Global Currents

Courtesy of our Applied Health Studies library at the University of Illinois you may want to be aware of some resources that are available to keep up-to-date on this outbreak.

World Health Organization – Swine Influenza Page –
http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/en/index.html

U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Human Swine Influenza Investigation Page:
http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/

Illinois Department of Public Health’s Swine Influenze Page:
http://www.idph.state.il.us/flu/swine_flu_mex.htm

The library also supports an excellent “Health Information Portal” providing links to a wide variety of resources including links to databases, subject guides, news and more.

VuFind is a new alternative interface for the online catalog at Illinois as well as throughout the state system called I-Share. You will find a link to it on the Library Gateway page, or you can access it directly at http://vufind.carli.illinois.edu/vf-uiu. Members of the statewide system (CARLI), which includes the University of Illinois, can search and request items from the catalog. Individuals who are not associated with the system can search for items, but should go to their local librarian to request materials.

VuFind provides what librarians refer to as a faceted search. This leads to more flexibility in discovering resources that you might find of interest. If you go to the Advanced Search, you will see the multiple options for targeting your search as well. This interface is more accessibility compliant for use by screen readers and other adaptive technologies. You can check on item availability and place requests from this interface, and in the case of newer material you should be able to view the cover and the table of contents for the item. Sometimes reviews and descriptions of the works are also available. Another special feature of the interface is the ability to tag titles as favorites.

The product is still in development, and the Next Gen Catalog group at the Library is interested in any feedback you can provide on what you like or dislike in this interface. Please click on the green highlighted link on the opening page and send your comments and suggestions.

For more information about VuFind go to:
http://www.library.uiuc.edu/catalog/vufind/
http://www.carli.illinois.edu/mem-prod/I-Share/opac/vufind-faq/vufind-faq-choose.html
http://www.carli.illinois.edu/mem-prod/I-Share/opac/vufind-faq.html

Whether you are a graduate student trying to find the most “authoritative” authors in your field, or a tenure-track professor looking for advancement, citation indexes are very useful tools. Most of us have used one of the ISI citation indexes at one time or another. (Some of us still have the poor eyesight that developed from using them in print.) The Web of Science has replaced the print indexes and is easily used by members of our campus. WOS includes the Science Citation Index (1970-present), the Social Science Citation Index (1970-present), and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (1975-present). In addition, since we know the Web of Science doesn’t cover everything, we also subscribe to SCOPUS, a product of Elsevier Publishing. SCOPUS covers the subject areas of life sciences, health sciences (including all of Medline), physical sciences, and social sciences with some citations dating back to 1823. In both of these cases, the data is derived from a set number of journal titles. If you are not a member of the Illinois campus community, check with your library to see if you subscribe to these.

In addition to these subscription resources, many scholars are turning to Google Scholar as a resource in citation searching. The search tool for these resources that has most recently come to my attention is called “Publish or Perish.” This is a program that can be downloaded to your computer and set up to search Google Scholar. The results presented include total number of titles, total number of citations, average number of citations per paper, average number of citations per author, average number of papers per author, average number of citations per year, Hirsch's h-index and related parameters, Egghe's g-index , and more. “Publish or Perish” does not include impact factors.

If you are looking for information on the overall impact of a journal title try http://www.eigenfactor.org/. This will not do individual articles or authors, but will provide a measure of the overall value of all the articles published in a journal title for a specific year and will also indicate a measure of a title’s prestige based on citations that is somewhat comparable to ISI’s impact factor.

If you need any assistance using these tools, don’t hesitate to contact me by going to our home page.

Please let us know if you are aware of any other tools for citation searching – and happy hunting!

The Yearbook of the United Nations provides access to the texts of all major General Assembly, Security Council and Economic and Social Council resolutions and decisions as well as the recorded votes. The new website provides access to all volumes from 1946-2005. Each volume includes analysis and is fully indexed. To use this tool, select the year you wish to browse or search. You will be provided with a table of contents for the volume, and also a search box for specific terms you might be interested in finding. Search alternatives include "web style," exact phrase/UN DOC Symbol, with all the words, and with "and"/"or" condition.

The stock markets and other financial markets around the world are still reeling from the events of the last few weeks, but even before the U.S. House passed a measure to help shore up the economy, experts were expressing opinions, often in opposition to the measures proposed. One of those voicing their opinions was Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001. He is the editor of the Economist's Voice published by The Berkeley Electronic Press. In his article, "We Aren't Done Yet: Comments on the Financial Crises and Bailout," he posits several reasons why the efforts won't work, and ends by referring to it as a "short time fix." Articles from many other scholars and economists are available in the issue themed, "Financial Regulation, Financial Crisis, and Bailouts." It can be found online through the University of Illinois Online Research Resources for members of the Illinois campus. For those who are not members of our campus community, contact your library or go directly to the Berkeley Electronic Press site.