Database Alert: Blackwell Synergy Shutting Down and Merging with Wiley InterScience

Library Users, please be aware that Blackwell Synergy, the home of over 1 million articles from over 850 journals, will cease to exist within the week. However, all is not lost. As of June 30th 2008, all journal content on Blackwell Synergy merges into Wiley InterScience, which is another of our publisher aggregate databases.

Already, access to some components of the Blackwell Synergy product have become unreliable or unavailable. (I can testify to this as the keeper of the library usage statistics!) Officially, it is over the weekend of June 28th and 29th, 2008 that there will be a period when both Blackwell Synergy and Wiley InterScience will be unavailable while the company "transitions and re-indexes data." Then, after July 1, 2008, Blackwell Synergy will no longer be available online, but the content therein should be available via Wiley InterScience, and any existing Blackwell links are supposed to relay to Wiley.


Still, be warned, the transition--starting now--may not be as smooth as the publisher hopes.

Putting a positive spin on this upheaval, the merger will make some 3 million journal articles in over 1400 journals available on a single site. Blackwell journal content will be searchable on Wiley InterScience, and listed under appropriately enhanced subject categories. Wiley claims that "this is a first step in the development of a next generation online publishing platform, arriving early 2009, which will deliver Wiley-Blackwell journals, online books, reference works, databases, protocols and other electronic resources through one integrated service."

More info and an FAQ are available at http://0-interscience.wiley.com.library.law.suffolk.edu/transition

For those who despair over all the mergers and changes in the world of publishing, journals, and databases, my best advice is to get used to it! Merger mania and rapidly changing delivery platforms are now the norm.

Here at the Sawyer Library, we will do our very best to stay on top of these changes and keep our library users informed about any change that will impact them and their research practices.

New Database: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics

We have recently added a new online edition of one of the classic reference texts in the field of economics. This is The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. The first edition, called The Dictionary of Political Economy, was edited by Robert Harry Inglis Palgrave, and published in three volumes, the first of which was printed in 1894. Several revising editions appeared in the more than 100 years since.

The current New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics contains articles by 1,506 contributors, including 25 Nobel Laureates in Economics. It includes 1,872 articles: 1,057 of these are new to the second edition; 550 are edited original articles; 157 are revised articles; 80 are ‘classics’; and 28 are ‘signpost’ articles. For those, like me, who do not want to "do the math," this supposedly means that over 70% of this edition’s articles are either new or heavily revised.

New or expanded areas include: experimental and behavioural economics, game theory, international economics and technological change and growth. Topics are placed in their historical perspective, indicating likely future trends as well as describing the contemporary situation.

With online access, current Suffolk students and faculty will be able to search and browse the content of this important reference work 24/7, from wherever they have an internet connection.

We also purchased the 8 volume print edition, which will please those who prefer the tactile pleasures of the physical book. However, the online edition has another key advantage. It will be regularly updated with new articles, updates to existing articles, and new features and functionality. The first updates are due to go live at the end of August.

That first online update is scheduled to include the following articles: "Patent Pools" by Daniel Quint; "Thin Markets" by Marzena Rostek and Marek Weretka; "Stigma" by Steven N. Durlauf and Lawrence E. Blume; "Cross-Country Growth Regressions" also by Durlauf and Blume; and there will also be 20 selected biographies of key economists in that load.

Like the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics does not have the most elegant or attractive interface. Still, it is a functional one, with the ability to search for keyword concepts from the box in the upper right, or browse A-Z alphabetical entries.

If you would like to consult a brief introduction to this online resource, prepared by the publisher, take a look at their Flash Tour.

And while you are exploring the Palgrave, also take a look at our re-configured Databases by Subject/E-Books page, which now includes not only large collections of eBooks, but also a list of multi-volume single-title reference sources worth exploring.

[FIND The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics on our "Databases by Subject" List in the "E-Books" category.]

New Database: ARTstor

We are happy to announce that we have recently added an impressive online archive of art reproductions to our array of databases. The resource, called ARTstor is "a digital library of approximately 700,000 images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences with a set of tools to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes."

When you first click on ARTstor on our database lists, you will then enter the main database by clicking on the GO button in the upper right of the screen. Sometimes, people have issues with the database immediately, when the main database (aka ARTstor Client) does not open properly.

ARTstor does have certain application and hardware requirements. These include:

* A high-speed internet connection (not a dial-up connection);
* Java version 1.3 or later installed on your browser (Mac users accessing ARTstor through Innovative Proxy--which is what Suffolk has--must have Java version 1.5 or later);
* Flash Player version 6.0 or later installed;
* Pop-up blockers are either disabled or configured to allow pop-up windows from www.artstor.org;
* Cookies are enabled in your browser;
* Monitor resolution is set at 1024 x 768 pixels or higher;
* Screen colors are set to True Color (32 bit) or better.

For more on troubleshooting, look at this Systems Requirements page. And explore the rest of the pages in the Getting Started area of their website. Since ARTstor does have a bit of a learning curve, as well as technical challenges, you might want to take a look at their Online Training modules, or even take a look at their YouTube videos that explain downloading images into PowerPoint as well as registering for your own account.

The latter is an important part of the ARTstor process. If you register for your own account as a Suffolk user, you will be able to store, organize, utilize, and share the images you collect more effectively. Also, with your own account, you can by-pass our standard proxy server access when necessary.

As most Suffolk users know, we run all of our databases through a proxy server that allows current students and faculty to enter their name and ID number, be authenticated, and then access our electronic resources off-campus, as well as on campus. Unfortunately, ARTstor is such a complex platform that it does not work well, in many cases, when used in conjunction with a proxy. Therefore, you are advised to set up your account at a Suffolk IP address--that is, ON campus. And if, after you create your account, you find that the database is painfully slow, freezes up, or otherwise does not work as efficiently as you would want, one option is to go directly to the database through the general URL of http://www.artstor.org/. Once you enter the database and login using your own account, you will be able to use the database, without proxy (or on-campus) access for up to 120 days. And each time you login through our regular database list proxy link, or from a Suffolk IP, that 120 day "grace period" renews itself. For more on this, see this ARTstor page on Remote Access.

To explore the images here, you may browse by classification category, collection, or geographic region, or simply use the search box to look for a particular artist, school, subject matter or other keyword concept.

Remember, that as a registered user, you also have more options in terms of using ARTstor images. And if you make regular use of the images, you will probably want to click Tools in the upper border and download the special OIV, or Offline Image Viewer, that allows you to use ARTstor's highest-quality images, which are 3200 pixels on the long side. (When you simply download images directly from the ARTstor Digital Library for use in documents and non-OIV presentations, the images are still large at 1024 pixels on the long side, but not quite as large as images in the OIV.)

We hope to do more with ARTstor education and support, but will wait for the soon-to-launch new platform, which will introduce additional changes to the database, and will (hopefully) also resolve some of the proxy access issues that currently exist.

As this database develops, we hope Suffolk users will take advantage of this impressive (and not inexpensive!) resource.

And for further assistance with ARTstor, although Reference is happy to try to help, you are better off contacting Jessica Roscio of the Humanities Department, who is the Suffolk ARTstor Administrator for the Art History/Humanities Department (jroscio@suffolk.edu / x8257) .

[FIND ARTstor on our "Databases by Subject" List in the "Literature, Arts and Humanities" category.]

Tales From The Front (Desk)--Ruminations on Why the World Still Needs Librarians

"Anyone can do good research....it's called Googling." "Who needs libraries?...Everything is free on the web!"

Librarians (to our dismay) hear statements like that every day. Don't get us wrong, we "Google" frequently ourselves, and we make constant use of materials that we find on the general internet. However, the best information that can be delivered electronically is, alas, not free at all. (Which is why we spend thousands of dollars each year providing the Suffolk community with superior quality journal databases and ebook collections.) Moreover, the issue isn't whether it is possible to find information using a search engine. For almost any search you could devise, you will indeed get hundreds or thousands or even millions of results. The question is, of the countless webpages you pull up, are any of them worth using, citing, or even reading?

One of our key missions is, therefore, to teach Suffolk students how to think critically about the thousands of "hits" they pull up on a Google search. What is the actual quality, veracity and currency of a source; who is the author and what is their level of expertise; what bias is being expressed in the content; and are the "facts" being provided documented and verifiable? (For more on this, take a look at Library Director Bob Dugan's Information Instruction Modules.)

The sheer number and variety of web resources present another danger, however. That is, many people now assume that everything worth knowing or reading or seeing is already available in electronic form--perhaps not in a free format, but at least in a fee-based database. Unfortunately, this is simply not the case. Many resources, especially those written before 1990, have never been "digitized." And projects to make more research materials available in web format have floundered recently. Even the mighty Microsoft is rethinking their ambitious web book project.

Librarians sometimes worry that they are perceived as redundant and unnecessary in a web-based and electronic culture. And perhaps that perception is there. Reality is another thing. Everyday, librarians help people explore and evaluate their options using both print and electronic resources. And (more often than you might think) librarians actually do exhaustive detective work to identify and locate needed materials for serious researchers. Here's a story from my personal experience:

Recently, a member of our science faculty requested help in locating an environmental impact study that had been done in the mid-70's in response to a proposed oil refinery in "Down East" Maine. This report included a species inventory he considered essential to his research. He knew the report existed. The authors verified this fact, but claimed not to have copies. The research laboratory for whom it had supposedly been compiled also claimed to have no copy. Our wonderful ILL assistant, Phally, tried to locate a copy in the inter/national combined catalog we have, called WorldCat, but could identify no library in North America (or beyond) that owned the report.

I Googled. I called. No luck. Then I started emailing any library, organization or agency that might have a copy of the report tucked away on a shelf or in a file cabinet. Among those contacted were the Region1 (New England) EPA Library, the National EPA-RTP Library, the Cobscook Bay Resource Center, the Maine Historical Society, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, Bowdoin College (where a lead author had taught), the Maine Law and Legislative Library, Maine Audubon Society, the National Resources Council of Maine, the Nature Conservancy (in Maine, and National) and the Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment. I must have emailed at least 30 individuals, organizations and libraries.

The Maine State Library said that they believed that they had a copy in a specific archival box, but our faculty member told me another researcher had not found it there.

I was starting to wonder if this was a lost cause. Still, even though I had already contacted the University of Maine (Orono and Machias) Libraries several times already, I remembered reading that Senator William S. Cohen had been involved in the decision-making about the refinery. Since his papers were held at the Special Collections Department of the Fogler Library at the University of Maine, I decided to send one more email out to the UMaine Archives.

Like Blanche DuBois, researchers often depend on "the kindness of strangers," and I was lucky enough to find a kindly archivist and librarian at the University of Maine (bless you, Brenda Howitson Steeves!) who took the time to sort through archival boxes in pursuit. And she found it! It didn't have the exact title I had been given, nor was it done for same agency as had been originally indicated. In short, if a librarian had not literally dug for this report and made the intellectual connection between what was asked for and what was in her hand, our happy faculty member would never have seen or read or made important scholarly use of this very rare (and never digitized) research report.

And that is why, dear reader, the world will always need the dedication and detective work that professional librarians bring to the scholarly pursuit of recorded knowledge. Google is great, but it will never replace that.

Notable Ebook - Mountains Beyond Mountains

Kidder, Tracy
Mountains Beyond Mountains [electronic resource]
New York: Random House, c2003.


Mountains Beyond Mountains is a Mildred F. Sawyer Library ebook available to Suffolk University faculty, students, and staff.

Paul Farmer is an expert in infectious diseases, a medical anthropologist, and a physician at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. His goal is to transform global health care by focusing on the world's poorest and most unhealthy communities. In the 1980s, Farmer helped found a nonprofit organization called Partners in Health, which cooperates with local health care providers in creating clinics in the underserved, rural communities of Haiti, Peru, and Siberia.

Pulitzer Prize-winning Tracy Kidder chronicles Paul Farmer's remarkable story, focusing on his philanthropic medical practice. Farmer founded a hospital and health center, Zanmi Lasante, in Cange, Haiti. About a million peasant farmers rely on Zanmi Lasante for free medical care, and Kidder describes in some detail the individual stories of the patients, the financial issues of the clinic, and Farmer's role in its success. Farmer spends several months a year in Cange, treating patients and improving treatments, including utilizing drugs necessary to treat resistant tuberculosis. The book is both inspiring and engaging and leads the reader to stop and think about the politics of health care and the ethical issues involved.



[Find Mountains Beyond Mountains by searching the title in the online catalog or through the ebrary link in Databases by Subject, Ebook category]

New Database: GreenFILE

With Earth Day fast approaching, it is worth mentioning a new environmental database that we have just added. Called GreenFILE, it was recently created by EbscoHost, one of Sawyer Library's major database vendors. They describe it as a "research database focusing on the relationship between human beings and the environment, with well-researched but accessible information on topics ranging from global warming to recycling to alternate fuel sources and beyond."

EBSCO launched GreenFILE as a symbol of their corporate "commitment to environmental consciousness." Towards that end, the basic database is actually "freely accessible." Those unaffiliated with Suffolk University who might stumble upon this blog entry should know that you can use the database at www.greeninfoonline.com. However, Suffolk users will definitely want to use GreenFILE through our own library link. In this way, you will be able to take advantage of additional full text options through journals we can link to directly, and also additional journals (provided by non-Ebsco aggregates) that Sawyer Library researchers may access through our online catalog or eJournal locator links found at the end of each results entry.

GreenFILE’s initial release included indexing for more than 600 titles, providing approximately 300,000 records, with full text links for more than 4,600 items, even without Sawyer Library's additional linked full text. Comprised of scholarly journals (like Environmental Health Perspectives) as well as general interest titles (like Mother Earth News), GreenFILE even provides access to some government documents and other materials.

Like all Ebsco databases, you can perform a simple (or boolean operator combined) keyword search, or you may limit your search in some way. For example, if I do a search for groundwater contamination, I end up with 740 results. If I limit that set (on the opening screen) by checking the box for "Scholarly (Peer-Reviewed) Journals" only, my results drop to 635. And if I limit those items only to those for which GreenFILE can provide full text, my results drop to 47, but include articles from the Journal of Environmental Engineering, Journal of Environmental Science & Health, and Global Change Biology.


If I am simply trying to put together some quick readings, clicking the opening screen box to limit to Full Text is a fine option. However, if I am attempting to do more careful research, I might not wish to limit my results right away. Remember, if you click the "Check Library Catalog" link or the "360 Link to Full Text" link below an interesting entry, you may be able to access more journal content through other Sawyer Library resources.

GreenFILE is brand new and is still a very modest (if well-focused) database. Hopefully, it will develop as time passes. Ebsco President Tim Collins has said that his company is “committed to actively adding content to the database to methodically increase its value over time because we want people to have the best information to use when making decisions about their impact on the environment.”

[FIND GreenFILE on our "Databases by Subject" List in the "Sciences" category.]

Notable E-Book: Encyclopedia of Business Ethics and Society

Sawyer Library added the Sage eReference Collection about a year ago, and we have found it to be a good way to search across many useful encyclopedias and reference handbooks from Sage, a major publisher with great strengths in the social sciences.

Within the constraints of budget, we hope to add a new updating collection of reference works each year. One such update was rolled into the collection recently. This 2007 and 2008 set includes new Sage encyclopedias on everything from Political Communication to Cancer and Society to 21st Century Psychology to Organization Studies.

One of the new encyclopedias is the Encyclopedia of Business Ethics and Society. Covering many topics related to corporate responsibility and governance, as well as the deeper philosophical issues related to how business operations impact humanity, this resource is a good starting place for either a quick overview of a known topic, or a means of browsing for topics related to a general concept.

For example, if I search the word sweatshops in the opening page search box

I get three pages of (ranked by relevance) entry hits that include that term. These range from an entry specifically on sweatshops to other related topics like Nike, Business Ethics in Developing Countries, the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), and Moral Relativism. We even pull up a historical entry on the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.

Obviously, an academic term paper should not be written completely from encyclopedia entries--found in either online or paper format. But for those interested in getting a basic introduction to a variety of subjects related to business ethics, doing some browsing or searching in this new encyclopedia can be a useful step in the research process.

[FIND the Encyclopedia of Business Ethics and Society by searching the title in our Online Catalog, or through the Sage eReference link in Databases by Subject, E-Books category.]