I Didn't Know You Had That... Part 3

Global Intelligence from Wherever You Are

You may have heard of the well-known international weekly news magazine, The Economist, but did you know about the Economist Intelligence Unit, a research wing of the same company specializing in country, management and industry analysis?  

The focus is on business decision making, but there's a lot for students or those with a general interest in world affairs in ViewsWire (you'll need a library card to log in--get one, it's free), a global current awareness and analysis information source from the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Like the CIA World Factbook and similar information sources, the division of information is regional and geographical, but ViewsWire strongly emphasizes current awareness, with dozens of new or updated articles released daily about the latest developments worldwide.

I know from my days as a reference librarian that "country profile"-type projects are common at all academic levels.  A few more subscription resources from the library that can be useful for these type of projects (again, you'll need your library card handy):

• Encyclopedia Britannica Online has some useful geography-focused web tools in addition to lengthy encyclopedia entries for countries.
•  Grolier Online features Lands and Peoples (select it from the list of resources on the left-hand side), an elementary-level encyclopedia of world cultures, countries and history.
• The Gale Virtual Reference Library (discussed previously in this blog post) has numerous useful reference books under categories such as History and Nation and World, at various academic levels.

Last Time On "I Didn't Know You Had That..."

This is an ongoing series highlighting interesting resources, features or other aspects of TPL's web services.  If you've missed previous parts:

• Part 2: Toronto Star / Globe and Mail historic archives
• Part 1: Gale Virtual Reference Library

I Didn't Know You Had That... Part 2

Back In the Old Days...

We made passing reference to them in the previous post in this series, but did you know you can get the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star going back to the 19th century from the Toronto Public Library website?  Both are available through a similar interface (you'll be asked for your library card number, so have it ready or get a library card if you don't yet have one--it's free).

Most online newspaper archives present articles in a web-based format that removes them from their original context (position above or below the fold, surrounding ads, etc), but these ones actually present searchable high-resolution scans of the original newspaper pages.  This means you can do things like see a copy of the front page of the newspaper for the day you or a family member were born, or admire the vintage ads surrounding the articles.  This format isn't as easy to browse as some others, but it's a lot closer to having a real copy of the newspaper (from back to 1844 for the Globe--how cool is that?) in front of you than a lot of other web-based resources of this sort.

Last Time On "I Didn't Know You Had That..."

This is an ongoing series highlighting interesting resources, features or other aspects of TPL's web services.  If you've missed previous parts:

• Part 1: Gale Virtual Reference Library