Expert Curation Sets this Literary Database Apart

EBSCO’s MLA International Bibliography with Full Text database provides access to a large collection of journals and a smattering of books, primarily targeting students, especially undergraduates. In addition to journal articles, the database contains instructional resources for both students and instructors.

Product Overview/Description

The database was built through a collaboration between the Modern Language Association and EBSCO. As of October 2024, it contains 1,107 journals and magazines (1,044 of them peer reviewed) covering language, literature, linguistics, rhetoric, writing studies, folklore, film, theater, and other dramatic arts. The journals are international and written in more than 70 languages.

Access to MLA International Bibliography comes in two tiers. The first is a citation-only database that contains over 3 million citations from 25,000 titles and 2,000 publishers. These are linked to full-text resources outside of EBSCO—for example JSTOR, MUSE, and open access resources. Of note is the relationship between the MLA and JSTOR. The MLA helped JSTOR develop its languages and literature collection, and, in return, the entirety of that collection is indexed and linked in the MLA Bibliography.

The second tier, reviewed here, includes the above-mentioned resources as well as the full text of over 1,000 journals and books.

The resources in the Bibliography are updated ten times per year. In addition to simple known item searching, the database includes the MLA Thesaurus, a controlled vocabulary of over 675,000 terms, names, and works developed by subject specialists in the Modern Language Association. This list is continually revised and expanded, reflecting new and changing terminology in the disciplines.

This package also includes access to the MLA Directory of Periodicals, which provides detailed descriptions of journals and book series included in the Bibliography and beyond. The directory helps researchers to find not only publications relevant to their research, but also places to publish.

User Experience

Like other EBSCO products, the database features a straightforward search bar. The Basic Search includes facets that allow the user to select full-text or peer-reviewed sources and specify a publication timeframe, so they don’t have to figure out faceting to avoid thousands of results (Figure 1).

Starting in January 2025, EBSCO will be moving to a new search layout (Figure 2). In addition to cosmetic changes, the major difference will be the relocation of the majority of the facets to the advanced search, leaving the basic search even more basic.

The Advanced Search allows intermediate and advanced users to frontload filters and options, getting a smaller but more relevant set of results (see Figure 3 for the current Advanced Search and Figure 4 for the new version). The search provides up to seven lines for keywords with basic Boolean operators; a dropdown after each keyword allows the user to specify which metadata field to search.

The Advanced Search builds on the Basic Search with additional filters (publication type, language, period, and genre), expanders (like Apply Related Words, which searches for synonyms and plurals), a searchable publication list, and EBSCO’s Smart Text, which extracts key language from up to 300 words of user-inputted text and searches the database accordingly. Lists of authors and works and the MLA thesaurus can be searched and applied as limits.

Regardless of the source material or the use of basic or advanced search, the search results appear with the search terms at the top followed by a select set of limits. Users can sort search results by relevance or chronologically and create search alerts. A box next to each result or at the top of the results list can be checked to download, save, or share, for each result, the metadata and a link to the resource or to cite the resource in one of nine different styles.

Search results appear as brief, expandable summaries with links to the full text. Each result includes peer-review status and source type, along with hyperlinked subjects that allow for serendipitous discovery. A source citation is followed by the EBSCO resource location and the names of all authors, hyperlinked so users can find additional works by an author without having the create a new search. At the bottom of each result users can access full text or click on “View details” to navigate to the metadata page.

Within each result, the search terms are highlighted.

When a user clicks on an individual search result, they can see all the metadata for the resource, download a PDF (rather than opening it in a new tab to read online), or add the resource to a project under their “MyEBSCO” account. The “Recent Activity” feature displays the search history and viewed records, allowing users to edit and rerun previous searches.

For search results with full text available, the user can choose to view it in HTML or PDF. Both displays include the standard save, cite, add to project, share, download, and print options. A search feature is, as of this writing, listed as coming soon. Users can choose among several options to listen to the article, including by downloading an mp3. The text-to-speech is difficult to follow, with strange pacing and some words so mispronounced that without the full text to read from it would be unintelligible (Figure 7).

In the HTML view, the user can choose to machine-translate the text into another language. Available languages are listed in a dropdown, in alphabetical order by the native language (for example, German is listed as “Deutsch”). I appreciated that EBSCO did not impose an English-dominant interface.

Translations are provided by Microsoft; the user is alerted that the translation is machine generated and potentially inaccurate (Figure 8)

In the full-text HTML, the back button returns to the user to the top of the search results list, which makes navigating large search results a bit challenging—there are only ten results displayed at a time, so working back to the last result read is time consuming. In the PDF view, the back button returns the user to the point in the results list where the article they just read appears.

Accessibility is covered by EBSCO’s general policies. Per EBSCO’s website, “EBSCO evaluates our products based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and the related Section 508 and EN 301 549 regulations in the US and EU. Most EBSCO products are substantially conformant with WCAG 2.1 level AA” (EBSCO, 2024). The publisher also provides a guide on accessibility with contact information for questions and to request VPATs for their products (EBSCO, n.d.).

Contracting and Pricing Provisions

Database content is accessible only during the subscription duration. When a contract ends, all access is terminated. The standard license agreement binds users to abide by the Copyright Act of 1976 regarding use of the resources available in the database. It also explicitly forbids data mining and using the content to feed large language models. EBSCO allows interlibrary loan as long as it is compliant with the Copyright Act and prefers users to send hard copies of articles rather than electronic copies.

EBSCO uses COUNTER R5 reports for tracking usage statistics.

Pricing for this database is based on a variety of factors including full-time enrollment, subscriptions to other EBSCO products, and consortia agreements. For the most accurate pricing, contact EBSCO.

Authentication Models

Authentication is available through a wide range of methods including IP authentication, SAML Single Sign-On, Clever Single-Sign On, one-time access, shared user ID and password, patterned ID, patron ID, referring URL, geolocation, and Google CASA. Supplemental methods include guest access, cookies, personal user accounts, and Google Sign-In.

Competitive or Related Products

ProQuest offers products that compete with facets of EBSCO’s MLA International Bibliography with Full Text. The Linguistics Collection covers all aspects of language including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics and includes the Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts database, which provides abstracts and citations for over 1,500 serials from 1973 to the present. Indexing in this database uses a thesaurus of 3,700 terms created by ProQuest and is updated monthly, adding approximately 14,000 records per year. Functionally, the two databases are comparable, offering basic and advanced searches with similar facets.

Another widely used literary resource is the Gale Literature Resource Center. This aggregates the resources of several other Gale products including Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors, Contemporary Literary Criticism, Dictionary of Literary Biography, Novels for Students, Shakespearean Criticism, and Poetry Criticism, to include 160,000 items. It links to over 2,600,000 full-text articles and 175,000 audio files focused on literature studies, including thematic, biographical, and bibliographic works. This resource focuses on the study of literature, leaving other topics covered in the MLA Bibliography to other Gale products. The primary difference is its focus: the MLA Bibliography has a wide range, while Gale zeros in on a specific subset of topics.

Critical Evaluation

The MLA International Bibliography with Full Text offers a well-rounded and authoritative collection of materials from the early twentieth century to the present.

Subject access is greatly enhanced by the inclusion of subjects and indexing by MLA staff. Additionally, access to the MLA Thesaurus and the Directory of Periodicals helps to direct searches and provides citations to resources beyond the available full text.

The search page utilizes the same layout as all other EBSCO products, and the database can be searched in conjunction with other EBSCO products. For libraries that subscribe to other EBSCO products, this is a useful feature in an age of ever more emphasis on cross-disciplinary research.

Recommendation

This product provides a highly focused and expertly curated list of resources for the study of language, literature, linguistics, rhetoric, writing studies, folklore, film, theater, and other dramatic arts. Other databases may offer wider coverage, but the MLA International Bibliography is distinguished by the expert selection of resources, in addition to its robust indexing and metadata architecture. Undergraduate students would benefit from this resource, as would researchers in these fields.

Note: this article has been updated to more clearly describe the collection of journals in the database.

References

EBSCO. (2024). EBSCO ACRs (VPATs). Retrieved October 22, 2024 from https://connect.ebsco.com/s/article/EBSCO-VPATs?language=en_US

EBSCO. (n.d.) Accessibility. Retrieved October 22, 2024 from https://www.ebsco.com/technology/accessibility