Those whose academic careers began and ended during the Reagan Administration can only look with envy at the reference and research tools available today. What we think of as “reference” has steadily evolved with technology. There was a time was when “reference” referred, as it were, to books and other printed materials. But as new media appeared, reference adapted.

Once the Internet became a force to be reckoned with, reckon people did, and now “reference” is more likely than not to be synonymous with “database.” Most of the publishers in this month’s Reference section offer digital databases alongside—or in lieu of—traditional printed reference materials like books and periodicals.

One of the major themes this year is evolving and refreshing those databases’ user interfaces to make them more friendly and intuitive and take into account how search techniques have changed. Most notably, EBSCO and CABI have totally revamped their UIs to better enable users to find content fast and easily.

But none of this comes at the expense of providing new content. EBSCO has launched a new literature database, CABI has added a new agricultural thesaurus, Degree Data lets educational researchers compare university programs, Bloomsbury is growing by leaps and bounds (thanks to some major acquisitions), and APA has new guides explaining how to present the results of research.

That said, print books are still in the game, and Grey House has a full slate of compelling new reference titles that have their own “UI” improvements. Let’s explore…
 

DegreeData 

Founder and president Anne Valentine spent 25 years working for institutions of higher education. In 2010, she launched DegreeData, an online database that compiles information from the academic catalogs of colleges and universities throughout the United States.

Updated annually, the database includes course, program, and policy descriptions from all two- and four-year colleges and universities in the U.S., both private and public; the archive provides 100 percent coverage. “It’s like the Encyclopedia Britannica of higher education in the United States,” says Valentine.

DegreeData is designed to be a resource for high school guidance counselors, college admission counselors, and educational researchers, and the company is now starting its outreach to libraries.

High school guidance counselors use the database to help guide student decisions when starting the college search. “You could, for instance, compare the academic rigor between an engineering program at MIT and the engineering program at Boston University,” says Valentine.

DegreeData can also be used by educators when developing a new curriculum or program. “If you were at Dartmouth College and you were developing a new nursing curriculum, you don’t do that in the dark,” says Valentine. “You’d look to see what the University of Vermont’s nursing curriculum is. So, researchers and curriculum developers can use it to compare programs.”

Another major application for DegreeData is obtaining information for transfer credit assessments. When a student transfers colleges or goes back to school after a hiatus, they often lose credits. For instance, a particular course taken at one institution in 2017 may not be completely comparable to the same or a similar course at another institution in 2024. Admissions officers need to be able to compare the two.

“That’s a real time sink for people that work in Admissions and enrollment offices,” says Valentine. “This is an efficiency tool that academic libraries could make available to their institutions’ Admissions personnel.”

Users can also search institutions by criteria such as public or private, two-year or four-year, Carnegie classification (what kind of research institution it is), or academic affinity like HBCU (historically black colleges and universities), HACU (Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities), military and veterans serving, and so on.

Designed to be affordable, DegreeData is a subscription service that starts at $1,500 a year. Some of DegreeData’s partners include Educational Testing Service, National Student Clearinghouse, American Council on Education, and others.
 

EBSCOhost

EBSCOhost, EBSCO’s intuitive online research platform , was launched more than 15 years ago and is used by academic, school, and public libraries, as well as medical institutions and corporate sites worldwide. Virtually every academic and public library in the U.S. uses some or all of EBSCO’s more than 300 databases.

Five years ago, EBSCO started overhauling its user interface to give it a more modern look and feel, as well as to make it more intuitive to navigate. One key new element built into the UI is responsive design. Since users tend to access the platform on a variety of devices at different times, EBSCOhost can now detect what type of device the user is accessing the platform with and configure itself accordingly.

“Our user research showed us that many students do their initial research on their phones, running some searches so they save them quickly or bulk save them,” says Bonnie Leavitt, vice president, product management, at EBSCO Information Services. “Then, when they’re on their laptops at the library or in their dorms, they have access to those searches without having to redo them.”

The interface was also redesigned to accommodate different types of users, or “personas” as EBSCO refers to them. One persona is a basic researcher, such as a high school student or college undergraduate who may not be familiar with advanced search techniques. Another persona is a power user: a graduate or PhD student or an academic or medical librarian who knows intimately how to search for specific content. Whatever a student’s level of expertise, the new UI design empowers students to effectively perform research on their own.

The interface features a simple search field at the top of the homepage, plus a dashboard that users can personalize. Users can save searches and search results, group results into projects, save results by topic, or create group projects. Users can also view their recent search history in case they fail to save a search result they need later. In short, the UI meets students’ expectations that “work done online is captured, cataloged, and retrievable,” says Ryan Walter, principal user experience researcher at EBSCO.

Users can also choose to search all the available EBSCO databases or select specific ones, such as APA PsycInfo or Academic Search Ultimate. Users can also receive alerts when certain publications are updated or if new materials related to a specific search are available.

A set of “quick filters,” the most common search filters or limiters as determined by EBSCO’s user research, are also featured on the homepage. “We added those so they’re easy to find and click on, so users don’t need to scroll through a long list of limiters and filters,” says Leavitt. Advanced users can access more detailed filters and other types of niche database functionality. EBSCO also added the option for users to easily switch between a basic search and a more advanced search.

The PDF viewer on the platform has also been rebuilt, making articles easier to scroll through and including features such as saving, sharing, printing, and text-to-speech for visually impaired users.

In addition to EBSCOhost, EBSCO also rebuilt the interface for Explora, its search product targeted specifically for primary schools and public libraries, as well as the interface for EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS), its more advanced academic search product for consistency across all EBSCO products.

As users advance from primary to secondary and perhaps graduate school, “EBSCO can grow with them,” says Leavitt.

EBSCO LitBase

Last June, EBSCO launched LitBase, a world literature database featuring the most studied authors, poetry, fiction, plays, and creative nonfiction. LitBase includes over 450,000 primary sources, 100,000 secondary and reference sources, plus hundreds of full-text scholarly journals and literary magazines.

EBSCO’s goal with LitBase was to go beyond the Western canon and include works from historically underrepresented groups (people of color, LGBTQ+, and other minorities), as well as from virtually every corner of the world. For example, LitBase includes a comprehensive collection of poetry from Asia that extends back 1,000 years.

“Universities and colleges in that part of the world [Asia] are pretty excited,” says Kimberly Clarkson, senior product manager at EBSCO. “Asian literature is being studied domestically as well, so we’re really offering something new.”

EBSCO also made a concerted effort to include more contemporary literature, as there is comparatively little literary scholarship dedicated to works created since the 1920s.

Five years in development, LitBase was the result of extensive research into what is being studied at colleges and universities in the U.S. and abroad. The criterion for inclusion in LitBase is any work that is studied academically; new works are added continuously. “We actively track about 3,000 of the most studied authors from around the world,” says Clarkson, “and that’s a constantly evolving list.”

“A lot of time was spent on thinking about the most valuable content to offer users and what their research behaviors are like, so that we could design a platform that accommodates them most efficiently,” Clarkson continues. “It was a combination of those two efforts: the content and the design.” LitBase is built with EBSCO’s new user interface design, so it seamlessly integrates other EBSCO products including MLA International Bibliography with Full Text.

Designed to provide quick and easy access to whatever a user is studying, the homepage is divided into three sections. The top section features popular genres—poetry, fiction, drama, creative nonfiction, and a one-click entry point to 400 Oxford World Classics. “We heard users say, ‘I just need quick access to contemporary poetry,’ so we gave them quick access to poetry right on the homepage,” says Clarkson.

The center of the homepage lets users explore subjects by geography or demographics, such as literature from Africa or Asia, or works by LGBTQ+ or women authors. The bottom of the homepage presents a “Spotlight” on a popular literary theme, which changes each month. October’s theme was “coming of age,” offering a definition of “coming of age” mand the ability to search for all coming-of-age-related primary and secondary sources.

Another shortcut to aid users’ research is LitBase author pages. For the 3,000 most studied authors, LitBase has created dedicated pages that include biographical data, secondary sources about the author and their writing, and primary sources by that author. “Our author pages create an efficient springboard into the works and supporting analysis of an author,” says Clarkson.

LitBase uses EBSCO’s standard database filters and limiters, such as searches limited to only peer-reviewed materials or within a certain timeframe. LitBase can also send users alerts when new records from certain journals or new authors are posted.

Although tailored to college and graduate school libraries, EBSCO discovered that high school libraries were also interested in LitBase. A subscription database, LitBase is available to libraries as part of their EBSCO bundle.

“It’s a one-stop shop for all your literature needs,” says Clarkson.

American Psychological Association (APA)

APA Style is the gold standard for consistency and accuracy for students and researchers writing academic papers and has been adopted internationally and across all academic disciplines. The latest edition (7th) of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association was published in 2019.

“The guiding principles of APA Style are to write with clarity, precision, and inclusion with the overarching goal of advancing excellence in communication and scholarship,” says Emily Ayubi, senior director of APA Style.

APA published the second edition of its Inclusive Language Guide in December 2023 (the first edition appeared in December 2021). Updates include new guidance on writing about body size and weight stigma, gender-inclusive language related to pregnancy, language pertaining to neurodiversity that takes a strengths-based approach, guidance on how to avoid ableist language, and the mental health impacts of racism.

Neurodiversity includes topics including autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder/condition (ADHD/ADHC), and learning disabilities. APA Style recommendations are based on the concept that there is no such thing as a “normal” brain, that neurodiversity is a spectrum on which everyone sits. The “strengths-based” approach emphasizes centering people’s strengths regarding neurodiversity, rather than their deficits.

“Ableism” is a type of discrimination against those who may not have full use of their cognitive, sensory, or neurological functions. The preferred APA style is to put the person before the disability, i.e., “special needs” should instead be “person with a disability” and “mentally ill” is written as “person with a mental disorder.”

The Inclusive Language Guide is available online or as a downloadable PDF on the APA web site at https://www.apa.org/about/apa/equity-diversity-inclusion/language-guidelines.

APA also published its Journal Article Reporting Standards for Race, Ethnicity, and Culture (APA Style JARS-REC) in November 2023, which includes standards for researchers in behavioral sciences, as well as for editors and reviewers evaluating how race, ethnicity, and culture are integrated into research.

“Science in general has been abused in ways that have negatively affected a lot of different people,” says Samantha Denneny, development manager. “This is one way in which we can make sure that people are looking at things like ethnicity, culture, and race when they’re doing their studies.”

APA is also vocal in stressing “accessibility,” not only making its own materials available in a variety of formats—such as Braille—but also providing guidance on accessibility in terms of fonts, heading styles, URLs, and color.

A related issue that has emerged is “artificial intelligence” (AI), which has generated its own set of ethical issues and challenges. APA is offering its guidance on best practices regarding the use of AI in research.

AI tools can help writers achieve the APA’s principles of clarity, precision, and inclusion, but the human writer needs to carefully vet the results. “With current artificial intelligence models that are rife with bias, the ethical use of artificial intelligence requires a human-centered approach,” says Denneny.

Think of AI like an electric bike, adds Denneny. “If you’re going up a hill, it can help you get up the hill, but you’re still steering it, as opposed to something like a Roomba where it just does everything for you. AI can help you in certain ways, but you need to actually read the sources to ensure they are accurate.”

Bloomsbury

Launched as a trade publisher in the U.K. in the 1980s, with an academic division debuting in 2008, Bloomsbury has been expanding both organically and through acquisition. For the past 20 years, Bloomsbury has been actively continuing to expand its digital activities, especially in reference.

“A key driver for pretty much all the acquisitions that we’ve made at Bloomsbury has been digital deployment and building our Bloomsbury Digital Resources program and our eBook channels,” says Kathryn Earle, managing director of Bloomsbury Digital Resources. “Reference is a linchpin to, if not all, then most of our digital products. Reference is hugely valuable.”

In late 2021, Bloomsbury acquired 70-year-old ABC-CLIO, an academic publisher serving schools, academic libraries, and public libraries, primarily in the U.S. The company’s reference works and periodicals focus mainly on topics such as history and social sciences. ABC-CLIO added more than 23,000 titles across four imprints and 32 databases, 16 of which serve U.S. schools and 16 of which provide academic scholarly research materials.

According to a Bloomsbury press release, “This acquisition is an excellent strategic fit, further strengthening Bloomsbury Digital Resources and significantly accelerating Bloomsbury’s academic publishing presence in North America.”

An ABC-CLIO title that launched in October 2024 is Women’s History in the United States, a look at the impact women have made on U.S. history, covering 12 time periods and 56 “Topic Centers,” from the lives of indigenous women to contemporary figures. The title includes more than 1,700 reference items, more than 1,800 primary sources—including historic suffragist speeches, homesteaders’ letters, and World War II memoirs—and the CLIOview statistical data tool that allows users to compare and analyse U.S. Census data on women from 1850 through today. Written material is complemented by an abundance of video content.

“Within each of those Topic Centers, we provide historical overviews, very much like one might read in a history textbook, and then buttress that with reference articles that further define those areas and identify people and events and places,” says Kevin Ohe, academic publishing director, digital resources.

There are two versions of this database. A schools version features 36 classroom activities for students, with corresponding educator guides. All content correlates to U.S. state standards. An academic version features scholar-led roundtable discussions, an eBook collection, and a primary source collection focused on the fight for women’s suffrage.

In May 2024, Bloomsbury made its biggest acquisition to date: Rowman & Littlefield, an American independent academic publisher. Adding their 40,000 titles “to ours will make us a significant U.S. academic publisher,” says Nigel Newton, chief executive of Bloomsbury, calling the acquisition a key milestone in Bloomsbury’s long-term growth strategy. Rowman & Littlefield is an excellent strategic fit for Bloomsbury’s Academic & Professional division.

Founded in 1949, Rowman & Littlefield’s list features leading authors in the arts, humanities, and social sciences and important publishing partnerships with renowned academic and professional institutions. One long-awaited title, which was published in June 2024, is the Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. It was commissioned by the British Psychoanalytical Society and co-published by Rowman & Littlefield. The work supplements Freud’s writing with substantial editorial commentaries through the lens of modern scholarship.

With the acquisitions of ABC-CLIO and Rowman & Littlefield, Bloomsbury is well on its way to becoming an academic publishing juggernaut, with an unparalleled number of titles and databases across a wide breadth of research areas. But the company’s growth hasn’t relied on acquisition alone. Bloomsbury has continuously developed new reference resources covering a broad range of interests and areas of study.

The Bloomsbury Fashion Central digital hub was launched about ten years ago. The most recent addition to the hub is Bloomsbury Historic Dress in Detail, which was launched in September. Created in partnership with UK production company Crow’s Eye, it comprises 26 immersive videos that explore the history of fashion and specific garments, including how they were made and how they were worn. Video titles include “1765-80s Women’s Dress,” “Corsets and Stays from the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century,” and “Mycenaean to Classical Greek Women’s Dress,” to name just a few.

“These are high-quality, visually stunning films that recreate costume history by showing kind of a ‘dressing episode’—somebody getting dressed in Elizabethan England, for instance. The film walks the viewer through that process, providing a look into a view of everyday life through film,” says Ohe. The videos are complemented by a series of “case studies,” written by one of the Crow’s Eye principals.

Coming in January 2025, the Animator’s Survival Kit Animated is a set of 16 video masterclasses that provide step-by-step guides for users to learn all the techniques of animation. Originally a printed book by multi-Oscar-winning animation legend Richard Williams—best known as the animation director on Who Framed Roger Rabbit? —it was reissued as a series of DVDs featuring 400 animated examples. Bloomsbury will be streaming the content online via subscription. Williams was a towering figure in animation, and his book is the authoritative manual of animation methods and techniques.

“It’s enabling access for new generations of users around key principles that informed animation, all the way back to the Hollywood greats,” says Earle. “It’s of great value for people who really want to learn the principles of animation.” It’s not targeted at just the academic market but also institutions like art schools. There will also be a business-to-consumer solution for individuals who want to learn animation techniques for applications like gaming.

Coming in March 2025 is the Bloomsbury Global Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture. Part of the Bloomsbury Visual Arts Hub, it’s an extensive database of articles and images that cover architectural history from 1960 (when women were first able to attend major architecture schools) to 2015, looking at the individuals who paved the way for female architects.

As the authoritative reference to women architects and their work, the encyclopedia tells the previously untold story of architectural history in the seminal period when women started to make an impact. It introduces students and scholars to notable and often-overlooked women who contributed to the global built world. Key architects from over 135 countries are included with in-depth biographical entries.

Featuring over 1,000 entries and 600 images, the encyclopedia is cross-searchable with other Bloomsbury Visual Arts content, including Bloomsbury Architecture Library, Architecture Design & Practice Online, and Bloomsbury Design Library.

Grey House Publishing

Based in Amenia, NY, Grey House Publishing launched in 1981. Today, the company publishes nearly 150 reference titles a year across several imprints, covering topics such as history, literature, science, health and wellness, and more. Grey House titles are targeted toward public, high school, and college libraries.

“Our history titles tend to be focused on the curriculum level of a junior or senior in high school, particularly at the AP class level,” says Publisher and President Leslie Mackenzie. “Community colleges have discovered us, and our customer base is getting larger in that area.”

One of the publisher’s most popular series is “Opinions Throughout History.” It releases four new titles each year. Each one examines a particular topic—for instance, the Supreme Court or voting rights—and traces how it has been discussed from the founding of the U.S. to the present time.

Using primary documents like magazines and newspaper articles, speeches, cartoons, and other sources to create a historical narrative, each subject is covered in easy-to-digest segments with ample illustrations. “[The series’ titles] are arranged in a way that’s inviting so you can scan through the pages,” says Jessica Moody, senior vice president. “It’s for the student who doesn’t want to read five pages with no illustrations.”

The most recent title is Refugees & Asylum Seekers, September 2024, ISBN 9781637008522, with an upcoming installment covering LGBTQ+ Rights, January 2025, ISBN 9798891790728. “Both of these [volumes] speak to where we are now as Americans,” says Moody, “and will give students a chance to look backwards and understand how we got here.” In March 2025, the series will add another new title, Fame & Celebrity in America, ISBN 9798891790742.

In 2020, Grey House launched its “Health & Wellness Guides” series, now comprising more than a dozen titles. Each guide focuses on a specific health topic, providing statistics, discussions about prevention, treatment, outcomes, and resources for consumers including additional books, associations, and helplines. Attention Disorders, July 2024, ISBN 9798891790636, and Digestive Disorders, October 2024, ISBN 9798891790650, are two recent releases.

A new guide covering the hot topic of Adolescent Mental Health, ISBN 9781637008430, is coming out in February 2025. “These books are meant to be consumer products, but they’ve really become professional aids,” says Mackenzie.

Switching gears, the Salem Press imprint is releasing the second edition of the three-volume “The Solar System,” October 2024, ISBN 9781637007914. It’s the first update to this title since 2009. In the interim, our knowledge of the solar system has expanded exponentially, as has the number of images available. “To see photos instead of an artist rendering makes it more real,” says Moody. “It’s just fantastic.”

Salem Press’s “Critical Insights” series is targeted toward high school and community college students and focuses on literature. Growing by about eight titles a year, each volume looks at an author, a work, or a theme through a critical lens, providing essays that help students understand the books they’re reading in English class.

The latest titles in the series include The Supernatural, August 2024, ISBN 9781637007402, and Going into the Woods, September 2024, ISBN 9798891790520. The latter explores how forests have been depicted in literature, either as places of beauty, escape, or peril. Another forthcoming title is Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, February 2025, ISBN 9798891791282.

For all Grey House and Salem Press titles, print edition purchases include access to online editions.

CABI

CABI is an international, intergovernmental, not-for-profit organization that improves people’s lives worldwide by providing information and applying scientific expertise to solve problems in agriculture and the environment.

CABI began in 1910 as the Entomological Research Committee, created to study the impact of pests and diseases on man, animals, and crops. Its first abstracting journal was The Review of Applied Entomology, and the organization published extensively throughout the 20th century. In 1973, content from all its abstract journals was digitized and unified in a database as CAB Abstracts.

1998 saw the formation of CABI Bioscience and the launch of CABI Publishing. CAB Direct, the platform for CAB Abstracts, was introduced in 2003. And the following year the entire archive of 94 years’ worth of print abstract journals was digitized and made available as the Global Health and CAB Abstracts Archive.

Today, CABI Digital Library has more than 15 million records. CABI’s primary products are CAB Abstracts and Global Health, the main databases that comprise the CABI Digital Library. “We have our collections and knowledge banks as well,” says Kelly Snell, senior marketing manager. “These are curated collections of abstracts and full texts, book chapters, and grey literature on a particular theme or topic. We also have CABI Compendium, an encyclopedic collection of data sheets, scientific data, and knowledge on pests and diseases to support those working in agriculture and animal sciences.”

CABI also offers a pest risk analysis tool and other resources, all linked to CABI Compendium. There is also an online learning platform, CABI Academy, which is focused on plant health.

CABI’s primary user base includes “university librarians and faculty who are looking to drill down and create long technical searches,” says Snell. It is also a powerful resource for students who are researching agricultural and related topics.

In October 2024, CABI launched a major redesign of its online CABI Thesaurus, first published as a printed book in 1983. The redesign was undertaken to improve the user interface, make it more user-friendly and provide faster and more intuitive access to information.

One of the goals of CABI Thesaurus is to standardize terminology and help researchers use terms consistently and precisely to aid research. “It’s basically a controlled vocabulary,” says Gary Leicester, CABI’s content metadata controller, who spearheaded the retooling of CABI Thesaurus. “If you think of the concepts we deal with—such as species names—there are common ways to refer to species and there are the preferred names.” Terms such as “climate change” are also referred to in different ways. Users look up a particular term, and the Thesaurus identifies the “official” name or term, as well as its foreign translations.

CABI Thesaurus presents those terms alongside a “knowledge graph”—a kind of Linnaean taxonomy or hierarchy. Users start with a general search or a preset list of concepts (i.e., “Anatomical and Morphological Structures,” “Diseases, Disorders, and Symptoms”). A search for “bird diseases” would let you explore a specific bird disease (say, Newcastle disease), other terms by which that disease may be known, the species of bird the disease affects, other non-bird species impacted by that disease, and so on.

“The new user interface is a window on that data showing people not just what they can do—build complex searches—but also that the data we have is also going to enrich a whole load of other projects,” says Leicester.

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