab next Friday. I urge you to do this: it is so important!
It would be great if you could write to Evelyn Cornell ([email protected]) and tell her how useful it is, how much more important and comprehensive than Historical Abstracts it is, and how vital it is for both teaching and research.
Thanks for your help, Labbers
Posts
3 comments:
I hope you won't mind an intervention direct from the RHS team. I'd better reveal my identity as Ian Archer, General Editor.
It's very interesting to read this, and we've done a bit of research comparing our coverage with that of Historical Abstracts which might help in the discussions with the librarians.
HA covers the historical period since 1450 only.
HA contains only publications from 1955 onwards.
BBIH offers richer coverage of local history journals and books (it is not clear how HA builds up its coverage of books at all; EBSCO's publicity [ http://www.ebscohost.com/thisTopic.php?topicID=836&marketID=1] in fact refers only to HA's coverage of periodicals, and it may be that HA includes only the books that are reviewed in the journals that it indexes, which will limit coverage and may account for the delays noticed below).
BBIH includes articles in collections of essays (so the combined effect of this and of the preceding point is that searching RHS bibs. author field for "John Morrill" [all of whose works fall into the historical and publication periods covered by HA] gives 99 hits; a general search of HA for "John Morrill" gives only 41; searching RHS Bib. for "John Morrill" as an author of books gives 24 whereas HA gives only 13).
BBIH has auto-complete lists, and browsable and searchable indexes or browsable and searchable trees for all term indexed fields; HA's "Visual search" goes some way towards providing a browsable tree of indexing terms, but it is still not possible to see the full indexing structure.
HA offers no way of searching specifically for place or personal name indexing; for far as we can see, all searches are carried out on the full text of the metadata.
We are not convinced that the EBSCO interface is comfortable to use, though others may disagree.
It's possible that HA is slower to add and index new material. Certainly HA lacks John Morrill's 2007 book, Oliver Cromwell (Very interesting people). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007 which was included in the RHS Bib's early 2008 release.
Dear Ian,
Thanks for this this: it's good to get things from the 'horse's mouth'. We've met before at PMT meetings.
I have to confess that I've never really bothered too much with HA, mainly because it doesn't cover books.
There's no doubt in my mind, that RHS is the thing. We'll point all these things out in our covering letter.
Here's hoping that sense prevails.
Malcolm
Clarification:
The Library has asked me to clarify a few points, as they are concerned that we may have given an unduly pessimistic account of the situation. The decision about funding RHS/BBIH has not yet been made, and when it is made, will be made in consultation with the School.
However, there are hard economic realities to be faced:
The cost of the new BBIH will be £750 plus VAT for the 1st year of subscription. This money has to be found from somewhere. The Library does not have any additional funds for the current academic year. It could be taken from the book budget, if it is thought that this is more important than buying texts for students. Alternatively, the School could transfer funds to the Library for this resource. Another possibility might be to stop paying for Historical Abstracts, however, this would not help for the current year, since the subscription has already been paid. It would also be very unpopular with those who research non-British history.
The Library is wholly committed to providing the best possible service for students and other users. Perhaps, even better than the petition, will be letters that outline precisely why RHS/BBIH is better than Historical Abstracts for what you do. This will actual contribute to an informed discussion about how this resource is funded in the future.
Thanks
Roey
Post a Comment