Duke University Libraries

Category Archives: Featured Database

Database Tip, Don't-Miss Database, Featured Database, Uncategorized

Don’t-Miss Database: Art & Architecture ePortal

October 15, 2024 lslilly@duke.edu 1 Comment

Post contributed by Lee Sorensen, Librarian for Visual Studies and Dance

The Art & Architecture ePortal (A&AePortal) is an aggregate of full-text books on art, architecture and cultural studies by the presses of major academic publishers.

Why Should You Use This?

Use this database tool to search the cultural aspect of many topics. What were the styles of dress in 19th-cenury Paris? What were the contributions of women to abstract art. What African peoples produced masks and in what quantities? All from hundreds of peer-reviewed sources.

Cool Features

Best of all, you can search images or text or both to create metadata about your image or links. Create slideshows, presentations and papers. Save your search results in a folder in the database so that you never have to repeat a search.

Recent titles include:

Database Tips

Search the A&AePortal for books from Harvard, Yale, Chicago and museums such as Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago–many available full-text exclusively on the A&AePortal. Finding scholarly sources for even short bits of information has never been easier!

Similar Resources

Find more image-related tools on the Art & Art History research guide.

Questions?

Contact Lee Sorensen, Librarian for Visual Studies and Dance.

Database Tip, Digital Collections, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Don't-Miss Database, Featured Database, Humanities

Don’t-Miss Database: Women’s Studies International

September 11, 2024 Danette Pachtner Leave a comment

Women linking arms with backs turned to viewer — Post contributed by Danette Pachtner, Librarian for Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies

Women’s Studies International (WSI) provides the latest scholarship in gender and feminist research. Providing access to over seven hundred publications covering the core literature of the field of women’s and gender’s studies, it is a valuable interdisciplinary resource spanning sociology, history, international relations, political science, as well as the arts and humanities. The database includes journal articles, newsletters, books, book chapters, reports, and grey literature focused on gender and women’s studies with date coverage from 1972 to the present.

Why Should You Use This?

According to Cindy Ingold, in her comparison of Women’s Studies library databases in Library Trends, WSI is the best database for the indexing of women’s studies journals in terms of number of titles covered, dates of coverage, and number of citations available for each title. WSI includes a large percentage of women’s studies core journals like Feminist Review, Hypatia, and Signs. With linking technologies available such as the SFX link resolver, providing access to the full text of journals in Women’s Studies International is now routine.

Hand holding up pro-LGBTQ+ symbol on leaflet

Cool Features

Like all library databases provided by Proquest and EBSCOhost, it’s easy to build relevant searches, apply limits like language, document type (like book chapter or conference paper), and peer reviewed, and search within the full text of online resources. When you delve into an individual record, you can find subject terms and author-supplied keywords that are hot-linked and will lead you to other resources and themes. WSI also includes video content from news organizations. I enjoyed watching a clip of “Japan’s ambassador of cute – Hello Kitty.”

Hello Kitty's Town map

Database Tips

You can search across multiple databases from the EBSCOhost platform. In addition to WSI, you can “Choose Databases” above the main search box and add other relevant databases like “Humanities International Complete,” “Historical Abstracts” and/or “Political Science Complete.” In women-focused databases, such as Women’s Studies International and GenderWatch, there’s usually no need to put “women” into your search, except where “women” is already part of the term.

Similar Resources

Other online databases for Women’s and Sexuality Studies include Gender Watch and an array of excellent primary source databases like LGBT Thought and Culture, Women’s Magazine Archive, Black Women Writers, and Women and Social Movements in multiple parts. You can access these resources on our Research Databases page, under Subjects—Women’s & Sexuality Studies.

Rainbow flag flying

Questions?

Contact Danette Pachtner, Librarian for Cinematic Arts / Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies / Theater Studies

Database Tip, Don't-Miss Database, Featured Database

Don’t-Miss Database: GeoRef

May 10, 2024 Heather Martin

Post contributed by Deric Hardy, Librarian for Science and Engineering

Are you a Duke researcher in need of a tool to perform thorough searches of the body of existing scholarly geoscience literature?

If the answer is yes, then look no further than the GeoRef research database, available through the Duke University Libraries.

GeoRef provides broad coverage of geology and geoscience literature and is a valuable search and discovery tool for Duke science and engineering students, researchers, and scholars.

Created in 1966 by the American Geosciences Institute (AGI), this research database provides Duke users with geological coverage of North America from 1666 to the present, as well as global coverage from 1933 to the present.

Why Should You Use This?

Today, researchers across science and engineering disciplines want access to efficient search tools that maximize search results, condense search processes, and save time.

GeoRef provides researchers with access to scholarly material on a wide range of environmental issues with global impact, such as sustainability, emissions reduction, climate change, and other emerging climate research themes aligned with the Duke Climate Commitment.

As an important research tool, it contains 4.6 million total records and includes scientific journals in 40 languages, as well as books, reports, maps, theses, dissertations, and geological survey publications.

Cool Features

Students and researchers commonly perform literature searches using separate research databases, but what if there was a search tool that allowed users to search multiple databases simultaneously from a single interface?

The Engineering Village, a multi-database platform that includes GeoRef, Inspec, and Compendex databases, provides users with this type of interface and capability to perform what is known as “Federated Search.”

The “Federated Search” functionality provides researchers with the ability to search GeoRef, Inspec, and Compendex with one search for a larger, more diversified, yet comprehensive range of scholarly search results.

Database Tips

Researchers who want to narrow down a huge number of search results to more research relevant sources will find these additional database techniques useful for refining their queries.

“Autostemming,” a default Engineering Village search feature, provides users with results containing all possible variations of keywords entered into a search by users, including root terms and any additional words with alternative suffixes.

Additionally, users may utilize the “Thesaurus Search” feature to perform searches using controlled vocabulary exclusive to each Engineering Village database.

“Thesaurus Search” allows researchers to locate indexed articles more precisely related to their selected geoscience research topic in a fast and accurate manner.

Similar Resources

Duke University Libraries offers multidisciplinary and subject-specific databases that give researchers greater capabilities for both broad and narrow scoping of the current geoscience scientific literature.

The following list of available research databases, in addition to GeoRef, and other Engineering Village databases, are recommended for geoscience literature searches:

Multidisciplinary:

• Web of Science

Subject-Specific:

• Environment Complete
• Earth, Atmospheric, and Aquatic Science Collection (ASFA)

Questions?

Contact Deric Hardy, Librarian for Science and Engineering.

Database Tip, Don't-Miss Database, Featured Database, Humanities, Lilly Library

Don’t-Miss Database: Columbia Granger’s World of Poetry

April 9, 2024 Heather Martin

Post contributed by Arianne Hartsell-Gundy, Head, Humanities and Social Sciences and Librarian for Literature

The Columbia Granger’s World of Poetry was originally a print index (first edited by Edith Granger in 1904) with thirteen editions. Though the online resource has many enhanced features, you can still search by poet, title, and first line. The word “world” in the title is apt because the poets represented span many countries.

Why Should You Use This?

This database is a reliable resource for locating a specific poem. Though there are great online resources like the Poetry Foundation and the Academy of American Poets that you can also use, some of what you will find online isn’t accurate or is incomplete. There are over 300,000 poems in full text and 450,000 citations in Granger’s. These numbers mean that frequently you can read the poem right there.

If the full text of the poem isn’t available, you can learn where it was published. You can then locate that publication in Duke Libraries. As shown in the example below, the poem “America I Do Not Call Your Name Without Hope” is available in the book Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness in our collection.

Cool Features

Since I firmly believe that hearing a poem read out loud enhances the experience, one of my favorite features is the Listening Room. Most of the poems included are classics, but you can listen to contemporary poets or actors. For example, you can listen to Rita Dove read Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 43. I also like the Compare Poems feature where you can look at two poems side-by-side.

Database Tips

In many cases the quick search box for “poet” and “poem” is sufficient, but the advanced search options are useful if you don’t already have a specific poem in mind.

Similar Resources

Columbia Granger’s World of Poetry is one of the best tools for locating a specific poem, but we do have full text poetry collections such as African American Poetry, American Poetry, and English Poetry!

Questions?

Contact Arianne Hartsell-Gundy, Head, Humanities and Social Sciences and Librarian for Literature.

Database Tip, Don't-Miss Database, Featured Database

Don’t-Miss Database: Trismegistos

March 19, 2024 Heather Martin

Post contributed by Greta Boers, Librarian for Classical Studies

Trismegistos (“An interdisciplinary portal of the ancient world”), is a tool for discovering writings from ancient Egypt and the Nile Valley, North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe at any time between 800BC and 800AD. This ongoing project at the Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven describes primary texts held by more than 150 institutions, in over 50 ancient languages, and as of March 2024, contained 962,930 entries.

Why Should You Use This Database?

You can use Trismegistos as a discovery tool for ancient writings preserved on papyrus, stone, pottery, and metal, as well as other media, from collections on websites, and in museums, archives, and universities around the world.

By providing systematic metadata for each text, Trismegistos offers both flexible and nuanced ways to search them. The results point to the institutions which house the texts, and in some instances the full text itself. Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri and Papyri.info, a project initiated by Duke Collaboratory for Classics Computing (DC3), are among the institutions linked from the database.

Cool Features

You could pass the time discovering that in Alexandria the new moon in January 400 BC was on the 26^thby the Julian calendar, but on the 27^th of the month of Phaophi in the Egyptian calendar.

If you wanted to learn Old Nubian it is possible to find 565 of the existing texts. You can sort these by material, using the graph. In this case the limit is to texts in stone. If you click on TM 99098 it will take you to another link to commentaries, including the 1927 article in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology.

Using Trismegistos as your search tool, you can find the earliest fragment (AD01 – AD02) of Dioskorides’ De Materia Medica in papyrus at the University of Cologne, as well as the famously beautiful codex (AD06) at the National Library of Austria.

Tax extensions? A lentil cook requested to postpone his taxes because of unfair competition from pumpkinseed sellers in the 3^rd century BC. Trismegistos points you to Papyri.info, which links to an image in Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence.

Database Tips

The database has two tiers, one is freely accessible to a general audience. Duke subscribes to the version that offers more sophisticated search capabilities, visualizations (pie charts, tables, maps, word clouds, and timelines), and exporting, with a steeper learning curve. Duke users can access this version of Trismegistos our Libraries’ website.

Similar Resources

There are many other library research databases which mine texts in the ancient world. These include Thesaurus Linguae Graecae and Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. Be sure to look at the Research Databases page for other resources. Another prime resource is the Digital Classicist Wiki which points to many open access resources for research in the ancient world.

Questions?

Contact Greta Boers, Librarian for Classical Studies.

Database Tip, Don't-Miss Database, Featured Database, International and Area Studies Department

Don’t-Miss Database: The Japan Times Archives

January 16, 2024 Heather Martin

Post contributed by Matthew Hayes, Librarian for Japanese Studies and Asian American Studies

The Japan Times Archives offers a searchable collection of digitized issues of Japan’s largest and longest running English-language newspaper, covering the years 1865 through the present. The database also includes access to digitized issues of several subsidiary newspapers, including The Japan Advertiser, The Japan Times & Mail, The Japan Times and Advertiser, and The Nippon Times.

Why Should You Use This Database?

For faculty and students working in English, this database offers perhaps the most comprehensive cross-section of current events in Japanese history, society, and politics, especially as they relate to the international community. The chronological coverage is also unmatched as users can explore articles from Japan’s closed-country period shortly before 1868, through wartime and postwar periods of the mid-twentieth century, and beyond to Japan’s current moment.

Cool Features

The coolest feature of this database is the ability to run full-text searches in any issue. This is made possible through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. This means that if a user is looking for articles on a very specific topic—even a single keyword—during a narrow run of issues, they can have results in a few seconds. For example, if a user wants to gather articles on the Anpo protests, a series of massive and violent demonstrations protesting the United States-Japan Security treaty, and which were most concentrated in 1960, they might search for “protest” and narrow to the mid-year period of 1960, as below:

This search will return more than 500 results with the term “protest” either in the headline or article text. Users can then browse to find the article that suits their needs.

Database Tips

Don’t limit yourself to newspaper articles! Advertisements are also a great way to better understand the commercial and visual design histories of Japan. In addition to local products and events, many issues also advertised international products. If users are interested in how Japan participated in international commercial markets, or what types of appeals were made to local consumers, there are thousands of options here.

Similar Resources

A few of Duke’s other Japanese historical newspaper databases include Yomiuri Shimbun 讀賣新聞 (in Japanese), Asahi Shimbun 朝日新聞 (in Japanese), and Mainichi Shimbun 每日新聞 (in Japanese). Rubenstein Library also holds the Masaki Motoi Collection of Japanese Student Movement Materials, which contains several original issues of left-wing student newspapers from 1959 through 1977.

Questions?

Contact Matthew Hayes, Librarian for Japanese Studies and Asian American Studies.

Database Tip, Don't-Miss Database, Featured Database, Music Library

Don’t-Miss Database: Qwest TV EDU

November 20, 2023 Heather Martin

Post contributed by Laura Williams, Head of the Music Library.

Qwest TV EDU is a video streaming channel showcasing Black music and global sounds. Created by music legend Quincy Jones, the database features a wide range of musical genres and styles, including jazz, the blues, soul, funk, world music, electronic music, classical music, and much more.

Why Should You Use This?

Qwest TV provides several major categories to explore in its catalog, including concerts, documentaries, and a rich trove of archival material with showstopping performances by legendary artists. Videos in Qwest TV span historic recordings from the 1950s right up to the present day, showcasing the storied history of musical styles and influences around the world.

The archive features some extraordinary live performances, including a 1963 Parisian concert by the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald, and a 1982 performance by the legendary Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, with dazzling virtuosic solos by the young Wynton Marsalis and Branford Marsalis.

Ella Fitzgerald Live at the Olympia, Paris (1963)

Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers Live at the Village Vanguard (1982)

Cool Features

One of the most interesting ways to delve into Qwest TV’s offerings is through recommendation lists created by Guest Curators who bring wide-ranging perspectives to their selections. Qwest TV also features some original content, such as Twelve Qwestions, a series of exclusive interviews. In anticipation of Gregory Porter’s visit to Duke in February 2024 through Duke Arts, you can explore his curated list of selections, a Twelve Qwestions interview, a documentary about the two-time Grammy Award-winning singer, as well as a live performance:

Gregory Porter “Liquid Spirit” -- Live at Jazz a la Villette Festival (2013) — Gregory Porter “Liquid Spirit” — Live at Jazz a la Villette Festival (2013)

Database Tips

A myriad of browsing categories connect content in a variety of interesting ways, highlighting Fresh Talents and Gems from the Vaults, as well as bringing together imaginative groupings such as Space is the Place (a celebration of spiritual jazz), the somewhat enigmatic New Ancient Strings, and an exploration of electronica in Africatronics.

One of the most exciting videos I discovered is a recent concert from the New World Symphony Orchestra conducted by William Eddins which “explores a symphonic world that influenced and was influenced by the musical heritage of the African diaspora.” Stunning performances by the orchestra and celebrated American soprano and scholar Dr. Louise Toppin are illuminated throughout by the historical commentary and insights provided by noted musicologist Dr. Tammy Kernodle, making this concert nothing short of extraordinary from both a musical and scholarly standpoint.

New World Symphony - Harlem Renaissance2023 — New World Symphony – Harlem Renaissance
2023

Similar Resources

Other related streaming databases that might be of interest are the Naxos Music Library Jazz, Smithsonian Global Sound, and Medici.tv EDU, which features a similar international lineup of live concerts and documentaries, but with more emphasis on classical music, opera, and ballet. You’ll find more on our Online Listening and Viewing page.

Questions?

Contact Laura Williams, Head of the Music Library.

Database Tip, Don't-Miss Database, East Campus Libraries, Featured Database, Lilly Library

Don’t-Miss Databases: Proquest Black Studies

October 13, 2023 Heather Martin

Proquest Black Studies combines primary and secondary sources, leading historical Black newspapers, archival documents, government materials, video, writings by major American Black intellectuals and leaders, and essays by top scholars in Black Studies. Years of coverage include 1650 to the present.

Why Should You Use This?

Anyone looking for primary sources in African American studies should start here. Proquest Black Studies provides access to a wide range of primary sources under one platform. You’ll find records of organizations including the Black Panther Party and the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs Records, 1895-1992. Jump start your research on historical figures (e.g., pilot Bessie Coleman) by browsing the Featured People list. You can also search the full text of eleven historical Black newspapers.

Bessie Coleman, First Licensed African American Woman Female Pilot

Cool Features

Documentaries, speeches, interviews, newsreels, and other types of videos are added features. I enjoyed watching Langston Hughes reading his poem “The Weary Blues” accompanied by a jazz band.

Langston Hughes: Performance "The Weary Blues" with Jazz Accompaniment — Langston Hughes: Performance “The Weary Blues” with Jazz Accompaniment

Database Tips

You can search the entire database for any terms you want to find, but choose the Basic Search page for an overview of the types of collections available and choices for browsing.

Similar Resources

Other online primary source databases for African American studies include African American Communities (focusing on Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and North Carolina) and HistoryMakers Digital Archive (video oral histories of African Americans). You’ll find more on our Research Databases page.

Questions?

Contact Heather Martin, Librarian for African and African American Studies.

Database Tip, Feature Articles, Featured Database, Humanities, Lilly Library, Music Library

ProQuest One Literature

February 21, 2023 Arianne Hartsell-Gundy

Proquest One Literature brings together one of the most comprehensive collection of primary texts, ebooks, reference sources, full-text journals, dissertations, video and more, for access to historical and contemporary content by and about celebrated and lesser-known authors from around the world. The international literature focus is especially useful!

After you search, the results are helpfully divided in to categories such as criticism, primary texts, reference works, dissertations, book reviews, etc. You can also limit results by aspects like peer reviewed, publication date, subject, and language.

Another nice search feature of this resource is that you can find both literary criticism and primary texts for poetry, drama, and prose. If you specifically search the primary texts, you can search by author nationality, author ethnicity, literary movement or period, or gender.

I also really enjoyed the Poets on Screen collection that is part of this database, where you can watch clips of poems being read aloud, sometimes by the poet.

Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day

If you need to do research about a literary text, author, literary movement, or genre, this is a great resource to begin your search!

Database Tip, Featured Database, Library Hacks, Tips and Tricks, Tips for students

Database Tips & Tricks: PubMed

December 6, 2019 Anastasia Forte

Another day another research paper, am I right?

And your professor said you could use any sources within biomedical or life sciences, as long as the sources are peer-reviewed.

Well we have the database for you!

PubMed is a database full of peer-reviewed articles focused around biomedical and life sciences and here’s how you get to it: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/.

So first let’s and that can be found at the top right.

After selecting Log in, choose Duke as your university and then it’ll prompt you to either create an account with your Duke email or sign into an account you already have, choose whichever is appropriate.

Some benefits of logging in:

View Recent Activity
Create/Manage Bibliographies
Create/Manage Collections
Create Custom Filters

Results Page

And after you’ve logged in and started searching, the results page gives you a helpful bar that look like:

More options for each sections looks like:

But it should be noted that the when choosing “Save” or “Email” you’re saving/emailing citations and not the search or its results.

Helpful hints:

Clipboard expires 8 hours after being added
You can save all the search results to your Collection

On the left is a column containing your filters and if you’re looking to get more specific in your search use this!

Article Page

On this page you’ll find some of the same features listed from the results page, but you’ll also be able to:

Download citations to RIS file
Add articles to favorites
A link to the full text (but beware, some of the links don’t always work)

The bottom of this page also gives you similar articles, a list of articles that cited the one you’re viewing, and a list of MeSH terms to aid you in your search.

And congratulations, you now have the tools you need to start or finish your paper!

Happy researching, friend!

And if you have more questions, feel free to reach out to a librarian at https://library.duke.edu/research/ask

Collections, Collections Highlight, Database Tip, Duke researchers, Featured Database, Humanities, Noteworthy Resources

Celebrate Black History All Year Round with “The HistoryMakers”

February 14, 2019 Duke University Libraries

Duke historian John Hope Franklin (left) and political scientist Samuel DuBois Cook, both of whom are featured in the HistoryMakers database of oral history interviews.

Guest post by Heather Martin, Librarian for African and African American Studies

Looking for oral history interviews of African Americans? Try The HistoryMakers Digital Archive, a new subscription database available through Duke University Libraries.

HistoryMakers contains over 10,000 hours of video interviews with African-Americans distinguished in the categories of education, media, science, politics, law, the arts, business, medicine, the military, sports, religion, entertainment, and other areas of public life. Interviewees discuss memories from the 1890s to the present. The project currently includes original interviews of more than 2,000 individuals, with a goal of collecting 5,000 interviews.

By creating story segments from each interview, HistoryMakers allows users to find relevant discussions on specific topics. Interview transcripts are searchable, but you can also choose from a list of story topics (e.g., leadership, desegregation/integration, public health issues, philanthropy, role models, gender identity, faith, humorous story quality, and arguing a position). You can also create shareable playlists by selecting stories from your search results.

A search for “Duke University” reveals hundreds of interviews with noteworthy individuals, including Paula McClain, current dean of Duke’s Graduate School.

A search for Duke University retrieves 321 stories, including interviews with noted historian John Hope Franklin; Samuel DuBois Cook, the first African American professor at Duke; Vera Ricketts, the first black female pharmacist at Duke University Hospital; and Paula D. McClain, current dean of the Graduate School at Duke.

HistoryMakers complements Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South and other oral history materials in the Duke Libraries’ collections. It is a substantial addition to our primary source collections.

To learn more about the creation of The HistoryMakers Digital Archive, visit the organization’s website.

Feature Articles, Featured Database, Humanities, Noteworthy Resources

Drama Online

September 21, 2016 Arianne Hartsell-Gundy

We now have access to the Core Collection of Drama Online, a resource for finding full texts of plays. It Includes full texts of plays from across the history of the theatre, ranging from Aeschylus to the present day. It also includes non-English-language works in translation, scholarly and critical editions, first night program texts, and critical analysis and contextual information. Critical interpretations, theatre history surveys and major reference works on authors, movements, practitioners, periods and genres are included alongside performance and practitioner texts, acting and backstage guides.

You can browse by plays, playwrights, genres, periods, context and criticism, and by theatre craft. Advanced search options also allow you to search by type, playwrights, genre, period, theme, and setting.

Each play in the collection includes a production enquiry, which gives helpful information on who to contact to get performance rights for the play. Many plays also include useful tools, like a Character Grid that can be used to see only the lines of a given character.

Another great tool is the Words and Speeches tool that shows how many words and speeches are spoken in different acts of the play.

Currently we don’t have access to all the Nick Hern plays or the videos, but it’s quite likely that our access will expand in the next year!

Collections, Collections Highlight, East Campus Libraries, Feature Articles, Featured Database, Humanities, Just for Fun, Lilly Library, Music Library, Noteworthy Resources

Video Spotlight on Women Filmmakers

Image March 7, 2016 Danette Pachtner

It’s Women’s History Month! Spend this March 2016 watching wonderful films created by talented women from around the world.

The Video Spotlight on Women Filmmakers, created by Lilly Library’s own audio-visual specialist and film aficionado, Ken Wetherington, can give you great ideas of where to start.

In recent years women in film have begun to be slightly better recognized, like Katheryn Bigelow’s oscar-winning direction (the only time for a woman!) of The Hurt Locker.

But did you know that in the early days of cinema, many women were powerful creative forces? Movies like Lois Weber’s Suspense, The Ocean Waif by Alice Guy Blaché and Cleo Madison’s Eleanor’s Catch, and other women pioneers of early cinema, can be viewed in Duke Libraries’ new subscription database, Kanopy Streaming Video.

Check out Lilly’s foyer display exhibiting films by women in the history of cinema. Some of the titles just may surprise you…

Browse Ken’s Video Spotlight Archives for more topical viewing inspiration.

Featured Database, Humanities

Human Rights Studies Online

August 26, 2015 Arianne Hartsell-Gundy

We have a new database called Human Rights Studies Online. It is a searchable database of documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes worldwide. The collection takes a case study approach, providing primary and secondary materials for selected events, including Armenia, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, and Darfur. It provides access to books, primary documents, audio, maps, images, and video, spanning 1900-2010.

You can browse by various categories such as titles, discipline perspectives, themes, events, organizations, people, and places. The ability to look at a variety of documents connected to particular events, such as the Holocaust or Darfur, will make it especially useful for understanding the context and history.

This database is a great complement to our Human Rights Archive located in our Rubenstein Library. Check out this guide for more resources about this important topic.

Announcement, Events, Featured Database, Instruction, Services, Technology

IEEE Xplore Digital Library Database “Tips & Tricks” Training Session

October 11, 2013 Gwen Hawkes

ieee-xplore — The IEEE Xplore Home Page

IEEE Xplore Digital Library Database “Tips & Tricks” training session for Duke faculty, Researchers, and Students

When: Tuesday October 22, 2013
Time: 1:00-2:00 pm
Where: Schiciano Auditorium – Side A @ Fitzpatrick Center (CIEMAS), (Click for Map)
Contact: Melanie Sturgeon, melanie.sturgeon@duke.edu
Please register to attend: Use our online registration form

Free lunch will be provided for participants before the event in the Schiciano Lobby from 12:00-1:00pm.

Come join us on October 22 and learn how to best use IEEE Xplore, one of the premier resources for scientific and technical content.

The IEEE Xplore digital library is a powerful resource for discovery and access to information published by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and its partners. IEEE Xplore provides Web access to more than 3-million full-text documents from some of the world’s most highly cited publications in electrical engineering, computer science and electronics. The content in IEEE Xplore comprises over 160 journals, over 1,200 conference proceedings, more than 3,800 technical standards, over 1,000 eBooks and over 300 educational courses.

The training session will teach attendees to use this invaluable resource more efficiently, and will focus on several key points of interest.

Topics Covered:

Best practices for searching
Advanced and Command Searching
Downloading Bibliographic Citation information
Setting up Alerts
and much more!

Announcement, Database Tip, Duke researchers, Featured Database, Instruction, Technology

Database Training Session: Scopus, Oct. 16 (Free Lunch!)

September 24, 2013 Duke University Libraries

scopus-home3

Scopus Training Session for Duke Faculty, Researchers, and Graduate Students
When: Wednesday, October 16
Time: 11:00 – 11:45 a.m.
Where: Schiciano Auditorium – Side A, Fitzpatrick Center (Click for map)
Contact: Melanie Sturgeon, melanie.sturgeon@duke.edu
Registration: Please Register to Attend

Note: Lunch to follow in FCIEMAS lobby, 12:00-1:00 p.m. (provided by Elsevier). We will also be raffling off two iPod shuffles for attendees!

Please join us on October 16 for a Scopus training session on campus with Elsevier.

Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature from international publishers, open access journals, conference proceedings, and trade publications. Database coverage includes Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, and Engineering; Life and Health Sciences; Social Sciences, Psychology, and Economics; Biological, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.

This training session will educate science faculty, researchers, and graduate students about Scopus, which was designed to save you time in finding the right articles.

Topics Covered

Coverage and searching
Author Identifier / Author Search Tab / Author Evaluator
Citation overview
Setting up alerts and exporting citations
much more!

Additional Training Session for Duke Library Staff:

Date: Wednesday, October 16
Time: 3:00 – 4:00 p.m.
Where: Bostock Library, Room 023
Contact: Melanie Sturgeon, melanie.sturgeon@duke.edu
Registration: Please Register to Attend

Snacks provided by Elsevier

Alerts!, Cool tools, Database Tip, Duke researchers, Featured Database, Library Hacks, Noteworthy Resources, Tips for students

Alerts!

September 8, 2011 Ciara Healy

This post is brought to you by Alerts! – a special section of Library Hacks. Weekly, you can look forward to new database announcements, updates, and (rare) outage notices. Stay tuned!

– Audiobooks from Recorded Books Incorporated via NC Live

Duke Libraries will be offering a great selection of downloadable audiobooks later this month, according to NC Live:
“On Monday, September 19th, NC LIVE will disable the MyiLibrary Audio Books platform from use. Beginning September 19th, you will no longer be able to access or download audio books via the MyiLibrary service.” Instead, a new audio book provider and platform – Recorded Books One Click service – will be available later this fall. The new Recorded Books platform will be an improvement with regard to download and searching capabilities.

– Information set free!

JSTOR announced today it is making journal content published prior to 1923 in the United States and prior to 1870 elsewhere freely available to anyone, anywhere in the world. This Early Journal Content includes discourse and scholarship in the arts and humanities, economics and politics, and in mathematics and other sciences. It includes nearly 500,000 articles from more than 200 journals. To learn more and to watch a video tutorial on how to access Early Journal Content, click here.

NEW databases:

– DRAM – Database of Recorded American Music
From the DRAM website : “DRAM is a not-for-profit resource providing educational communities with on-demand streaming access to CD-quality audio (192kbps Mp4), complete original liner notes and essays from independent record labels and sound archives. Continuing in the tradition of DRAM’s sister company New World Records, one of DRAM’s primary focuses is the preservation and dissemination of important recordings that have been neglected by the commercial marketplace, recordings that may otherwise become lost or forgotten.

Currently DRAM’s collection contains more than 3,000 albums worth of recordings from a distinctive set of 26 independent labels, and we are continually working to add more content. The basis for the current collection is the diverse catalogue of American music recordings by New World Records. From folk to opera, Native American to jazz, 19th century classical to early rock, musical theater, contemporary, electronic and beyond, New World has served composers, artists, students and the general public since its inception in 1975 with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.” (Quote source and more information from DRAM.)
Contact librarian: Laura Williams
Subject Categories: Arts & Humanities – Music

– Naxos Video Library
From the Naxos Video Library: “more than 250 full-length videos of concerts, operas, ballets, and documentaries from prestigious performing arts labels such as Arthaus Musik, Dacapo, Dynamic, EuroArts, H‰nssler Classic, Medici Arts, Naxos, Opus Arte and TDK. Featuring performances from legendary artists including Placido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, Martha Argerich, Gerald Finley, and celebrated conductors such as Arturo Toscanini, Leonard Bernstein, Claudio Abbado, Valery Gergiev and many more, videos are available to stream at 700 Kbps (standard quality) and 2 Mbps(high quality) and the service is compatible with both PC and Mac computers.”

Functions and features:

Naxos Video Library image — Conductor Simon Rattle

Ability to stream videos at 700 Kbps (standard quality) and 2 Mbps (high quality) resolutions
Create custom clips, which can be edited and added to individual playlists
Access to pre-defined video chapters, as well as individual arias and scene breaks of operas
Subtitles in up to 5 languages
The ability to follow along with scrolling libretto text
View video as Full Screen, 2/3 Screen or 1/4 Screen
Advanced search functionality, including the ability to search by category, role, composer, artist, production, personnel, work venue or festival (Quote source and more information)

Contact librarian: Laura Williams

Subject Categories: Arts and Humanities, Music, Film/Video; Area Studies and Cultures – Film/Video

– Political Science Complete (PSC)
From EBSCO: “PSC contains full text for more than 530 journals, and indexing and abstracts for over 2,900 titles, (including top-ranked scholarly journals), many of which are unique to the product. PSC has a worldwide focus, reflecting the globalization of contemporary political discourse.” Topical coverage includes : Comparative politics,Humanitarian issues, International relations, Law and legislation, Non-governmental organizations, Political theory” ( Quote source, title list and more.)

What do librarians think? This database received a “Highly Recommended” rating in a 2010 issue of Choice, the American Library Association’s review magazine.
Contact librarian: Catherine Shreve
Subject Categories: Social Sciences – Political Science

– IPA Source (Transcriptions and Literal Translations of Songs and Arias)
From the IPA site: “Online since 2003, IPA Source is the web’s largest library of International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcriptions and literal translations of opera arias and art song texts. Now with over 5598 texts including 955 aria texts! Using the dropdown menus, search for titles by composer, poet, title, opera aria, or Latin text.” Tip: This resource requires the Aodbe Acrobat reader. (Quote source)

Subject Categories: Arts and Humanities – Music

Electronic resources such as e-journals and databases are generally accessible only to Duke community members such as faculty, staff and students.

Alerts!, Featured Database, Library Hacks, Noteworthy Resources, Research Help

Alerts!

June 13, 2011 Ciara Healy

This post is brought to you by Alerts! – a special section of Library Hacks. Weekly, you can look forward to new database announcements, updates, and (rare) outage notices. Stay tuned!

Northern Ireland. A Divided Community 1921-1972
Contact person: Margaret Brill
” Northern Ireland: A Divided Community 1921-1972 presents a full record of every cabinet meeting for the duration of the Stormont administration, the devolved government of Northern Ireland, 1921-72. Separate files exist for each Cabinet meeting and include minutes and memoranda. The discussions and decisions reflect the wide range problems and activities involved in making the new administration work.

Topics debated and reported in just one sample year of the Troubles (1970) include: policing, arms and explosives, social need, Prevention of Incitement to Religious Hatred, Army occupation of factories, road spiking, routing of Orange Day parades, dock strikes, law and order, riots and the roles of the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).

With immediate access via browseable indexes of organisations, subjects, places and people (cabinet members, politicians, senior civil servants and police officers), in addition to full-text searching of the typed minutes themselves, this digital archive will be essential not only to teachers and researchers in Irish and British History, but will support students of politics, peace studies and conflict resolution. ” (Quote source.)

Oxford Bibliographies Online. Atlantic History
Contact person: Margaret Brill

Selected new articles (Spring 2011):

African American Religions by Stefania Capone; African Port Cities by Ty Reese, University of North Dakota; Coffee by Michelle Craig McDonald, Stockton College; Visual Art and Representation by Susan Scott Parrish; and Sugar by Justin Roberts, Dalhousie University (New articles source)

Oxford Bibliographies Online. Hinduism
Contact person: Edward Proctor

“The study of Hinduism is diverse—it combines religion, philosophy, history, and textual studies, as well as informing a variety of comparative studies. Because the field comprises so many varied aspects, research and scholarship is wide-reaching in its response to different interpretations. Much of this work has moved online so that students and researchers have ready access to key primary source texts and a range of other electronic resources. ” (Quote source)

Forthcoming articles (Fall 2011): Marriageby Lindsey Harlan; Hinduism and Buddhism by Greg Bailey, La Trobe University; Sacrifice by Kathryn McClymond, Georgia State University; Hinduism and Psychoanalysis by Jason Fuller; Philosophical Approaches to Hinduism by Vishwa Adluri, The City University of New York.

Slavery and Anti-Slavery. A Transnational Archive
Contact person: Karen Jean Hunt

Organized in 4 parts, Slavery and Anti-Slavery. A Transnational Archive now has available the first part:
“Part I: Debates over Slavery and Abolition – available now – contains 1.5 million pages, including more than 7,000 books and pamphlets, 80 newspaper and periodical titles, and a dozen major manuscript collections. For academic researchers, historians, undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and others studying slavery, these varied sources shed light on the:

– Abolitionist movement and conflicts within it

– Anti- and pro-slavery arguments of the period

– Debates on the subject of colonization” (Quote Source)

Electronic resources such as e-journals and databases are generally accessible only to Duke community members such as faculty, staff and students.

Alerts!, Featured Database, Library Hacks, Noteworthy Resources, Research Help

Alerts!

May 20, 2011 Ciara Healy

This post is brought to you by Alerts! – a special section of Library Hacks. Weekly, you can look forward to new database announcements, updates, and (rare) outage notices. Stay tuned!

Wiley Online Library outage

On Saturday May 21st, access may be interrupted to Wiley Online Library due to essential site maintenance. The interruption will begin in the US at 5am eastern time and may continue for 2 hours.

New journal in Project MUSE – The Minnesota Review

Minesota review "Feral" cover

Also indexed in MLA Bibliography, Minnesota Review is now available, from 2010, in full text through the Project MUSE database. “Publishing contemporary poetry and fiction as well as reviews, critical commentary, and interviews of leading intellectual figures, the Minnesota Review curates smart yet accessible collections of progressive new work. This eclectic survey provides lively and sophisticated signposts to navigating current critical discourse.”(Quoted from Project MUSE’s journal description.) This journal is also available through Duke Libraries in the following databases: Literature Online (from Spring 2004), ProQuest (from 04/2004), Humanities International Complete (from 03/2006), and Open J-Gate (from 2006). Check out The Minnesota Review’s Creative Writing Blog.

New database: The Foundation Directory Online

“To meet the needs of grantseekers at every level, all FDO subscribers can search by county, metro area, and ZIP code as well as by city and state; save searches and store them in a password-protected ‘My FDO’ e-folder; tag records with any reminder word or phrase; E-mail, print, and save records; export lists of up to 100 search results at a time into Excel with a single click; and exclude grantmakers that don’t accept unsolicited applications… Updated weekly, Foundation Directory Online includes details on nearly 100,000 funders and over 2 million recent grants.” (Quote from www.foundationcenter.org) Click to see a sample record from the Foundation Directory Online.

Electronic resources such as e-journals and databases are generally accessible only to Duke community members such as faculty, staff and students.

Alerts!, Database Tip, Featured Database, Library Hacks, Research Help

Alerts!

May 16, 2011 Ciara Healy

This post is brought to you by Alerts! – a special section of Library Hacks. Weekly, you can look forward to new database announcements, updates, and (rare) outage notices. Stay tuned!

Outages:
– UNC Libraries online services will be unavailable on Wednesday, May 18, from 2:30 a.m. until noon, because of a critical equipment upgrade. This outage will affect all electronic services, including: the online catalog; digital collections; access to electronic journals, databases, and e-books; request forms; interlibrary loan;
and the University Library website. Both on-campus and off-campus access will be affected.

– For those of you who use WiseSearch (WiseNews, the News archive, is updated every day with items from over 1,600 content providers, including all 18 Chinese and English newspapers of Hong Kong, and a large number of other top-tier newspapers, magazines, newswires, TV and radio broadcasts of Mainland, Taiwan and some Asia Pacific countries) please be informed that a system maintenance will be scheduled on Saturday, 21 May 2011 from 13:00 to 19:00. During this period, the information update on our platform will be temporarily unavailable. The services will be resumed to normal after the maintenance.

New databases –

Listener Historical Archive, 1929-1991
“The Listener Historical Archive, 1929-1991 features the complete 62-year run of The Listener, established by the BBC in 1929 as the medium for reproducing radio and later, television programmes in print.”
Contact person: Margaret Brill

Picture Post Historical Archive
“The Picture Post Historical Archive comprises the complete archive of the Picture Post from its first issue in 1938 to its last in 1957 – all digitized from originals in full colour.”
Contact person: Margaret Brill

Economy and War in the Third Reich, 1933-1944
“This source provides 30,506 digital page images reproducing… original documents from the London School of Economics and Political Science collection Statistics of the Third Reich analysed, 1933-1944”
Contact person: Heidi Madden, Ph.D.

Afghanistan and the U.S., 1945-1963: Records of the U.S. State Department Central Classified Files
“The U.S. State Department Central Classified Files are the definitive source of American diplomatic reporting on political, military, social, and economic developments throughout the world in the twentieth century.”
Contact person: Edward Proctor

Federal Response to Radicalism in the 1960s
“This collection provides digital page images reproducing FBI documentation on a wide range of viewpoints on political, social, cultural, and economic issues.”
Contact person: Kelley Lawton

Democracy in Turkey, 1950-1959: Records of the U.S. State Department Classified Files
“This collection of digital reproductions of State Department documents provides access to unique primary source materials on the political, economic and social development of Turkey during a period of democratization in the 1950s.”
Contact person: Christof Galli

Japan at War and Peace, 1930-1949: U.S. State Department Records on the Internal Affairs of Japan
“This collection of digital reproductions of State Department documents provides access to essential and unique documentation on a wide variety of topics relating to Japanese internal affairs”
Contact person: Kristina Troost, Ph.D.

Literature, Culture and Society in Depression Era America: Archives of the Federal Writers’ Project
“This collection presents the FWP publications of all 47 states involved in the project, which ran from 1933 to 1943.”
Contact person: Kelley Lawton

Mountain People: Life and Culture in Appalachia
“This collection consists of the diaries, journals, and narratives of explorers, emigrants, military men, Native Americans, and travelers. In addition, there are accounts on the development of farming and mining communities, family histories, and folklore. ”
Contact person: Kelley Lawton

Amerasia Affair, China, and Postwar Anti-Communist Fervor
“This collection presents documents from 1945-1973. The Amerasia Affair was the first of the great spy cases of the postwar era.”
Contact person: Kelley Lawton

Bush Presidency and Development and Debate Over Civil Rights Policy and Legislation
“This collection contains materials on civil rights, the development of civil rights policy, and the debate over civil rights legislation during the administration of President George H.W. Bush (1989-1993) and during his tenure as vice president (1981-1989).”
Contact person: Kelley Lawton

Civil War in Words and Deeds
“These first-person accounts, compiled in the postwar period and early 20th century period, chronicle the highs and lows of army life from 1861 through 1865.”
Contact person: Kelley Lawton

American Indian Correspondence: Presbyterian Historical Society Collection of Missionaries’ Letters, 1833-1893
“This is a collection of almost 14,000 letters written by those who served as Presbyterian missionaries to the American Indians during the years from 1833 to 1893.”
Contact person: Kelley Lawton

War Department and Indian Affairs, 1800-1824
“This collection consists of the letters received by and letters sent to the War Department, including correspondence from Indian superintendents and agents, factors of trading posts, Territorial and State governors, military commanders, Indians, missionaries, treaty and other commissioners, Treasury Department officials, and persons having commercial dealings with the War Department, and other public and private individuals.”
Contact person: Mark Thomas

America in Protest: Records of Anti-Vietnam War Organizations, The Vietnam Veterans Against the War
“This publication consists of FBI reports dealing with every aspect of antiwar work carried out by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). In an attempt to keep this group under close watch, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) maintained diligent surveillance of the VVAW almost from the inception of the group’s activities and running through 1975, when the United States ended its presence in Vietnam. The collection also includes surveillance on a variety of other antiwar groups and individuals, with an emphasis on student groups and Communist organizations.”
Contact person: Patrick Stawski

German Folklore and Popular Culture: Das Kloster. Scheible
“Das Kloster is a collection of magical and occult texts, chapbooks, folklore, popular superstition and fairy tales of the German Renaissance compiled by Stuttgart antiquarian Johann Scheible, between 1845 and 1849.”
Contact person: Heidi Madden

Black Economic Empowerment: The National Negro Business League
“The records comprising this collection make clear that the National Negro Business League (NNBL) was an important social and economic organization among African Americans in the early years of the twentieth century… This collection documents the rise of the NNBL through 1923 and affords great insight into an important African American social movement and the black middle class after 1900.”
Contact person: Karen Jean Hunt

Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees: The West’s Response to Jewish Emigration
“The inside memoranda, records, government documents, and correspondence that helped shape the course of Jewish emigration in the Nazi era. The date range is 1938-1948, and the content is 30,100 pages.”
Contact person: Patrick Stawski

Exhibits, Featured Database, Library Hacks, Noteworthy Resources

The Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art

May 10, 2011 Christof Galli

ARTstor, one of Duke University Libraries’ image databases, recently announced the addition of about 400 pictures from the collection of Islamic and South Asian art from the Shangri La, Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art. The images feature some of the exquisite objects in the collection: Indian jewelry and enamels; Syrian, Indian, Spanish, and Persian furniture, doors, and ceilings; Persian and Turkish tile panels and portable ceramics; and Central Asian, Persian, Turkish, and Indian textiles.

Shangri La, A Center for Islamic Arts and Cultures, the online exhibit of the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, is fully searchable by keyword, medium region, and period. Containing about 3500 objects, the artifacts cover a time period from 1500BCE to the 20th century.

I heard about Doris Duke’s interest in Middle Eastern and Islamic art for the first time when Mary Samouelian, Doris Duke Collection Archivist at Duke’s Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library (RBMSCL), asked me to help her identify locations on photographs Ms. Duke took during her trip to the Middle East in 1938. These pictures, linked to an interactive map, are part of an online exhibit of materials from the Doris Duke Archives. The records from Doris Duke’s Shangri La residence are housed in RBMSCL.

Alerts!, Database Tip, Featured Database, Library Hacks, Research Help

Hack Alerts!

May 3, 2011 Ciara Healy

Welcome to the first post of the Alerts special section of Library Hacks. Weekly, you can look forward to new database announcements, updates, and (rare) outage notices. Stay tuned!

Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Online Subject Categories

The Garland encyclopedia of world music online is a comprehensive online resource devoted to music research of all the world’s peoples. Each volume contains an overview of a geographic region, a survey of its musical heritage, and a description of specific musical genres, practices, and performances. Articles include detailed photographs that show musicians, musical instruments, and the cultural context of dances, rituals, and ceremonies. Other images include drawings, maps, and musical examples for further study. Contains the full text of the 10 volume print encyclopedia (originally published in 1997), which is searchable all together for the first time.

OntheBoards.TV

OntheBoards.TV is a way to view theater performances. According to KUOW radio station news, “A recent study released by the National Endowment for the Arts shows that millions of people watch performing arts online. Seattle’s On The Boards hopes to capture some of that audience through a new project called On The Boards TV.” Here is a link that describes the history and mission of On the Boards: http://www.ontheboards.org/history-mission

Presidential Recordings of Lyndon B. Johnson: Digital Edition

“ As a historical resource, these tapes transcend scandalous utterances to provide a compelling, unique window into the American presidency during some of the most pivotal and contentious years of recent American history.” – David Coleman, Associate Professor and Chair of the Presidential Recordings Program. Quoted from the website http://presidentialrecordings.rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/essays

Databases are generally accessible only to Duke community members such as faculty, staff and students.

Featured Database, Library Hacks

Black Short Fiction and Folklore is Now Available

July 9, 2010 Karen Jean Hunt

Black Short Fiction and Folklore — New Database

Black Short Fiction and Folklore is the most comprehensive collection yet created of stories from African and the African Diaspora. When complete, it will feature 8,000 stories and folk tales published in more than 15 countries from the mid-1900s to the present. In addition to these published works, the database features previously uncollected works and unpublished manuscripts by many authors. We have an impressive collection of fables and folktales, which arise from oral traditions that date back hundreds of years.

The relevance of the collection extends well beyond literature:

Fables and folktales provide unique insights into a culture’s history and memories. Social anthropologists and psychologists will find this collection to be rich in myth and societal customs. The extensive indexing even makes it possible to see how certain parables evolve over time and to compare New World fables with those told in Africa today.
Ideas expressed here often are not found in mainstream publications; getting novels published through traditional publishing channels was often impossible for blacks. But through short stories, these writers could express themselves quickly and distribute their works effectively through literary journals and other alternative forms.
Historians will find the collection to be rich in political discourse, social commentary, and polemic.

Catalog Tip, Cool tools, Featured Database, Library Hacks, Noteworthy Resources

Books To-Go

April 19, 2010 Michael Peper 3 Comments

Flying-Books1

Earlier, we told you about the many ways to get audiobooks through Duke and on the web.

There is now a new way to download audiobooks straight from the web. NC Live is now providing 750 downloadable audiobooks that are available in .mp3 format so you can burn them to a CD or transfer them to a portable device like an iPod. Just browse, select, and download the title of your choice to your computer, then transfer your selection to a portable listening device for on-the-go audio enjoyment.

Subjects focus subjects focusing primarily on language learning, classic literature, history, and biography. Available titles include The Shawshank Redemption, Slaughterhouse Five, Atlas Shrugged or learn to speak French, German, Greek or Thai.

Use this link to download books while you’re on campus…

And if you’re off campus, connect to NC Live and then browse to Audio Books.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/22244945@N00/4394440698/

Cool tools, Database Tip, Duke researchers, Featured Database, Library Hacks, Research Help, Tips for students

Sociology Resources Online

January 13, 2010 Linda Daniel

Duke users now have access to the sociology research database SocINDEX with Full Text. This new subscription provides comprehensive coverage of sociology resources, encompassing all sub-disciplines and closely related areas of study.

SocINDEX with Full Text features more than 2,066,400 records; extensive indexing for books/monographs, conference papers, and other non-periodical sources; abstracts for more than 1,200 “core” coverage journals dating as far back as 1895; and provides cited references that can also be searched.

SocINDEX with Full Text offers coverage for topics including: abortion, anthropology, criminology, criminal justice, cultural sociology, demography, economic development, ethnic & racial studies, gender studies, marriage and family, politics, religion, rural sociology, social psychology, social structure, social work, sociological theory, sociology of education, substance abuse, urban studies, violence, welfare, and many others.

In addition, SocINDEX with Full Text features over 25,000 author profiles. Each profile includes contact information, journals of publication, and author’s areas of expertise and professional focus.

SocINDEX with Full Text is a great resource for your sociology research.

Duke researchers, Featured Database, Library Hacks

The Left Index™

April 20, 2009 libraryhacks 1 Comment

The Left Index™ is a complete guide to the diverse literature of the Left, with an emphasis on political, economic, social and culturally engaged scholarship inside and outside academia.

Topics covered include the labor movement, ecology & environment, race & ethnicity, social & cultural theory, sociology, art & aesthetics, philosophy, history, education, law and globalization.

Historically significant early Left publications such as The People (est. NY 1891) and The Class Struggle (1931 – 1937) along with classic texts by Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels and others, written in the formative years of the Left are also covered.

Click here to access the Left Index™.

Written by Nathaniel King

Duke researchers, Featured Database, Library Hacks

Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa

April 6, 2009 libraryhacks

The Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa collection consists of more than 180,000 pages of documents and images, including periodicals, nationalist publications, records of colonial government commissions, local newspaper reports, personal papers, correspondence, UN documents, books, oral testimonies, life histories, and speeches.

Materials in the Struggles for Freedom collection have been selected to address the following five broad themes:

• the colonial system and its consequences;
• popular resistance;
• anti-colonial organisations;
• regional and international contexts; and
• wars of liberation, destabilisation, and internal conflicts.

Click here to access the Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa collection.

Written by Nathaniel King

Database Tip, Duke researchers, Featured Database, Library Hacks

SimplyMap

January 26, 2009 libraryhacks 3 Comments

SimplyMap lets users create professional quality maps for use in presentations, research reports, business plans, or Websites. Data variables can be viewed at the State, County, ZIP Code, Tract and Block Group levels.

Want to know the top 10 wealthiest ZIP codes in your state? How about the top 25 counties with the most elderly residents? These and similar questions are easily answered by ranking locations using any data variable in SimplyMap.

SimplyMap includes access to thousands of demographic, business, and marketing data variables such as consumer expenditure, real estate, crime and many more.

Everything you do in SimplyMap can be exported in multiple formats for further customization and analysis. Create and export large amounts of data or detailed reports as Excel or CSV files. Advanced users can even export shapefiles for use in their own GIS software.

Written by Nathaniel King

Click here to access SimplyMap.

Duke researchers, Featured Database, Library Hacks

India, Raj and Empire

January 12, 2009 libraryhacks

India, Raj and Empire provides documents pertaining to the History of South Asia between the foundation of the East India Company in 1615 and the granting of independence to India and Pakistan in 1947.

The database includes original manuscript material, comprising diaries and journals, official and private papers, letters, sketches, paintings and original Indian documents containing histories and literary works.

Documents are arranged around the following themes:

The East India Company: Government and Administration c.1750-1857; Agriculture and Trade c.1750-1857; Society, Travel and Leisure c.1750-1857; The Mysore and Maratha Wars; Indian Uprising 1857-58; The Raj: British Government and Administration of India after 1858; Agriculture and Trade after 1858; Society, Travel and Leisure after 1858; and India: Literature, History and Culture.

Click here to access India, Raj and Empire.

Written by Nathaniel King

Duke researchers, Featured Database, Library Hacks

Latinobarómetro

December 3, 2008 libraryhacks

The Latinobarómetro is an annual study of public opinion in eighteen Latin American countries.

Latinobarómetro has the goal of providing a representative survey of Latin American public opinion over time and provides annual measures of attitudes toward democracy, civic culture, economic issues, gender issues, the environment, inequality, social capital, and trade policy.

Latinobarómetro covers Latin America from 1995-1998 and 2000-2006.

Click here to access Latinobarómetro.

Written by Nathaniel King

Duke researchers, Featured Database, Library Hacks

China Data Online

November 17, 2008 libraryhacks 1 Comment

China Data Online includes two parts: economic statistics and census data. It includes the economic statistics of China, arranged by regions and categories; monthly and yearly reports on China’s macroeconomic development; statistical databases about China’s population and economy at the county and city level; and financial indicators of more than 568 industrial branches.

Duke’s subscription includes (1) China Yearly Macro-economy Statistics (1949-), (2) China Monthly, Macro-economy Statistics (1998-), (3) Monthly Reports on Economy Development (2002-), (4) China City Statistics (1996-), (5) China County Statistics (1997-), (6) China Industrial Data (2001-), and (7) various statistical yearbooks (2002-).

The database also includes census data, including census data from 1982, 1982 (10%), 1990, 1995 (survey), and 2000 (county and province level).

Click here to access China Data Online.

Written by Nathaniel King

Duke researchers, Featured Database, Library Hacks

Russian Resources

November 4, 2008 libraryhacks

The Universal Databases provides a unified search engine for several Russian language databases: Russian Central Newspapers (UDB-COM), Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press (UDB-CD), Social Sciences & Humanities (UDB-EDU), Voprosy istorii: Complete Collection (UDB-VI), and Voprosy literatury: Complete Collection (UDB-VL).

The multilingual interface offers transliteration and Russian/English search capabilities.

Click here to access the Universal Databases.

Written by Nathaniel King

Duke researchers, Featured Database, Library Hacks

PrimateLit

October 27, 2008 libraryhacks

PrimateLit provides access to the scientific literature on nonhuman primates for the research and educational communities.

Coverage of the database spans 1940 to present and includes all publication categories (articles, books, abstracts, technical reports, dissertations, book chapters, etc.) and many subject areas (behavior, colony management, ecology, reproduction, field studies, disease models, veterinary science, psychology, physiology, pharmacology, evolution, taxonomy, developmental and molecular biology, genetics and zoogeography).

Click here to access PrimateLit.

Written by Nathaniel King

Featured Database, Library Hacks

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

October 20, 2008 libraryhacks

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database has information on almost 35,000 slave voyages to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.

This database allows users to search for specific voyages of slaving expeditions. Users can also create listings, tables, charts, and maps using information from the database.

Use the interactive estimates page to analyze the full volume and multiple routes of the slave trade.

Use the African Names Database to identify over 67,000 Africans aboard slave ships, using name, age, gender, origin, and place of embarkation.

Click here to access the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database.

Written by Nathaniel King

Duke researchers, Featured Database, Library Hacks

Digital Library of the Caribbean

October 13, 2008 libraryhacks

The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is a cooperative digital library for resources from and about the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean. dLOC provides access to digitized versions of Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials currently held in archives, libraries, and private collections.

Collections include newspapers, photographs, archives of Caribbean leaders and governments, official historical documents, and historic and contemporary maps.

Click here to access the Digital Library of the Caribbean.

Written by Nathaniel King

Duke researchers, Featured Database, Library Hacks

Blue Devil Press

October 6, 2008 libraryhacks

The library has recently obtained access to Duke University Press Scholarly Books.

Duke University Press Scholarly Books provides easy access to the Library’s electronic Duke University Press titles.

The Collection includes online access to around 100 new scholarly books published by Duke University Press in the humanities and social sciences. In addition to new books, the Collection also includes access to all of the Press’s backlist books that are available in electronic form.

Click here to access Duke University Press Scholarly Books.

Written by Nathaniel King

Database Tip, Featured Database, Library Hacks

UNdata – A world of information

September 29, 2008 libraryhacks

UNdata pools major UN databases and those of several international organizations into a single entry point for easy access. Users can easily browse, search and download data from a large number of statistical databases.

Data categories include: agriculture, education, employment, energy, environment, health, human development, industry, information and communication technology, national accounts, population, refugees, trade, and tourism.

Data sources include, but are not limited to: UN Statistics Division, UN Population Division, Food and Agriculture Organization, International Labour Organization, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, World Tourism Organization and UNESCO.

Click here to visit the UNdata site.

Written by Nathaniel King

Duke researchers, Featured Database, Library Hacks

Declassified Documents

September 15, 2008 libraryhacks

The Library has recently obtained access to Declassified Documents Reference System (DDRS), a collection of declassified documents from various government agencies such as the White House, the CIA, the FBI, the State Department and others.

DDRS makes possible both broad-based and highly targeted investigation of government documents. Users can query every document in the database for any name, date, word, or phrase. Searches can also be focused according to document type, issue date, source institution, classification level, date declassified, sanitization, completeness, number of pages, and document number.

You can access DDRS by clicking here.

Written by Nathaniel King

News, Events, and Exhibits from Duke University Libraries