Retrieval performance and citation characteristics of the MLA International Bibliography and the Annual Bibliography for English Language and Literature: A comparative study

Journal of Documentation

Volumn 56, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 332-340

  Stebelman, Scott ^a  

^a GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0042182144     PISSN: 00220418     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (15)

1. Tollers, V.L. and Stroud, C. Is the MLA or MHRA better? RQ, 13(2), 1973, 126-128.
2. Loomis, A.A. Dickens duplications: a study of overlap in serial bibliographies in literature. RQ, 25(3), 1986, 348-355.
3. Baker, W. and Anderson, B. The MLA database on CD-ROM: perception and reality. Library Review, 43(2), 1994, 30-36. The authors compared retrieval in the print and CD-ROM versions of the MLAIB. For the purposes of the present study, to control for format, only print ABELL and MLAIB data were analysed.
4. Hindersmann, J. MLAIB und ABELL: periodische Fachbibliographien, CD-ROM- und Online-Datenbanken zur Anglistik. Münster: LIT, 1997.
5. Hindersmann, J. MLAIB und ABELL. Münster: LIT, 1997, 42-44. MLAIB had 133% more unique US author and 90.9% more postcolonial author citations; ABELL had 74.2% more unique UK author citations.
6. One critic, James K. Bracken, generalised about the databases based on twenty-eight Stephen Crane citations that appeared in the 1984 volumes. See Bracken, J.K. Reference works in British and American literature. Vol 1: English and American literature. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1990, 72.
7. When chi square is applied separately to each of the three tables, or to the combined data, p<0.1. Hence the differences are not statistically significant at the standard 0.05 level.
8. To control for differences in publication data coverage, searches were restricted to the years 1980-1996. Because MLAIB does not index post-colonial literature under 'English Literature', if citations from that area were included, the citation gap between the two databases would widen.
9. The canonical status of writers was established by their presence in one of the following works: The Norton anthology of English literature, 6th ed. 2 vols. New York and London: Norton, 1993; The Norton anthology of American literature, 4th ed. 2 vols. New York and London: Norton, 1994; The dictionary of literary biography. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1978-; and Contemporary postcolonial and postimperial literature in English. http:// landow.stg.brown.edu/post/misc/postov.html (visited 20 March 1999).
10. The canonical status of writers was established by their presence in one of the following works: The Norton anthology of English literature, 6th ed. 2 vols. New York and London: Norton, 1993; The Norton anthology of American literature, 4th ed. 2 vols. New York and London: Norton, 1994; The dictionary of literary biography. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1978-; and Contemporary postcolonial and postimperial literature in English. http:// landow.stg.brown.edu/post/misc/postov.html (visited 20 March 1999).
11. The canonical status of writers was established by their presence in one of the following works: The Norton anthology of English literature, 6th ed. 2 vols. New York and London: Norton, 1993; The Norton anthology of American literature, 4th ed. 2 vols. New York and London: Norton, 1994; The dictionary of literary biography. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1978-; and Contemporary postcolonial and postimperial literature in English. http:// landow.stg.brown.edu/post/misc/postov.html (visited 20 March 1999).
12. The canonical status of writers was established by their presence in one of the following works: The Norton anthology of English literature, 6th ed. 2 vols. New York and London: Norton, 1993; The Norton anthology of American literature, 4th ed. 2 vols. New York and London: Norton, 1994; The dictionary of literary biography. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1978-; and Contemporary postcolonial and postimperial literature in English. http:// landow.stg.brown.edu/post/misc/postov.html (visited 20 March 1999).
13. An exception was made for scholarly editions, which MLAIB and ABELL both appear to cite with the same frequency.
14. In her analysis of 1980 Dickens records, Loomis recorded 75% more unanalysed records in ABELL than in MLAIB [2, p. 350].
15. To determine the degree to which MLAIB and ABELL citations correlated with each other, which would be a measure of data reliability, Pearson product-moment correlation was used; r = 0.961.