Hi David
Actually if you go into Academic Search Complete which is an Ebscohost
database you can search under AB which is abstract or author supplied abstract
searching. I just went into Academic Search Complete and saw it for
myself that it does provide this feature. Do you have access to Academic
Search Complete? It may be only the Completes that can be searched this
way. I know a lot of libraries have ASP and it may not have it. We
are currently trialing ASC so I was surprised to see this. It may be a
plus feature that libraries should now consider as an added value to the “Complete”.
Sandhya
Sandhya
(Sandy) D. Srivastava
Electronic
Resources Librarian
New
York Institute of Technology
Wisser
Library
Northern
Boulevard
Old
Westbury, New York 11568-8000
Telephone:
(516) 686 - 3790
Fax:
(516) 686 - 1152
Email:
ssrivast@nyit.edu
From: SERIALST: Serials
in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU] On Behalf Of David
Jank
Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2009 12:23 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: Re: [SERIALST] whose abstract?
Hi.
I just wanted to
give a little clarification here about abstracts (I was a database vendor for
many years, and now I'm teaching in LIS for many years, so I've kind of been
through the drill....)
First of all, any
database of scholarly
journal articles will only have author-supplied abstracts.
That's just the way it works; so, if you're searching the serious stuff, you
needn't ever worry about this, as it's the only way it's done .
For trade journals,
it's a bit of a crap shoot, and depends on the journal itself. Many trades will
take author-supplied abstracts, while others don't require it. If an author
writes one, it is very rare that the journal would not print it verbatim. On
the other hand, if you're talking popular publications, it is very rare that
abstracts would even exist. When abstracts do exist in purely popular trades
(like BusinessWeek, Aviation Week, etc.) they are virtually always written by
the publisher.
Whenever abstracts
appear to be almost identical to lead-ins in the text, this can be the choice
of either the publisher or
the author. (Note: many scholars - serious researchers - believe this is
entirely appropriate, and while getting my Ph.D., I was actually told by some
professors that it's supposed to be this way, though I've not done it myself
whenever I've published. It is entirely a matter of style, and shouldn't be
interpreted in a negative sort of way, as it's considered the right thing to do
in certain academic circles.)
Lastly, and perhaps
most to the point, there is no way, to my knowledge, to ever limit a database
search to "author-supplied" vs. "publisher-supplied"
abstracts. I've never seen it, and I know of no way it could technically
be done, since database developers do not have access to that sort of
information. I've built many of these databases, and absolutely
never known of this ever to occur. However, I've also worked with many
publishers, both as a researcher/writer and as an indexer, and was always
told this isn't done.
So, "in
closing" - HA! - ballpark guideline is to just keep reminding yourself while
searching that abstracts are always author-supplied whenever you've got a
scholarly journal, or any "serious" trade journal; and that they're
likely to be publisher-supplied in popular and "lighter" trades.
*********************
David Jank
Associate Professor
Dowling College
Library
Oakdale,
NY 11769
*********************
-----Original
Message-----
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum
[mailto:SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU] On Behalf Of Steve Rossiter
Sent: Sunday, May 24, 2009 6:18 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: [SERIALST] Whose abstract?
Hello,
In doing searches in
databases such as OmniFile (Wilson), OneFile (Gale /
Cengage), Business Source Premier (EBSCO), Research Library (ProQuest) you
will often find abstracts preceding the main body of the article.
At least in the case
of ProQuest some of these abstracts / summaries are not
author supplied but merely a snippet of the first paragraph or some portion of
it and not very telling as to what the actual article is about.
I am curious to know
if there is a listing out there somewhere, print or
online, which indicates whether publications come with author supplied
abstracts?
The reason I am
asking is that in trying to determine which articles might be
of interest it would be easier to review a set of abstracts than having to
read the entire set of articles. Computer generated summaries really do not
work very for this purpose although I imagine most authors will try to
emphasize their main ideas in the lead paragraph.
Thank you everyone
for this help, Steve.