Library Research for ECON 300 Economic Analysis

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Library Researchfor ECON 300Economic Analysis

• Charlotte Johnson Jones
• Reference and Social Sciences Librarian
• Simpson Library
• Spring 2007

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An (Abbreviated) Search Model

• State your research topic or question.
• Identify the keywords and/or keyconcepts in your
  topic.
• Brainstorm to create a list of synonyms.
• Use Boolean operators, nesting, and wildcards to
  create a search statement. (Check for accuracy
  in the database help.)
• Choose an appropriate database for your subject.
• Search.
• Cull the results for hits and clues.
• Modify the search and/or follow new clues
• Return to step 5 and repeat.
• Stop when the same results begin to appear again
  and again. Use other models, such as chaining
  footnotes and browsing bibliography items to
  supplement your survey.
• Adapted from
• Greenlaw, S. A. (2006) Doing economics a guide
  to understanding and carrying out economic
  research. Boston Houghton Mifflin
• Ackermann, E., Hartman, K. Searching
  researching on the Internet and the World Wide
  Web. Wilsonville, OR Franklin, Beedle
  Associates.

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State yourresearch topic or question.

• Casinos and the new what-happens-here stays
  here Las Vegas seem to be the hottest places in
  America these days. Vegas-based reality, travel,
  and dramatic series are all over cable and the
  networks. Apparently trying to become a
  family-oriented theme park in the desert didnt
  work out so well for Vegas. (Remember
  Circus-Circus? And the roller coasters at New
  York-New York?) It all makes me wonder
• How do casinos affect a local economy?

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2) Identify the keywords in your topic.
How do casinos affect a local economy?
Lets assume that if we can find information
about casinos and a local economy it will have to
do with the relationship between the two. So
lets not use affect as a keyword.
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3) Brainstorm to create a list of synonyms
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4) Use Boolean operators, nesting, and
wildcards to create a search statement.
Put each set of synonyms together using OR.
Nest each set of synonyms in parentheses. Just
as in algebra, the parentheses tell the computer
to deal with finding the synonyms first. Then
link all three concepts together using AND.
(casinos OR gambling) AND (local OR region OR
regional) AND (economy OR economic)
Are there any words within each set of
parentheses that have the same root? Truncate, or
lop-off, the word at the root and add an asterisk
to the end. The asterisk is a wildcard that tells
the computer to search for all variations of that
word. Use the wildcard to search for the singular
and plural of a word also. This is the search
statement.
(casino OR gambling) AND (local OR region) and
econom
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4) Choose an appropriate database for your
subject

• For background information, choose a database
  with more popular sources
• Business and Company Resource Center
• Factiva (business and economic news including the
  Wall Street Journal)
• Lexis/Nexis Academic
• For the literature survey portion of your
  research project, choose databases with scholarly
  resources in your field
• Expanded Academic
• EconLIT

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Caution a database is NOT the same as a data set

• Databases and data sets are both compilations of
  information stored on a computer and organized
  into records and fields so that the information
  may be manipulated and/or searched.
• Sometimes the terms are used interchangeably but
  most librarians or information scientists make a
  distinction between the two based on content.
• To a librarian, a database contains citations,
  abstracts, or even full text of articles and
  other primarily verbal information.
• A data set, on the other hand, usually contains
  raw numbers, often the data gathered from surveys
  and other research projects.

Scout around for data sets when refining your
topic.
For your ECON300 assignment you will probably
either create or locate a data set to analyze,
i.e. you need raw data. If you are not going to
gather the data yourself (through a survey, for
example) be sure that you can actually find the
data you will need before your finalize your
research question. Remember that most research
articles only report the highlights and the
authors own analysis of data. Articles rarely
include actual raw data.
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Data sets at UMW

• ICPSR (See your professor for help.)
• Inter-university Consortium for Political and
  Social Research archive of downloadable data sets
• Sets may require special software, computer
  equipment, or codebooks to decipher and run.
• Lexis Nexis Statistical (See your librarian for
  help.)
• Searchable statistics compiled by national and
  international sources, including the U.S. Census,
  World Bank, U.S. Departments of Justice,
  Commerce, Labor, and many more
• Contains statistical tables, plus a few
  statistics and time series in Excel format
• Provides links to primary statistical Web sites,
  such as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
• 10K Wizard (See your librarian for help.)
• Contains data drawn from financial reports for
  U.S. publicly-held companies
• Construct downloadable Excel files of financial
  indicators in time series for individual
  companies
• Select companies according to financial criteria,
  such as net income, or by NAIC or SIC code
• Create downloadable Excel comparison reports for
  groups

See also Guide to Finding Statistics
http//www.umw.edu/library/research/guides_to_libr
ary_resource/finding_statistics.php
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EconLit

• The database for scholarly literature in
  economics
• Online, expanded version of the Journal of
  Economic Literature
• Contains citations and abstracts for journal
  articles, books, book chapters, books,
  dissertations, and working papers
• Contains no full text except for book reviews
  since 1993
• Coverage from 1969-current
• Updated monthly
• Over 638,000 records as of February 2004
• The database is produced by the American
  Economics Association
• Database is put into an interface (or platform)
  and sold to libraries and other research
  organizations by several different commercial
  vendors. UMW gets our access to EconLit through
  Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA).
• Search features in EconLit may vary from platform
  to platform, but the content is the same. (This
  will be good to know when EconLit looks different
  in grad school.)

Access EconLit from the librarys home page
http//www.library.umw.edu
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Searching EconLit
The EconLit link on the librarys web page opens
to Advanced Search.
Advanced Search Anywhere is basically a keyword
search.
Use this to change to a completely different CSA
database, not a different subject search in
EconLit.
Notice that this is the only clue youre
searching EconLit. Got your reading glasses?
Limits your search to updates (new records are
entered monthly), to references for journal
articles, or to English only. Notice there is no
limit for full text.
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Sample search
Search Statement (casino or gambling) AND
(local or region) and econom
Notice that you dont have to worry about
parentheses when you enter the search. The search
boxes take care of that. And according to the
Search Tips the asterisk is, in fact, the
wildcard for EconLit.
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Notice the numberand type of results
Click on the underlined number of results on any
green tab to go and see a subset of results by
publication type Journals, Peer Reviewed
Journals, Books, Book Reviews, and More
Whoa. This search returned 579 records. Well
look at a way to narrow that down in a minute.
Peer Reviewed Journals is a subset of Journals.
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More gt results
More gt includes Dissertations, and a miscellany
category labeled Other.
Click lt More to see the initial set of results.
Other items are usually working papers or book
chapters.
Working paper.
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Notice the available information for each item
Your search terms are in bold italics.
The citation.
A portion of the abstract Click View Record or
the article title to see the full abstract.
JEL subject headings with three-digit
classification codes and CSA standard subject
headings are assigned to each item.
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A sampleEconLit record
Click to see more works by each of these authors.
Notice the descriptors also appear in the record.
You can check one or more descriptors to build a
new search. Use descriptor searches to narrow, to
broaden, or to find related items.
Heres the complete abstract.
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Notice how broad the JEL descriptor is in this
case
Notice how broad the JEL descriptor that includes
gambling is Sports, Gambling, Recreation,
Tourism (L830). No wonder so many results
werent about gambling at all. Lets revise our
search to control for this.
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To refine, or pare down, the results of the search
Do another advanced search. Look for gambling in
the descriptors. This will pick up results that
have Sports, Gambling, Recreation, Tourism, just
as in the first search. Leave the local and
economic variables the same.
Add a search row.
Then add casino with AND. This tells the
database only to return Sports, Gambling,
Recreation, Tourism items that ALSO have
something to do with casinos. Because we have
added an additional requirement with AND, we
should get many less results.
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Thats more like it!
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Unfortunately, there is no full text except for
book reviews in EconLit. Click Locate Journal
Article to check availability at UMW Libraries.
These results definitely are relevant to our
concern about the relationship between casinos
and the local economy.
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Locate Journal Article
Locate Journal Article (or a link with a similar
name in other databases) always opens the same
pop-up box specific to UMW Libraries. The
citation is automatically entered at the top of
the box.
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If the articleis available online
The box shows links to the article in other UMW
Libraries online databases. Click to retrieve the
full-text.
If the article is not available online, search in
the library catalog for the title of the
periodical (not the article title).
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Last resort!Interlibrary Loan
New policy 10/2/10

• Please notice the interlibrary loan policy.
• To better manage your interlibrary loan requests
• Use the Locate Journal Article feature and get
  materials that are in Simpson Library
• Read abstracts to be sure articles will be useful
  before you request them
• Ask for help from the Social Sciences Librarian

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Mark recordsand manage search results
Mark items on the results screen and click
Update Marked List before moving to another
screen.
Click Save, Print, Email to manage your results.
Or check here on the individual record screen and
click Update Marked List before returning to
results.
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Great feature!
From Save Print, E-mail, use QuikBib to create a
bibliography from your marked items. Choose your
citation style from the dropdown menu and click
Create.
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If your browserblocks pop-ups . . .
Click here
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A QuikBib samplein Chicago style
Do double-check references. Notice that CSA
automatically inserts a web address for each of
these articles. If you didnt get to the article
through that address, dont leave it in. Put the
details of how you accessed each article you got
online. And correct the accessed date. Your
professor will spot-check details.