New database - Gallup Analytics

Gallup Analytics is an online analytics platform containing data from the Gallup World Poll, which collects opinions on the most important issues worldwide. Topic areas include: economic confidence, employment, leadership, military and police, religion, food, corruption, and more.

Data can be viewed by demographic and socio-economic groups, and across geographies, and can be exported to create custom data tables, trends, charts and scatter plots.
 

The Map Collection

Western Bank Library houses the library's map collection. The whole country is covered at a scale of 1:25,000 and 1:50,000. Larger scale maps are available for local areas (North Derbyshire, South Yorkshire) at a scale of 1:2,500 and 1:10,000. Sheffield is covered in greater detail; 1:500 and 1:1,250.  There is a wide range of historical maps (mainly 1850s onward) as well as geology maps for England, Scotland and Wales at a scale 1:50,000. The collection also includes:

• Aerial photos covering Sheffield and Rotherham for 1992
• A good range of atlases and gazetteers
• A small collection of foreign maps used for teaching and research.

Alongside the physical map collection the library also has a subscription to Digimap

For information on how to consult maps in Western Bank Library see our Subject guide: Maps in the Library and on the Internet

Digimap

Following on from discussions at the last Geography department staff-student committee meeting, our latest Social Sciences newsletter features an article on Digimap.


This is a really useful database which many people are not aware of, so take a look! You can also check out the Digimap blog and find helpful videos on the EDINADigimap Youtube channel.

Magnificent Maps

Just a reminder about the marvellous Magnificent Maps exhibition running at the British Library St Pancras until 19 September 2010. If you haven't had a chance to visit it yet, do try to - it's free!  The website supports the exhibition and in addition to visitor information it also has some great online features. These include interactive images of some historic maps including the Psalter world map and the Fra Mauro map with background information on their content and importance.

If you missed the recent BBC series The Beauty of Maps the BBC website has some video highlights of the maps featured and a link to Maptube,  a free resource for viewing, sharing, mixing and mashing maps online, created by UCL's Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis.

Documents on British Policy Overseas

The University Library has arranged a trial to the Documents on British Policy Overseas database.  This historical collection gathers together tens of thousands of UK Government documents relating to Britain’s international relations, including foreign policy instructions, letters and memos, business reports and more.

The database is produced in collaboration between ProQuest and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. They say "Documents on British Policy Overseas offers researchers the opportunity to see beneath the surface of the major events of the twentieth century. Users can access contemporary accounts and follow the detailed exchanges that shaped British foreign policy from the origins of the First World War and beyond".

The trial  is available to all registered staff and students at the University until 31 July 2010.  Please let us have your feedback.

OECD iLibrary trial

We have another new trial running. This one is  to the OECD iLibrary which is available to registered staff and students of the University of Sheffield until December 2009. Although it's a preliminary version and not yet fully complete nor functional, do take a look and let us have your feedback. There is a Guided Tour of the OECD iLIbrary to help you.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is one of the world's largest sources of comparable statistics, and economic and social data. As well as collecting data, OECD monitors trends, analyses and forecasts economic developments and researches social changes or evolving patterns in trade, environment, agriculture, technology, taxation and more. This trial provides access to all their books, statistics and journals.

Many OECD publications are also freely available online. They can be found either from the OECD website,  via a 'Contains' search on Find it, or from the ESDS International database in MUSE.

Global Barometer Surveys

Global barometer surveys is the first comprehensive effort to measure, at a mass level, the current social, political, and economic atmosphere around the world. It provides an independent, non partisan, multidisciplinary view of public opinion on a range of policy-relevant issues.

Check out this new resource by connecting to the Global Barometer Surveys website. You'll need to be logged in to MUSE but you'll be prompted to do this if you're not already logged in.

Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports - free!

The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Report has been purchased by JISC Collections and is available free of charge to UK Higher and Further Education institutions and Research Councils as part of the UK National Academic Archive.

Covering the period 1974–1996 in the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Eastern Europe, the JISC selection of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports includes a wealth of transcripts of broadcasts and news from around the world all translated into the English language.

The FBIS Daily Report series:

• contains significant, critical material unavailable from any other source. The newspaper, short-wave, radio, and television broadcast texts in many cases exist nowhere else but in the English transcription or translation of those broadcasts which have vanished into the airways.


• shows what the US government knew from the open source intelligence and when they knew it.


• shows what the world thought of the U.S. and its democratic allies, “the West,” in often harsh and critical assessments.

The FBIS Daily Report has been the United States' principal record of
political and historical open source intelligence for nearly 70 years.
it provides an archive of translated broadcasts, news agency
transmissions, newspapers, periodicals, and government statements from
around the world. It also includes many firsthand reports of events as
they occurred.

The archive collection covers the following regions and dates:

* Middle East and North Africa, 1974-1987
* Near East and South Asia, 1987-1996
* South Asia, 1980-1987
* Sub-Saharan Africa, 1974-1980
* Africa, 1987-1996
* Eastern Europe, 1974-1996