For 20 years, the print Index to Journals in Communication Studies (better known by communication students as “Matlon’s Index”, after editor Ronald J. Matlon) has been the main research tool for students and scholars in the field. The most recent edition of this print version covered journals through 1995, however, and will no longer be produced. As of 1999, CommSearch ‐ the electronic version of Matlon’s index ‐ is now in its third edition. Similar to the print, it contains tables of contents and indexes (through 1996) by keyword, author, and title to more than 24 core journals in communication studies. In addition, CommSearch builds on its predecessor, providing abstracts (1978‐1997) and full text (1991‐1997) for the six journals published by the National Communication Association (NCA). The publisher stresses that CommSearch is a work in progress, part of its long‐range plan to permit full‐text retrieval for a wide range of scholarship in the field of communication. Although NCA would have liked to make full text available for more titles, it explains that this was not possible at the time of publication for financial reasons and due to copyright restrictions from other journal publishers.
Installation of the program is fast and requires a mere 17Mb of free space; this copies the viewing/searching software, DynaText v.4.1a, and its tutorial to the hard drive. Use of the CD is still necessary to access the CommSearch data files.
The DynaText browser, also used with another product reviewed in this issue, the ASM Handbook, is a piece of software designed to read and search SGML documents. All files within CommSearch are marked up in SGML ‐ a feature which should make this product easily portable to the Web in later releases. There are nine different datasets within CommSearch that may be searched or browsed individually or together. They are as follows:
Six files: the full text of the journals Communication Education, Communication Monographs, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Quarterly Journal of Speech, and Text and Performance Quarterly (all published by NCA) from 1991‐1997, as well as abstracts of earlier issues, some dating as far back as 1972, through 1997.
One file: tables of contents from 26 journals, from Vol. 1 No. 1 of each journal (as far back as the earlier part of this century) through 1996.
One file: an index to authors/contributors from these journals, through 1996.
One file: an index to keyword descriptors from 24 of these journals. From 1996 on, abstracts and keywords written by article authors are included here instead of keyword descriptors.
Although I made a valiant attempt to use DynaText without reading the manual first, I admittedly did not get far. All new users should read the printed CommSearch manual before proceeding with a search, as it does an excellent job of explaining how to search for, browse through, display, and print information. In addition, after reading the manual thoroughly, DynaText seems so easy to use that it is hard to believe that the process was not clear to me earlier.
The DynaText screen resembles Windows Explorer, with expandable folders on the left‐hand side (“navigation panel”) and their contents on the right (“content panel”). When the program begins, the nine files above are listed separately in the content panel. These files may be browsed by double‐clicking on each; once users choose a folder in this way, a new window opens in the foreground. This makes backtracking through the search process as easy as closing the appropriate windows.
At the document level, many fields appear in either red (for article codes) or blue (for authors’ names), indicating that they are hotlinked. Clicking on these links will bring users to either further information about a source or to the author index, a simple way of retrieving a comprehensive list of articles written by a person. In addition, students will no doubt find the APA and MLA hotlinks handy. These provide the appropriate organization for APA‐ and MLA‐style citations for a given article, although students will need to change some fonts in order for the citation to be formatted correctly.
Searching is likewise easy. Users can type their search terms in the Find box at the bottom of each screen. DynaText will perform the search in whichever folder(s) are currently selected within the navigation panel; users may even do a comprehensive search throughout all databases by selecting “CommSearch 3rd edition” on the original screen.
After searching, the number of hits found within each of the folders is indicated. At that point, users can browse through the various folders down to the appropriate level to see where their results are located. Checking off the Expand box before searching will also search for synonyms and other related terms, for example “sex roles” instead of “gender roles”. Printing is straightforward, and librarians will appreciate that students may print full‐text documents only one at a time.
For future developments with CommSearch, a Web interface would greatly improve the product. Even with a fast machine, searching across multiple folders can be a slow process. However, it’s a great improvement over searching manually for terms throughout the whole print index to Journals in Communication Studies. Color is used to great effect within the database, as users will easily be able to tell where their search terms are found. The main defect of CommSearch is that it’s updated infrequently, which means significant lag time in terms of journal coverage.
How does CommSearch 3.0 compare to the other major indexing/abstracting source in communication studies, the Web‐based ComAbstracts from the Communication Institute for Online Scholarship (http://www.cios.org)? CommSearch indexes five journals not covered by ComAbstracts, with full text provided for one of these titles (Text and Performance Quarterly). On the other hand, ComAbstracts indexes 27 journals not included in CommSearch 3.0 and is updated more regularly, but coverage for most titles goes only as far back as the late 1980s. No full text is provided within ComAbstracts, either.
Rather than having to choose between them, since the cost is not prohibitive for either, I recommend that libraries make the investment in both products. With its current SGML format, CommSearch 3.0 is surely on the right track for the development of a Web version. Perhaps with the move to the Web, communication scholars and librarians can hope for more frequent updates as well. Even as it stands now, though, CommSearch 3.0 is an indispensable resource for libraries supporting study in the communication field.
