LIB 1015–Fall 2011–Prof. Francoeur

Ethnic NewsWatch: The subject specialty this database has is News. This database provides a broad coverage of the news from approximately 200 publications and provides users with over 670,000 articles. It has local and metropolitan perspectives on local, national, and international issues. The database consists of big news stories from small sources.  It has multicultural coverage on subjects that focus on news about African-American, Hispanic, Latino, and many other ethnic groups. When you run searches, information is mostly found in the form of articles. Controlled vocabulary can be found in this database listed under subjects; for example, it can be government, religion, cultural, local, national, or international issues. One surprising feature in this database is that it is available in two languages, both English and Spanish since it provides news on ethnic groups.

World Bank Data: The subject specialty this database has is Economics and Financials. It provides international social and economic data from over 207 countries. It also consists of social, financial, and environmental indicators from 1960 until 2000. It is designed to help fight poverty through economic knowledge. When searches are done, the information is mainly portrayed in tables that provide all the financial data that is necessary. This database does not have a specific section for controlled vocabulary and subject terms but it does have a section for various topics that you can search by such as agricultural and rural development, financial sector, education, poverty, private sector, public sector, etc. One unique feature that this database has is that it consists of a system of blogs within the database itself. Additionally, these blogs vary from all different forms of international news and issues from numerous countries.

Handbook of Latin American Studies: This database is a bibliography on Latin America consisting of works selected and annotated by scholars. The database is edited by the Hispanic division of the Library of Congress. It alternates annually between social sciences and humanities. The database itself is an annotated bibliography with full text journal or books available at other locations. One unique feature about this database is that it only provides information about Latin America. All other types of information from other parts of the world are not included.

Cinema Image Gallery: The Cinema Image Gallery database provides a collection of still images from the film, television and entertainment industry. The only information that is available through this database are images or photographs. There is a great variety of images available. When searching for a specific film, one could find a design from the movie’s advertisements or still images from scenes in the actual film. Instead of basic search fields such as “author” in other databases that allow for the search of books, this database contains search fields such as “director, studio, awards, etc.”

ACM Digital Library

ACM Digital Library is a database which contains collections of journals/transactions, magazines and proceedings. The database is mainly focused on computer science and mathematics. The formats that appears the most are articles. There is controlled vocabulary in this database but the database refers to it as index terms. One unique feature of ACM Digital Library is it has a small section on the main page which features the recently loaded issues and proceedings.

Literature Resource Center

Literature Resource Center is a database that provides resources on authors and their topics and works. The subject specialty is Literature, and the formats used are articles, books, journals, and magazines. This database does use controlled vocabulary. One unique feature of this database is it gives you other searches that may be related to your search on a sidebar.

Communication and Mass Media Complete

This database focuses on information revolving around mass media and communication. It is a merger of CommSearch and Mass Media Articles Index which were both their individual databases. The majority of the content of this database are journal articles. Communication and Mass Media Complete has controlled vocabulary titled as “Subject Terms”. One surprising thing i found about this database was that it has a meter on the bottom of each article stating how relevant it thinks the article is to your search.

Literature Resource Center

The Literature Resource Center contains biographies, bibliographies, and critical analyses of Authors of literature; such as novelists, poets, essayists, journalists, etc. This database has a variety of formats including critical essays, articles, book reviews, and bibliography. The controlled vocabulary is also very efficient on this database because not only does it a provide a list of different subjects pertaining to your search term, but each link also has the key phrases you search highlighted. One thing that separates this database from other databases is that it contain a really detailed list of subjects to help narrow your search more efficiently.

The two databases that I will be analyzing are:
1. C – Computing Reviews
2. D – Dismal Scientist

1. Computing Review is a database that includes reviews of computer science literature, which includes: books, articles, conference proceedings, theses, technical reports, and Web-based. Computing Review does use controlled vocabulary to help narrow searches. They have the option to categorize searches with subjects like: General Literature, Hardware, Computer System Organization, Software, etc. One thing that I found interesting, but not surprising, is that this database updates daily. With technology advancing at its current rate, a database that caters to the topic must keep up.
2. Dismal Scientist is a database that provides economic information and analysis including over 100 economic indicators, stock market valuation, profiles by region, articles, industry information, forecasts, demographic information, and thousands of economic statistics. This database also has the option to categorize, but unlike Computing Review, Dismal Scientist categories are in alphabetical order: Agriculture, Antitrust, Banking, Central Bank, etc. Something that is interesting about this database is that it only has access to the data of the United States and Canada.

My first database I went into was the “Dismal Scientist” database. It is used mainly by business students and faculty to find out just about anything statistical about the market or anything related with business statistics. The title “Dismal Scientist” suggested to me, that it be more about science but to my amazement was about business science, a whole different subject. Its strengths are finding market trends, business information, statistics on market values, and other business related searches. When i searched up science on the database it showed me links to the industry outlook, emerging market, economic preview, and etc which to me is a weakness that its only pertaining to business. Opportunities are everywhere in this database for selling the database easily to business companies and threats are companies that have business on their database as well as other topics. It has a search not like Google and more like a news paper. It has only a small box not really showing much you can do with it other than advanced searching. I like this database because of all the visual material put on the cover page to show readers graphs and market trends or such.

My second database I went into was “Philosopher’s Index” which is what seems to me a more specified version of EbscoHost. Of course the strengths would be having so much data on anything philosophy related if searching for material from 1940 to present.  The weakness would be having only data from 1940 to present. Opportunities might be finding more material before 1940. Threats are other databases that have more material on philosophy but since its combined with EBSCOhost it seems complete with knowledge from other subjects as well. I don’t see much threat to this database. I find this database very useful for finding material because with control vocabulary it makes searching more simpler. With all of the advanced searching, getting specific with words isn’t a hard thing to do.

NAXOS- This database specializes in music. The database provides information mostly by an audio format. There is controlled vocabulary available. One unique feature in this database is that it is a library for music and it also has playlist making features.

Counseling and Therapy in Video- This database has information available specializing in the area of counseling. The database provides the information by videos. There is controlled vocabulary. This database only has videos, which is not common in many of the databases we usually use.

D: DOAL>>>Directory of Open Access Journals is used for multiple searches on various subjects such as mathematics, English, Sciences. and so on. This database offers only journals and articles based on your searches. From the looks of it, there’s also a segment for a controlled vocabulary search. I don’t see any unique features, it’s pretty much shows similar formats from any other regular databases.

M: MathSciNet>>> Is used primarily for math related subjects. It offers a wide variety of information mostly from textbooks and others from mostly articles/journals and such. It also has a controlled vocabulary search. The database has one or two unique features, one of them is that it has an option to choose where you want to get information from books, articles, journals, and such. Another is that you can choose a time period of which you want to look in.

M- MarketResearch.com

• In this database it aims in the field of marketing so it would probably be used in a marketing class or any beginner business class.  This database is used by business professionals not only in America but around the globe since it provides research reports for over 2,000 industries in the world. It is mostly used  industry overviews, competitive analysis, market trends, product innovations, consumer behavior, and market share in industries in the Food Department to even Science and Technology.  Most of the results in this database are downloadable and using a PDF file containing not only information but images as well. In every report there is an abstract and a chapter of contents that will break the information into subtitles. However, there is no controlled vocabulary in the search. I never seen a database that will have a chapter of contents and I think that is very helpful when there is a report that is over 200 pages and your only interested in a certain topic in the field. It makes it very convenient for the uses when they want to skim through different topics.

P- Philisopher’s Index

• In this database, which you can tell from its name is used for philosophical information. This database will probably used for a philosophy class or any class along those lines like ethics. It is a database from EBSCOhost which mean that it will contain articles from scholarly journals, books, book chapters and book reviews. Yes, there is controlled vocabulary depending on your search and which field you choose when searching. If you specify in subject field, your world will be in the subject of every result. There isn’t anything really unique in this database since it is under EBSCOhost which is the center of many databases.