Szenczi Bianka: Project MUSE

The aim of my project was to examine and introduce an online database, Project MUSE. I have also observed the usefulness of this database in our group’s research and compared the search results in the different online databases.

Firstly, Project MUSE is an online database of academic journals and electronic books. The aim of this database is to provide reliable and high quality content for the users. Although, subscription is needed for the database, currently about 2500 libraries worldwide subscribe to it. Moreover, at present, there are thousands of scholarly books and journals available through the database.

The usage of Project MUSE is not complicated because it provides a friendly platform that is easy to use. Different access is provided for librarians and publishers to make their research easier. Furthermore, users can choose from quick or advanced search. The advanced search option enables the users to directly search for content, title, author or publisher. This function helps to reach the desired content as soon as possible.

Secondly, there are different options to narrow down the results and find the suitable content the fastest way possible. For instance, by simply ticking the “only content I have full access to” option, all the irrelevant materials can be sorted out. The content can be narrowed down by choosing from Content type (journals, articles, review or books), Research Area, Author, Publisher, Journal name, Language or Publication year. The database has further options as well. It is a significant advantage that the results can be sorted by relevance or by the newest or oldest publication. Under each journal, there is a possibility to download the text in PDF or HTML format to make the usage of the different texts more convenient. The citation management tool enables the users to save citations that can be easily found later when they need them on the website. A clear explanation is also given next to all articles which show whether the article is available for us or not. These functions make the user’s work easier. Unfortunately, despite these functions, Project MUSE was not a suitable database for our group’s research. By using the keywords “Much Ado About Nothing”, “gender” and “Shakespeare,” I examined the results provided by Project MUSE.

However, the results were often improper or recurring. Most of the articles do not mention Much Ado About Nothing at all and they are not even about the play. For example, if we use the keywords “Much Ado” and “Shakespeare,” Project MUSE shows 38 results. The newest journal is connected to More’s Utopia that was not even written by Shakespeare. The oldest result was published in 1993 and it is connected to the topic of The Two Gentlemen of Verona. However, these results do not provide material in connection with Much Ado About Nothing. It is mentioned only twice in the latest publication but the main theme of the journal is about a completely different play. By contrast, if we search based on all of the keywords, we have only 16 results. If we sort them by relevance the first one is “Shakespeare’s Jestbook: Wit, Print Performance” from Spring 2004. This match was the closest to our topic. The oldest research remains the same journal in this case as well. Furthermore, most of the results are theatre reviews by different authors and there are some reviews that mention Much Ado About Nothing only in the Works Cited section as a secondary source for the article.

In conclusion, despite the fact that I used various keywords and narrowed down the results in different ways, the records were not accurate. Although, the usage of Project MUSE was quite easy and clear, the results were not suitable for our research.