Search Competency 3: JStor

For this search competency I am going to be using the database JStor. JStor is a digital archive that consists of over one thousand academic journals and other scholarly content. Since this database covers more information that pertains to the liberal arts than news or event oriented information I am going to use the following naive question:

I love Indian contemporary fiction. Can you suggest some authors?

For this search I am going to use the Building Block search strategy.

My initial facets are: Indian, contemporary, and fiction.

Descriptors and synonyms:
Indian- India, South Asia, New Delhi, Mumbai
Contemporary- modern, current, present, latest, recent, twenty first century
Fiction- novel, literature, book*

ss1: (India or South Asia* or New Delhi or Mumbai) AND (contemporary or modern or twenty first century) AND (fiction or novel or literature or book*)full-text search
Results: 197251

Way too many results to sort through. I'm now going to change my search sentence so that it contains less search terms.

ss2: (India or South Asia*) AND (contemporary or modern or twenty first century) AND (fiction* or literature or book*) Abstract Search
Results: 30

After going through the results none seem relevant!

ss3: (India) AND (contemporary or twenty first century) AND (fiction* or literature or book*) Abstract Search
Results: 12

With JStor full-text search retrieves too many results and abstract search too little! Once one runs an abstract search JStor immediately warns the searcher that only 10% of the articles offered have abstracts. I'm going to now narrow my search even more and try a new field to search in.

ss4: (India or South Asia*) AND (contemporary fiction or contemporary literature) Item Search
Results: 7

Though the results are sparse, all seven results are contemporary book reviews.

Title: The Crisis of Contemporary India and Nayantara Sahgal's Fiction
Author(s): Makarand Paranjape
Source: World Literature Today, Vol. 68, No. 2, Indian Literatures: In the Fifth Decade of Independence (Spring, 1994), pp. 291-298
Publisher(s): University of Oklahoma
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40150153

Title: Reviewed work(s): Truth Tales: Contemporary Stories by Women Writers of India
Author(s): Alamgir Hashmi
Source: World Literature Today, Vol. 66, No. 1 (Winter, 1992), pp. 206-207
Publisher(s): University of Oklahoma
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40148103


What I've learned from all of my database searching this semester is that each database has a specific language that one must understand in order to run a successful search. With JStor, there is no subject search like most databases, and with only 10% of the articles having abstracts it becomes substantially more difficult to weed through the items. With JStor, the less, and most specific one can make a search query, the more successful their search will be.