Bibliographic Index Plus describes itself as a “cumulative bibliography of bibliographies”. According to its publisher, the H.W. Wilson Company, Bibliographic Index Plus contains full text bibliographies from over 2,000 journals covering a wide variety of disciplines. It also contains in‐depth indexing of more than 530,000 bibliographies, appearing in periodicals, as whole books or parts of books. Bibliographic essays, literature reviews, serial bibliographies, and bibliographies appearing as regular features are also listed among the resources cited.
The default search screen features an advanced search function. This feature contains a number of filtering mechanisms including the option of using Boolean operators. Search terms can be narrowed according to nineteen different criteria such as subject, keyword, title, author, document type, and ISBN. The default setting is to search within all criteria. Results can be sorted according to relevance, date, author, journal issue, journal name, publication year, and title. Users are provided with the option of limiting searches by date. The default setting is any year, however, options are provided to limit searches to within the last 12 months and according to year ranges established by the user. Searches may be limited according to document type such as: full‐text, page image (PDF), peer reviewed, and non‐peer reviewed. Other filters allow the user to limit searches according to document type and physical description. Searches may be expanded to search within the full text of articles. Bibliographic Index Plus interface language options are in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese.
The basic search screen provides one search bar for search terms. No limiters are offered on the basic search screen, however, searching within the full‐text of articles is an option that is provided and Boolean operators may be used. By selecting the browse tab a user can browse the terms contained in a field or group of fields. Twenty different options (such as subject, author, and series) are provided through a drop down box. Another feature provided is a thesaurus search. A search history option allows the user to combine search histories using Boolean operators. The Print E‐Mail Save tab allows users the option of printing, e‐mailing, saving, or exporting their searches to a program such as RefWorks.
Bibliographic Index Plus provides users the option of customizing the interface display. The background color design can be changed to one of four options. Records may be sorted according to criteria such as relevance (the default setting), date, and author. Patrons may choose which fields to include in book and article records. The My WilsonWeb link allows users to create a “profile” for saved searches, emailed alerts, and RSS Feeds. An additional feature is the ability to save information concerning individual records, records per page, language of the interface, and sorting options. If a RSS Feed is saved in My WilsonWeb, users will get an automatic alert when the RSS Feed is about to expire. The link is located at the top of each WilsonWeb screen.
The help file is not specific to Bibliographic Index Plus. The help file does provide useful information; however, a database specific help file could be more useful. The help file does offer information concerning a listserv for users of H.W. Wilson Products. Unfortunately, the Journal Directory does not list journals that are covered in Bibliographic Index Plus. A user might be better served by having a list of journals that are covered in this database.
Overall Bibliographic Index Plus provides many useful features and is a valuable resource for an academic library. However, patrons are likely to need assistance in initial use of this database.
