News and tips by and for staff providing reference services at the Newman Library, Baruch College (New York, NY).
We have a trial to McGraw Hill eBook Library until October 31, 2012, on campus only.
McGraw Hill ebooks are not available on other platforms. McGraw Hill offers both a subscription and a purchase model, including subject collections. A list of all titles and titles per collection can be found under “For Librarians”.
I would appreciate any feedback you may have.
Mike has set up a trial to the LandScan database from East View.
LandScan is a mapping application that provides gridded population data for the world. They’ve used satellite data to calculate population for small grid cells for the entire planet. This gives population researchers the ability to work with areas of a uniform size with data that is collected using one methodology, as opposed to working with census data from hundreds of countries that is collected using various methods for different time frames for places of widely varying size.
The product provides researchers with the ability to access the maps directly in GIS via the company’s servers, and also locally from individual files the vendor would provide us. Researchers can use the maps in GIS to extract data and overlay the population grid with layers of their own.
East View also provides a user-friendly web browser application that anyone can use. You can view population data broken down by age and gender for individual cells, countries, and first level subdivisions (states and provinces). There are a number of base maps for streets and topography that you can overlay the population data on.
The trial works on campus (without a password) from now until Sept 14th. Once you’re in the interface there is a link to a short video that gives you an overview of how it works. Access the resource here:
http://wms.cartographic.com/LandScan2011/
We have a CUNY-wide trial to EasyBib until 7/31/12. I have set up remote access since one of its main features is the ability to access citations from anywhere. Please note that while there is some customization on the main landing page, this may change if we decide to subscribe.
As always, I am interested in hearing what you think of this product and if you think this would be of use to our users.
We have a short trial (until May 3rd) to Statista. It is available on-campus only for the trial.
Statista is a statistical portal that integrates over 60,000 topics from over 10,000 sources onto a single platform. It has been reviewed favorably by Library Journal in their January 1, 2012 issue and by the Center for Research Libraries.
Please take a look and let me know what you think of the interface, search capabilities and its usefulness to supporting the curriculum at Baruch.
We have a trial to EBSCO’s Ebook Academic Collection trial until June 30, 2012.
This is a new product from EBSCO, comparable to the collection we have from ebrary. Like ebrary, there are over 70,000 titles (only about 51,000 for this trial), unlimited simultaneous users and downloads. Because this is a trial, we will not add the records to the catalog, but if we were to subscribe, they would be added.
We will be actively comparing this product with ebrary’s so please share your comments in the comments below or email me directly. In particular, I would like comments on ease of downloading, search capabilities, on-screen display, marking, saving and emailing capabilities, and any other feature you may consider important.
We have a trial to Business Expert Press Digital Library until November 15, 2011.
Business Expert Press publishes books that are filled with practical, concise books covering specific areas of business, including supply and operations management, international business, social media, finance, accounting, public relations, and marketing strategy.
They are hosted on the ebrary platform but are a separate collection. They also allow (unlike ebrary currently) downloading to PDF (which can then be uploaded to a mobile reader). To download – with the book open, go to InfoTools then go to Global Express Options.
I would appreciate feedback on the content and its usefulness to our curriculum.
We have an on campus trial to the two databases above until November 6, 2011. They all show up on the same platform as we have our APA books, which may be confusing. Also, each of these can be searched together or individually but the default for the trial is that everything is selected, including the APA books.
PsycTESTS is a repository for the full text of psychological tests and measures as well as a rich source of structured information about the tests.
PsycTHERAPY is a database of streaming psychotherapy demonstration videos; users may create playlists, clips, search transcripts of videos, and more.
Please share with interested faculty and I welcome all feedback.
I don’t think I have much more to add to the insightful comments sent out on the library’s mailing list yesterday by one of our colleagues. I too think we should take a pass on this database, as it doesn’t seem to have unique content. It’s worth noting that I do really like the database’s modern look and feel (by the way, Gale really needs to bring Business & Company Resource Center out of its early 2000s era design).
As part of my poking around in the database, I did a company search for Google and found myself looking at the SWOT analysis (which happens to be the same SWOT analysis you’d find in Business & Company Resource Center). The SWOT analysis is produced by a company called GlobalData. I’m not qualified to just the quality of the analysis but I do think I can say that it is troublesome that the report featured some grammar problems and incorrect info. For example, the company snapshot section of the report says that Google’s web address is at www.google.co.in (that address is actually for the Indian subsidiary); this mistake may suggest where the SWOT analysis was created.
We have a trial until October 21 to Gale’s new business database, Business Insights: Global. We can extend this if necessary.
It covers case studies, interactive charts for business and economic indicators that users can generate, global company and country information, global industry research reports and more.
Feedback is always appreciated.
We have a 30 day trial to Mango Languages Learning Center. It is on-campus only and is listed in our list of databases.
Mango is a language learning program teaching practical conversation and cultural awareness for the following languages: Arabic (Levantine), Chinese (Cantonese), Chinese (Mandarin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dari, Dutch, Farsi (Persian), Finnish, French, French (Canadian), German, Greek, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Pashto, Pirate, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Slovak, Spanish (Latin America), Tagalog, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu and Vietnamese.
Please send me any feedback you might have on this resource.