Or just the results?

With the Roper Center’s iPoll, you not only get to see the results, you can also see the actual questions asked and the results for each one.

iPoll can be searched by keyword.  Say, maybe something like “Sarah Palin AND Tina Fey” and we can see the question, “How much if anything have you heard about each of the following? Have you heard a lot, a little or nothing at all?…Skits on Saturday Night Live with actress Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin?”  That question was reported by the Pew Weekly News Interest Index Poll this October.

By the way, 42% of those asked heard a lot about it, 30% heard a little, 27% heard nothing at all, and 1% didn’t know or refused to answer (Survey by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Methodology: Conducted by Opinion Research Corporation, October 3-October 6, 2008 and based on telephone interviews with a national adult sample of 1,006.)

Looking at individual questions is pretty nice but that’s not all.  There is also a section of the site devoted to browsing poll results by topic.  Broad topics include the economy, the government, personal beliefs, education and, of course, the election! All of this adds up to an important tool for following public opinion on issues that matter to you.

And if you want even more political and elections information don’t forget to look at the growing number of links in my Delicious collection.  Try the terms elections or politics for example.

Click here to search PsycINFO and PsycARTICLES (EBSCOhost)

It’s a trusted and familiar resource for finding scholarly articles, book chapters, books and dissertations in Psychology but could a different interface make it easier to use?  That’s exactly what I want to find out.

Now through November 21st, 2008 we have a trial of PsycINFO and PsycARTICLES on the EBSCOhost database platform.  It’s the same content that we have on the OvidSP platform, just a different interface.

Try it out, compare how you do the same search on both platforms, you know, kick the tires.  And then let me know what you think! Your feedback matters!

Maritime Jurisdiction and Boundaries in the Arctic Region

Well, it looks like Denmark does.  But why does that matter?  Bragging rights aside, fixing the international boundaries around the actual North Pole may not be that important.  What is far more important is who will control the vast amount of oil and gas thought to be sitting below the Arctic ocean.

The International Boundaries Research Unit, at Durham University has issued a new report, available in pdf from the website above, that that examines boundaries in the Arctic and discusses both likely boundaries and potential claims that the surrounding countries may make soon.  The report and briefing notes are a good introduction to an issue that could have major international-relations and economic implications.

The IBRU’s website is also a good resource for boundary-related news and links, with searchable news and link archives.

Communication and Mass Media Complete

The Library just subscribed to EBSCO’s Communication and Mass Media Complete, an extensive database with a large amount of scholarly fulltext journal content covering all aspects of Communications and related areas.

From the database description: CMMC incorporates the content of CommSearch (formerly produced by the National Communication Association) and Mass Media Articles Index (formerly produced by Penn State) along with numerous other journals in communication, mass media, and other closely-related fields of study to create a research and reference resource encompassing the breadth of the communication discipline. CMMC offers cover-to-cover (core) indexing and abstracts for more than 420 journals, and selected (priority) coverage of nearly 200 more, for a combined coverage of more than 600 titles.

This is a very important resource and greatly expands the Drexel community’s access to scholarly information in this field.

Silobreaker

Silobreaker provides a new way to read, search, and use information from thousands of international news sources, blogs, and even academic, company, and government websites.

Provides customizable mapping for local or global news stories, graphs trends in news coverage for topics or people, and shows relationship networks for topics or people. Here (below) is a Network search for Barack Obama:

This resource can be especially useful for tracking media coverage of topics of interest over time, looking at connections between topics, or examining how news stories are discussed in other countries.