BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATABASES FOR THE ART RESEARCHER: DEVELOPMENTS, PROBLEMS ANDPROPOSALSAuthor(s): James C. BoylesSource: Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, Vol. 6,No. 1 (Spring 1987), pp. 9-12Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Art Libraries Society of NorthAmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27947702 .

Accessed: 16/06/2014 01:11

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

The University of Chicago Press and Art Libraries Society of North America are collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of NorthAmerica.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.159 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 01:11:27 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Art Documentation, Spring 1987 9

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATABASES FOR THE ART RESEARCHER: DEVELOPMENTS,

PROBLEMS AND PROPOSALS by James C. Boyles

State University of New York College at Purchase

(Authors note: This paper was presented, in a modified version, at the June 6, 1986, meeting of ARLISINew Jersey.)

In an article which appeared in the Summer 1983 issue of Art Documentation, Paula Baxter described her experiences with using online database searching for research in art.1 Her experiences, though, were limited to the one readily available "art" database at the time, ARTbibliographies MODERN. The Avery Index and SCIPIO were "up," but their use was re stricted to the members of RLIN. Until recently, there was little change in this paucity of online information for art research. There was one new database, the online version of the Jour nal of the Society of Architectural Historians, available from the vendor BRS. That, unfortunately, was short-lived; and by July of 1984, it had been cancelled. Except for some promises, ARTbibliographies MODERN was the only hope that most of us had.

During the past year-and-a-half, many of those promises have finally been fulfilled, with a few unexpected additions as well. In the summer of 1985, BRS announced the availability of Arts and Humanities Search (file AHCI), the online version of ISI'sAts and Humanities Citation Index. This database indexes articles, reviews, editorials and so forth in over 1,300 journals that cover the humanities. In art this coverage includes al most seventy-five scholarly periodicals, including foreign-lan guage journals and specialty publications, such as the Journal of Glass Studies. Although lacking subject indexing, this database does allow the researcher to search keywords in each record. If the title of the indexed item does not contain keywords that adequately identify its subject, the AHCI in dexers have enriched it with additional words that can be searched as title keywords. For example, in the record for Thomas McEvilley's 1984 article in Artforum, "On the Manner of Addressing Clouds," the indexers have added "(Soulism in Art)" to the title as a key for subject access. Of course, the database, like its printed counterpart, provides access to the cited references in the indexed articles. Unfortunately, only one of the cited reference's authors and its source (often poorly abbreviated) are given; the title of the cited article is omitted. This omission severely limits a particular strength of this database in relation to the alternative art databases. Un less the subject of a cited reference happens to appear as a keyword in the record of the citing source (and the researcher has managed to use the correct search term), that reference will not be retrieved.

In a recent search of this database for materials on black smiths and farriers, I retrieved sixty-eight "hits": thirty be cause these terms appeared in the title of the citing source, thirty because they appeared in the title of the source of the cited reference and twelve because they appeared in the titles

of cited art works. (Four records had either "blacksmith$" or "farrier$"2 in the titles of the citing article and in one cited reference, three of which were reviews that repeated, as a citation, the title being reviewed.) To put those thirty cited references in perspective, they were gleaned from almost 2,500 cited references that were retrieved with the sixty-eight hits. All thirty were retrieved because the searched terms ap peared in the title of a cited book or film. Because none of the journals listed as cited sources had "blacksmith," "farrier" or the variants of these terms in their titles, none of the cited articles (approximately 22% of the 2,500 citations) would have been found if there had not been some other element within the record that contained the key terms. Furthermore, without their titles, most of these articles have no indication of their relevance to the topic. In the documentation for the database, the producers of AHCI suggest that, in order to find more information about the cited references, the user search each of them as a possibly indexed item.3 If the item were pub lished during the years covered by the database (1974 to the

present) and if the item's subject were a topic in the human ities and if AHCI indexed its source, then I might be able to retrieve the title of the cited reference in order to guess as to

whether or not it might be relevant. I could also search for any other sources that have cited these references and try to de termine each reference's relevance based on the collected ti tles of its citers. Patience and limited funds prohibit such en deavors; and the pertinent, but "invisible," references that are hidden in this lode of 2,500 citations must be abandoned. AHCI should expand its cited reference field to include article titles, thus allowing better subject retrieval of all of the mate rials that this database has to offer.

In the results of the search for information on blacksmiths, some of the hits resulted from the inclusion of the subject terms in the titles of cited art works. AHCI includes, as "im plied" citations, art works that are illustrated, as well as those works that are referred to in the text, but not illustrated. These references are indexed by artist, title and date, if known. Fur thermore, all illustrations are identified as such; so, by search ing the "CR" field for the artist or the object's title and using the word "illustration" as a keyword, the art researcher can use AHCI as a supplement to Havlice, Clapp, Monro and other printed indices to illustrations of art.

In the late fall of 1985, the online version of RILA (file 191) arrived on DIALOG. Developed from the same computer tapes that are used for the printed index, online RILA provides ac cess to over 300 art-related journals, as well as books, cata logs, dissertations, microform publications, Festschriften and conference reports. Unlike AHCI, there is subject indexing. More importantly, there are the abstracts, which, combined with the ability to do free-text searching, opens up each cita tion to a greater variety of points of access. In this way, RILA

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.159 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 01:11:27 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

10 Art Documentation, Spring 1987

is closer to ARTbibliographies MODERN than to Arts and Hu manities Search. The major difference between the RILA and ABM databases is their coverage: ABM concentrates on the literature of art since 1800; RILA covers the entire history of

Western art. As if the availability of RILA on DIALOG were not enough,

the database's sponsor, the J. Paul Getty Trust, announced in the February 1986 issue of News from RILA that the database

would be merged with that of R?pertoire d'art et d'arch?ologie, whose online version has only been available through the French system TELESYSTEMES-QUESTEL.4 The merged database will be available on DIALOG, as well as QUESTEL, and will eventually include not only the present coverage (RAA's database has literature published since 1972; RILA's, since 1973), but will also have retrospective indexing of the complete run of RAA's printed index, which goes back to 1910. Tentatively scheduled to occur in 1987, the merger will pro duce the richest art database available.

At the same time that RILA came online via DIALOG, WILSONLINE introduced the online version of the Art Index (file ART). This database continues the broad coverage and uncomplicated indexing structure that is associated with its printed counterpart. The commands are simple and logical. Subject headings follow the familiar Wilson format, with the "extravagant" feature of automatic transference from a non used heading to the used one. In addition, the availability of free-text searching permits access to the entire record. In November of 1986, the H. W. Wilson Company modified the system to permit nested Boolean logic and proximity searching, allowing for more complicated search strategies.

Illustrations can be retrieved through the online version of the Art Index. If an indexer has considered the treatment of an artist in an article to be sufficient to list that artist in the record's personal name subject field, any works by that artist that are illustrated with the text are indexed in a subfield for illustrations. For example, in the record of Paul Gardner's

Artnews article, "When Is a Painting Finished?," Janet Fish is included as a personal name subject, with the added informa tion that her painting Eggs and Cereal is illustrated in color ["Fish, Janet:91-2:il(col): Eggs and cereal"]. The documenta tion from WILSONLINE states that up to ten illustrations that accompany an article will be listed. However, the record for the Gardner article lists thirteen illustrations, each by a dif ferent artist. (The illustrated work of a fourteenth artist, Keith Haring, who is listed as a personal name subject, is not in cluded in the record, perhaps because it is identified in the article as "Untitled.") If the artist of a reproduced work is not listed as a personal name subject, the work is indexed as a separate record type for reproductions. Roger Brown's Tales of the Decameron is reproduced in Dan Cameron's article, "Illustration Is Back in the Picture" in Artnews; but the paint ing is not discussed in the article. Therefore, Brown's work has

been treated as a separate record from Cameron's article, in dexed in its entirety as:

Brown, Roger:1941-:Reproductions:Tales of the De cameron Art News 84:115 '85

The majority of these reproduction record types come from gallery advertisements, in which a work is identified but no other significant text is given. Because the basic index of this database includes the titles of indexed art works, references to illustrations and reproductions can be retrieved either through free-text searching or through the use of qualifiers: "(psb)" for works that are listed in the subfield for illustrations to texts or "rep(rt)" for reproductions treated as individual record types. With its larger coverage of art journals and with its indexing of reproductions that do not accompany texts, the

Art Index's inclusion of illustrations in its records is a more useful tool than the limited indexing of AHCI's "implied" citations.

That is the news regarding bibliographic databases. We may never have half as much as our scientific colleagues, but we are no longer the poor cousins either. But, how are our databases serving us? Over the few years that online search ing has been available, art librarians have had five main com plaints about the products:

1 ) limited subject coverage 2) poor retrospective indexing of the literature

3) inadequate currency in the indexing 4) lack of coordination among the services 5) vocabulary difficulties.

Have the innovations done anything to resolve these issues? In regard to the limited scope of subject areas, RILA and the

Art Index, and to a certain extent Arts and Humanities Search, have expanded coverage to art before 1800. Of course, there are also those non-art databases that provide information to the art researcher. Among these are Religion Index, PysclNFO, America: History and Life and the GPO Monthly Catalog. Even such foreign databases as AGRICOLA can provide such refer ences as the representation of farming in art. On a very lim ited basis, the Information Access Company's (IAC) databases also provee some help, particularly on current news. Maga zine Index and Magazine ASAP index some of the more popu lar art jounals, including American Artist, Art in America, Archi tectural Digest and Architectural Record; and the National

Newspaper Index provides access to the New York Times and other major newspapers. Newsearch is the daily update for many of the resources of these three databases. With all of these new and varying databases, our need for subject coverage is being met.

Retrospective indexing remains problematic. Eugene Gar field, using data from the ISI citation indices, has estimated that 60% of the cited works in scientific journals were pub lished in the last five years. In contrast, a humanities journal, such as History, may have only 38% from the last five years. Of the 300 most-cited authors in scientific articles from 1961 to 1976, the oldest was born in 1899. Of the 300 most-cited au thors in the humanities in 1977 and 1978, nearly 60% were born before 1900.5 We in the arts use the older literature and we need indices to this literature. Unfortunately, RILA only goes back to 1973; ARTbibliographies MODERN, to 1974; and the Art Index, to 1984. AHCI's expansion of its cited reference field would extend its coverage and give some access (though haphazardly) to the preonline searching literature.

The proposed retrospective indexing of RAA will be a boon. There is no earlier, continuing work of a comparable nature. Its closest rival, the Art Index, should follow suit. John Regazzi, an H.W. Wilson vice-president, has stated that retrospective conversion of the earlier volumes of the printed Art Index is "being considered."6 Admittedly, it is expensive to convert and the Wilson people have set up their own system in order to maintain high quality, which will only add to the expense. However, for those of us in the arts, a database that covers less than two years of the literature is only marginally useful for most of our searches.

If we cannot have retrospective conversion, what about an

up-to-date bibliographic database? To test the currency of our databases, I ran a simple test to determine the indexing, as of June 1,1986, of the literature regarding one of the current art world stars, Pat Steir. After determining the various forms of her name in each database, I asked for the number of 1985 and 1986 publications that had been indexed by each database. This step immediately eliminated RILA from my experiment, because it had no items that had been published in either of those years. ARTbibliographies MODERN had only

480 items from 1985 and none from 1986. Art Index, on the other hand, had 19,899 records from 1985 and 1,428 from 1986. AHCI had 109,787 from 1985 and 21,633 from 1986. Having found which databases had information on Steir and included materials from either of the years, I combined the sets: Pat Steir and (1985 publications or 1986 publications) (see chart). Seven different references were retrieved from the four art databases, of which only three were found in more than one of the four databases. (In the bibliography in the book, Pat Steir Paintings, that was published in the spring of 1986, there are sixteen references from 1985.7 Three of these were in cluded in the seven hits from the art databases.) ARTbibliogra phies MODERN had only one item, an article in the January 1985 issue of Arts Magazine. Arts and Humanities Search had three hits, the most recent coming from the November 1985 issue of Artnews. The art database with the most items was the online version of the Art Index, with six hits, the most recent being the Artnews article that AHCI indexed, as well as an illustration for an advertisement in that same issue of Artnews and a reference to an article in the November/De

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.159 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 01:11:27 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Art Documentation, Spring 1987 11

d o 3 <

9 a ?ai C C C ? z-i zi aj < <3 <3 <oo

to 2 >

i II x LU

Washington Post 1/85 Arts Magazine Arts & Auction NY Times 3/85 Art Monthly 3/85 Flash Art 3/85 Trib. de Geneve 3/85

Village Voice 3/85 L'Hebdo 4/85 Artforum 4/85 Arts Magazine NY Times 4/85 L'Hebdo Artforum 6/85 NY Times 6785 New York 7/85 (X) NY Times 7/85

(X) Artforum Artnews ( ) Artnews 11/85 NY Times 11/85 PCN 11-12/85 Museum J. 1985 Christ. Sei. M. 2/86 NY Times 3/86 NY Times NY Times 4/86 Arch. Digest 4/86 (x) NY Times 5/86

concept A: Pat Steir concept : 1985 publications concept C: 1986 publications search: A and (B or C) data as of June 1,1986 Items marked with "(x)" were retrieved from the indicated database, but were identified by that database as coming from the Magazine index.

cember 1985 Print Collector's Newsletter. A search of the printed version of the Art index (the 1984-85 annual volume and the January and April quarterly issues) produced two citations, the most recent being a Flash Art reference from March 1985. None of these art databases, however, had any 1986 citations, as of June 1. By searching the IAC databases (Magazine ASAP, Magazine Index, the National Newspaper In dex and Newsearch), I found two references on Pat Steir that had been published this year (one from the New York Times, the other from Architectural Digest), as well as two articles from non-art journals that had been published in 1985. However, these four databases only handle the general litera ture on art, leaving the more scholarly journals to the art databases. The NEXIS databank produced fourteen hits, five for 1986 articles. This experiment was simple and very limited in its scope; but it does suggest that the art databases are not keeping up. RILA and ARTbibliographies MODERN are far be hind and Arts and Humanities Search's coverage is too limited.

Comparatively, the online Art Index is obviously superior to its competitors. Still, at the end of June 1986 (i.e., after 50% of the year had past), the Art Index had only 3,000 records of articles that had been published in 1986 or approximately 12.5% of the producers' estimate of a total of 24,000 records for the entire year. This 12.5% did include articles as recent as May 1986 and this currency is laudable. But, it is also inconsis tent in that a few journals have apparently been indexed quickly, while most wait for several months. A list of those journals which have been selected for immediate indexing

would be helpful. Although I believe that retrospective conversion is the more

critical issue, I also believe that we need access to indexing that adequately treats the literature on the rapidly shifting trends of today's art world. The producers of the Art Index are

working on this and promise improvements. In the announce ment of the merger of RILA and RAA, RILA's producers

obliquely referred to their problem of currency, which they hoped would improve with the merger. ABM, particularly with its emphasis on the literature of modern art, should also be investigating means to solve the problem of making ac cess to the most recent literature available as quickly as it is needed.

The fourth problem, cooperation and coordination among the online services, is being met with some success. The proposed merger of RAA and RILA is one example. Another is the negotiations between RLIN and OCLC for the exchange of their database tapes. Furthermore, RLIN's lower rates, through CLASS, have made access to the Avery Index and SCIPIO viable to more of us. It is cheaper to subscribe to RLIN's Search Only service with the addition of access to the Avery Index than it is to continue to purchase the printed supplements. Having dealt with G. K. Hall's maybe-yes-may be-no attitude towards the publication of the printed version of the Avery Index, I appreciate the easier online access to this excellent resource.

Finally, there is the Art and Architecture Thesaurus. Planned not only to provide a standard source for art termi nology and subject headings, but also as a linking system between preferred and nonpreferred terms and between ter minology in different languages, this project will help unite our disparate sources under one framework of terminology. Having gained the backing of the J. Paul Getty Trust and the cooperation of the Library of Congress, the project appears to be moving successfully ahead. However, a statement in the recent announcement of RILA and RAA's merger is

worrisome:

The RAA and RILA are viewing the prototype issue as an opportunity to make improvements in format as well as in frequency and extent of coverage. To this end, the Getty Art History Information Program has commis sioned James D. Anderson, Associate Dean of the School of Communications, Information and Library Studies at Rutgers University, to design a new classi fication and indexing system on behalf of the two agencies.8

Surely, one Getty agency, RILA, is aware of the well-pub licized efforts of another Getty agency, the AAT project. This proposed merger provides an excellent occasion for the em ployment of the developing Art and Architecture Thesaurus. I hope that Dr. Anderson's labors will be directed toward this end.

As much as I applaud the endeavor toward this standard thesaurus, I still cannot shake some skepticism that I have of the success of the AAT. This skepticism relates to problem five: vocabulary. The study of art has an inherent problem in its use of a verbal language. The fundamental characteristic

of the center of our attention?the art object?is that it is an

expression in a nonverbal language. Yet, to discuss it, we resort primarily to verbal communication. (I say "primarily" because additional resources, such as slides, have been used as other means of discussion.) To be fair to the object and to its expression, we tend to use a verbal language that is vague, ambiguous and encompassing. In other words, our language is imprecise. For instance, the word "art" holds a myriad of connotations: art librarian, art work, state of the art, the art of war, the Arts and Crafts Movement, the performing arts and Art Buchwald. We can barely distinguish among them; the "dumb" computer hardly tries. Success with online search ing, however, demands a precision in terminology, which the language of the humanities rarely provides. Even with a state of-the-art art thesaurus, I doubt that our language will change to meet this need...nor should it.

If the language is not going to change, then the change must come with either the databases or our expectations of them. Perhaps online systems will be developed that will mesh with our approach to our subject. However, until then, the change is going to have to come from us, the intermedi aries and facilitators of online searching. We understand, or should understand, that there are many complexities imbed ded in our subject area and in its automated reference re sources. Of all these complexities, vocabulary will probably continue to be our most troublesome. Nevertheless, this

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.159 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 01:11:27 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

12 Art Documentation, Spring 1987

problem should not deter us from using online searching. In many situations the problem of vocabulary will be minimal (and further minimized by a standard source, such as the

AAT, for terminology). Many of the innovations in searching techniques (such as DIALOG2) have allowed us to use, with relative ease, more complex concepts and, thus, circumvent the inadequacies of our vocabulary. However, with the avail ability of all of these changes in techniques and resources, we must be prepared to serve as both advocate and critic, urging the researcher to take advantage of the speed and agility of automation and warning the researcher, as well as the data base producers, of its limitations.

To conclude my discussion of bibliographic databases, I would like to add another problem to the list: end-user searching. In the beginning of online searching, librarians in terposed themselves between the terminal and the user, based on the valid rationale that the complexities, the incon sistencies and the variety of the systems required trained personnel. However, with gateway systems that make the process simpler and cheaper, with personal computers that make access to the databanks possible from almost any where and with an enlightened public that is eager to use automation, the validity of our excuses is evaporating. The number of requests for end-user searching had been minimal and will probably remain so for a while. However, as this service spreads, the demand will multiply; and, even though I enjoy searching for others, I welcome this change as one more attempt to provide efficient and unhindered access to information.

Nevertheless, end-user searching will not make our jobs easier. On the contrary, this innovation will require greater diligence. Judith Herschman and Carol Mandel, in their article on how patrons search online catalogs, noted that users tend ed not to use thesauri, but often chose terminology that was too broad or too narrow for the subject.9 Combined with the inherent problem of our vocabulary, this tendency could easi ly frustrate any end-user. Furthermore, the public is already exhibiting symptoms of what Kathryn Deiss has described as "online psychosis," that is, too much reliance upon the pre sumed authority of the machine and not enough scrutiny of the machine's output.10 Still, Herschman and Mandel suggest that there are indications that users "show greater per severance when using an online catalog."11 Perseverance

may be a characteristic while the user is online, but it does not necessarily mean that the patron will supplement the computer with printed sources. During the testing period for our online catalog, the staff at SUNY Purchase noted that students often failed to use the card catalog even though there were numerous signs indicating that the online database represented only 20% of the library's collection. The more we have to wait for databases, such as the Art Index and RAA, to contain all of their indexing, the more we will have to pull our patrons back to the old-fashioned printed indices. Furthermore, there are indications that end-users will rely upon a few familiar sources and not seek alternatives; this online perseverance may only apply to one or two databases for each patron.12 With the addition of more databases, this entrenchment may become more pronounced as searchers are overwhelmed by the possibilities. Our task, as facilitators rather than as intermediaries, will be to digest the many changes and innovations that occur in online services and to keep our patrons alert to the opportunities that these bring to the field of art research. Kathryn Deiss, in her paper "Databases: Artful Reference Tools or Convenient Alibis?," called for a more critical attitude on the art librarian's part towards the capabilities of online searching. I concur, not be cause there is too little, but because there is the potential for so much.

NOTES ?Paula Baxter, "Using an Art Database in an Academic Library," Art Documenta tion 2, no. 3/4 (Summer, 1983): 89-90. 2"$" is the truncation symbol for BRS. 3Eugene Garfield, "Is Information Retrieval in the Arts and Humanities Inher ently Different from That in Science? The Effect That ISI's Citation Index for the Arts and Humanities Is Expected to Have on Future Scholarship," Library Quar terly SO, no. 1 (January 1980): 49. ?"RILA and RAA to Merge," News from RILA 4 (February 1986): 1, 3. 5Garfield, op. cit., p. 42. eCarol Tenopir, "What's New with WILSONLINE" Library Journal 111, no. 10 (1 June 1986): 98. 7Pat Steir, Pat Steir Paintings (New York: Abrams, 1986), p. 117. 8"RILA and RAA to Merge," p. 1. 9Carol A. Mandel and Judith Herschman, "Online Subject Access?Enhancing the Library Catalog," Journal of Academic Librarianship 9, no. 3 (July 1983): 149. 10Kathryn Deiss, "Databases: Artful Reference Tools or Convenient Alibis?" (paper delivered at ARLIS/NA conference, New York, N.Y., February 9, 1986), p. 5. 11Mandel and Herschman, op. cit., p. 149. 12Richard V. Janke, "Online After Six: End User Searching Comes of Age,"

0NUNE8, no. 6 (November 1984): 19.

PUBLICATIONS FROM DATA ARTS

Tribal Arts Review (Quarterly) $35.00 annual subscription. ISSN 0748-0024. Abstracting and indexing journal covering the current literature on the arts of the indigenous peoples of Africa, Oceania and the Americas.

Bibliography of Tribal Arts Bibliographies $9.00 (Tribal Arts Review Supplementary Publication No. 1)

Index to Illustrations In Art Periodicals (Quarterly) $44.00 annual subscription.

Cover-to-cover indexing of all illustrations in selected art periodicals. Indexed by artist, title, medium and subject. Begins January 1987.

Send order/make checks payable to: Data Arts P.O. Box 15453 Seattle, WA 98115-0453

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.159 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 01:11:27 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions