The librarian is: BLOGGING | Journalism Library, Columbia University

Sometimes, you’re writing a trend story and want some quick facts to plug in. Sometimes, you’re casting around for a story idea.

In both cases, Research Alert, a publication searchable via Factiva, provides quick and convenient access to useful stats taken from market research reports (which are generally not available for free on the web).

To search Research Alert, connect to Factiva (access restricted to current Columbia affiliates) and plug in the following publication code in the search box:

rst=RSAL

After this, type and, then include keywords related to your topic, e.g.:

rst=RSAL and clothing

Here is an excerpt from a search result:

Big and tall men find best fit online.(notices)(Brief Article)
6 January 2006
Research Alert
10
ISSN: 0739-358X; Volume 24; Issue 1
English
Copyright 2006 Gale Group Inc. All rights reserved.

Frustrated by not being able to find clothes that fit them in stores, many big and tall men are turning to the Internet (33%) and catalogs (17%) for clothes that fit them, according to The NPD Group. Major complaints about the shirts available in stores include length too short (54%), sleeves too short (42%), tight necks and shoulders (38% each) and tightness across the chest (33%). Pants are often too tight in the waist (35%) and thighs (30%). [Clothing/Accessories]

The Columbia Undergraduate Science Journal is brand-new, with a first issue expected in April 2006. Watch their site for more details…

That’s right, this is FREE to anyone out there on the Net.

Enjoy!

Facts of Life is a series of issue briefings for health reporters, brought to you by the Center for the Advancement of Health, a nonprofit which translates the latest evidence-based research on health, health care, prevention and chronic disease management for the general public.

General Science Full Text: (access restricted to current Columbia affiliates) A multidisciplinary database that indexes articles in general science periodicals back to 1984 (with full text available from 1995 on for selected titles).

PsycINFO: (access restricted to current Columbia affiliates) The premier database for literature in psychology and related disciplines, PsycINFO includes references back to 1880.

MEDLINE: (access restricted to current Columbia affiliates) The premier database for finding research articles in the biomedical sciences. Columbia offers students and faculty access to Medline via the OVID interface, which has a more sophisticated search mechanism, and which makes locating online full-text versions of articles indexed in Medline simpler, via Columbia’s “e-Link” feature.

Medline is also accessible free to the public via PubMed, at http://www.pubmed.gov/

Scientific American Archive Online: (access restricted to current Columbia affiliates) The full text of the magazine, with images, archived back to 1993.

Ig Nobel Awards: Given each October by the publishers of the science humor journal, Annals of Improbable Research. Note that these awards generate a fair amount of media interest when they are announced, so if you find something you’re interested in writing about, do find out if and where it was already covered!

Science Libraries at Columbia: The science libraries at Columbia are: Biological Sciences Library, Chemistry Library, Engineering Library, Geology Library, Geoscience Library (at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory), Health Sciences Library (at Health Sciences campus, 168th St.), Mathematics & Science Library, Physics & Astronomy Library, and the Psychology Library.

CQ Homeland Security (access restricted to current Columbia affiliates) is “a web-based intelligence service that brings subscribers the most up-to-date and comprehensive homeland security information. A dedicated team of CQ reporters and editors provide daily news and analysis on the latest homeland security spending and policy issues. Subscribers also have access to a special homeland security version of CQ schedules, complete with event dates, times and hearing room locations.”

Of potential interest to News21 students: the “Industry and Contracting” news link on the left-hand menu.

Factiva and ThomsonONE Banker (access restricted to current Columbia affiliates) are two central sources for doing background research on public companies and on executives. For more business research resources, visit the Business & Economics Library website.

Of particular importance on the site: the 24/7 Help feature is a searchable knowledgebase that guides you through databases and other resources, and the Guides link takes you to research guides on various topics.

ThomsonONE Banker

ThomsonONE Banker is a comprehensive database of company information (as well as data on indices, portfolios, stock markets, and deals). Its interface is quite user-friend for company searches. For more in-depth SEC filings and PDFs of company annual reports, see the companion database, Thomson Research (access restricted to current Columbia affiliates).

Getting the Most out of Factiva

Factiva, a joint product of Dow Jones and Reuters, is a source for the full text of thousands of news sources, including newspapers, wires, broadcast transcripts, and trade publications. It also contains a significant amount of company information, including stock prices, balance sheet information, and lists of competitors within the same sector.

When searching the News portion of Factiva, two types of searching can help to filter your results down to the most useful sources:

Proximity searching:
A proximity search puts search terms within a certain distance of each other in the story, and replaces “AND” as the connector between terms. Some examples:
gates same tuberculosis
(this will find the name Gates in the same paragraph as tuberculosis)
unisys w/10 homeland security
(this will find unisys within 10 words of the phrase homeland security – you can change the number of words to anything between 1 and 10)

Atleast searching:
An atleast search specifies a minimum number of occurrences of a word in a story (to a maximum of 50). It is particularly helpful for finding more in-depth stories, or transcripts of a broadcast on which a particular person was a guest. Example:
robert w/2 chen and atleast8 rae
(this will find Robert within two words of Chen, and at least 8 occurrences of RAE).