Charles W. Chesnutt Library

Collection Development News

May 2003

Databases and Indexes

RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) is a service for finding and downloading the latest research results in economics. It is a collaborative effort of over 100 volunteers in 30 countries to enhance the dissemination of research in economics. The heart of the project is a decentralized database of over 200,000 working papers, journal articles and software components. Coverage: 1993-present. Updated: Continuously. Language: Mainly English.

PubMed is the National Library of Medicine's search system which provides access to the 12 million citations dating back to 1966 in the PubMed database of bibliographic information, which is drawn primarily from MEDLINE and PREMEDLINE and additional life sciences journals. PubMed also incorporates citations formerly included in AIDSLINE, BioethicsLine, HealthSTAR, HISTLINE, and SPACELine. PubMed includes links to many sites providing full text articles and other related sources, and also provides access to the molecular biology databases included in NCBI's Entrez retrieval system. Coverage: 1957-present. Updated: MEDLINE - weekly and PREMEDLINE - daily.

North Carolina State-Adopted Textbooks Catalog lists the textbooks currently adopted and approved by the North Carolina Board of Education for use in the state's public schools. Coverage: Current year only.

Gateway to Educational Materials, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, is a resource for educators that provides access to educational materials on federal, state, university, nonprofit, and commercial Internet sites, and includes lesson plans, activities, and projects from over 300 consortium member sites. Coverage: 1996-present. Updated: Continuously. 

MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching) is a free and open resource designed primarily for faculty and students of higher education. Links to online learning materials are collected here along with annotations such as peer reviews and assignments. Browse the collection subjects: Arts, Business, Education, Humanities, Mathematics, Science and Technology, and Social Sciences.

The GrayLIT Network makes the gray literature of U.S. Federal Agencies easily accessible over the Internet. It taps into the search engines of distributed gray literature collections, enabling the user to find information without first having to know the sponsoring agency. The GrayLIT Network is the world's most comprehensive portal to Federal gray literature. By offering a mode of communication for this hard-to-find class of literature, the GrayLIT Network enables convenient access by the American public to government information.

The PrePRINT Network provides access to electronic preprints available from diverse sites.  Developed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), the Network is a "one-stop shopping" site for preprints in science and technology. The PrePRINT Alerts feature allows users to create personal profiles which will then notify the user as new information is added.  Preprints in the areas of physics, materials, chemistry, mathematics, biology, environmental sciences and other areas related to DOE's research interests are accessible through the Network.

Energy Citations Database contains bibliographic records for energy and energy-related scientific and technical information from the Department of Energy (DOE) and its predecessor agencies, the Energy Research & Development Administration (ERDA) and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). The database provides access to DOE publicly available citations from 1948 through the present, with continued growth through regular updates.  Included are bibliographic records of literature in disciplines of interest to DOE such as chemistry, physics, materials, environmental science, geology, engineering, mathematics, climatology, oceanography, computer science and related disciplines. It includes citations to report literature, conference papers, journal articles, books, dissertations, and patents.

Scirus  is the most comprehensive science-specific search engine available on the Internet. Driven by the latest search engine technology, it enables scientists, students and anyone searching for scientific information to chart and pinpoint data, locate university sites and find reports and articles quickly and easily. It was launched by Elsevier Science, the leading international publisher of scientific information. Scirus focuses only on web sites containing scientific content - quickly pinpointing key data by targeting sites that conventional search engines cannot find, such as university Web sites and author homepages. Scirus also search both free and journal sources covering over 135 million science-related pages, consisting of 120 million Web pages, as well as 17 million records from sources such as ScienceDirect, MEDLINE on BioMedNet, Beilstein on ChemWeb, BioMed Central, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, US Patent Office, E-Print ArXiv, Chemistry Preprint Server, Computer Science Preprint Server, Mathematics Preprint Server, CogPrints and NASA.

Infotrieve enables searching of 20 million citations and 10 million abstracts from over 30,000 journals in this database of scientific, technical, medical, and other scholarly content.

The Anthropological Index Online is based on journal holdings of The Anthropology Library at The British Museum (Museum of Mankind) which receives periodicals in all branches of anthropology, from academic institutions and publishers around the world. As from 5 March 2001 the searchable data includes a further 140,000 references from the original paper edition of AI. The earliest reference is from 1957.

Documenting the American South (DAS) is a collection sources on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through the first decades of the 20th century. It is organized into the following projects: First-Person Narratives of the American South; Library of Southern Literature; North American Slave Narratives; The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865; The Church in the Southern Black Community; The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940; and, North Carolinians and the Great War. The Academic Affairs Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill sponsors DAS, and the texts come primarily from its Southern holdings. As of May 1, 2003, DAS includes 1,230 books and manuscripts. Most are accompanied by a full bibliographic record.

The North Carolina Periodicals Index seeks to provide access to articles in North Carolina periodicals of potential interest to undergraduate students at East Carolina University, although it is expected that the index will be used by graduate students and faculty as well. The periodicals, most of which are not indexed in standard reference tools, regularly feature useful articles pertaining to the arts, social sciences, and sciences. No attempt has been made, however, to index each title exhaustively. In some cases an issue may not contain an article deemed relevant to undergraduate students' needs. The index does not include reviews of any kind. Coverage for most titles began in January, 1992, although a limited amount of retrospective indexing has been accomplished since that time. An abstract, in some cases simply a sentence that reflects the content of the article, accompanies each entry.

The purpose of the Pediatric Database (PEDBASE) is to provide information on various Pediatric disorders. PEDBASE contains descriptions of over 550 childhood illnesses and has been on the Internet since November 15, 1995. Information on each disorder in this Database has been obtained from at least 3 sources including Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics (14th and 15th editions), the Birth Defects Encyclopedia (1990 and 1994 editions) and from at least one other source (journal articles, review articles, textbooks).

RxList: the Internet Drug Index provides an A-Z list 1300+ prescription drugs, a database that can be searched by drug names, keywords, imprint codes, NDC, and medical terminology, a listing of the top drugs with links to side effects and drug interactions, and a disease index.

Uniform Crime Reports from the Federal Bureau of Investigation provides PDF reports on Crime in the United States (1995-present), Hate Crime Statistics (1995-present), Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (1996-present), and the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS).

The Virtual Religion Index from the Religion Department at Rutgers University is designed to advance research in matters of religion. It analyzes and highlights important content of religion-related websites and provides links to homepages and directories and documents.  Topics included are: Academic Sites, American Studies, Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Anthropology and Sociology, Archaeology and Religious Art, Biblical Studies, Buddhist Studies, Christian Tradition, Comparative Study of Religion, Confessional Agencies, East Asian Studies, Ethics and Moral Values, Greco-Roman Studies, Hindu Studies, Islamic Studies, Jewish Studies, Philosophy and Theology, and Psychology of Religion. 

The mission of  Librarians' Index to the Internet (lii.org) is to provide a well-organized point of access for reliable, trustworthy, librarian-selected Internet resources, serving California, the nation, and the world. The index is a searchable, annotated subject directory of more than 11,000 Internet resources selected and evaluated by librarians for their usefulness to users of public libraries. lii.org is used by both librarians and the general public as a reliable and efficient guide to Internet resources. Topics included are: Arts, Crafts, & Humanities; Business, Finance and Jobs; Education and Libraries; Government and Law; Health and Medicine; Home and Housing; Internet Guides, Search Tools, and Web Design; News, Magazines, and Media; People; Quick Facts and Ready Reference; Regional; Computers, Science, and Technology; Social Issues and Society; and Sports, Recreation and Entertainment. The site is a program of The Library of California.

Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School  is an outstanding non-commercial, comprehensive legal resource. The database search engine will look for information in the "Law about..." section of the LII and will return information and commentary about broad areas of law. Search engines and ranking systems identify the LII as the most linked to web resource in the field of law.

The Avalon Project at the Yale Law School: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy provides digitized documents relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government ranging from Pre-18th Century through the present.

Journals

Below is a listing of Chesnutt Library journal subscriptions in Philosophy, Psychology, and Religion. The journals are located in the Periodicals Department on the first floor of the Chesnutt Library.

Collection Development News is a monthly publication of the Office of Collection Development, Charles W. Chesnutt Library, Fayetteville State University, 1200 Murchison Road, Fayetteville, NC 28301-4298.  Please forward your comments and recommendations to Duane Bogenschneider, Associate Director for Collection Development (910-672-1520; dbogenschneider@uncfsu.edu; Room 321, Chesnutt Library.  The Office of Collection Development is funded by the Higher Education Act, Title III 2(b), awarded by the United States Department of Education.