New Database: Tax Analysts Web Services

The Mildred F. Sawyer Library has added a high-quality database for tax researchers. Tax Analysts Web Services offers access to the following materials:

Tax Notes Today (TNT)- The well-known TNT contains daily federal news and tax-related documents dating back to 1987. The news include events in Congress, the IRS, and the courts. Supporting documents include legislation, court opinions, IRS rulings, press releases, regulations, and more. TNT also provides a federal Commentary & Analysis section that offers analysis by economic experts on the Tax Analysts staff.

Federal Research Library -A comprehensive federal tax resource that includes essential primary source materials from the IRS and Treasury, including:

Internal Revenue Code and explanations

Regulations & Treasury Decisions

IRS Documents- rulings, procedures, announcements, notices, etc.

Internal Revenue Manual

Within this library are the following additional groupings:

-The Chief Counsel Advice Library (CCA) offers letter rulings, technical advice, field service advice, legal memorandums, Chief Counsel Notices, Information Letters and other forms of IRS guidance.

-The Court Opinions Library holds more than 100,000 full-text opinions and summaries of tax cases from the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Court of Federal Claims, Tax Court, bankruptcy courts, federal appellate courts, and federal district courts.



-Tax Legislation Library - provides full-text of federal tax legislation, including bills and public laws, as well as legislative histories which offer full-texts of House and Senate Reports. Also, includes the outstanding Congressional Research Service Reports.


State Tax Today (STT)- provides daily news and tax-related documents that affect the states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories. It includes information from state governments, state revenue departments, state courts, and state legislatures, plus activities of multistate organizations and federal or international changes that influence state tax policy. STT also provides a Commentary & Analysis section that offers analysis by experts on the Tax Analysts staff. STT news coverage and supporting documents date back to 1992.

Worldwide Tax Daily Worldwide Tax Daily (WTD)- provides daily news and tax-related documents from over 180 countries and multinational organizations, including U.S. federal information concerning international tax issues. WTD also provides a Commentary & Analysis section that offers analysis by experts on the Tax Analysts staff.

Worldwide Tax Treaties -includes over 3,500 tax treaties and similar documents from over 180 jurisdictions. Treaties concern taxes on income and capital as well as estate and gift taxes, model tax treaties, and more. Includes in-force, pending, and terminated treaties. Documents date back to 1828. Allows comparison of different income tax treaties.

Tax researchers may also utilize the Sawyer Library's access to Lexis/Nexis Academic for tax information. Choose the "Legal tab," then select "Tax Law" from the left column to search tax journals, state and federal tax cases, treasury regulations, the Internal Revenue Code, Cumulative Bulletin, and more.

Make selections from the drop-down menu before searching:

Department of Labor ERISA Opinion Letters

Federal Courts Tax Cases

Internal Revenue Code

IRS Cumulative Bulletin and Internal Revenue Bulletin

IRS General Counsel Memos, Actions on Decisions, & Technical Memos

IRS Private Letter Rulings and Technical Advice Memoranda

State Courts Tax Cases

Tax Law Review Articles, Combined

Treasury Regulations - Final, Temporary, and Proposed

[FIND Tax Analysts Web Services on our "Databases by Subject" List on the first column of our "Business and Management" list.]

Notable E-Book: Gran Enciclopedia de España

Sawyer Library recently added an important Spanish language reference set to our e-book database, Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL). It is the 22 volume Gran Enciclopedia de España (Great Encyclopedia of Spain), a new edition of a classic encyclopedia published over a sixteen year period from 1990 to 2006. It constitutes the largest encyclopedic work done on Spain.

The massive reference set contains more than 150,000 entries dedicated to the art, sciences, culture, economy, geography, history, institutions, nature and society of Spain. Major specialists and scholars--from the Royal Academy as well as major Spanish universities--contributed entries. Altogether, there are more than 11,000 pages of content here, as well as 20,000 illustrations. Graphics include drawings, genealogical tables, statistics, maps and chronologies. Selected historical documents are also included.

Keep in mind that the encyclopedia is both in the Spanish language and designed for Spanish audiences, however. Entries may, therefore, not be presented as U.S. readers would expect. If you try looking up "Generalissimo Francisco Franco" in the GVRL search engine for the encyclopedia, you get no results--not even a cross-reference. And if you drop the military title, and look up Francisco Franco, you also don't get very far. The entry, which is extensive, is actually under his proper name, "FRANCO BAHAMONDE, Francisco." So, stay flexible as you search and browse through this resource.

Because it is on the GVRL platform, users will have the option of quickly opening and scrolling through HTML text with highlighted keywords. Or, if you prefer, look for the small Adobe icon at each entry to open up the PDF version that looks exactly like the original volume entry.

We hope that this authoritative reference tool will be useful for both Spanish speakers and Spanish learners....And especially for our students and faculty at our Madrid campus.

New Database: Roper Center for Public Opinion Research

Sawyer Library recently added a most impressive databank of polling research. It is sometimes referred to as The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, and is other times referred to by the Center's major database component, iPOLL.

Whatever you call it, The Roper Center, housed at the University of Connecticut, is one of the world's leading archives of social science statistics, specializing in data from surveys of public opinion. The Center's mission includes promoting the informed use of survey research and public opinion information; maintaining, and constantly enlarging, a computer-based library of survey research and public opinion data; developing access tools for researchers to secure required information; and increasing international understanding and promoting cross-national research on political and social issues.

The data held by the Roper Center range from the 1930s, when survey research was in its infancy, to the present. Most of the data are from the United States, but over 50 nations are represented.

iPOLL, their easy-to-use database is the most comprehensive, up-to-date source for US nationwide public opinion available today. A full-text retrieval system, the iPOLL online database is organized at the question-level. The system allows for users to sift through nearly half a million questions archived from national public opinion surveys since 1935. The database is updated daily. iPOLL includes data survey results from academic, commercial and media survey organizations such as Gallup Organization, Harris Interactive, Pew Research Associates, and many more. The data come from all the surveys in the Roper Center archive that have US national adult samples or samples of registered voters, women, African Americans, or any subpopulation that constitutes a large segment of the national adult population.

To access iPOLL, click the large icon link on the homepage, or choose the option from "Data Access" pull-down menu. You will first enter your email and fill out a short registration form, and then accept the terms and conditions.

You will then have access to the files. Search for keywords within the extensive topic list categories. Often the immediate poll results, with questions and numerical breakdowns of responses, will be all you will need.

However, Roper also allows you to manipulate and download much of their data. RoperExpress is a data access tool for on-demand downloads. Faculty and students at Suffolk now have unlimited access to those datasets in the Roper Center collection that are in ASCII or SPSS portable formats. Simply do a search for datasets and the studies accessible for immediate download in RoperExpress are marked with an icon: Although the Center does assume that anyone wishing to do SPSS work with their data is familiar with the program and has access to the software, Roper does provide a page with guidelines for bringing ASCII data files into SPSS. Here users have the opportunity to download sample SPSS syntax files with their corresponding datasets and codebooks. (Please note, SPSS, a productivity software package for "number crunching" is available at the University computer labs, but is not available at Sawyer Library.)

Roper has several pages of tutorials and other educational materials to get people started. You might want to take a look at their 20 page PDF introduction to iPOLL. Their page on the Fundamentals of Polling is also a useful. Those interested can also look at one on Analyzing Polls. There's even a glossary of terms for the field of public opinion research. A Topics at a Glance page provides a sampling of different types of surveys to help you get a sense of what the Roper Center has and does.

Those who are interested in polling data might want to know that Sawyer Library also provides access to Polling the Nations, an online database of public opinion polls containing nearly one half million questions and responses from 14,000 surveys conducted from 1986 through the present in the U.S. and 100 other countries. However, Polling the Nations is less extensive and updated less often. (We also have a limited access contract, so please be sure to logout when you finish using it.) In addition, according to Roper, because nearly 60% of iPOLL questions are linked to respondent level datasets, this new database provides researchers access to the full questionnaire and details of the methodology, codes, demographic variables, etc. instantly. iPOLL also provides search within results, save a search, and search history features.

Public opinion data can be useful for students and faculty in a wide variety of disciplines, from Communication to Marketing to Government to Sociology. So we hope you'll explore this database anytime you need to get some measure of American attitudes.

[FIND Roper Center for Public Opinion Research on our "Databases by Subject" List on the second column of our "Social Sciences" list.]

New Database: Education Research Complete

Sawyer Library is happy to have recently added a high-quality database of educational literature called Education Research Complete (ERC). Delivered via our familiar EBSCOHost platform, this proprietary database from Ebsco is the most wide-ranging database available for the discipline.

Here's how the publisher describes it: "Education Research Complete is the definitive online resource for education research. This massive file offers the world's largest and most complete collection of full text education journals. It is a bibliographic and full text database covering scholarly research and information relating to all areas of education. Topics covered include all levels of education from early childhood to higher education, and all educational specialties, such as multilingual education, health education, and testing.

Education Research Complete also covers areas of curriculum instruction as well as administration, policy, funding, and related social issues. The database provides indexing and abstracts for more than 1,870 journals, as well as full text for more than 1,060 journals. This database also includes full text for 133 books and monographs, and full text for numerous education-related conference papers. "

You might think "I'm not an education major, so this database has nothing to do with me." But many of the topics that Suffolk students (who've never taken an education course) write reports or prepare speeches about do, in fact, relate to education in some way. Topics like school violence, local property taxes, uniforms and dress codes, assessment in higher education, self-esteem issues affecting the young, financial aid for college students and scores of other topics could be found in this database.

If I were interested in girls bullying each other in school, I might start with a search for girls and bullying.

I end up with over 200 possible sources to utilize.

Although many journals, chapters, papers and documents are available full-text in ERC, not everything (especially the most recent articles) will appear with a PDF or HTML symbol underneath the citation. But if that is the case, don't forget to click the 360 (green dot) or other links that will likely be presented. These might well link you to the article you want in another electronic file.

As is always the case with an EBSCOHost database, I could limit the 242 articles I find on girls and bullying by clicking one of the subject headings in the left frame (like Bullying in Schools), or I could limit to Academic Journals in the left frame, or perform the same limit by checking the box for Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals in the right frame, and then updating my results. Do this type of limit if the teacher ever tells you that the articles you use must be scholarly, and cannot come from secondary materials like magazines and newspapers.

We hope that this database will be the go-to file for any of our students and faculty researching anything related to education.

[FIND Education Research Complete on our "Databases by Subject" List on the second column of our "Social Sciences" list.]

Library Systems Alert: Server Replacement, May 27th, 2009

Time of Latest Update: 11:25 am

Status: All Library Systems Are Back Up on the New Server. Our testing indicates we are back to normal. Please advise if you have any issues with the Online Catalog or Database Access. And thank you for your patience!

As we previously warned through the University Email, Library News, and this blog: The Suffolk University Libraries are replacing our systems server TODAY, May 27th.

This process will NOT affect any other University web services (like Blackboard or email). This will ONLY affect library functions. During the server switch library users will not be able to access library databases OFF-campus through the proxy. Nor will they be able to access the online catalog or their circulation records online.

We hope this process will not take too long and we apologize for any inconvenience. And we will try to update this page with information, as we learn it.

For most of our users, the most practical approach to this outage of service is to simply avoid doing research during this time period. However, for those who wish to pursue a "work-around" during the down time, here are a few detailed notes on two major library research functions.

1----TO ACCESS LIBRARY DATABASES

We are sorry, but OFF-campus use of databases is not possible during the server replacement. However ON-Campus, our databases can operate through IP recognition. But you cannot go through the proxy server for access. So, you will need to capture the shortcut and remove the proxy parts of the URL.

First, go to our database list as you normally would, but instead of left-clicking on the name of the database you want, right-click on it and on the box options that display, choose to "copy shortcut." Then paste this shortcut in, say, Notepad (or directly into your browser address bar, if you are very comfortable with web manipulations)

For Academic Search Complete, the shortcut we copy would look like this:

http://0-search.ebscohost.com.library.law.suffolk.edu/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&profile=asp

To make the database recognize our IP WITHOUT going through the proxy server we would remove the bolded parts (a leading 0- and the .library.law.suffolk.edu from the first part of the address) :

http://0-search.ebscohost.com.library.law.suffolk.edu/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&profile=asp

which leaves us with a URL that reads

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&profile=asp

If I copy and paste this stripped-down URL into my browser address bar and hit enter, the database will pick up on my valip IP address (if I am ON CAMPUS) and allow me into the database.

If you are here at the Suffolk Boston campus, you can de-proxyize any of our database links and you should be able to get at the database. But, again, this will unfortunately NOT work if youare at a non-Suffolk (Boston Campus) location.

2-----TO SEARCH FOR BOOKS

Here is an alternative to our Archer Online Catalog (OPAC):

Go to http://www.worldcat.org/account/?page=searchItems

On campus, WorldCat will pick up our Suffolk IP and will enter a 02108 "location" and indicate on the search results pages that "You are connected to the Sawyer Library network." If this does not happen, you can "enter your location" by zip code when you see the appropriate box. For Suffolk, enter 02108.

When you search for an item, the links to libraries will appear below the book information. With a 02108 zip, Suffolk will come up first if we own the book. However, you will not be able to click on "Sawyer Library" to get the call number (since the server is down and the OPAC is non-operational). Therefore, if you wanted to try to find the book in our stacks, try clicking on the next library listed and look for a call number.

For example, I search for Panic : the story of modern financial insanity

and click on the book in results list. I see that Sawyer Library owns the book, but I cannot click into our OPAC by clicking on the Sawyer Library link, so I click on Boston Public Library (BPL), the entry below Sawyer, instead.

I see that BPL owns the book--although all of their copies are checked out or on hold. I also see that they assigned the book the call number of HB3722.P36 2009, which happens to be the same Library of Congress (LC) call number our copy was given. (The fact is that most academic and large public libraries will assign the same LC call number to a book.)

With that call number and the knowledge that Sawyer owns the book, I should be able to find it in our 4th floor stacks. (With one caveat: If the book is checked out or at a secondary location like "New Books" or "Reserve", it would not be on the normal stack shelves.)

NOTE: WorldCat might try to get you to create an account and sign in to create a bibliography, but you do not need to do this to use the service.

If you do not wish to "wait out" the server change, give these work-around techniques a try. And if you need additional assistance, please come and see us at the reference desk. Although we will also be inconvenienced and frustrated by this systems outage, we will try our best (as we always to) to provide research assistance to Suffolk researchers.

New Database: Public Administration Abstracts

Public Management is an active field of study here at Suffolk. But until now, student and faculty researchers in that discipline never had their own professional-level database. They had to sort through all the private sector materials in our excellent Business Source Complete in order to find the public sector articles, or they needed to find appropriate resources through our governmental databases, like Political Science Complete.

Both of those techniques can still be useful, in many instances. But a better starting point for public management research can now be found in Public Administration Abstracts (PAA).

Many years ago, Public Administration Abstracts was a print index and abstracting service published by Sage. Ebsco, our primary supplier of databases, recently acquired the index and besides keeping it up-to-date in an electronic form, they have also digitized the entire archive, bringing the index (of 60,000 records) back to 1974.


Abstracting services are not generally full-text oriented resources. If "Abstracts" is in the title, that is usually an indication that you will see a short summary of any indexed material, but you will not be able to see the entire article or publication. In one sense, this is also true of Public Administration Abstracts. However, because of all the linking we can do between PAA and Business Source Complete, Academic Search Complete, Political Science Complete, and the "custom-linking" we can do with other non-Ebsco databases like JSTOR and LexisNexis Academic, anyone using PAA here at Suffolk will find a surprising number of records will link directly to PDF or HTML full-text. And those that do not might well link out to the full-text, with a few extra clicks, after following the shortcut to our other aggregates via the eJournal Locator (the green-circle "360" link below records in any EbscoHost database).

Suffolk researchers in public management can find a wealth of research articles in a much more consolidated and convenient way, using the familiar and flexible EbscoHost platform, now that we are able to provide them with Public Administration Abstracts.

[FIND Public Administration Abstracts on our "Databases by Subject" List in the "Business and Management" category.]

Notable E-Book: Encyclopedia of Homelessness

The two-volume Encyclopedia of Homelessness describes the basic knowledge of homelessness, including the history of homelessness, the current situation in the United States, and examples of homelessness around the world. This is an online fully searchable ebook available to Suffolk University students and faculty through both Gale Virtual Reference and Sage eReference. Entries cover causes, history, legal issues, governmental policy, legislation and programs, health problems, services, demography, lifestyles, and world perspectives. Specific articles describe homelessness today in eight major American cities, including Boston, New York, Houston, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, and more than thirty cities and nations around the world.

Some of the more specific topics covered include, social welfare policy, the Great Depression, HIV and AIDS, health care, child care, causes of homelessness, legal advocacy, mental illness, families, food programs, legislation, housing (fair housing laws and shelters), and literature (hobo and tramp).

The Appendix includes a Documentary History of Homelessness (23 primary documents), a Directory of Street Newspapers by state and country, and a Filmography of American Narrative and Documentary Films on Homelessness.

These two volumes are geared toward sociologists, anthropologists, economists, historians, and other social scientists, social policy analysts, program administrators, physicians, social workers, advocacy lawyers, journalists, and students in high school through graduate school.

[FIND The Encyclopedia of Homelessness by entering this title in the Suffolk University Library Catalog or by going to our "Databases by Subject" list and selecting E-Books. Choose either Gale Virtual Reference or Sage eReference, and enter this ebook title.]