New Online Resources: News & Reference

The library has several new online resources for you to explore. All of them are available from off campus to DACC students and staff with a valid user i.d. and password. American Newspapers provides full-text access to more than 2000 newspapers, including 128 specifically from Illinois. The Commercial News and News-Gazette are among the Illinois titles. In addition the database provides access to news video from several of the major news, sports and entertainment outlets.

But that's not all! In the Gale Virtual Reference Center, the library has added several new online e-reference sources covering several different topics. New titles include American Decades: Primary Sources, a reference series that presents examples of original source documents of all types covering the 20th century. It includes everything from government documents to songs, from homemaking documents to political cartoons, and in so doing presents a comprehensive sense of the history of the last century. The St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, a reference series that looks at the history of world through its popular artifacts and interests. Entries include information on Elvis and Birkenstocks, MAD magazine and Thanksgiving. The library has this title in print as well, and it is arguably our most entertaining reference title. Also added is The Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture. This multidisciplinary work examines Latin America from the pre-historic period to the present day, including information on important figures, cultural periods and genres, and events. In a similar vein, the New Encyclopedia of Africa examines that continent's past, from the ancient Egyptian culture of the North to amazing sub-Saharan civilizations of the Great Zimbabwe and other regions, to today's 53 independent nations, which vary radically in degree of success and conflict. Finally, The updated Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology offers those interested in exploring these topics authoratative sources of information on the phenomena, personalities, topics, locales and groups related to the subject.

And one final resource, which actually entered the library's collection late last semester, is the Sage e-Reference collection. The Sage collection consists of 66 online encyclopedias, primarily in the social sciences, but also in history, business, media and education. Invaluable to anyone interested in the social sciences in particular, the Sage set includes titles focused on masculinity, death and dying, law enforcement, white-collar and corporate crime, terrorism, world poverty, human development, distributed learning, religious and spiritual development, disability, activism and social justice, career development, and epidemiology, to name just a few.

Take a few minutes to explore the library's latest resources and see all they have to offer you!