NEWS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE               DATE: 03/17/06
CONTACT: LESLIE SCHALER, COMMUNICATION ASST., (413) 545-0162

LIBRARY ACQUIRES NOTABLE RESEARCH TOOLS

Amherst, MA – The UMass Amherst Libraries recently acquired access to the following electronic resources, which can be found at http://www.library.umass.edu/. For more information contact a reference librarian or your Library liaison at http://www.library.umass.edu/reference/liaisons.html. 

African American Song documents the history of African American music in an online music listening service, making 50,000 tracks available to scholars and students.   Some of the records in this resource are rare or never-before-published.  It contains recordings from top names in the history of black American music.

Chronicle of Higher Education online includes news reports and editorials on all facets of higher education in the United States, Canada and abroad.

Classical Music Library is a fully searchable, comprehensive database of distinguished classical recordings, including tens of thousands of licensed recordings that users can listen to on the Internet. The audio selections are cross-referenced to a database of supplementary reference information.

Dun and Bradstreet’s Industry Norms and Key Business Ratios helps business researchers compare the performance of one company to the performance of the industry as a whole. 

FAITS: Faulkner Advisory on IT Services includes market reports covering IT infrastructure, telecommunications, wireless technology, data networking, computer security, enterprise systems, Internet, and technology vendors. 

IBISWorld Industry Market Reports provides 700 industry reports that conform to the U.S. industry classification system – the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS).  Each report is approximately 40 pages in length and updated every four months.

Journal Citation Reports: Science and Social Science Editions – Journal Citation Reports is a recognized authority for providing a systematic, objective way to evaluate journals and their impact and influence within the research community.  It covers more than 7,500 of the world’s most highly cited, peer-reviewed journals in 200 disciplines. This tool can help researchers identify journals in which to publish, indicate the status of journals in which they have published, and identify journals relevant to their research. 

Historical Boston Globe is the most recent graphical version of full-text newspaper content digitized by ProQuest.  This resource offers access to historical primary source material.   Students can browse entire issues or search for articles on specific topics of interest.   Coverage includes issues published between 1872 and 1922.

Smithsonian Global Sound includes an extraordinary array of more than 35,000 individual tracks of music, spoken word, and natural and human-made sounds. Users browse, search, click, and then listen to the music over the Internet through their headphones or speakers.  The collection is an outgrowth of the vision and work of Folkways Records’ founder Moses Asch, who created a veritable encyclopedia of the human experience of sound, releasing more than 2,000 albums between 1948 and 1986, including those by American folk icons such as Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Pete Seeger, and countless influential others.

SRDS Online is an advertising budget tool that lists current rates for business and consumer magazines, radio, and newspaper.  It contains a direct marketing component.

Wiley InterScience includes access to over 350 online journals across a wide spectrum of disciplines. Subject areas include: business, chemistry, computer science, engineering, life sciences, physics and astronomy, polymer science, psychology and social sciences. Many online journals within this package provide access back to 1997. 

Web of Science’s Century of Science makes available 850,000 older, twentieth century scientific journal items in one place for the first time from 262 journals.  This comprehensive collection is fully searchable, with complete bibliographic data, cited reference data and navigation, and direct links to the full text.  Century of Science provides comprehensive backfile and cited reference data from 1900 to 1944.  This important tool allows researchers to discover which articles were highly cited during that time period, what journals they were published in, and trace a topic through over one hundred years of research literature.