May 2016 New Databases

The following databases are now available from the University of Houston Libraries:

Euromonitor Passport
An online market research tool that monitors industry trends and gives strategic analysis and a market size and market share database for all products across all key countries. Passport is Euromonitor International’s global market analysis software platform, which analyses the industry in countries around the world.

Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower
The complete electronic edition of the Papers of Dwight D. Eisenhower combines the full text of all 21 volumes of the print edition, including letters, memoranda, cables, and directives–many of them previously classified–from private collections and public archives in the U.S. and U.K., as well as papers from the Eisenhower Presidential Library, written or dictated by Eisenhower from the years prior to World War II through full term of his presidency.

Presidential Recordings Digital Edition
Presidential Recordings Digital Edition (PRDE), the online portal for annotated transcripts of the White House tapes published by the Presidential Recordings Program (PRP). Created by a team of scholars and researchers at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, these transcripts are presented in PRDE alongside the corresponding audio, enabling users to read and listen to these conversations simultaneously. This effort at deciphering the presidential recordings and decoding their meaning allows these documents, many of which would remain otherwise inaccessible, to come alive, providing an intimate view of life inside the Oval Office.

April 2016 New Databases

The following databases are now available from the University of Houston Libraries:

BoardVitals
Medical exam question banks with expert reviewed board questions for NCLEX-RN, USMLE Step 1, USMLE Step 2, and USMLE, Step 3.

Data-Planet Statistical Datasets
Provides access to statistical data produced by U.S. federal agencies, states, private organizations, and major intergovernmental organizations. There are up to 2 billion charts, maps, views, rankings, time series and tables available for use in the Data-Planet repository. Data-Planet Statistical Datasets offers powerful capabilities to compare and contrast multiple data series, perform statistical calculations on the data, and customize output views.

Gnomon Workshop
The Gnomon Workshop is a web-based video training solution for the entertainment arts industry. It gives studios and artists access to self-paced video-based training by entertainment production artists working in film, games, and television.

Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive
The TLS historical archive provides searchable access to the full text of the Times Literary Supplement. It includes more than 300,000 reviews, letters, poems, and articles.

New Digital Collection: Board of Regents Records

The University of Houston was established in 1927 as the Houston Junior College. It grew and prospered to become the University of Houston in 1934. In 1939, the institution acquired land for a permanent campus and opened its first building. The university became a state institution in 1963 and joined the newly created University of Houston System in 1977.

The Board of Regents Records include the minutes from the meetings of the Board of Trustees between 1939 and 1944, and later, the Board of Regents, the governing body of the University of Houston system. The meeting minutes provide insights into the evolution and governance of the University. Digitization of these records is ongoing, and subsequent volumes will be added to the UH Digital Library as they become available.

The original materials are available in UH Libraries Special Collections.

New Digital Collection: Carlos (DJ Styles) Garza Drawings and Memorabilia

Enter the world of Carlos “DJ Styles” Garza, who has in turn been a high school b-boy and aspiring graffiti artist, an up and coming club DJ, producer for the highly creative hip hop artists Odd Squad and Devin the Dude, and an independent producer and audio engineer. This digital collection contains approximately 50 artworks, sketches, fliers, and promotional items from the eighties to the 2000s, related to Garza’s life in hip hop.

Carlos Garza was born in Reynosa, Mexico in 1968, and settled in Houston with his family in the 1970s. As a teenager in Bellaire, he fell in love with hip hop through the music of the original pioneers, and films like Wild Style. In the mid-1980s Carlos began break dancing under the name DJ Pace Master. He and a few friends formed the Dynamic Crew, a break dancing group which performed at parties and participated in contests. They and other friends also sketched hip hop style artwork and practiced making potential graffiti tags. After a year of break dancing, Garza decided to switch to DJing and began performing at house parties and school events under the name DJ Styles.

Garza got a job at Soundwaves Records on South Main in 1987, where he worked until 1992 as the store’s buyer for hip hop (at a time when many music stores in Houston were not stocking hip hop). During that period, he launched the career of the legendary producer DJ Premier by recommending his friend to a New York label owner who was looking for a member to join the group Gang Starr.

In the early 1990s, Garza began working with the group Odd Squad (Rob Quest, Devin, and Jugg Mugg) as a producer, contributing to their classic Rap-A-Lot album Fadanuf Fa Erybody. He has also done production for Devin the Dude and the Coughee Brothaz, and these artists are represented in the digital collection.

The original materials are available in UH Libraries Special Collections in the Carlos “DJ Styles” Garza Papers.

December 2015 New Databases

The following databases are now available from the University of Houston Libraries:

AIP Scitation
Provides full-text access to journals published and distributed by the American Institute of Physics, American Physical Society, American Society of Civil Engineers, American Society of Mechanical Engineers International, International Society for Optical Engineering, and other science and engineering societies. Covers physics, astronomy, electronics, engineering, materials science, mathematics and associated disciplines.

API Standards
The American Petroleum Institute (API) maintains more than 500 documents that apply to many segments of the oil and gas industry; from drill bits to environmental protection. API standards advocate proven, sound engineering and operating practices and safe, interchangeable equipment and materials. API standards include manuals, standards, specifications, recommended practices, bulletins, guidelines and technical reports.

IBISWorld
IBISWorld is a wide-ranging collection of U.S. and global industry market research and U.S. risk ratings. It contains business reports in five categories: industry market research, industry risk ratings and company research for the U.S., global industry research, and selected economic and demographic data. Market analysis components include overviews, industry performance and outlook, competitive and regulatory environment, major competitors, operational conditions and key statistics. U.S. risk reports discuss industry and market risk, including industry life cycle, growth potential and economic sensitivity. Downloadable report elements include SWOT analyses, statistical tables and graphs.

Joanna Briggs Institute
The Joanna Briggs Institute EBP Database allows you to search simultaneously, a wide range of summarized and appraised health care evidence, including 3,000 records across seven publication types: Evidence Based Recommended Practices, Evidence Summaries, Best Practice Information Sheets, Systematic Reviews, Consumer Information Sheets, Systematic Review Protocols, and Technical Reports.

PhilPapers
PhilPapers is a comprehensive index and bibliography of philosophy maintained by the community of philosophers. Using advanced trawling techniques and large scale crowdsourcing, we monitor all sources of research content in philosophy, including journals, books, open access archives, and personal pages maintained by academics.

SimplyMap
SimplyMap is a web-based mapping application that lets users quickly create professional-quality thematic maps and reports using demographic, business, and marketing data for the United States.

U.S. Political Stats
U.S. Political Stats contains over 225,000 data series or data measures over time about people, places, and policies across 10 distinct political science data categories, aligned with a typical political science curriculum. The data series span as far back as 1982, and are updated on a timely basis in accordance with the collection and publication schedules of original sources. Detailed source information, with links where applicable, is provided for every data series.

WARC
WARC is a database providing access to advertising and marketing information from various sources. The searchable sources include organisations of various countries, monographs, conference papers, abstracts, and the full-text of various journals.

New Digital Collection: the Emilio R. Ypiñia Journals

The Emilio R. Ypiñia Journals is a manuscript collection consisting of five distinct journals authored by Emilio R. Ypiñia (1905-1936). A self-educated Mexican national born in Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes, Mexico, Ypiñia immigrated to Houston, Texas, following the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Each volume contains approximately 100 pages and 10-20 poems, essays, and journal entries authored throughout the 1930s, the bulk in 1933.

There are approximately 50 distinct poems and sections of prose in the collection, as well as variations of certain works. Each “Scholastic” bound volume reveals Ypiñia’s observations of the world around him and his reflections on society, spirituality, international relations, and world history. A few of the specific topics mentioned include: masculinity, Asian philosopher Confucius, and the inequalities present in his local Houston neighborhood, Magnolia Park.

The original materials are available in UH Libraries Special Collections in the Emilio R. Ypiñia Journals.

Kanopy Streaming Video

The University of Houston Libraries now offers access to a collection of streaming videos through Kanopy. Students, scholars and faculty can search and view over 4,500 educational videos in business, the arts, training, health sciences, media and communication, natural sciences, social sciences, and teacher education.

New videos will be added as they become available.

Browse the collection of videos by searching for “Kanopy” in the library catalog or by using a keyword search.

New Databases at UH Libraries

The following databases are now available from the University of Houston Libraries:

Alt-HealthWatch
A full-text database of periodicals, peer-reviewed journals, academic and professional publications, magazines, consumer newsletters and newspapers, research reports, and association newsletters focused on contemporary, alternative and integrated approaches to health care and wellness.

American Indian Histories and Cultures
A wide-ranging digital resource presenting a unique insight into interactions between American Indians and Europeans from their earliest contact, continuing through the turbulence of the American Civil War, the on-going repercussions of government legislation, right up to the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century. This resource contains material from the Newberry Library’s extensive Edward E. Ayer Collection.

American West
Original manuscripts, maps, ephemeral material, and rare printed sources from the Graff Collection about the American West, including tales of frontier life, Native Americans, vigilantes, and outlaws, and the growth of urban centers and environmental impact of westward expansion and of life in the borderlands.

Global Commodities
This resource brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of global commodities in world history. The commodities featured in this resource have been transported, exchanged and consumed around the world for hundreds of years. They helped transform societies, global trading operations, habits of consumption and social practices.

Health Source, Consumer Edition
Provides consumer oriented information on many health topics including the medical sciences, food sciences and nutrition, childcare, adult health, behavioral health, cardiology, drug and medication information, pediatric health, senior health, women’s health, and sports medicine.

Literary Reference Center
This full-text database provides a spectrum of information on authors and their works across literary disciplines and time frames to give scholars, professors, and researchers a foundation of literary reference works to meet their research needs.

Natural and Alternative Treatments
Natural & Alternative Treatments contains detailed information on almost 200 different conditions and the conventional and natural treatments used to treat them, over 300 herbs and supplements, plus drug-herb and drug-supplement interactions for more than 90 drug categories.

Project Euclid: Mathematics and Statistics Online
Project Euclid is a joint effort by Cornell University Library and Duke University Press; this not-for-profit online publishing service provides access to journals, monographs, and conference proceedings in the fields of theoretical and applied mathematics and statistics.

ProQuest Congressional Publications
Provides users with access to a comprehensive collection of historic and current congressional information.

For database assistance, visit Electronic Resources Help.

IEEE Xplore Mobile gets new features

Have you tried the IEEE Xplore Mobile platform yet? It’s available through http://m.ieeexplore.ieee.org on your mobile device, and it has just come out of beta. Searches will get you abstracts and the option to email yourself a link to the article for viewing later on the full IEEE Xplore site. Also, since UH now authenticates by IP address, if you access the IEEE Xplore Mobile site via UH Wireless, you can view full-text PDFs right on your device.

For more library info relevant to science and technology fields, check out the UH Libraries’ Science Info blog.

Encore, a new way to search the catalog

Encore offers a single search box for retrieving results from the library catalog. Search results can be refined using a faceted display. Results are redrawn on the page so that users see in real-time how their results can be refined by selecting a single facet option or multiple facets. Results can be limited by title, subject, material format, sub-collection, date, and language.

A tag cloud is generated for each search based on subject headings for titles in the results set. Search results can also be refined by selecting any keyword or phrase in the tag cloud. The results display uses font size to highlight possible search options and helps to distinquish similar search terms.

Community tags allow the user to create their own search terms for an item, and can be used in describing works on a professor’s reading list.

Encore also highlights recently added materials based on the keyword search entered.