Resource Review #1: Credontials

As a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I fully understand the privileges we have through our library system and the databases to which it subscribes. Credo Reference, like most other aggregate reference databases, is surely costly. On our "search" page, it boasts to contain over 1.4 million full text entries (as of today) in 101 reference books. However, the public domain/website claims there are over 3.2 million entries, from 440 titles. Perhaps UW's subscription is "universityalized"contains reference sources most useful/relevant to the academic programs most likely to use the database...

But that certainly does not diminish the wide range of subjects and resources this reference tool encompasses: art, bilingual dictionaries, biographies, business, dictionaries, encyclopedias, food & beverage, geography, history, language, law, literature, medicine, music, philosophy, psychology, quotations, religion, science, social sciences, and technology. Though I was instantly excited about the food & beverage subject, I was somewhat dismayed that there did not seem to be any resources dedicated to textile studies (a field I am currently researching and a discipline towards which I plan on focusing my archival education). Having explored the Oxford Art Online reference source, to which we also subscribe, I know I can find some textile-related information there. A disclaimer to anyone with insight: I do not have a background in art or art history, which textiles and design studies are often (and rightfully) grouped with. Therefore, I feel I often have to do extra research just to understand some of the contextual arenas in which textiles are presented.

I digress...

Searching Credo Reference (formerly known as Xrefer, Ltd.) is nice and easy with all sorts of bells and whistles that are presented in a user-friendly way. Searching can be done by first choosing a subject, reference source type, or just entering a key word to be searched in all subjects. In addition to searching for terms, images and concepts can be searched. One can Find A Book by subject, title, type, Dewey Classification, or Library of Congress subjects/systems. I randomly chose a title that caught my eye, Rawson's Wicked Words and entered an EXTREMELY informative resource that provides definitions and uses for the more "colorful" words in our English colloquialisms; its readership is defined as "anyone who needs a put-down or insult".

Advanced searching is similar to other databases in that one can limit the ways in which to search. The concept map was something I cannot say I've ever seen before: one types in a term and a diagram is created with various synonymous or relative terms/concepts (anything goes here, though the relationships may not initially make sense--the algorithm obviously works off of the root word. Try "martini").

Another fun feature is the "Gadgets" toolbar on the right side. One enters a term in any of the designated boxes:

• Define
• Person
• Images
• Pronunciations
• Crossword
• Quotations
• Holidays & Festivals
• Conversions (area, distance, energy, fuel consumption, temperature, power, speed, volume, weight)-with a decimal precision up to 6 points that can be expanded.

I was slightly perplexed that "Halloween" in the "Holidays & Festivals" box yielded nothing.

C'est la vie!