Canadian Women's Periodicals: Title Word Index, Vol 2, No. 1

Canadian Women‘s Periodicals: Title Word Index first became available to subscribers in 1985 after three trial issues had been mailed to all Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW) members on an experimental basis to determine whether there was sufficient support for such a publication. Now published by CRIAW every four months, the index provides valuable access to Canadian women’s periodicals — such as Broadside and Canadian Woman Studies — that are not well covered elsewhere.

Along with indexing of Canadian women’s periodicals, Canadian Women‘s Periodicals also selects items of relevance to women from general academic and popular journals.

First access to periodical content is through reproduced table of contents pages. Printed at the front of each issue, these can be quickly scanned for items of interest. Following this is the KWIC Index (keyword in context), where each word of an article title or author’s name is rotated to become an access point. (It should be noted, however, that later issues than the one sent to this reviewer use a KWOC (keyword out of context) where each word is displayed in turn at the left side of the text.) The major disadvantage of this method of indexing is that it relies entirely on the title of an article’s being relevant and descriptive. Catchy or humorous titles, for example, which do not reflect content, mean that an article is virtually irretrievable.

However, until a more in-depth index to current Canadian women’s periodicals is produced, this title word index provides the only coverage of many of the periodicals of interest to women in this country.