Library News for Economics

ICPSR Summer Internship Program -deadline 1/28

The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the world's largest archive of digital social science data, is now accepting applications for its annual summer internship. ICPSR is a unit within the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. ICPSR's data are the foundation for thousands of research articles, reports, and books. Findings from these data are put to use by scholars, policy analysts, policy makers, the media, and the public. ICPSR's holdings span many substantive areas, such as sociology, political science, demography, history, economics, gerontology, public health, criminal justice, substance abuse and mental health, education, health and medical care, and international relations.

Application Deadline: January 28, 2008

For more information, go to: http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/ICPSR/careers/internship.html

Geospatial Information Systems for Economics

A university-wide initiative which has implications for your research and teaching in Economics: Geospatial Information Systems (GIS).  Any time you have data with a location component, you can use GIS to add context to your analysis. You can also use GIS as a data mining tool, evaluating large datasets for unexpected correlations and meaning.

We have a number of free software packages and extensions are available as a part of the WU Campus License we hold with ESRI.  All of this information is online.at:

http://www.esri.com/industries/university/education/sitelic.html#district

WU currently holds an “Unlimited Site License” In addition to the ESRI Site License.  WU also has other GIS related software:

• A site license for Manifold.net, which is GIS software by a different vendor.

More information at: www.manifold.net

• 35 floating licenses for the ERDAS Imagine imaging and remote sensing software suite:

More information at: http://gi.leica-geosystems.com/documents/pdf/ERDAS_IMAGINE_9.1_Brochure.pdf

• And our newest software package added just this week, the FME Professional product from SAFE software for GIS data translations.  We have been awarded a 30 floating seat license from this vendor which has a dollar value of over $67,000.

More information at: www.safe.com

Also a list of the file formats supported by FME at: http://www.safe.com/products/fme/formats-supported/index.php

All of the above software will be available for use in the GIS lab (Earth and Planetary Sciences Lab, (Earth & Planetary Sciences Building, 935-5406).  It is also available for installation and usage anywhere on the WU network as long as the computer has a 128.252.xxx.xxx address. The ESRI software is the only software currently available for use off campus.

For more information about using GIS:

• contact Scott Horn (horn@wustl.edu ) or Aaron Addison (aaddison@wustl.edu)
• Attend an overview session on GIS on August 29, 2007 in the main library ARC presentation room (lower level).

GIS Datasets can be found at:

USGS Data

• USGS EROS Data center
• USGS Geographic data download
• USGS Seamless data distribution
• USGS Mineral Resources
• USGS Water Resources
• USGS Sagemap forest and rangeland data

US Census Data

• US Census boundary files
• US Census TIGER Files

US Fish and Wildlife Service

Geodata.gov

US Forest Service

National Geospatial Intelligence Agency

National Atlas

Missouri Spatial Data Information Service (MSDIS)

Geography Network

ESRI Data Downloader

Geocommunity

Extensive List of other sites hosted by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Extensive List hosted by the US Army.

New database available: SocINDEX with Full Text

A campus wide subscription of SocINDEX with Full Text is now available, courtesy of the Social Work Library.

This resource provides comprehensive coverage of sociology, encompassing all sub-disciplines and closely related areas of study. These include abortion, criminology & criminal justice, demography, ethnic & racial studies, gender studies, marriage & family, political sociology, religion, rural & urban sociology, social development, social psychology, social structure, social work, socio-cultural anthropology, sociological history, sociological research, sociological theory, substance abuse & other addictions, violence and many others.

New Economic History addition: The Making of the Modern World

The Making of the Modern World: The Goldsmiths'-Kress Library of Economic Literature

The Making of the Modern World digital collection presents full-text access to more than 61,000 monographs from the period 1450-1850, and 466 pre-1906 serials. In more than 11 million pages, it focuses on economics interpreted in the widest sense, including political science, history, sociology and special collections on banking, finance, transportation and manufacturing. This online resource encompasses two collections- Goldsmiths’ Library of Economic Literature at the University of London and Kress collection of Business and Economics at the Harvard Business School-with supplementary materials from the Seligman collection in the Butler Library at Columbia University and from Sterling Library at Yale University.

This resource will be invaluable to faculty and students across multiple departments, including Economics, History, Political Science and Languages& Literature. If you are interested in having this resource demonstrated for you, or need help in conducting a search, please contact Carol Mollman: mollman@wustl.edu or 935-6465

WTO related sources

The following is a comprehensive  bibliographic essay published in Choice magazine. If there are any books listed that you think belong in our collection, please contact Carol Mollman at mollman@wustl.edu

Download wto_bibliographic_essay.htm

ICPSR & Web of Science workshop

When: Tuesday March 6, 2007. Time: 4:15-4:45. Where: Olin Library ARC lab, Level A.

The concept for this class is similar to the final project for Writing I students. We will begin with a particular article, (Shuman, H. and Rieger, C. "Historical Analogies, Generational Effects, and Attitudes Toward War". American Sociological Review, 1992, Vol. 57 pp. 315-326) and use it to discover how to retrieve a dataset and examine the relationship(s) between the data and published articles about the data using the ICPSR website and Web of Science. In this way students may think more critically about topics in the social sciences and also about social scientists and their professional "conversations".

Links:

• ICPSR: the Inter-University Consortium for Social and Political Research
• Web of Science
• Contact for more information- Barb Rekhop: brehkop@wustl.edu 

Trial for International Country Risk Guide ends 11/2

ICRG Online
http://www.icrgonline.com

'ICRG’s risk ratings have been cited by experts at the IMF, World Bank, United Nations and many other international bodies as a standard against which other ratings can be measured. The ICRG has been independently acclaimed by publications such as Barron’s and The Wall Street Journal for the strength of its analysis and ratings system. In studies at academic institutions including Harvard, Duke, and New York University, ICRG has time and again been proven as one of the most reliable and predictive services available.

All of this means that you cannot find a more reliable, widely accepted standard for rating and forecasting risk than the International Country Risk Guide. If your company is not using the ICRG, you are missing out on the information used by banks, international organizations and your competition.'

NOTE: the Excel tables are accessible via Firefox, but not the country reports. For those, you have to use Internet Explorer.

• Expires: November 2, 2006
• Cost: $2,298/year for 1 user; $4,995 for unlimited users

New Database- ASSIA

The Social Work Library added a new database at the beginning of the summer called ASSIA (Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts). You can access it campus-wide.  It's on the CSA/Illuma interface, and in addition to economics it covers health, social services, psychology, sociology, politics, race relations, and education.

More digital resources added

We have added some electronic resources to our collection that may be especially useful to the economic historians…

·        The Times [London] Digital Archive (1785-1985) 

·        New York Times, Historical (1851-2003) 

·        Wall Street Journal, Historical (1889-1989)

We’ve also ordered microfilm for the first 68 editions of The Economist.(1843-1914)  This will replace the almost useless ‘microcard’ format and fill in some missing issues.

In addition, we’ve added several items to the Reference Collection at Olin Library:

·         An Eponymous dictionary of economics: a guide to laws and theorems named after economists.  Edited by Julio Segura and Carlos Rodríguez (Rodriguez) Braun.  E. Elgar, 2005 (c2004).

·         We also added the electronic version of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History (http://www.oxford-economichistory.com/ )

WU Libraries Technology Changes

This fall we will be seeing a number of changes in technology in the WU libraries. The most notable shift is the end of free printing at the University Libraries effective October 20th. Here are the new rates:  8 cents (single sided) and 12 cents (double-sided). Charges for photocopying will remain the same: 12.5 cents per copy if using a copy card; 15 cents per copy if paying with cash. Please visit the WU Libraries Technology Changes website for additional information.