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I am responding to Max Marmor's question about the scope of Art Index
and Art Abstracts.
Electronic versions of Art Index contain indexing
back to September 1984. We currently index 313 journals cover to
cover.
Art Abstracts contain the indexing of the journals back to September
1984 plus abstracting of those journals back to January 1994. All
indexed articles and reviews with the exception of book reviews are
abstracted. Reproduction records are not abstracted.
Indexing is done first and the records entered into the database,
then the abstracts are written by a different staff using another set
of the journals. It sometimes happens that the cutoff time for the
updates (weekly for the Web product and monthly for the discs)
separates some indexing records from their abstracts that have not
yet been completed and added to the records. The abstracts for those
records are attached soon after, usually by the time of the next
update. Both the indexing and the abstracting departments work hard
to make records available as quickly as possible. All of the
indexing and abstracting staff have graduate level training in art
history, but the training for indexing and abstracting is different
and in order to provide the best possble access to the periodical
literature we do not have the same staff do both.
I hope that this addresses satisfactorily the question that Max
raised. If it does not, or if anyone has other questions, please do
not hesitate to call or email me.
Alison Dickey
Editor
Art Index
718-588-8400
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