Visit W.W. Hagerty Library (33rd and Market Streets) from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Thursday, October 1, 2009 for the Drexel Libraries’ first Electronic Resources Fair!

Students will learn about the resources the Libraries provide, including e-journals, e-books and databases licensed by Drexel University Libraries.

Food, prizes and giveaways will be offered throughout the Fair!

We will be featuring the following resources and vendors:

Elsevier ScienceDirect; Elsevier Engineering Village; Proquest (includes CSA, Chadwyck, COS, and Refworks); Simplymap; Oxford University Press; Knovel; Mergent

Plus!  Drexel Archives will be showcasing their digital collections and Hagerty Librarians will be highlighting their favorite resources.

Stop by and say hello!

Back in October I mentioned the This American Life series covering our current economic situation.  Well, there is a new addition to the series, and it is equally impressive and informative.

Bad Bank.  “The collapse of the banking system explained, in just 59 minutes. Our crack economics team—the guys who explained the mortgage crisis, Alex Blumberg and NPR’s Adam Davidson—are back to help all of us understand the news. For instance, when we talk about an insolvent bank, what does it actually mean, and why are we giving hundreds of billions of dollars to rich bankers who screwed up their own businesses? Also, two guys go to New Jersey to look at a toxic asset.”

This series is put together by the folks at Planet Money — an NPR initiative with an extremely useful blog and podcast of their own.  A great resource for understanding the United States’ financial situation as it changes.

Become the Contemporary Literary Expert you’ve always hoped you’d be!  We have just purchased from Gale the online version of Contemporary Literary Criticism.

Contemporary Literary Criticism Online presents significant published criticism on the works of novelists, poets, playwrights, short story writers, and other creative writers now living or who died after December 31, 1959. Each entry contains a biographical essay that discusses the author’s life, works, and critical importance; critical essays or excerpts taken from books, magazines, literary reviews, newspapers, and scholarly journals; and, where available, interviews with featured authors. Entries also provide suggestions for further reading.

CLC is part of Gale’s Literature Criticism Online offerings, and is fully indexed by author, title, and year of critique.  We have online access to these volumes from 1973 – present.  Hagerty’s Print Holdings for this resource will likely be going to offsite storage in the near future.

Google has teamed up with Life Magazine to offer the LIFE Photo Archive!  Most of these images were never published, and are offered for free.  They are fully searchable by subject.

Check it out here: http://images.google.com/hosted/life

Whoa, did you guys know there’s an election coming up?!  In 2 weeks?!  ha!

Well, there are a whole lot of issues being discussed by the presidential candidates, and a whole lot of facts and figures being thrown around in the process.  Wanna know the historical context of some of these issues, or the voting record of the candidates, or what the supreme court has been doing?  Or, maybe you are just enraged about some of the issues and want to contact your local representative!  Well, Drexel Libraries happens to have a really fanastic suite of resources that culls all this information and more for you in one place.

CQ Political Reference Suite contains a whole lot of useful and interesting information for looking at the US political history and our political present.  Congress and the Nation and Politics in America will tell you everything you want to know about the voting record of your congressperson and analysis of congressional-backed policies.  The Washington Information Directory provides contact information for all our federal elected officials, and while you are waiting for Joe Biden to call you back, you can check out Vital Statistics on American Politics and analyse all kinds of political trends.

There are also a couple of great free resources available if you are interested in close scrutiny of the election process.

FiveThirtyEight.com is a site designed to “accumulate and analyze polling and political data in way that is informed, accurate and attractive. Most narrowly, to give you the best possible objective assessment of the likely outcome of upcoming elections.”  You’ll be dreaming in blue and red after a few minutes on this site.

FactCheck.org is the go-to site for dispelling the myths perpetuated by the campaigns of all parties.  The debate fact-checks are particularly interesting since these misleading statements come directly from the mouths of the candidates.

It doesn’t happen to be something in Drexel’s eresource collection, But it is a terrific and entertaining free resource that I highly recommend.   If you are like me, you’ve had a really hard time getting your mind around our country’s current economic fallout and the subsequent government bailout.  Here’s what did it for me:

This American Life is a weekly show out of Chicago on National Public Radio that tells stories centered around a theme.  The show airs on WHYY (Philadelphia’s NPR affiliate) on Wednesday evenings at 10pm and again on Sundays at noon.  In addition to the radio broadcast, This American Life also offers a free podcast and free streaming video on their website, and has recently begun a television series on Showtime.  2 recent episodes have helped me understand the historical and present decisions that drove our economic fallout:

The Giant Pool Of Money is about the history of Predatory Loans and the housing crisis, told through personal stories of victims and predators involved in the debacle.

Another Frightening Show About The Economy covers the fall of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, etc, and the implications of the bailout bill.

We now have a subscription to the Columbia Gazetteer of the World Online!   Check it out: http://innoserv.library.drexel.edu/record=e1000800~S9

Planning an African Safari?

We do not have a library subject guide for travelers, but we certainly have a wonderful selection of electronic resources the Drexel Community can use to help plan a vacation!  Just a reminder — here’s a few:

Columbia Gazetteer of the World: The entries include information on demography; physical geography; political boundaries; agriculture; cultural, historical, and archeological points of interest; transportation lines; longitude, latitude, and elevations; distance to relevant places; pronunciations; official local government place-names and changed or variant names and spellings.

Global Road Warrior: covers 175 countries. Each country listing includes: Key facts, Communications, Service support and Technical support contacts, Business culture insights, Language tips, top 150 travel web sites, regional maps, international dialing guide, mobile connectivity problems and solutions, currencies of the world and more.

SimplyMap: A web-based mapping application that lets users create thematic maps and reports using United States demographic, business, and marketing data.

CountryWatch: Details Political, economic, corporate, social, and environmental trends in 192 countries.

Europa World Yearbook: Covers political and economic information in over 250 countries and territories, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.