Sources for Economic Statistics

Today I want to mention some sources for economic (and social) statistics. The only advice I’d give for using economic statistics is to try to find a statistic from multiple sources because they can be reported so differently depending on source. Historical Statistics of the United States I really like this source. Covers recent few decades as well as past centuries. Statistics are easy to find and easy to use. International Financial Statistics Online Statistics from the International Monetary Fund Source OECD Development sources from the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development World Development Indicators Online Statistics from the World Bank

—Fred Rowland

Sage eReference, Blackwell Compass, and more

Sage is one of the academic and professional market’s major social science publishers. Sage eReference is a collection of 45 online encyclopedias. Here’s a complete list of titles. Accessible from the All Databases list. Other Reference Databases Don’t forget about our other reference databases. You’ve never had it so good. Gale Virtual Reference Library; Oxford Reference Online; xreferplus. Accessible from the All Databases list. Philosophy Compass and Religion Compass These are very new review journals in philosophy, religion, and other areas. Access via Journal Finder. Each article is a broad review of a particular topic with a discussion of the literature. They are supposed to be current and very relevant. Review journals have become very big in the sciences where new literature comes out at a crushing pace. These two for philosophy and religion are great tools for faculty that are approaching a new field, for graduate students who are studying for exams and dissertations, and for advanced undergraduates. Take a look and let me know what you think. —Fred Rowland

Business databases

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

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.


—Fred Rowland

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.

—Fred Rowland

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

—Fred Rowland

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