Let's Get Political: With Political Science Complete and Public Affairs Index, We've Got You Covered

The year the Cheng Library is offering two new databases to support undergraduate and graduate study and research in politics and public policy.

Political Science Complete is a full-text resource on politics and public policy offers access to:

• over 900 academic journals (with full-text access to almost 500 titles)
• over 300 books
• over 43,000 conference papers from the major national, regional, and international political science associations, including:

• American Political Science Association
• Northeastern Political Science Association
• International Studies Association
• Midwestern Political Science Association
• New England Political Science Association
• Southern Political Science Association
• Western Political Science Association

• almost 300 country reports
• and almost 50 magazines

The database also features a subject-specific thesaurus with over 17,500 terms to provide high-precision searching guidance to researchers. Subject coverage includes comparative politics, humanitarian issues, international relations, law and legislation, non-governmental organizations and political theory. Over half the full-text titles offer backfiles to the year 2000, with approximately 30 percent of the full-text titles offering backfiles ranging from the 1960s to the 1990s.

Public Affairs Index is a bibliographic database covering all aspects of national and global contemporary public policy issues ranging from public health, economic policy, the environment, education policy, labor, housing, human and civil rights, to international commerce and conflict. It indexes over 2,000 academic journals, over 660 magazines, over 350 country reports, over 340 trade publications, and a variety of other sources, including industry reports, newspapers, conference papers, government documents, and more. Indexing coverage extends back to 1990 or later for approximately 90 percent of the titles, with over 400 titles offering indexing coverage extending to prior decades. The database is designed to provide up-to-date information on a broad range of topics of concern to the world today, and links to full-text materials are provided where available.

Together, these databases provide comprehensive access to the research literature, news, and other expert analyses of politics and policy. These databases replace Worldwide Political Science Abstracts and PAIS International.

We invite you to try Political Science Complete and Public Affairs Index and see what they can offer you. Please contact Richard Kearney, Electronic Resources Librarian (kearneyr@wpunj.edu or 973-720-2165), or Nancy Weiner, Library Liaison to the Political Science Department (weinern@wpunj.edu or 973-720-2161 if you have questions or comments about these databases.

There's Music in the Air (and Online)!: Naxos Music Library and Jazz Library Now Available

The Cheng Library is pleased to announce that we are now offering TWO new databases providing music online through streaming audio technology:

The Naxos Music Library is a large online classical music library. It offers streaming audio access to over 100,000 albums and features over 1.4 million tracks covering both standard and rare repertoire. Over 800 new albums are added to the library every month. The database offers the complete Naxos and Marco Polo catalogues plus the complete catalogues or selected titles from over 650 record labels. Along with classical music, a modest selection of jazz, world, and pop/rock are also represented. The Naxos Music Library can be accessed from any computer, anywhere, anytime. With the iPhone/iPod and Android mobile apps, subscribers can also access the service on the go, and the HTLM5 player can stream music though the standard internet connection of the most phones and tablets. The contents of the library can be searched by composer, work, genre and label; by keyword search; and by a sophisticated advanced search engine with up to 11 combined search criteria. In addition to the audio, Naxos Music Library provides liner notes for many recordings. Listeners can create personalized playlists or use predefined Naxos Music Library playlists.

Naxos Music Library Jazz is one of the most comprehensive collections of jazz music available online. Naxos Music Library Jazz comprises Naxos Jazz, the catalogue of Blue Note Records, and the 22 labels of Fantasy Jazz along with Prophone and Proprius. It currently offers over 100,000 tracks of jazz from 260 labels, and over 12,000 jazz artists are represented. U.S.-based Fantasy has the world's deepest jazz catalogue and offers the very best in blues and R&B. Blue Note offers albums featuring the legendary artist John Coltrane and iconic artists such as Herbie Hancock, Dexter Gordon, Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter and many others. Through a sophisticated online search engine, users can locate works by featured artist(s), disc, song title and catalogue number. Playlists can also be easily created for educational use, or for hours of continuous enjoyment. New jazz releases are continually added to ensure that the music library is always up-to-date.

Both Naxos Music Library and Naxos Music Library Jazz are excellent tools for musical education. They give faculty the opportunity to plan course work and assignments around much wider collections of material than are usually available in libraries, with the option to create customized playlists. Students will have access to the playlist recordings, on or off campus. Multiple users can listen to the same or different tracks at the same time. In the classroom, teachers can choose from a great selection of music to play without having to find or purchase CDs.

Both databases enable users to create static URLs linking to individual albums, playlists, repertoire, and tracks.

The audio in both databases is streamed through the web site. Adobe Flash is the default player, and recent versions of any major web browser software that meets the requirements for Adobe Flash should work fine. The music is streamed in Flash AAC format, and the standard sound quality produces near-CD quality audio.

Naxos offers brief overview videos that will introduce you to the content and features of each database, so try the overview video for Naxos Music Library and Naxos Music Library Jazz for a quick and easy orientation.

We invite you to try Naxos Music Library and Naxos Music Library Jazz. Please contact Richard Kearney (kearneyr@wpunj.edu or 973-720-2165) in you have any questions or need any additional information or assistance.

GenderWatch Database Offers Full-Text Support for Women's, Gender, and LGBT Studies

GenderWatch is our newest full-text database for supporting teaching and research in gender and women's studies, and gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) research. The database offers over 300 titles, with more than 250 in full-text, from an array of academic, radical, community and independent presses, with coverage back to 1970. Researchers and teachers may access more than 219,000 full articles on wide-ranging topics like sexuality, religion, societal roles, feminism, masculinity, eating disorders, healthcare, and the workplace.

GenderWatch's strong collection of important, current titles provides users comprehensive support for gender, family, ethnic, and societal studies from both academic and grassroots perspectives.  Users will find essential titles such as Off Our Backs (1970 to current) and Transgender Tapestry, international titles such as Sister Namibia and the Australian Feminist Law Journal, community newspapers such as Out & About and the Windy City Times, and many other diverse and interdisciplinary publications.

The database features a wide array of publication types, including scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, regional publications, books, booklets and pamphlets, conference proceedings, and reports of government and non-governmental organizations (a complete title list is available online). It is provided on the ProQuest platform and provides powerful search and browse capabilities.

We invite you to try GenderWatch and benefit from its diverse and high-quality content. Please contact Richard Kearney (kearneyr@wpunj.edu or 973-720-2165) if you have any questions.

Got Data If You Want 'Em: The Statistical Abstract of the United States Available Online Once Again

Following a budget cut in 2011, the U.S. Census Bureau terminated the collection of data for its Statistical Compendia program, resulting in the discontinuation of major statistical publications, including the Statistical Abstract of the United States, one of the most important and useful reference publications ever produced. Subsequent to this decision, the database company ProQuest began publishing a new version of the Statistical Abstract online, and the Cheng Library is happy to announce that the current (2014) edition is now available online to the WPUNJ community.

The Statistical Abstract of the United States is the most authoritative and comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States. It offers convenient access to a wide variety of data on such topics as population, education, elections, all major sectors of the economy, health and nutrition, government, science and technology, transportation, housing, and much more. Every table in the Statistical Abstract provides citations to more extensive and detailed sources of data for its subject, which also makes it an efficient guide to data sources. The data in the Statistical Abstract is drawn from the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and many other Federal agencies and private organizations.

The online version of the Statistical Abstract features an easy-to-browse table of contents and keywork searching. All statistical tables can be exported to PDF or to Excel format for further analysis, and most of the data source citations appearing in the notes at the bottom of each table are hyperlinked for easy navigation to additional detail. A Quick Start Guide to the online edition is available featuring useful tips.

The older editions of the Statistical Abstract remain available through the Census Bureau's web site, but please the current edition for more recent data.

Please contact Richard Kearney (kearneyr@wpunj.edu or 973-720-2165) if you have any questions or need additional information about the Statistical Abstract of the United States.

New This Fall: The PsycTESTS Database

Starting this fall, the Cheng Library is offering PsycTESTS, a research database produced by the American Psychological Association that provides access to over 20,000 psychological tests, measures, scales, surveys, and other assessments as well as descriptive information about the test and its development and administration. The database is a most valuable resource for any student or faculty member engaged in data collection, survey development, testing and measurement, methodological issues, or assessment.

PsycTESTS focuses primarily on unpublished tests, that is, tests developed by researchers but not made commercially available. Most records in the database link to a variety of materials describing the test in peer-reviewed literature, technical reports, or dissertations as well as links to related peer-reviewed literature describing test development, review, or use. All records include a summary that describes the test, with its purpose and some history of its development, and most records include the actual test instrument.

Each record in PsycTESTS includes data on the scope of the test, test implementation, a high-level overview of the test's development, and reliability and validity data (when available). Tests include those compiled from a systematic review of peer-reviewed journals published by APA, Hogrefe Publishing Group, and other large publishers; technical reports from the APA's PsycEXTRA database; contributions from individual test authors; collections from the Archives of the History of American Psychology; and more. Commercially available tests indexed by APA are also included, with links to purchase the instrument from the publisher.

The database, which we are providing on the EBSCOhost platform, offers a variety of search and browse options, including access by test name or acronym, author, construct, subject, format, population, year, and other attributes.

We invite you to try PsycTESTS and see what its unique content has to offer. Please contact Richard Kearney (kearneyr@wpunj.edu or 973-720-2165) if you have questions or comments about PsycTESTS.

ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Database Now Available

The Cheng Library is pleased to announce that the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database is now available. The database includes three million dissertation and theses citations from around the world from 1861 to the present day together with over one million full-text dissertations available for download in PDF format. It represents a significant enhancement to the University community's access to current and historical research, and it will be of special interest to faculty and graduate students.

The database offers full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997 and strong retrospective full-text coverage for older graduate works.

More than 80,000 new full-text dissertations and theses are added to the database each year through dissertation publishing partnerships with 700 leading academic institutions worldwide and collaborative retrospective digitization of dissertations through ProQuest's Digital Archiving and Access Program. Full-text dissertations are archived as submitted by the degree-granting institution. Some will be native PDF, some PDF image.

Each dissertation published since July 1980 includes a 350-word abstract written by the author. Master's theses published since 1988 include 150-word abstracts. Simple bibliographic citations are available for dissertations dating from as far back as 1637. Where available, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses provides 24-page previews of dissertations and theses.

The database supports a wide variety of search and browse options, including
searching by institutional affiliation, degree awarded, advisor, and department. Retrieved records can easily be saved, emailed, exported to bibliographic management software, or printed.

Theses and dissertations submitted by WPUNJ students will continue to be available through our special Theses and Dissertations @ The William Paterson University of New Jersey portal as well as in the larger database.

We invite you to try ProQuest Dissertations and Theses this semester. Please contact Richard Kearney (kearneyr@wpunj.edu or 973-720-2165) in you have any questions or need any additional information.