Tuesday, April 26, 2005

FirstSearch At Your Fingertips

OCLC FirstSearchThe Santa Fe Public Library used part of the State General Obligation Bond money which New Mexico residents overwhelmingly voted for--(your library thanks you and your fellow citizens thank you)--to buy a large block of searches in OCLC FirstSearch.
       This is a terrific resource, access to 35-or-so different databases with (variously): detailed citations, business directory listings, some (not much) access to full text articles, and--we librarians use this the most--WorldCat, the database of holdings of nearly 40,000 libraries from which we borrow books and articles by interlibrary loan. WorldCat is where you find out what books are out there, anywhere. Then you ask us to borrow them for you by InterLibrary Loan.
       Some of the databases available include Agricola (Materials relating to all aspects of agriculture, forestry, and animal science), Dissertation Abstracts (Dissertations and theses from institutions in North America and Europe), GEOBASE (Worldwide literature on geography, geology, and ecology), PAIS (Database chronicling global public policy and social issues) and WilsonSelectPlus (Full text articles in science, humanities, education and business).
       FirstSearch is only available from inside the library, but it is definitely worth booking some Internet time on one of our machines when you need to do some research. You'll find links to FirstSearch on the magazine database page, and at the bottom right of the table on the Internet Starting Points.

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