This November the University Libraries are examining a variety of new resources that we are considering acquiring. The resources cover a wide variety of fields including music, literature, modern languages, Islamic studies, business, psychology, art history and more!

Please click here to view the resources being trialed. As always, we welcome your feedback and input as we look at ways to strengthen our library’s collections.

The University Libraries are currently looking at two federated search products. (Federated searching allows you to search several databases at once.) Since we are only trying out these products, they are set up on a smaller scale – these products currently only search across 12 databases and our catalog. If we decide to purchase either one of these products, we will have many more databases included in the search. These trials are available until April 22, 2007.

• Central Search
• WebFeat

We are also considering three databases:

• ERIC. We currently subscribe to this database through FirstSearch – this database trial is through CSA. The interfaces provided by each company differ, so try it out and let us know how you like the CSA interface. This trial is available until April 23, 2007.

• Foundation Search and Big Online are two grants resources we are considering. While the content in these databases is similar to that found in the Foundation Directory, they include several unique features such as visual analysis tools that show the number of grants awarded by category/area, the number of grants by grant size, and year by year giving patterns. These two trials are available until May 4, 2007. You will need a username (grandvalley) and password (demo) to use this resource.

We would love your feedback – please send us e-mail here with your thoughts.

The University Libraries are considering several databases for purchase – please try them out and tell us what you think!

The following databases will be available until February 28th:

• Wilson Education Abstracts indexes and abstracts articles from over 680 periodicals and yearbooks. Periodicals are indexed back to 1983, and abstracting goes back to 1994. Books published after 1995 are indexed as well.
• We are also looking at Education Research Index, which indexes and abstracts over 1730 journals. The Libraries are hoping to subscribe to either this database or Wilson Education Abstracts (but not both).
• World News Connection provides information from media sources around the world. The material in this databases is provided to the National Technical Information Service by the Open Source Center.
• Safari Books Online provides electronic access to books on a variety of technology and business topics. Some of the publishers represented in this database include O’Reilly, Addison Wesley, Prentice Hall, and Microsoft Press.
• We have a number of foreign language databases on trial through a company called EastView. We are trialing a database called Russian Universal Databases, which queries a number of Russian news sources. We are also trialing the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure and Ancient Chinese Classics, as well as a Taiwan Encyclopedia.
• IEEE/IEE Electronic Library Online contains a wealth of information for the those in the fields of computer science and electrical engineering. IEEE journals, conference proceedings, and books are only part of the information included in this database.
• Market Line Business Information Centre (formerly Datamonitor) includes reports, rankings, news, major company profiles (for companies in the U.S., Europe, and Asia), industry profiles, and country profiles.
• Business Insights contains strategic market reports; this database might be most appropriate for graduate students and faculty. These reports are based on independent market research, and cover five industries: consumer goods (including health & wellness, food, drink, and retail), energy, finance, healthcare, and technology. You will need a username [username removed] and password [password removed] to access this database.

These databases will be available until March 14th:

• ABI/Inform Global. The Libraries used to subscribe to this database and are reconsidering subscription again. ABI/Inform covers information on business, management, economics, and related fields. This is an abstracting and indexing database with some full text available.
• Euromonitor Global Market Information Database is a statistical database focusing on macroeconomic, demographic, and lifestyle trends. It includes over a million statistics, including country data, market size data, and lifestyle indicators. This database also includes almost 5,000 market reports in full text.

If you’d like to offer feedback on any of these databases, please send us e-mail here.

The University Libraries is always evaluating new resources to offer to the GVSU community. If you’d like to check out some of the databases we’re currently looking at, visit our Database Trials page. Currently, we’re looking at databases from Ebsco, including GLBT Life, SocINDEX, CINHAL, along with a number of other resources. Take them for a test drive, kick the tires and then let us know what you think.

You can find the link to our Database Trials page at the top-right of the Database Table. The list changes regularly so you’re going to want to come back often.