Rickey Barnett MSLS
Content Analysis
Scope
Both the EBSCOhost and ProQuest database providers offer an extremely expansive breadth of databases, which encompass a wide swath of topics and subject disciplines. For instance, EBSCOhost alone contains approximately 50 individual databases with thousands of journal articles, spanning nearly every subject discipline from the hard sciences to the arts and humanities. Likewise, ProQuest, although not quite as large as EBSCOhost, still offers an impressive selection of twenty-three databases that span similar disciplines. These collections of databases may be searched individually, or by any combination that best fits the users’ needs. Finally, there is the aspect of date coverage; this aspect does vary somewhat by each individual journal, however, it seems that EBSCOhost has acquired a more comprehensive coverage, spanning in some cases back to the turn of the 20th century.
Authority
The authority of both of these database platforms is of the highest quality, as they share a mutually accepted presence at academic institutions, and are thus frequently utilized by scholars and professionals to satisfy their information needs. Additionally, the actual content of each respective database originates from the most authoritative sources, such as peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings. Therefore, it is unlikely a user would ever need to question the reliability of information gathered from these providers. These types of resources allow one to easily cross-reference information by tracing citations and comparing the content of documents.
Accuracy
Containing such a high volume of resources, which will inevitably result in the confusion of similar identifying information (e.g., identical authors’ names), EBSCOhost and ProQuest offer comprehensive indexes of people, places, and subject terms within their thesauri, authority files, and indexes to combat this. Users will find a specific index/authority file for each respective database, as established terms obviously vary by ontology. However, EBSCOhost will combine thesauri and indexes if a user happens to search multiple database simultaneously, a feature not present with ProQuest. EBSCOhost also possesses the added advantage of the “cited references” feature, which also does not appear in ProQuest. This feature allows a user to effectively check the citations of a document against other sources that cited it as a reference.
Arrangement
The visible arrangement of both EBSCOhost and ProQuest are quite similar, and are quite conducive to effectively supporting users of varying skill. Access points are also a critical aspect of arrangement, and there exist some significant discrepancies between EBSCOhost and ProQuest, for example. The specific “field codes” are individual by database and platform; therefore, users will have to accustom themselves to varying terminologies. However, EBSCOhost offers greater ease in transitioning from varying field codes. When one changes the database to be searched, so too does the drop down menu of available field codes automatically, ProQuest however, does not. It instead links to a separate, static help page where one must search for the database they are using.
Special Features
Firstly, is the ability of a user to create their own personalized account, which is available to users of both platforms. With a personal account users are able to save their research for future use and personally customize their UI so that it is most conducive to their personal needs. Users may modify the graphical layout of the UI in several ways, such as changing colors and fonts to accommodate seeing impairments. However, EBSCOhost hosts a text-to-speech function for the seeing impaired that does not appear in ProQuest.
Nonetheless, ProQuest too has a special feature of its own, known as “Breadcrumbs”. This provides a navigable trail of searched terms in a hierarchical display, proving very helpful when backtracking or modifying searches. EBSCOhost only allows users to view their search histories, which may not always be as effective. Still yet, only EBSCOhost possesses a special feature known as the “Citation Matcher”. This tool allows users to effectively cross-reference incomplete, or unknown citations, in order to retrieve the entire document.
Search Analysis
This portion of the database analysis will entail a comparison of a search between two databases from each provider: the Music Index from EBSCOhost, and the International Index to Music Periodicals Full Text from ProQuest. The following query was used: clarinetists. The query is somewhat broad in order to apply various search functions to observe differences and similarities in database functionality.
Record Structure
For the most part, fields (i.e., attributes) used to both describe and search documents in each database were identical, such as Title, Author, Date, etc. Furthermore, even selecting limiters were observed to be nearly identical, save for a few fields that were slightly out of place across the two UIs. However, the two platforms do differ significantly in a few specific fields that can be used to search a document. For instance, EBSCOhost contains the “Geographic Terms (GE)” field option, which is absent in ProQuest, despite its potential for being very useful in narrowing a search.
Advanced Search
Users will be pleased to find that both EBSCOhost and ProQuest contain an equal amount of impressive search operators to conduct more narrow searches. For example, both platforms allow the user to apply Boolean Logic to their searchers, as well as proximity operators and stemming capabilities. One should note however, that truncation symbols do differ; ‘$’ or ‘*’ in ProQuest, and ‘?’ or ‘#’ in EBSCOhost. Also, one should make sure to differentiate between the “NEAR/N” (where is the number of terms to consider in the proximity operator) in ProQuest, and simply N/# in EBSCOhost when employing proximity operators (where # is the number of words to be considered).
Limits, Filters, and Options & Records Search
There are noticeable differences in terms of what document types may be used as filters, and which search options may be used. Take for instance the presence of the “More Search Options” area of the “Advanced Search” area within ProQuest. Here one is allowed the advantage to limit their search to a wide selection of document types, and even features (e.g., cartoons, illustrations, and maps), which are subsequently lacking in EBSCOhost. On the other hand, EBSCOhost only offers minimal limits of document type (only three options in all), which will prove difficult in improving precision of recall. Users should give special attention to the type of record that they are trying to recall, as each type of record (e.g., book, journal article, or multimedia file) will contain different descriptive attributes.
Controlled Vocabulary
EBSCOhost has a far superior collection of thesauri, encompassing: names, subject terms, publications, and geographic locations for each database. Although ProQuest too offers its users access to such thesauri and indexes, they do not offer the same breadth of information (e.g., geographic terms), nor are they innate in how they are to be accessed. Even for the trained searcher, locating the subject term thesaurus was burdensome in ProQuest, whereas EBSCOhost simply has a tab denoting the subject index and thesaurus, which automatically change depending on the particular database a user is searching.
Sorting
It is ProQuest who offers superior sorting functionality over EBSCOhost, allowing a user to easily apply sort parameters before the search is conducted. Detractions from the sort functions present in EBSCOhost stem from awkward placement that is not immediately intuitive to the user. EBSCOhost requires a user to first conduct the search, and then toggle options form the “Relevance” drop down menu, in addition to toggling other separate menus, such as “Page Options”. Thus, one must endure a more burdensome process to achieve the same sort functions that are contained within a single box with ProQuest.
Command Line Searching
Searching by command line is an extremely useful functionality, allowing one to construct more precise search queries by utilizing Boolean Operators, in addition to combining different fields of the document to be searched. Users employing this search method will find that results retrieved will more than likely be very relevant to their query, equally minimizing search time, frustration with massive return results, and avoiding information overload. Thankfully, command line searching is present in both EBSCOhost and ProQuest. For example, by using the following command line search: “(AU) Strauss NOT Johannes, (BK) Instru*” one is likely to retrieve a much more desirable set of results when searching for book written by the great arranger Richard Strauss. This is opposed to simply searching, “strauss’s instrumentation book”, in a key word search, which will recall thousands of documents at varying levels of relevance.
–Rickey Barnett
University of Kentucky
