New Research Databases from WilsonWeb
by Jennifer Keach, Electronic Services Librarian

The library recently started subscriptions to three popular research databases through WilsonWeb:  Wilson OmniFile Full Text, Mega Edition, Readers’ Guide Retrospective, and Art Abstracts.  These new databases join Book Review Digest Plus, which we added last year.  As periodical indexes, all four help you identify articles that showed up in journals, magazines and newspapers. 

Wilson OmniFile

Our subscription to Wilson OmniFile Full Text, Mega Edition began in July.  Don’t hold its ridiculous name against it; it’s a valuable product.  Similar to InfoTrac OneFile, it helps you identify articles in over 3,000 periodicals in all subject areas, and provides the full text for over 1,600 of them.  In some cases, InfoTrac OneFile and Wilson OmniFile overlap; in many other cases they complement each other, each pointing to different articles.  It offers the reliable Wilson indexing that researchers have come to appreciate over the years.  After all, H. W. Wilson has been in the business of indexing periodicals since 1890.

Produced by H. W. Wilson, Wilson OmniFile combines the indexing, abstracting and full text of the big Wilson indexes -- Education Abstracts, General Science Abstracts, Humanities Abstracts, Readers' Guide Abstracts, Social Sciences Abstracts and Wilson Business Abstracts.  For good measure, Wilson OmniFile also throws in the full text that can be found in Applied Science & Technology Full Text, Art Full Text, Biological & Agricultural Full Text, Index to Legal Periodicals Full Text, and Library Literature & Information Science Full Text.  Because this purchase duplicates it, we’ll be canceling our subscription to Humanities Index. 

Wilson OmniFile allows users to search across all the aforementioned Wilson indexes at once for a large, multidisciplinary search.  Researchers can also narrow a search to a broad subject area (i.e. humanities, social sciences, education, science), by selecting a subject area on the search page.  Researchers can also combine a search in Wilson OmniFile with our other three Wilson databases for an even larger search.  Wilson OmniFile indexes articles from 1982 to date and is updated daily.

Readers’ Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982

For historical research, we’ve also purchased the back files of the Readers’ Guide through WilsonWeb.  Long considered a standard in indexing, our new online version points users to 526 general interest magazines as far back as 1890.  This is the full content of the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature as well as Nineteenth Century Readers Guide to Periodical Literature, covering 1890 to 1982.  Readers’ Guide Retro is just indexing – no full text.  Use the LinkFinder Plus icon  within WilsonWeb to find out if we have the articles you’ve identified in our library.

Because it is part of our WilsonWeb family of databases, you can search Readers’ Guide Retro at the same time as Wilson OmniFile to find both older and current articles.  We also plan to purchase the retrospective versions of Humanities Index (1907-1982) and Social Sciences Index (1907-1982), scheduled for release this fall.

Art Abstracts

We’ve also purchased Art Abstracts through WilsonWeb.  If you are researching art – including advertising art, antiques, architecture, crafts, fashion design, film, graphic arts, industrial design, interior design, landscape architecture, television, and textiles – it is a great choice.

With Art Abstracts and Wilson OmniFile both on WilsonWeb, we now have the best of both worlds -- the complete indexing and abstracting of the approximately 450 periodicals in Art Abstracts (1984 to date), along with the associated full text for about 115 art periodicals found in Wilson OmniFile.  To search both databases at once, simply check both indexes on the main WilsonWeb search page.  Focus your search within Wilson OmniFile to just the art subset, if you’d like, by selecting “Art” from Wilson OmniFile’s list of subject areas. 

Be sure to add Wilson OmniFile, Readers’ Guide Retro and Art Abstracts to your researching arsenal while you are looking for articles this year.  Find all of them in our Research Database lists and in the JMU Library Catalog .