EBSCO's Hospitality & Tourism Index was launched in 2003 and merges content from three premier print and online indexes: the previously restricted‐access Hospitality Database from Cornell University's renowned School of Hotel Administration, the Lodging, Restaurant & Tourism Index (LRTI) from Purdue University, and Articles in Hospitality and Tourism (AHT) co‐produced by the Universities of Surrey and Oxford Brookes. Additional content added by EBSCO increased the number of periodicals and other resources (primarily country or industry reports) included.
Current content includes over 490,000 bibliographic records and brief abstracts from over 500 scholarly and trade journals, newsletters, magazines and reports. Publications are more likely to be selectively indexed, rather than indexed cover‐to‐cover. A few records date back to the mid‐1960s, but the majority are from publications dating from the mid‐1980s to the present. Reflecting the global nature of the hospitality and tourism industry, selected publications from Canada, Australia, Europe and Asia are indexed, as are international market and industry reports. However, only English‐language materials are included and the bulk of material is published in the USA or UK. A very broad range of subjects is spanned, ranging from hospitality and tourism business and management to culinary arts, hospitality law, travel, technology and demographics and statistics.
The standard EBSCOHost interface is used for this index. This is simple and easy to navigate. Help links are provided from every screen, and pages are refreshingly uncluttered. Tabs provide easy access to basic and advanced search pages and a navigational bar to keyword, thesaurus, index and cited reference searches. Standard Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), wildcard, truncation and proximity searches are supported in both search screens. The basic keyword search screen allows user to limit searches by linked full text, peer reviewed material, publication title, date published, availability of references, number of pages or expand searches to within the full text of articles, automatically add AND to search terms or to search for related words. This screen will suffice for most users, with the ability to limit to peer reviewed material and search for related words being particularly valuable for undergraduates. The ability to link to full text will depend on the subscribing institution's subscriptions, as Hospitality & Tourism Index itself does not include any full text.
The advanced search screen adds links to a field code list to facilitate field searching and adds limits for publication and document types and cover story. Searchable fields include all text, author, title, subject terms, abstract, geographic terms, people, reviews and products, company, NAICS code or description, DUNS number, ticker symbol, journal name and ISSN or ISBN. While this is an extremely valuable feature, it is unfortunate that users can only use field codes, rather than an easier to use drop‐down menu, to perform field searches. Users should also note that while EBSCO has performed substantial editorial work by standardizing subject headings across the three merged databases and creating a single new thesaurus, differences between the original data sources can affect advanced search results. For example, records from Articles in Hospitality and Tourism tend to have briefer abstracts and few or no subject headings, including instead author‐supplied keywords (a different field if searching using fields).
Search results are presented in reverse chronological order, with one‐click access to results from specific type of resources such as academic journals, a very helpful feature. Users can modify, refine or re‐sort searches and search results easily and quickly. Search results can be stored in a folder and folder contents saved, e‐mailed or printed. Like many other products, users can create personalized accounts with stored records and searches, and create journal or search alerts. EBSCO provides persistent links to records and searches, an increasingly important feature for those creating online course pages or using course management software.
While inconsistency in search results can occur due to differences in the original data sources, the combination of easy to use interface and content (some previously inaccessible) from three well‐known resources has created a unique tool for professionals and libraries supporting academic programs in all aspects of hospitality and tourism.
