Thursday, June 26, 2008

Visuwords Online Graphical Dictionary

Here's a resource that's not only fun to use, but useful too.

Visuwords: http://www.visuwords.com

Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary can be used to help students understand ways research topics can be divided and/or organized. It’s a great tool when starting a research paper and will give you ideas as how to develop your research topic.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Prelinger Archives

View nearly 2,000 films from the Prelinger Archives! http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger

Prelinger Archives was founded in 1983 by Rick Prelinger in New York City. Over the next twenty years, it grew into a collection of over 60,000 "ephemeral" (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur) films. In 2002, the film collection was acquired by the Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. Prelinger Archives holds approximately 4,000 titles on videotape and a smaller collection of film materials acquired subsequent to the Library of Congress transaction. Its goal remains to collect, preserve, and facilitate access to films of historic significance that haven't been collected elsewhere. Included are films produced by and for many hundreds of important US corporations, nonprofit organizations, trade associations, community and interest groups, and educational institutions. Getty Images represents the collection for stock footage sale, and almost 2,000 key titles are available here. As a whole, the collection currently contains over 10% of the total production of ephemeral films between 1927 and 1987, and it may be the most complete and varied collection in existence of films from these poorly preserved genres.
Some titles include:
About Bananas, 1935
USDA : A Step Saving Kitchen, 1949
Chevrolet Leader News, 1937
And my favorite so far Television Commercials from the 1950s and 60s

Friday, June 20, 2008

Company Dossiers from LexisNexis Academic

Do you need the addresses of all the software companies from Anchorage, Alaska to Zulch, Texas with more than 50 employees? Or maybe you need a list of companies with home offices in the Dallas area? And do you want financial or personnel information for those companies?

Create a Company Dossier, new from the database Lexis Nexis. Just follow the instructions from the How to Create a Company Dossier guide created by the librarians at McDermott Library.

Friday, June 13, 2008

Statistics

The use of statistics in your paper that back up your assumptions and conclusions can be a great addition that makes your papers more credible. Use the database Statistical Universe then select Search Abstracts. We’ve also compiled a list of statistics sites on our Useful Web Sites. From the library home page under Resources, select Useful Web Sites, then Statistics. Statistics from the World Bank, the Roper Center and Gallup Poll are included.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Dictionaries and Thesauri

Don’t write your papers without a dictionary or a thesaurus; keep these online versions readily available – Merriam-Webster Dictionary and Merriam-Webster Thesaurus. Follow the links or go to the Library Home Page – under the heading Resources, click on the link Useful Web Sites then Dictionaries, Grammars and Thesauri.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

World Development Indicators Online Database

The database World Development Indicators (WDI Online) now has 854 indicators available for 209 economies and 18 groups from 1960 to 2007, where data are available. This is an increase of over 100 indicators from 2007!
World Development Indicators, developed by the World Bank, provides online access to financial and demographic data for over 228 countries and regions of the world. Data retrieved can be manipulated by adjusting output parameters and downloaded as an Excel file. Coverage begins with 1960.

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

RefWorks

RefWorks has introduced two new components, RefShare and RefAware.RefAware is a web based current awareness service designed to provide researchers and other members of the academic community with immediate access to new research and publications in their field - all within hours of being posted online. Covering over 8,000 peer-reviewed sources and other non-refereed sources of information, RefAware provides a comprehensive, up-to-the minute picture of today's global research.RefShare provides users with a quick and easy way to share their RefWorks databases. RefShare allows subscribing institutions to make available central, customizable Web pages where users can post their RefWorks databases or folders. The databases are easily accessible from the site; users can also easily share access to this information with anyone via e-mail.
I just signed up for 3 seminars – RefWorks Advanced Features; RefShare and RefAware, and thought that some of you might like to try the seminars as well. http://refworks.com/content/webinars/default.asp#RefShare will give you more information, and registration details.
McDermott Library provides free access to RefWorks through the library’s home page.Create your account at http://www.utdallas.edu/library/resources/refworks/index.htm (be sure to use you UTD email address), then use RefWorks to import citations, manage citations in folders, format them within your papers and create instant bibliographies.
RefWorks provides easy to follow tutorials, a Quick Start Guide and HELP screens. If you need help getting started, you can call me at 972-883-2627, or email me at carol.oshel@utdallas.edu, or contact RefWorks at support@refworks.com or 775-327-4105.

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Marquis Who's Who on the web

Marquis Who’s Who on the Web is one of our newest databases. It provides access to over 1.4 million brief biographies from 21 Marquis titles including Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in Science and Engineering, Who’s Who in the World and Who Was Who in America. This database provides full text content from 1985 and allows users to create specialized searches for individuals based on criteria such as occupation, geography, religion, and hobbies.