Reference at Newman Library

Year: 2014

ISO has draft standard re indicators for city services and quality of life

The International Standards Organization is working on a new series of standards with indicators relating to the sustainable development and resiliency of cities.

A draft is available.

A Youtube.com video about ISI 37101 is available. Introductory information about the project, includes:

Cities need indicators to measure their performance. Existing indicators are often not standardized, consistent, or comparable over time or across cities.

As part of a new series of International Standards being developed for a holistic and integrated approach to sustainable development and resilience, this set of standardized indicators will help
support sustainable development and resilience in cities.

These indicators can be used to track and monitor progress on city performance. In order to achieve sustainable development, the whole city system needs to be taken into consideration. Planning for
future needs must take into consideration current use and efficiency of resources in order to better plan for tomorrow.

The indicators and associated test methods in this International Standard have been developed in order to help cities:
a) measure performance management of city services and quality of life over time;
b) learn from one another by allowing comparison across a wide range of performance measures;
c) share best practices.

Problem with access to Thomson Reuters Checkpoint federal tax content

I went to federal tax resources on Thomson Reuters Checkpoint (the default screen when one logs on through the Newman Library database) this afternoon and learned we have lost access to most of the primary and secondary resources to which we have subscribed. I have reported this to collection management and it is being looked into.

The Warren Gorham Lamont tax treatises are usually available on this resource.

If you have a federal tax question from a student or faculty member, CCH Intelliconnect is our other database for federal and state tax information. It has the primary sources that are also on Thomson Reuters Checkpoint, as well as secondary resources, including those published by CCH and Wolters Kluwer, that help explain the primary sources; cases, etc. So, please suggest CCH Intelliconnect as an alternative.

Please watch for updates from collection management about the Thomson Reuters Checkpoint resource in the next few days.

ScienceDirect Now Mobile-Friendly

This week, ScienceDirect articles can be viewed in a way optimized for mobile devices. If you run a search in ScienceDirect (or get a link to an article in ScienceDirect), the database will recognized the dimensions of the device you are using and deliver you a version that is optimized for your device. If you’re on a desktop or laptop, you’ll see articles looking as they always have:

ScienceDirect--desktop view of an article

If you are on a mobile device, such as your phone, the article will look like this:

ScienceDirect--article viewed on mobile phone

 

If you want to try this yourself on your phone, here’s a link to the article pictured in the screenshots above.

Many databases are now being designed this way so that users on mobile devices aren’t required to first go to a special mobile website or a use a specialized app for for that database.