Archive
IJMSTA - Vol. 5 - Issue 1 - January 2023
ISSN 2612-2146
Pages: 9
Exploring Three Leading Search Platforms for Secondary Literature: JSTOR, WorldCat, and RILM
Authors: Stacy Olive Jarvis
Categories: Journal
Abstract - The article examines three popular search platforms JSTOR, WorldCat, and RILM. JSTOR is a search platform that explores different topics from humanities, social sciences, and Art literature, among others. RILM is also a search platform that mainly explores music articles and other disciplines. In contrast, WorldCat, on the other hand, is a global library that allows users to search for books, articles, and other materials held in the library.
WorldCat covers items in the library worldwide. The article will explore the three databases as search platforms for secondary literature. Each platform has its unique characteristics; therefore, the platform will explore its importance, advantages, and disadvantages and compare its differences with each platform. Databases such as JSTOR, RILM, and WorldCat have been the main source and storage of literature in the music orb. The Reference Index to Music Literature is a bibliographic database of over 2.6 million citations to writings about music from over 70 countries. The Research Institute produces RILM for the Study of Music at the University of Buffalo. JSTOR is an e-library of academic journals, books, and primary sources. Database JSTOR helps scholars find, utilise, and build upon a vast range of literature through a powerful teaching and research platform.
Another database, WorldCat, is the world's biggest library catalogue, assisting scholars in finding library materials online. An evaluation of these databases in the music sphere by looking into the description and intended use and finding similarities and differences. Through comparison, these aim to serve different purposes, though they have the same goal of providing and storing literature. Also, since each database has different parts of literature that it majors on, the intended use of the three databases is evaluated. It can be found in the description, scope, and intended uses section. These areas are crucial to the research as it addresses the functional or literature differences among the three databases. It is also found that these databases have different quantitative potentials. It is determined by addressing the year each database began collecting literature and the number of articles, periodicals, albums, conference proceedings, music, dissertations, digital media, essays collections, journal articles, monographs, online resources, reviews, and reference materials that can be found in each one of them. It can be found in the sections description, scope and intended uses and the importance of the database in identifying literature on different topics. To compare the delivery of services to the users, the importance of databases in identifying literature on different topics is also addressed in the section -the importance of databases in identifying literature on different topics. Even though these databases are used in research, they all have disadvantages and advantages. It is addressed in the sections on advantages and disadvantages. It will be significant in determining which of the three is the best. Also, it will help address how the shortcomings of one database can be addressed by utilising two databases together while conducting research. It is addressed in the section a combination of RILM and JSTOR. All this information revolves around the idea that a huge amount of quantitative and qualitative data can be found in the presented databases on music and digital content; however, each database has a different construction and material features contributing to the musical scholarship.
Keywords: RILM, JSTOR, WorldCat
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