Keeping up with the times: Evaluating currency of indexing, language coverage and subject area coverage in the three music periodical index databases

Music Reference Services Quarterly

Volumn 8, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 53-68

  Green, Alan ^a  

^a OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

C. p. e. bach; Music publishing; Scholarly editions

Indexed keywords

EID: 0344412554     PISSN: 10588167     EISSN: 15409503     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1300/J116v08n01_04     Document Type: Article

References (16)

1. Elaine Gorzelski (President, Harmonie Park Press, publisher of Music Index), letter to the author, 26 January 2001.
2. RILM’s Primary Journal Titles, , viewed 4 March 2000. International Index to Music Periodicals, Full Text: Current Title List, , viewed 4 March 2000.
3. RILM’s The Music Index 51, no. 4 (1999): 25-35.
4. RILM’s The Music Index Periodical List, , viewed 4 March 2000.
5. RILM’s For RILM searches, The OCLC FirstSearch version was consulted for all titles. In addition, occasional searches of the NISC BiblioLine version were performed. No differences in most current indexed issue were noted between these two versions.
6. RILM’s In order to evaluate possible differences in indexing treatment for periodicals in various broad subject areas, a broad classification scheme was developed to summarize the major focus or “intended audience” of each periodical. The basic model was patterned after the typical divisions of faculty found in many departments and schools of music, augmented by musical activity areas typically not found in academic settings. These are the journal classifications used in this study: (1) Musicology and ethno-musicology; (2) Music theory and composition; (3) Music education; (4) Performance (excluding jazz and popular music); (5) Jazz; (6) Popular music (excluding journals with scholarly ethnomusicological studies listed in the first category); (7) Recording industry, and trade periodicals; and (8) Interdisciplinary, or related disciplines. The author wishes to thank Leslie Troutman, Martin Jenkins, and Thomas F. Heck for their assistance in developing these classifications, and for helping to classify a few periodicals which could have been placed in two or more classes. Also of great use were entries in Ann Basart’s Writing about Music: A Guide to Publishing Opportunities for Authors and Reviewers (Berkeley, Calif.: Fallen Leaf Press, 1989). A similarly broad journal classification structure was devised by Michael Colby in his article
7. RILM’s “Music Periodical Indexing in General Databases,” Notes 54, no. 1 (September 1997): 27-37. Colby's classes (p. 31) closely resemble those employed in this study, but his categories subdivided groups of journals to a degree deemed unnecessary for the current study (e.g., musicology and ethnomusicology). This study also required a category for interdisciplinary journals and those from related disciplines, not present in Colby's classification.
8. RILM’s In most cases, the primary language of a periodical was easy to determine by examining the article citations. However for multilingual periodicals, those with less than approximately 80 percent of recent articles in any one language were classed as “international.”
9. RILM’s A list of academic libraries using this catalog software is available on the Innovative Interfaces web site at .
10. RILM’s if a periodical title lacking a cover date could not be located in an Innovative Interfaces library catalog (or another library catalog providing a date of receipt for the most recent issue), it was then searched in other library catalogs to determine the volume and number of the most recent issue. In some cases, the publisher’s web site was consulted to determine the most recent available issue. For RILM journals lacking a catalog record in OCLC WorldCat, titles were located through searching national library catalogs and large university libraries in the country of origin, located through consulting Thomas Dowling’s Libweb on the Berkeley Digital Library SunSITE, .
11. RILM’s Research presented at the Edinburgh conference (see author footnote, p. 53) was based on the first collection period. RILM and IIMP updated their databases between the first and second data collection periods, while Music Index did not.
12. RILM’s Of this group of periodicals, 173 are selectively indexed by RILM, 23 by IIMP, and 18 by Music Index.
13. Sonja Hempseed (Music Index) to the author, 12 January 2001 and 26 January 2001; Sarah Brechner (IIMP) to the author, 11 January 2001 and 26 January 2001.
14. RILM’s “primary journal titles” (those listed on ) represent the titles regularly reviewed for either thorough or selective indexing in RILM. However, RILM also contains citations and abstracts for individual articles published in journals not regularly reviewed. Such citations are reported to RILM by authors or RILM national committees. The RILM web site presents a list of over 3500 periodical titles which have been represented in RILM since its inception in 1967 .
15. RILM’s Recall that this study made no attempt to judge the completeness of indexing for individual periodical issues, only the date of the most recent issue represented by citations present in the databases.
16. RILM’s When informed of the problems with their advertised list of current periodical titles, the new Bell and Howell editor in charge of IIMP took immediate steps to correct the problem. In a letter to the author dated 29 August 2000, Ms. Sarah Brechner indicated that 47 of these titles would be relocated to their “Retrospective title list,” while 20 others would be resubscribed and kept active on the “Current title list.”