Bibliographic Index Coverage of a Multidisciplinary Field.

This study examines the literature of a multidisciplinary field, later-life migration, and evaluates the effectiveness of 12 bibliographic databases in indexing that literature. Five journals--three in social gerontology, one in rural sociology, and one in regional science--account for 40% of the papers published in this area. The disciplines that publish the most work on later-life migration are not necessarily those that provide the best index coverage, however. Moreover, four multidisciplinary databases each provide better index coverage than any single-subject index. The relatively low degree of overlap among the 12 databases suggests that scholars working on topics such as later-life migration must continue to rely on a wide range of bibliographic tools, both disciplinary and multidisciplinary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]