New Electronic Resource: Statista

Statista is an internet-based statistics portal.  The Statista platform covers over 60,000 topics from over 18,000 sources world-wide.  Statista categorizes data into 21 market sectors — including, E-Commerce, Consumer Goods, Media & Advertising, and Technology& Communications.

Users can export content in widely used formats such ass PNG, XLS and PPT for use in presentations, websites or blogs.  Statistics can be displayed in bar chart, line graph and table formats — based on the users needs.  Statista also provides reading support to explain statistics published on the portal.  Detailed source citation is also included so that users can trace back directly to the original source.

Each statistic indexed in Statista is dealt with on an individual basis and linked to corresponding topics and subject areas within the portal.  Uses can use Statista’s rankings to arrange tables in sortable formats.

Bentley Library Workshop for Faculty: Creating Static Links to ProQuest, EBSCOHost & JSTOR Articles

The Bentley Library invites faculty to: Creating Static Links to ProQuest, EBSCOHost & JSTOR Articles

When:  Wednesday, November 12, 2014, 12:45 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Where:  Research Instruction Center (RIC), Library Lower Level, Room 011

The EBSCOHost, ProQuest, and JSTOR databases all offer “persistent” or static links to articles that can be accessed for several years. Attendees will learn how to create durable links to articles with the comfort of knowing that copyright permission and royalties have been taken care of by Bentley’s site licenses to these databases.  This workshop will show users how to create links to articles and use them in Blackboard course websites, online bibliographies, and personal websites.  Workshop attendees will also learn how to make links available to off-campus students.

Please RSVP to library@bentley.edu if you would like to attend this workshop.

Bentley Library Workshop for Faculty: EndNote X7

The Bentley Library invites faculty to an EndNote X7 workshop:

Date and Time: Wednesday, November 5, 2014, 12:45 p.m. – 1:45 p.m.

Location: Research Instruction Center (RIC), Ground Floor of the Library, Room 011

EndNote X7 is the most recent version of the popular EndNote bibliographic citation management tool. The Bentley University Library provides faculty and students with Mac and Windows versions of EndNote X7. This workshop will cover EndNote basics, including direct import, managing Endnote libraries, and the selection of import filters and output styles. Users of earlier versions of EndNote are welcome to attend and see what is new with X7.

Please RSVP to library@bentley.edu if you wish to attend this workshop.

Database of the Month: IHS Connect (formerly IHS Global Insight)

ihsconnectFor a number of years the Bentley University Library has relied upon IHS Global Insight to provide us with comprehensive economic and country risk data.  Recently IHS has transitioned the content we received via Global Insight  into a new product, IHS Connect.  The IHS Country Profiles can now be found under the “geography” tab at the top of each IHS Connect page.  User can search for Country Reports based on geographic location for Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania.   The country reports are comprehensive, updated reports across major factors shaping foreign investment: political, economic, legal, tax, operational and security environment.  Country reports has a content area labeled “Research and Data Center” that provides Bentley users with exchange rates and CPI tables, monthly forecast tables, and quarterly forecast tables.  The tabular data is downloadable with Excel.

The Growth Outlook content area provides users with a number of tables based on key economic indicators, such as production and inflation, trade and exchange rates.  Key indicator tables can be exported to PDF, Excel and PowerPoint.  IHS provides 6-8 month projections of key indicators.  The Country Rankings content area  provides users with the ability to build a rankings table for 206 countries.  Countries can be ranked by GDP, CPI, foreign Debt, International Reserves, Long-term Interest Rates, and a number of other categories.  Any table in this section of IHS Connect can easily be downloaded to Excel.

A full country report is provided for each country covered by IHS.  Each report includes a Country Risk Statement prepared by IHS.  Each report also includes a Short-term Outlook section as well as Medium- and Long-term Outlook. The Short-term Outlook provides key points and analysis with recent and projected key macro-economic indicators.  The Medium- and Long-term Outlook section provides for a deeper analysis of each country’s economic growth.   Growth, labor markets, inflation, exchange rates, monetary and fiscal policy, and the external sector of each country are covered in the narrative of each country report.

Under the “Insight” tab users can find the Risks and Ratings content area.   This section provides tables of the IHS Country Risks and sovereign risks.  The IHS Country Risks provide weighted  risks (Political 25%, Economic 25%, Legal 15%, Tax 15%, Operational 10%, Security 10%) for doing business in all of the countries covered in the database.  The sovereign risk content area provides a quick tabular view of medium term risk with ratings from Fitch, Moody’s, and S&P.

IHS Connect is a large, comprehensive database with some content areas that are  not available to members of the Bentley community.   When logged into the database users will notice that some content areas are “grayed out” or a “lock” icon is used as an indicator that we do not have access to that content.

IHS Connect can be accessed via the Bentley Library’s Databases page (http://library.bentley.edu/research/databasesaz.asp) or directly at http://ezp.bentley.edu/login?url=http://connect.ihs.com.

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Database of the Month provides a very brief introduction to an important research database, highlighting key features of the database that you should know about. If you would like more information about this database (or any of the library’s databases) please Ask a Librarian. If you would like a demonstration of this database for a class, please contact the Reference Desk.

Database of the Month: Forrester Research

forrester

Forrester Research is a research and advisory firm serving professionals in three distinct client segments, business technology, marketing and strategy, and the technology industry.  Forrester provides coverage of 13 different “roles” including Customer Experience, Application Development & Delivery, Enterprise Architecture, and Analyst Relations.

The Bentley Library provides access to over 11,000 Forrester reports.  Reports are graphic rich and all tabular data can be downloaded as standalone slides or included in the PDF or ZIP format of each individual report.   Each proprietary report is prepared by a Forrester analyst.   All reports have author provided tags so users can quickly access like content from Forrester.  Forrester has over 100 analysts covering all of Forrester’s content areas, with many analysts updating blog content on a regular basis.

Forrester’s Advanced Search feature allows users to search by full-text, report summary, title, and tables and charts.  Search results can be refined by Forrester Analyst, role characteristic, region, and industry.  Recently Forrester has created “Playbooks” that organize reports based on content across all roles.  Playbook frameworks guide critical decisions with integrated reports, tools, and insight, designed for business technology professionals, marketing and strategy professionals, and technology industry professionals.

Forrester Research is available to all current Bentley students, faculty and staff.  A link to Forrester can be found on the Bentley Library’s databases page (http://library.bentley.edu/research/databasesaz.asp).  Graduate and undergraduate students who wish to access Forrester should contact the Reference Desk at refdesk@bentley.edu or 781.891.2302 to be provided with credentials for one of the Library’s shared accounts.  Faculty, staff and PhD students are eligible to have individual Forrester accounts and should contact Stephen Tracey (stracey@bentley.edu) to learn more about accessing Forrester Research.

Database of the Month: In Context series from Gale

The Bentley University Library recently acquired access to a number of databases from Gale Cengage Learning as part of the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC) statewide database licensing program.  Included in the collection are five titles from Gale’s “In Context” series of electronic resources:gale-in-context

One of the main features of the In Context series is what Gale refers to as “Media-rich content”, including images, audio, video, Google maps and interactive resources that enhance student ability to evaluate and apply information.  Traditional, aggregated databases provide users with indexing and articles from a range of sources.  In Context provides this same content but with these added Web 2.0 features.  The history collections in the series allow users to search primary source materials, a valuable tool for all researchers, and all In Context collections include academic journals and reference sources.  The Science in Context collection allows users to search for statistics, graphic and tabular information, and experiments.

For those who are interested in providing links to full-text articles, videos, audio files, other In Context content Gale is now offering improved Infomark functionality that allows users to copy, bookmark, or email a persistent URL of nearly every page — giving them the ability to create and share reading lists, bibliographies, content management systems (such as Blackboard) and more.

This past February In the Know featured the Gale Opposing Viewpoints in Context collection as our “Database of the Month”.  To learn more about that database or to see any of our recent “Database of the Month” posts please click here.

Connect to the In Context Databases

Visit our Databases A-Z or Databases by Subject pages to access the In Context databases.

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Database of the Month provides a very brief introduction to an important research database, highlighting key features of the database that you should know about. If you would like more information about this database (or any of the library’s databases) please Ask a Librarian. If you would like a demonstration of this database for a class, please contact our Coordinator of User Education, Elizabeth Galoozis.

Database of the Month: Encore

The Bentley University Library is pleased to announce the launch of our new discovery service, Encore.  Over the past few years, in both formal and informal settings, patrons have told us they wanted the ability to search topics from multiple resources, including the LIBCAT library catalog and articles from aggregated database vendors such as ProQuest and EBSCOHost, with one search interface. The Encore discovery service provides users with ability to do just that and to filter results with multiple facets.  Over the coming months patrons will see the Encore search box appearing on Bentley Library webpages and online research guides.

  • The Bentley Library Encore homepage can be accessed by pointing your browser to http://encore.bentley.edu. (The Encore search box also appears on our homepage at http://library.bentley.edu).  Because Encore provides access to licensed electronic resources it is only available to current Bentley University students, faculty and staff.  You will need your Bentley University Email Address and Network Password to login to Encore.

  • To use Encore simply enter a search term in the search box and click the arrow.  Use and “and”, “or” and “not” to expand or narrow a search.  To limit a search to just those items in LIBCAT or the Library’s articles databases click on the “Articles” or “Catalog” (the default) options at the top of the page.
Encore Search
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  • Encore provides an “Advanced Search” option that allows patrons to search using keyword, author, title, and subject indexes just like LIBCAT.  Users can also limit their search by language, format (book, DVD, E-Resource, etc.) and date range.
Encore Advanced Search
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  • Once the search is completed it is now time to filter and organize the results. By default Encore will return results by relevance. If the search was completed using the “Catalog” option, items from LIBCAT will be listed first, followed by links to articles from aggregated databases vendors.  There is also a link to “WorldCat” on the results page, under Other Resources, that will search the WorldCat multi-library catalog for items not owned by the Bentley Library that may be available via Interlibrary Loan (see the “Database of the Month: WorldCat post from April 17, 2012).  Searches completed using the “Articles” option will only return results from databases.
Encore Search Results
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  • Users who wish to continue using the classic LIBCAT search interface can simply click on the link titled “Classic Catalog” or point your browser to http://libcat.bentley.edu.
  • Encore does not search all of the Bentley University Library’s databases.  It is designed to search articles databases from aggregated vendors such as EBSCO, ProQuest, JSTOR, Gale/InfoTrac, Project Muse,  Elsevier, CQ Researcher, IEEE, and ACM Digital Library. The “Article” search will return by broad subject categories from those vendors indexed by Encore.

For questions regarding Encore (or any library service) please contact the Bentley University Library Reference Desk at 781.891.2300 or refdesk@bentley.edu.

Database of the Month: Web of Science

Web of Science Web of Science (WoS) is a cited reference index, which is one of the best tools for discovering and retrieving accurate citation information from as far back as 1956. WoS allows researchers to trace particular research forward in time or backward in time to see how published scholarship grows and helps researchers focus on a wide array of published scholarship. WoS is published on Thomson Reuters’ Web of Knowledge research platform.  Bentley subscribes to three WoS citation indexes:

  • Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) — 1956-present
  • Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) — 1975-present
  • Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED) — 1977-present

WoS lets users search for topics, authors and publications, as well as, eleven other indexes.  Users can search for and limit data based in times span (within a date range, from a date, or before a particular date).  Lemmatization allows users to find alternative forms of the search term, for example, tooth and teeth.   Results can be limited by publication date, relevance, times cited, source, author, and publication.  The Web of Knowledge platform provides a number of useful tools that work with WoS including the Journal Citation Reports (JCR).  The learn more about JCR please see Database of the Month for June 2011.

Citation Mapping:

WoS citation mapping tool tracks an article’s cited and citing references through two generations, allowing researchers to visually discover an article’s wider relationships.

  • Go forward and backward in time to track citing and cited references
  • Color code, re-configure and organize your citation maps to discover trends in citation activity
  • Completely interactive!
  • Access via any Web of Science full record

To learn more about citation mapping please visit the citation mapping tutorial from WoS.

Registering with WoS and Remote Access:

Users can click on the “Sign In” link at the top of any WoS webpage to register become a registered user.  To register one should be on-campus with a Bentley University I.P. address.  Once registered, users will be able to access WoS from off-campus.  Registering with WoS will also allow users to set up search alerts, save custom searches and search histories, and select a starting application that enables them to start their session in a specific database rather than on the All Databases (default) page.

Connect to this Database:

Users will find each of the WoS databases (Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts and Humanities Citation Index and Science Citation Index) listed under their individual names on our Databases A-Z page as well as on any applicable databases by subject pages.  The databases can be searched individually or cross-searched in any combination.

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Database of the Month provides a very brief introduction to an important research database, highlighting key features of the database that you should know about. If you would like more information about this database (or any of the library’s databases) please contact the Reference Desk.  If you would like a demonstration of this database for a class, please contact our Coordinator of User Education, Elizabeth Galoozis.