Reference at Newman Library

Tag: Databases

Reference USA Historical Data Renamed as Infogroup Historical Business

The listing for Reference USA Historical Data on the databases pages will now be displayed as Infogroup Historical Business. What’s also news here is that the data is now available on the WRDS platform. Ryan Phillips provided this updated description:

(Baruch users only) Provides calendar year-end snapshots of local business data from 1997 to 2024. It contains business identification, location, industry, corporation hierarchy, employment, sales, and most other attributes available in Reference Solutions (including XY coordinates that allow the data to be plotted and mapped using GIS software).

Please note that this name change doesn’t affect our listing for Reference Solutions, which provides current information. Here is the description for that database, which was previously known as Reference USA and continues to focus on offering current information only:

Detailed information on more than 14 million U.S. businesses, 210 million U.S. residents, 855,000 U.S. health care providers, 1.5 million Canadian businesses, and 12 million Canadian households.

New Database Trial: Oxford Scholarly Editions

Description (from the vendor)

“Available for the first time online, Oxford’s scholarly editions provide trustworthy, annotated primary texts for scholars and students.

OSEO currently includes writers active between the 8th and 20th century, plus Roman and Greek authors — from Aristotle, Austen, Bentham, Catullus, Dickens, and Donne through to Plato, Virgil, Homer and Wordsworth. It contains over 1,750 scholarly editions — the equivalent of more than 870,000 print pages.”

Trial Ends

November 28, 2023

Access

On and off campus. Use the link on the Trials tab on the databases page.

Feedback

Please share with any faculty who might be interested and recommend they use the trial feedback form (also linked to on the Trials tab on the databases page).

New Listing for Harvard Business Review on A-Z Databases

The A-Z database list now features a link for Harvard Business Review. The URL takes you to a new Harvard Business Review LibGuide page that explains all the complicating factors in accessing articles from Harvard Business Review (which we have full text access for the magazine articles going back to 1922 in the Business Source Complete database), including:

  • restrictions on direct linking for all HBR magazine articles
  • restrictions on printing and downloading for selected articles
  • web-only content on the HBR.org website
  • case studies, which aren’t in the magazine anyway, and must be directly purchased by students and faculty

I added a search box on this page that has some hidden code that takes the user’s search term and ANDs it with “harvard business review.” This works pretty well in finding both the magazine articles and the web-only content that can be found in Business Source Complete.

Please look over this new guide to familiarize yourself with all the access issues and options. The decision to add this periodical on our list of databases didn’t come easily, as we normally use the A-Z list for things that truly are databases, given the continuing confusion students and faculty have over this resource, it made sense to give it a standalone listing on the databases page much as we do for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

New Database: Health Poll Database

We now have access to a second database from the Roper Center called Health Poll Database. Here is their description of it:

The Health Poll database is the most comprehensive database for health-related U.S. survey questions, covering eighty years of national polling. Searchable questions and results, demographic crosstabs, and trends are available on every topic related to health, from social determinants and influences on health to insurance, costs and health-care utilization.

Access to this database is available on and off campus via links found on the following pages of the library website:

Please share news about this new resource with faculty and students you work with.

New Content in HeinOnline on LGBTQ+ Rights

HeinOnline just expanded our access to include a collection of legal and historical materials that surrounding the efforts in the United States to define and defend LGBTQ+ rights:

LGBTQ+ Rights charts the gay rights movement in America, showing the civil rights codified into law in the 20th and 21st centuries, as well as the inequalities that still exist today. Topics covered include the Defense of Marriage Act, the AIDS crisis, military service by gay and transgender service members, “bathroom bills,” and more. A separate subcollection presents historical texts whose views some readers may find offensive today, showing the prejudicial beliefs that permeated society and helped formed the laws of their time.

Over the years, HeinOnline has been adding all kinds of topical legal materials and government documents that offer a historical perspective on key issues in American history. When you first go to HeinOnline, you can drill down to one of these specific collections by selecting from the dropdown menu in the search bar or by clicking the collection from the list lower down on the page:

HeinOnline landing page listing collections.

Please share news of this new collection with faculty in relevant departments.

New Database: Chicago Defender

We now have access to the Chicago Defender on ProQuest’s Historical Newspapers platform. Coverage for this important newspaper goes from 1909-2010. As is the case with other newspapers that we have on this platform (New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Amsterdam News), coverage includes not just the articles but also ads and all the images in the articles and ads.

A link to the database may be found on the A-Z databases page and selected subject database pages (News, Black Studies, and History).

Although you can look up a journal record for the Chicago Defender in OneSearch, you won’t be able to find articles from it there. Instead, you’ll need to connect to the database itself and search within it. This is due to limitations in way that Ex Libris has made this collection available within Primo (our OneSearch system).

Please let faculty in relevant departments know about this valuable new resource.

New Databases on the EBSCOhost Platform

We’ve recently acquired seven new databases on EBSCOhost. Some of these new acquisitions give us deep access to archives of important magazines:

  • Ebony Magazine Archive
  • Fortune Magazine Archive
  • JET Magazine Archive
  • The Nation Archive
  • Time Magazine

Two other acquisitions provide access to a mix of serials:

  • African American Historical Serials Collection offers the full text of magazines, newspapers, reports, and annuals from 1816-1922 from churches and educational and service institutions.
  • Fuente Académica provides the full text of 450 scholarly journals from Latin America, Portugal and Spain.

Links to all of these databases can be found on our A-Z databases page if you want to access them and search them directly within the native EBSCOhost interface. Links to them will also be added soon on various subject database pages.

The content for these collections is also being indexed in OneSearch; some of it may already be discoverable at the article and journal level while others (such as JET and Ebony will take some time, as Ex Libris hasn’t yet set up discovery access to these newer collections yet in Alma and Primo). As soon as the content is fully discoverable within OneSearch, I’ll post a new item to the reference blog.

Please alert faculty in relevant departments you work with about these new acquisitions.

Remote Access System Is Intermittently Down

This is affecting both off campus and on campus access, as our EZproxy system isn’t able to load the login pages for our off campus users and our on campus users can’t get past any proxied link because the EZproxy system isn’t available.

I have a ticket into BCTC but haven’t been able to get any more info yet on whether network issues may be affecting our access to the EZproxy server.

Workarounds (only available for on campus users)

If you are are on campus, you can still get to our proxied resources as follows:

  1. Copy the full link of the resource you are trying to connect with.
  2. Paste that link into Notepad on your computer. Delete the initial portion of the link that begins with https://remote.baruch.cuny.edu/login?url= and then copy the remainder of the link.
  3. Paste that remainder of the link into a new browser tab or window. That should take you directly to the resource instead of having it go first through the EZproxy server here on campus.

Example: You want to go to Academic Search Complete. Copy the link to the database and paste it into Notepad. The URL will like this:

https://remote.baruch.cuny.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&profile=ehost&defaultdb=a9h

Delete the portion at the front that begins with https://remote.baruch.cuny.edu/login?url=

That leaves you with something you can copy and paste back into your browser as long as you are on campus:

https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&profile=ehost&defaultdb=a9h

Dissertations & Theses Databases Page Created

A Dissertations & Theses – Databases page was created.

It can be found by browsing the Databases by Subject page. It is listed within the General & Reference box.

Dissertations and Theses Databases

The Dissertations & Theses – Databases page includes links to:

  • ProQuest Dissertations @ Baruch to access the DBA dissertations
  • Baruch’s Institutional Repository to access the DBA dissertations, master’s theses, and undergraduate honors theses uploaded by students
  • OneSearch to help users identify the microfilm number for older Baruch master’s theses
  • CUNY Academic Works to search for CUNY-wide dissertations and theses
  • and other recommended sources, such as Google Scholar and ILLiad

LibGuides System Is Down (see update)

Springshare customers in the US are reporting that their LibGuides systems are down. Here at Baruch, this means that we can’t access:

  • research guides
  • e-reserves
  • A-Z list of databases

As an alternative means of access to our A-Z list of databases, there is this Google Docs spreadsheet we can use to get links to all of our databases.

As soon as Springshare resolves the problem, an update will be posted here.

UPDATE (July 27, 2021, 12:17 pm): All LibGuides systems are now working again.