When you are doing your research, don’t forget about Temple’s business databases. Although they might sound like unlikely sources, there are some good reasons to keep them in mind: 1) they are absolutely HUGE databases; 2) they are international so you will find info from and about places all around the world; and 3) businesses have penetrated just about every aspect of our lives (not a good thing). Below I’ve listed the two most important general business databases. Most business schools of any stature have these two. I’ve also linked some articles so you can get a sense of the stuff you might find. Business Source Premier: over 2800 full-text scholarly journals. ABI Inform: indexes over 4000 titles, 3000 in full-text, including the Wall Street Journal. —Fred Rowland
Category Archives: Library News
Exporting records from Google Scholar to Refworks
See how to directly export records from Google Scholar into Refworks: http://librariancentral.blogspot.com/2007/02/out-of-cite.html. One more good reason to use Refworks. —Fred Rowland
Refworks saves time
You know how you can finish a term paper at about 8:00pm the night before it is due, only to spend three or four additional hours slogging through the citations and bibliography? By the time the 11:00 news is on you’re wailing and gnashing teeth. Refworks can help end that pain. Just download the citations from the library’s databases into Refworks and output them in MLA, APA, or Chicago style. Doing a dissertation any time soon? Refworks can save you loads of time by organizing your sources. The end will come sooner than you think. Need to send a recently finished article out to five different publishers with five different citation styles? If you’ve been using Refworks along with the Write-N-Cite plugin for Microsoft Word, this task can be performed in a jiffy. You’ll think it’s a miracle.
Refworks, the online database that allows you to download, store, organize, and output references, is getting easier and easier to use because so many scholarly databases are enabling direct exports into it. Just two vendors EBSCO and CSA have enabled this for all of the databases we purchase from them, which comes to about 75 including Academic Search Premier, ATLA, ERIC, Medline, MLA International Bibliography, Philosopher’s Index, Index Islamicus, Criminal Justice Abstracts, and Sociological Abstracts. Refworks is free to all Temple students, faculty, and staff. Just click on the link above and sign up for a personal account.
Below are five video clips that show how to export references from selected scholarly databases directly into Refworks. You will need Adobe Flash on your computer to watch them (my understanding is that most computers have this now). In each I start from a search results list, select a few records, and then export them into Refworks.
Philosopher’s Index
Academic Search Premier
JSTOR
Project Muse
Blackwell Synergy
And here’s one last video clip on outputting your bibliography using Refworks.
Outputting Bibliography
Check out Refworks today! You’ll be glad that you did. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
News Broadcasts and News Transcripts
The library has a subscription to Vanderbilt University’s Television News Archive. This is a searchable database of television news stories going back to 1968. For CNN, you can view the actual broadcasts going back to 1994 (you will need RealPlayer on your computer to do so). You can purchase videos of news broadcasts from the other networks through the Television News Archives.
Although the records in the Television News Archive do not include the actual transcripts, you can in many cases find the full-text transcripts in Lexis Nexis Academic (go to “Guided News Search”, under Step 1 select “News Transcripts”, under Step 2 select to search “All Transcripts” or ones from individual networks). Use the database to track important national and international events as portrayed in the news. Use it to learn how religious issues are framed and reported.
New encyclopedias online
These are new titles from the Gale Virtual Reference Library. All GVRL titles are also linked from Diamond.
Encyclopedia Judaica, 2nd edition
Encyclopedia of Aging
Encyclopedia of Sociology
Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History, 2nd edition
Encyclopedia of Crime and Justice
Encyclopedia of European Social History
Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa
Encyclopedia of World Cultures
Below is the complete list of reference titles through the Gale Virtual Reference Library:
Africa: An Encyclopedia for Students , 4v, 2002
African American Almanac , 9th Ed., 2003
African-American Years: Chronologies of American History and Experience , 2003
American History Through Literature 1870-1920 , 3v, 2006
Business Plans Handbook , Vol. 1, 2005
Business Plans Handbook , Vol. 2, 2005
Business Plans Handbook , Vol. 3, 2005
Business Plans Handbook , Vol. 4, 2005
Business Plans Handbook , Vol. 5, 1998
Business Plans Handbook , Vol. 6, 1999
Business Plans Handbook , Vol. 7, 2000
Business Plans Handbook , Vol. 8, 2001
Business Plans Handbook , Vol. 9, 2002
Business Plans Handbook , Vol. 11, 2006
Business Plans Handbook , Vol. 12, 2007
Business Plans Handbook, Volume 10 , Vol. 10, 2004
Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy , 2nd Ed., 1999
CDs, Super Glue, and Salsa: How Everyday Products Are Made: Series 3 , 2v, 2003
Chemistry: Foundations and Applications , 4v, 2004
Cities of the World , 6th Ed., 4v, 2002
Contemporary American Religion , 2v, 1999
Dictionary of American History , 3rd Ed., 10v, 2003
Encyclopaedia Judaica , 2nd Ed., 22v, 2007
Encyclopedia of African American Society , 2v, 2005
Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History , 2nd Ed., 6v, 2006
Encyclopedia of Aging , 4v, 2002
Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy , 2nd Ed., 3v, 2002
Encyclopedia of American Industries , 4th Ed., 2v, 2005
Encyclopedia of American Religions , 7th Ed., 2003
Encyclopedia of Anthropology , 5v, 2006
Encyclopedia of Bioethics , 3rd Ed., 5v, 2004
Encyclopedia of Buddhism , 2v, 2004
Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion , 3v, 2005
Encyclopedia of Crime and Justice , 2nd Ed., 4v, 2002
Encyclopedia of Drugs, Alcohol, and Addictive Behavior , 2nd Ed., 4v, 2001
Encyclopedia of Education , 2nd Ed., 8v, 2003
Encyclopedia of European Social History , 6v, 2001
Encyclopedia of Food and Culture , 3v, 2003
Encyclopedia of India , 4v, 2006
Encyclopedia of Irish History and Culture , 2v, 2004
Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World , 2v, 2004
Encyclopedia of Modern Asia , 6v, 2002
Encyclopedia of Philosophy , 2nd Ed., 10v, 2006
Encyclopedia of Population , 2v, 2003
Encyclopedia of Public Health , 4v, 2002
Encyclopedia of Public Health , 4v, 2002
Encyclopedia of Recreation and Leisure in America , 2v, 2004
Encyclopedia of Religion , 2nd Ed., 15v, 2005
Encyclopedia of Russian History , 4v, 2004
Encyclopedia of Science and Religion , 2v, 2003
Encyclopedia of Sociology , 2nd Ed., 5v, 2001
Encyclopedia of the American Constitution , 2nd Ed., 6v, 2000
Encyclopedia of the Great Depression , 2v, 2004
Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa , 2nd Ed., 4v, 2004
Encyclopedia of World Cultures , 10v, 1996
Encyclopedia of World Cultures Supplement , 2002
Europe, 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World , 6v, 2004
Gale Encyclopedia of Genetic Disorders , 2nd Ed., 2v, 2005
Gale Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders , 2v, 2003
Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America , 2nd Ed., 3v, 2000
Gale Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Unexplained , 3v, 2003
Geo-Data: The World Geographical Encyclopedia , 3rd Ed., 2003
Governments of the World: A Global Guide to Citizen’s Rights and Responsibilities , 4v, 2006
Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedia , 2nd Ed., 17v, 2004
History of the American Cinema , Vol. 1, 1990
History of the American Cinema , Vol. 2, 1990
History of the American Cinema , Vol. 3, 1990
History of the American Cinema , Vol. 4, 1997
History of the American Cinema , Vol. 5, 1993
History of the American Cinema , Vol. 6, 1997
International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers , 4th Ed., 4v, 2001
International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family , 2nd Ed., 4v, 2003
Macmillan Encyclopedia of Death and Dying , 2v, 2003
Macmillan Encyclopedia of Energy , 3v, 2001
Major 21st-Century Writers , 5v, 2005
Major Acts of Congress , 3v, 2004
New Catholic Encyclopedia , 2nd Ed., 15v, 2003
New Dictionary of the History of Ideas , 6v, 2005
Nutrition and Well-Being A to Z , 2v, 2004
Reference Guide to Short Fiction , 2nd Ed., 1999
Reference Guide to World Literature , 3rd Ed., 2v, 2003
Science and Its Times: Understanding the Social Significance of Scientific Discovery , 8v, 2001
St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture , 5v, 2000
The People’s Chronology , 3rd Ed., 2005
Tobacco in History and Culture: An Encyclopedia , 2v, 2005
Water: Science and Issues , 4v, 2003
West’s Encyclopedia of American Law , 2nd Ed., 13v, 2005
World Education Encyclopedia , 2nd Ed., 3v, 2001
World Press Encyclopedia , 2nd Ed., 2v, 2003
Worldmark Encyclopedia of Religious Practices , 3v, 2006
Worldmark Encyclopedia of the Nations , 11th Ed., 6v, 2004
Women Writers Online
Take a look at this new electronic resource from Brown University’s Women Writers Project: Women Writers Online, a great source of writing by women going all the way back to the Renaissance (includes Renaissance Women Online). Here’s some more information about the database. And here’s an article about Women Writers Online from the journal Pedagogy: “Learning, Reading, and the Problem of Scale: Using Women Writers Online”. Fred
AT&T agrees to net neutrality for two years
Net neutrality is the principle that companies providing access to the Internet cannot discriminate between customers. For instance, consumers get the exact same service from their homes as ExxonMobil, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, HBO, Disney, and Dreamworks. Telecom companies claim that they cannot build the advanced Internet of the future unless they are able to charge extra for premium access. Net Neutrality advocates argue that the Internet was originally developed and built with taxpayer monies and should be seen as a public utility and that it has become, in essence, the public square of the twenty-first century. A multi-tiered system of access would not only limit free speech but also limit important new technologies. What would have happened if YouTube, MySpace, and Flikr had had to pay for premium service? What about the blogosphere?
In order to win approval for its $85 billion merger with BellSouth, AT&T has agreed to observe net neutrality for two years, a window of opportunity for advocates to lobby Congress for a law enshrining net neutrality as a guiding principle of the Internet. It will also put pressure on other telecom companies to follow AT&T’s lead. See: AT&T-BellSouth deal called “breakthrough” for consumers.
Below are some podcasts and web sites concerning net neutrality that you might find interesting.
Video from Save the Internet Coalition
Commercial from the Cable and Telecommunications Association
Don’t Regulate coalition that includes AT&T and BellSouth
Robert McChesney on COPE Bill working its way through Congress (on Democracy Now, May 8, 2006)
NetCompetition.org coalition that includes AT&T, BellSouth, and other cable and telecommunications firms
—Fred Rowland
Political Talk
I heard an interview recently with Frank Luntz, the Republican language maestro who uses polling and focus groups to advise political candidates, organizations, and corporations on how to choose their words and frame their issues for the highest political impact. He’s got a new book called Words that work : it’s not what you say, it’s what people hear. He has recommended that organizations use the term “climate change” instead of “global warming”, “gaming” instead of “gambling”, and “death tax” instead of “inheritance tax” or “estate tax”. You might be able to still hear the interview here. Here’s the web site of Luntz’s research company. There are also some short articles by Luntz in Lexis Nexis Academic(sorry, can’t give you the direct links to the articles, LNA doesn’t enable that). In a Dec. 28, 2002 NTY article, Luntz describes how he was an advisor to TV’s “West Wing” for a while, giving direction on the script from a Republican point of view. The job didn’t last, evidently.
It occurred to me that it would be interesting to read the Luntz book along with books by linguists (academics) whose work has been associated with liberal causes, Geoffrey Nunberg and Georg Lakoff. Nunberg does a regular spot on Fresh Air, the NPR interview show. Temple has quite a few books by both authors. Nunberg’s most recent book is Talking right : how conservatives turned liberalism into a tax-raising, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show (Paley doesn’t have a copy of this, have to correct this). Lakoff’s most recent book is Whose freedom? : the battle over America’s most important idea.
And of course there’s George Orwell’s famous Politics and the English Language, written in 1946.
—Fred Rowland
Whither the university?
I’ve been reading about the future of the university lately. Detractors think it costs too much, is inefficient, is too politicized, doesn’t properly train the workforce of the future, and is generally out of step with the great demographic changes of the past 25 years. It’s not flexible enough (what is?), researchers don’t teach well and teachers don’t research well. Supporters point out that universities are among the few institutions that have survived from the fifteenth century, that good education is just plain expensive, that education is about more than just posting “content” online somewhere, that Socrates got it right, and that businesses are out to privatize lots of publicly-funded infrastructure as was done with the healthcare industry (there is even talk about Educational Maintenance Organizations, EMO’s). Both supporters and detractors seem agreed that there’s a lot of change ahead for the university.
Of course the development of the Internet plays a huge role in the debates surrounding the future of higher education. Techno-utopians see the Internet as bringing more democracy, more education, more knowledge, more love, new life forms… More practical sorts see the reduced costs of information delivery on the Internet as a great business opportunity, so you see for-profit educational organizations popping up. More traditional sorts see the Internet as improving but not overturning current educational practices.
What interests me the most is the way the Internet (and high-tech in general) produces what can only be described as religious passions in many people. Cyberspace becomes a heavenly realm where information and emotions are transmitted friction-free and conflict melts away. You saw this in the millennial binge of the late 1990′s dot.coms, where profits were suddenly deemed unimportant and market share was everything. The fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of the Internet, and Y2K (remember that?) made everyone a bit crazy for a time.
Below are some of the sources I’ve been looking at and thinking about:
Digital Diploma Mills–short book, well written and closely argued, author very much against distance education, makes interesting comparisons to the “correspondence movement” in the early twentieth century
Digital Revolution and the Coming of the Postmodern University–seems a bit too focused on the technology and not enough on the institutions that create the context for the technology
After the New Economy–includes interesting analysis of 1990′s business bubble
Post-Capitalist Society–by Peter Drucker (aka “the management guru”), Drucker began talking about the “knowledge worker” decades ago, thinks the university won’t last
Startup.com–this documentary unwittingly highlights the excesses of the 1990′s dot.com boom
Shaping Communication Networks: Telegraph, Telephone, Computer–puts Internet in historical perspective
Death of the University–written in 1987, interesting but makes a lot of sweeping generalizations
Higher Education in the Digital Age
The University in Transformation
Technology and the Rise of the For-Profit University– authored by Donald Norman, an educational entrepreneur (UNext), says scholars should create content and instructional specialists should deliver it
Undisciplined–by Louis Menand, interesting, about the breakdown of disciplinary boundaries in the university
Linkages Between Work and Education?
Dearing Report–influential UK report on higher education
Distance Education and the Emerging Learning Environment–short, interesting article
The Rise and Rise of the Corporate University–good article, part of an entire issue of the Journal of European Industrial Training devoted to corporate education
Surviving the Change: The Economic Paradigm of Higher Education in Transformation–interesting article by a guy with economic training
Educating the Net Generation–from Educause, about learning styles, likes and dislikes of the net generation
—Fred Rowland
Political Resources from Congressional Quarterly
CQ Researcher Online Great for researching pressing public policy issues that come before Congress. CQ Researcher takes an issue and explores it in depth. Start here on a research paper, or use it for in-class discussion. CQ Press Political Science Suite Contains many CQ Press titles that researchers and policy makers are so familiar with. Broken into sections: Congress and the Nation; Historic Document Series; Political Handbook of the World; Politics in America; Supreme Court Yearbook; Vital Statistics on American Politics; Washington Information Directory CQ Weekly Online Congressional Quarterly’s weekly magazine online back to 1983. —Fred Rowland