Database News - September 2005

Beginning in 1968, Congress and the President have designated a time span (first a week, then a month) during September and October for celebrating the cultures and contributions of Hispanic Americans. The University Libraries offer several specialized resources for studying Spanish and Latin American histories and cultures, including:

• Handbook of Latin American Studies
  Since 1935, the Library of Congress has produced this important bibliography listing books and articles on all topics related to Central and South America, such as anthropology and archaeology, history, politics, literature, economics, and more. Now you can search through thousands of indexed publications through this powerful tool.
  
• CLASE and PERIÓDICA
  These two indexes are produced at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) and offer access to more than 300,000 bibliographic citations from documents published in 2,600 scholarly journals published in the Spanish, Portuguese, French and English languages. Contains information from articles, essays, book reviews, monographs, conference proceedings, technical reports, interviews and brief notes published in journals edited in 24 different countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as from publications that focus on Pan-American issues.
  
• Life and Works of Jorge Luis Borges: A Digital Database
  This database originates from the Jorge Luis Borges Collection and Documentation Center of the Fundación San Telmo, which contains the world’s largest collection of materials related to Borges’ life and works. The collection was begun in 1986 and includes manuscripts and letters, books, periodicals, photographs, audio and video recordings, newspaper and magazine clippings, and other objects and documents. The database provides access to a wide range of materials on Borges, including those that are rare or appeared in unindexed national and provincial newspapers and journals.
  
• JSTOR and Project MUSE
  Each of these journal collections offer full-text access to important articles on a wide range of Latin American topics. Journals included are:
  • JSTOR:
    • Hispania, 1917-1999
    • Hispanic American Historical Review, 1918-1999 (plus links to recent content 2000-2004)
    • Hispanic Review, 1933-1999
    • Journal of Latin American Studies, 1969-1999
    • Latin American Perspectives, 1974-2001
    • Latin American Politics and Society, 2001
    • Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 1970-2000
    • Journal of Inter-American Studies, 1959-1969
    • Latin American Research Review, 1965-2001
      
  • Project MUSE:
    • The Americas (Oct. 2000-)
    • Economía (2000-)
    • Hispanic American Historical Review (Aug. 1999;2000-2004; archive only)
    • Hispanic Review (2005-)
    • Journal of Latin American Geography (2003-)
    • Latin American Music Review (2001-)
    • Latin American Politics & Society (2004-)
    • Latin American Research Review (2003-)
    • Luso-Brazilian Review (2004-)
    • Nepantla: Views from South (2000-2003; archive only)
• Lexis Nexis Newspapers
  Did you know that Lexis Nexis Academic has the full-text of almost 50 Spanish-language newspapers and periodicals? Browse the Source List of Non-English Language news sources to see titles such as El Universal (Mexico City), Palabra (Satillo), El Nacional (Venezuela), Cinco Dias (Madrid), and La Republica (Uruguay).

Of course, you can also find information on Hispanic topics in almost all our resources, including Historical Abstracts, EconLit, GeoBase, AnthroLit, and more.

The Libraries have recently moved two more databases to the popular Ebsco platform.

• Mental Measurements Yearbook (MMY) contains full-text information about and reviews of all English-language standardized tests covering educational skills, personality, vocational aptitude, psychology, and related areas. Use MMY to identify intelligence, skills, or personality tests for particular attributes and to find critiques of those tests. Because PsycINFO and ERIC are also on the Ebsco platform these databases can now be searched together.
  
• International Political Science Abstracts (IPSA) provides abstracts of political science articles published in scholarly journals and yearbooks worldwide. Topics include method and theory; political thinkers and ideas; political and administrative institutions; political processes (public opinion, attitudes, parties, forces, groups, and elections); international relations; and national and area studies. Having IPSA on the Ebsco platform means easier linking to full-text articles and to ILLiad interlibrary loan requests.

Members of the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA) have been working together to build a portal to biological engineering resources, the GWLA Biological Engineering Gateway.

The Gateway is currently concerned with biological engineering as it is used in three areas:

• bioprocess engineering
• bioenvironmental engineering
• bioresource engineering

( Biomedicine and biotechnology may be added at a later stage of the project.)

Through the Biological Engineering Gateway, you can locate recommended reference books, online databases, patent search engines, organizations, academic programs, and full-text collections. While a few of the linked resources are by subscription only, many are open access and free to any scholar in the world.

Reader more about the project goals and send in your suggestions on the project web site.

The Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) has just released a new version of its SciFinder Scholar software for accessing Chemical Abstracts and related databases. SciFinder Scholar can be used for noncommercial purposes on any campus computer.

This new version offers several enhancements, including:

• Quick Reference Lookup
  The new Locate feature helps you quickly find a specific reference based on one or more pieces of bibliographic information, such as title words, author/inventor, journal name, publication date, or patent number.
• Removal of Duplicate Records
  You can now quickly remove MEDLINE® records that are duplicate entries of CAplusSM records in your reference answer set, or set a preference to omit duplicates automatically in the future.
• Structure Similarity Searching
  SciFinder uses the Tanimoto algorithm to compare all substances in the database with your query structure, and then determines which are the most similar.
• New Structure and Reaction Drawing Tools
  Variable Attachment Position and Repeating Group tools allow for powerful variation in substructure queries.
• Query Highlighting in Reaction Results
  Quickly locate your query structure within a reaction result and identify why the answer was retrieved.
• Enhanced, Interactive Reaction Displays
  Utilize new visual cues to quickly and easily access information related to reaction participants: additional reactions, references, substance details, commercial sources, and regulatory information.

More new features are described on the CAS web site. To download a software update for Windows, visit our SciFinder page.

Scholar 2006 for the Mac is expected in early 2006.

CAB Abstracts, produced by the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureau, covers the subject of agriculture in the broadest sense. It includes: agronomy, biotechnology, crop protection, dairy science, economics, environmental degradation and remediation, forestry, genetics, herbicides, irrigation, leisure, recreation and tourism, microbiology, nutrition, parasitology, rural development, veterinary medicine, and much more.

Now CAB has extended coverage back for almost of century of agricultural research. You can find articles about rice or apple cultivation in Arkansas in the 1920s and 1930s, or strategic rubber plantations during WWII, or the worldwide revolution in agricultural yields in the 1950s and 1960s. So try out CAB today for a phenomenal harvest of information.