My state listserv has lit up with problems on the validity and the currency of articles in our subscription databases. Are you seeing the same thing? Can we as a larger group put pressure on some of these vendors to do a better job?
Hilda
Sent: Sunday, June 5, 2016 2:26 PM
To: NJASL@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [NJASL] Fw: The importance of evaluating sources found in subscription databases...
Sent from my iPhone
On Jun 5, 2016, at 8:53 AM, Mary Lewis maryklewis@optonline.net [NJASL] <NJASL@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
Sadly, this is only one of the ways subscription database publishers have let us down. At some point, publishers decided to put all of their efforts into interface enhancements, apparently at the expense of editorial updates. A couple of years ago I dropped my expensive subscription to Student Resource Center Junior when I realized that the biographical and scientific articles my students needed came from sources that hadn't been updated more recently than 2008. I did a careful evaluation of the age and content of articles using a few topics I knew something about, and found that important current information about people's careers and awards, and about discoveries and statuses of endangered animals and habitats was missing. I also reevaluated our gorgeous, and similarly expensive Marshall Cavendish science databases, and found that these were also outdated. Had this been information in physical reference sets on the shelves, I'd have replaced it years earlier with more current editions.
I teach my students that current information in these areas is important, and I can't justify asking them to use outdated, fee-based sources that they must supplement with more current - and often more comprehensive - information that they can find free on the Internet. Reliability without timeliness is pointless.
I complained about this to people at Gale and Marshall Cavendish (now Cavendish Square), and as promised many of the Cavendish Square articles have had some updates. Gale was unresponsive. However, these publishers (as well as Infobase to some extent) have also revised the available citation information so that when my students want to find the publication dates for the articles they use, they must use the 2016 copyright date, because the actual publication dates are no longer provided!
As frustrating as I find this situation, I'm more disappointed that the library community has allowed this to go on without response (at least that I've seen or heard).
Mary Kay Lewis
On Jun 4, 2016, at 8:29 PM, Hilda Weisburg hildakw@hotmail.com [NJASL] <NJASL@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
Something to be aware of. It's somewhat shocking.
Hilda
From: infolit-request@lists.ala.org <infolit-request@lists.ala.org> on behalf of Cortez, Angelica M <corteza@palmbeachstate.edu>
Sent: Thursday, June 2, 2016 5:47 PM
To: infolit@lists.ala.org
Subject: RE: [INFOLIT] The importance of evaluating sources found in subscription databases...Thanks for sharing this!
From: infolit-request@lists.ala.org [mailto:infolit-request@lists.ala.org] On Behalf Of Zoe Fisher
Sent: Wednesday, June 01, 2016 4:46 PM
To: infolit@lists.ala.org
Subject: [INFOLIT] The importance of evaluating sources found in subscription databases...
Hi all,
Apologies for cross-posting, but I thought many folks would find this interesting—
I was helping a student today who was looking for scholarly articles about the history of perfume. We found the attached article, “History of Cosmetics” from the Asian Journal of Pharmaceutics, in Academic Search Complete (EBSCO). Check out the References list:
<image001.jpg>
Yep. The student didn’t want to use this article once we realized the author had cited Wikipedia several times, as well as websites like lifeinitaly.com, make-upusa.com, and thehistoryof.net. I have no idea how this article was published by this journal (it’s not on Beall’s list of predatory open access journals) and it seems like a reputable journal otherwise… Feel free to use this example in your own teaching! It’s a good reminder that students should evaluate every source they use, and sources from databases are not automatically more credible than any other source.
Cheers,
Zoe Fisher
Assistant Professor, Reference & Instruction Librarian
Pierce College Puyallup
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