Database News: November / December 2005

Although November was officially designated American Indian Heritage Month only in 1990, the movement to to set aside a month to recognize the unique contributions and cultures of the American Indians and Alaska Natives goes back to 1915. You can investigate the history and achievements of the First Peoples with several library resources:

eHRAF Ethnology and Archaeology Collections: HRAF (Human Resources Area Files) has collected monographs, journal articles, and other publications on all aspects of cultural anthropology since the 1950s. HRAF's unique organization cross-tabulates cultures with cultural practices -- such as weddings, foodways, religious ceremonies, or other human activities. The growing eHRAF online collection contains over 300,000 pages of information on all aspects of cultural and social life with diverse topics ranging from religious beliefs, bringing up children, causes and cures of diseases, to economic and political behavior. Cultures included are mostly ethnic and indigenous groups from around the world. Native American cultures currently available in the collections include:

Early Encounters in North America: draws together primary source materials from the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries on the cultural encounters in the European exploration of and United States expansion into of the North American continent. When complete the database will include more than 100,000 pages of letters, diaries, memoirs and accounts of early encounters. Search or browse for texts by geographic place, time period, type of encounter, ethnic group, or other criteria.

U. S. Congressional Serial Set and American State Papers: These two collections over the full text of congressional and executive documents from 1789 to about 1880 (when complete, the set will cover through 1980). An incredibly rich collection, with documents such as treaties, ethnographic histories, and more.

National Register of Historic Places: view historic properties, national parks, recommended travel itineraries, and essays on Native American history in this special American Indian Heritage Month site.

Sequoyah Research Center - Native American Press Archives: a joint effort between the UALR Department of English and the UALR Library, this archive collects and preserves Native American newspapers, manuscripts, and related materials. Indexes to the Cherokee Phoenix and Cherokee Advocate newspapers are available online, as are selected digital library exhibits.

UofA researchers now have access to conference proceedings from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) online. Currently, the site hosts a growing collection of conferences on topics such as structural engineering, soil mechanics, transportation, urban planning, coasts and ports, and related fields. Users can browse or search by paper author, conference title, broad subject area, or year. Records for these online proceedings are also being added to the InfoLinks library catalog.

If you have not visited the ASCE site recently, you will be pleased to find many other new functions. Approximately 30 journals are available online, including:

• International Journal of Geomechanics
• Journal of Aerospace Engineering
• Journal of Architectural Engineering
• Journal of Bridge Engineering
• Journal of Cold Regions Engineering
• Journal of Composites for Construction
• Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering
• Journal of Construction Engineering
• Journal of Energy Engineering
• Journal of Engineering Mechanics
• Journal of Environmental Engineering
• Journal of Geotechnical & Geoenvironmental Engineering
• Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
• Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
• Journal of Infrastructure Systems
• Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
• Journal of Management in Engineering
• Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
• Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities
• Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education & Practice
• Journal of Structural Engineering
• Journal of Surveying Engineering
• Journal of Transportation Engineering
• Journal of Urban Planning and Development
• Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management
• Journal of Waterway, Port, Coastal and Ocean Engineering
• Leadership and Management in Engineering
• Natural Hazards Review
• Practice Periodical of Hazardous, Toxic & Radioactive Waste Management
• Practice Periodical on Structural Design and Construction

In addition to journals and conference proceedings, you can take the CE database for a spin. The Civil Engineering Database allows you to search citations for engineering literature back to 1958 - with abstracts available from 1970 to date.

ProQuest continues to add new features to help you find information faster. This University Libraries subscribe to several databases on the ProQuest platform:

• ProQuest Research Library
  • covers 2600+ popular and trade magazines and scholarly journals, wtih full text articles avaiable for 1700+ titles
  • covers all subject areas
• ABI / Inform Complete
  • covers more than 1600 business and industry journals and magazine, with 700+ available in full text
  • provides information on all aspects of business, marketing, management,finance, industry, and related fields.
  • includes the Wall Street Journal from 1984 to the present
• ProQuest Dissertations and Theses
  • indexes North American dissertations back to 1851, adding abstracts, international dissertations, and master's theses in the last few decades
  • offers more than 500,000 full text dissertations and theses; most full-text documents date from 1997 to the present, though many earlier titles are also available

Recent ProQuest enhancements include:

New search limiters exclude newspaper and book review content

This new capability allows users to easily exclude newspapers and book reviews from search results.

To use these limits, click the button for "More Search Options" and then Exclude Book Reviews or Newspapers

New Document Type added for Business Case Studies

This option can also be found under "More Search Options" and then "Publication Type."

Dissertation Content Added to ABI Inform

Approximately 10,000 business and economics dissertations and masters theses have been loaded into ABI/INFORM. Most dissertations/theses come from the date range 1999 to 2002.
These can also be found with "More Search Options" and then "Publication Type"

Limit to Arkansas Dissertations and Theses with School Code

Limit your search in the Dissertations database with the school code 0011 for University of Arkansas.
This is more precise than searching the school name, which may also retrieve UAMS, UALR, etc.

Learn more about ProQuest on their Training Site where you can read reference guides for ProQuest Dissertations, ABI Inform, and other topics.

Mac users will be pleased to learn that SciFinder Scholar has announced two new software releases this year for the Mac OS X platform. Previous versions would only run under the Mac "classic" OS 9 platform. This new version offers:

• Support for Tiger (10.4), Panther (10.3), Jaguar (10.2) versions of OS X
• Direct integration with native OS X web browsers, including Safari® (default), Mozilla Firefox™, Netscape® Navigator and Microsoft® Internet Explorer
• Better desktop performance

A second release in 2006 will bring many new tools, such as duplicate removal, additional reaction information, and more. Read more at the SciFinder web site.

To upgrade from a previous Mac version of SciFinder or to install for the first time, visit our support page.

New to SciFinder Scholar? SciFinder is the client interface for searchign the Chemical Abstracts database for articles, patens, and other publications on all kinds of scientific and technical literature. To use Scifinder, you must download and install special software onto your campus computer. (Please note that SciFinder scholar will not work from off-campus.)