Penn State Great Valley Library Blog

www.Flu.Gov
A great website for information regarding the flu is: http://www.flu.gov. This is a government resource.

With many newspaper’s elimination of science sections, where can readers turn for reliable Science News? Futurity (http://Futurity.org) is one option. This site collects and posts science news releases from universities. Universities such as Penn State, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, University of Penn, etc. needed a way to easily post their scientific findings and Futurity fits the bill. “It’s ironic that we have fewer writers in our major media focusing on science, while we have ever more issues that have a science base — from climate change to the health care debate, stem cells, evolution and swine flu — many of which are very controversial,” said Cristine Russell, a former Washington Post science reporter. Although a reliable source, Futurity lacks the impartiality of an independent science reporter. For that, readers can still turn to Knight Science Journalism Tracker, an MIT website of published science articles (http://ksjtracker.mit.edu).

For more details about locating science news, click on the link to the article on the Baltimore Sun:
Universities establish own way to tell public about findings
http://www.baltimoresun.com/technology/bal-university-wire-0916,0,6633143.story.

Penn State has created a new Scientific Search Engine call CiteSeerX. The beta version was released earlier this summer, and it can be used to search scientific literature including: algorithms, data, meta data, services, techniques, software, and even tables. With more than a million journal articles and other scholarly works, this resource, developed by Penn State’s College of Information Sciences & Technology (ITS), is accessible to anyone. It is funded by the National Science Foundation, Microsoft, NASA, as well as ITS. To access click on CiteSeerX or the link: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/

What is Forward Citation Searching?
Forward Citation searching is a way users can quickly identify later works which cite a particular article. For instance, if a specific article or book were the cornerstone of a user’s research, any later work which refers to that original text would be significant to that research. These later writings could either collaborate or refute the original text, or even take the research in a whole new direction. Locating the later writings is referred to as Forward Citation Searching. The most important aspect to take from this posting is to simply be aware of this type of searching for your research. An example is outlined below. However, if you have questions with the actual procedure, please ask. Library contact information follows the example…

As an example, let’s perform a forward citation search for the 1989 book, Improving Higher Education Environments for Adults, by Nancy Schlossberg, Ann Lynch & Arthur Chickering.
We will be searching for any later works which refer to this text, i.e. articles or books written between 1989 – 2009. One way to perform Forward Citation Searching is by using the
Web of Science database.
From the Penn State Library homepage http://www.libraries.psu.edu ,
Select Databases by Title (A-Z)
Then select Web of Science.
From the ISI Web of Knowledge page, click on the Web of Science yellow tab.
Then click on Cited Reference Search.

Enter cited author’s name. For this example enter Schlossberg, N. Only enter the first author’s name. As the Web of Science page demonstrates, enter last name first, with no punctuation and only first initial.

The cited work entry is a little tricky. This database abbreviates everything, so you need to search for the work’s title (Improving Higher Education…) to see how this database has abbreviated it. To do this, click on the magnifying glass symbol at the end of this line. Enter the first three words of the title – Improving Higher Education. This search produced IMPROVING HIMPS EARL. Our example should come before this entry, so click the Previous button and then scroll to the bottom. There the user will see Improving Higher Ed click ADD and then click OK. This will bring you back to the Citing Reference Search page.

Next, for Cited Years, enter 1989-2009. (1989 was the year this book was published.)

Click Search button.
On the Search Results page click on Select box in front of Schlossberg N, then click on the Finish Search button.
This will produce seven results which refer to the Schlossberg text – six good references and one false hit or incorrect result.
That is how to perform a forward citation search.

Questions? Contact the Penn State Great Valley Library 610-648-3362.

If you are interested in knowing the latest information about populations in Pennsylvania you might want to consult the July 1, 2008 Pennsylvania County Estimates and the 2008 Metro and Micro Area Population Estimates released earlier this month by the US Census Bureau. Read more about this recent release in the PaSDC’s Research Brief, available online at:
http://pasdc.hbg.psu.edu/pasdc/data_and_information/briefs/RB031909.pdf

The federal report “Enrollment in Postsecondary Institutions, Fall 2007; Graduation Rates, 2001 & 2004 Cohorts; and Financial Statistics, Fiscal Year 2007,” is available online at http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009155.pdf

If you are looking for the text and sometimes video of a famous speech you may want to check the American Rhetoric web site at http://www.americanrhetoric.com/.

Scholars can now study Hemingway’s life in Cuba – the period not well known to biographers and yet the time & place he wrote his greatest works. The Cuban Hemingway Archive includes: 2,000 documents (manuscripts and letters), 3,500 photographs, and 9,000 books (2,000 with Hemingway’s notes in the margins). This collection is made possible through a joint effort of the Cuban National Cultural Heritage Council and the U.S. Social Science Research Council.

This collection will not be available to the general public, but instead to scholars who submit written request for access. While the materials are currently only available in Finca Vigia, Cuba, they will be assessable at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston by the end of January, 2009.

As indicated on the Europeana homepage (http://dev.europeana.eu/ ), 10 million hits per hour halted this site on the opening day of its prototype. Europeana is a digital collection of European culture and heritage produced by the efforts of many European Archives, Research Institutions, and National Representatives. Offering 6 million digital sounds, photos, paintings, maps, manuscripts, books, film material, newspapers and archival papers, Europeana began in July 2007 and is expected to provide full access by 2010. The demo displays screenshots from this site and provides a taste of what to expect. (The demo can be found on the home page address listed above.) While the demo is only offering in English, when completed the portal will be accessible in all the languages of Europe.

Some representatives from European Cultural institutions considered the portal’s capability handling 5 million hits an hour excessive, even doubting the public’s interest in a digital cultural collection. However, the traffic for this prototype has overwhelmingly demonstrated a need for this European digital cultural collection. The prototype is expected to attempt to launch again toward the end of December 2008.

The Penn State Great Valley Library offers many resources for our Management and Business Programs. The library’s collection consists of a great assortment of items in print, electronic access, and microfilm/microfiche.

• Print Resources – Frequently used print periodicals:
o Harvard Business Review - Print Only (article abstracts can be searched on ProQuest (Multiple Databases))
o Investor’s Business Daily - Also available electronically through LexisNexis Academic
o New York Times - Also available electronically through ProQuest (Newsstand)
o Wall Street Journal – Also available electronically through ProQuest (Newsstand)

• Electronic resources - accessed through Penn State’s Library main page (http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul.html) and select Databases by title (A-Z)
o ABI/Inform
o Hoover’s Online
o LexisNexis Academic
o Mergent (formerly Moody’s)
o ProQuest (Multiple Databases)
o ProQuest (Newsstand) for Wall Street Journal, NY Times, and other national newspapers
o PsycINFO
o Standard & Poor’s NetAdvantage
o TableBase
o Value Line

• Resources available from outside Penn State:
o Business Source Premier – this electronic source can be accessed using ACCESS PA through a public library website such as the Chester County Library (http://www.ccls.org)- please contact the library for more information or help using this source

If you have any questions or need help please stop in, call 610-648-3215, or e-mail Dolores Fidishun, Head Librarian dxf19@psu.edu.

JSTOR (the scholarly journal archive) has launched JSTOR Africa as “part of JSTOR’s mission to create an archive of scholarly literature and extend access to the archive as broadly as possible, we are proud to announce that JSTOR has adopted a plan to waive participation fees for any academic or not-for-profit institution on the continent of Africa. This plan affects new participants, as well as institutions that currently participate in JSTOR.”

The plan will provide three years of free access to institutions in Africa participating in the program. JSTOR’s provides a rationale for selecting the continent of Africa as follows:

“We understand that there are many other regions of the world and many institutions that would benefit from a similar policy. We have limited this access plan to Africa in part because barriers to sustainability and access are so broadly similar across this region. The Open Africa Program is the latest initiative we have taken in the last few years to address issues of affordability, utility, sustainability, and access.

JSTOR has taken steps to make access to the archive more accessible to the developing world, including an access plan for countries outside the United States that extend savings off of standard JSTOR participation fees based on criteria established by the World Bank’s analysis of Gross National Income (GNI).”

Learn more about this exciting initative by logging onto: www.jstor.org/about/africa/openafrica.html

Newspaper articles about Martin Luther King, Jr. tell the story of an African-American minister whose strong hope for social change never swerved his belief in nonviolence. During the American civil rights movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s, King encouraged nonviolent methods to protest segregation such as boycotts of city buses that gave preferential treatment to whites, sit-ins at lunch counters that refused to serve African Americans and mass rallies to draw attention to the civil rights cause.

Find more on Martin Luther King, Jr. by searching the archive.
http://martinlutherkingjrarchive.com/

“Welcome to the Benjamin Franklin web portal: a comprehensive, one-stop site that includes carefully curated educational resources, Franklin’s own writings and proverbs, and tens of thousands of websites scattered throughout cyberspace. Befitting this founding father’s leadership in establishing the country’s first public library, this free site, in honor of his Tercentenary, is accessible to anyone with an internet connection.”
http://ben.clusty.com/

Not sure what to write about?
Need background information on a given topic?
Want to see a list of references related to your paper?

If your answer is yes to any of these questions then check out a specialized encyclopedia at the Penn State Great Valley Library.

Encyclopedia of leadership
HD57.7.E53 2004

Encyclopedia of distributed learning
LC5211.E52 2004

Encyclopedia of health care management
RA971.E52 2004

International encyclopedia of business and management
HF1001.I53 2002

Encyclopedia of business information sources
HF5353.E9 2002

Encyclopedia of women’s health issues
RA778.G39 2002

The encyclopedia of addictive drugs
RM316.M555 2002

Encyclopedia of American law
KF154.E528 2002

Encyclopedia of genetics
QH427.E54 2001

Encyclopedia of applied ethics
BJ63.A66 1998

Encyclopedia of small business
HD62.7.H553 1998

But wait there’s more:

As a student, staff or faculty member you have access to online encyclopedias including:

The International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences
http://alias.libraries.psu.edu/eresources/SOCBEHVSCI

Encyclopaedia Britannica
http://alias.libraries.psu.edu/eresources/EB

Encyclopedia of Genetics
http://alias.libraries.psu.edu/eresources/ENCGENETICS

Encyclopedia of Life Sciences
http://alias.libraries.psu.edu/eresources/ENCLIFESCI

Gale Virtual Reference Library
http://alias.libraries.psu.edu/eresources/GVRL