St. Thomas Libraries Blog

I just received a helpful email from Facts on File World News Digest today.  They write:

Follow the 2012 Elections with Up-to-Date Coverage
from World News Digest

As a subscriber to Facts on File World News Digest, you know this acclaimed database offers up-to-date coverage of U.S. and world news through informative overview articles, newswire stories, and handy guides to its comprehensive archive.

As the 2012 elections approach, our extensive 2012 Election Guide is the perfect place to turn for current, complete coverage of the U.S. presidential and congressional elections–from the candidates, campaigns, and conventions to the key issues, debates, and more. Fascinating information about past presidential elections from 1940 to the present is also included.

Librarians: please forward this email to faculty in history, political science, international relations, government, and related subjects, or add these links to your library’s Web page to direct students to this invaluable content.

Quick links to get started:

Candidates:

• Barack Obama
• Herman Cain
• Michelle Bachmann
• Mitt Romney
• Rick Perry

Key Issue: Presidential Primary System

Presidential Elections: From 1940 to the Present

I wrote about Facts on File World News Digest back in September and how handy it is for covering, explaining and in some cases condensing today’s world news and current issues. It’s great for covering the Eurozone crisis, the various wars, Occupy (fill in the name of a place here), elections (both here and around the world) and almost every other major news story.

So this morning on the radio I heard that American Airlines’ parent company, AMR Corp, is filing for bankruptcy.  First off, who knew American Airlines was owned by someone else?  I thought they were the parent company.  But they’re not.  They’re the subsidiary.  So I was curious about AMR Corp. Luckily we have a very rich collection of business resources for me to quickly and easily find out more about AMR Corp.

Using the Business: Company Profiles subject database page, I found many different resources. A few were even suggested as the best profiles or directory-type information.  But I am familiar with Business & Company Resource Center and opted to use that.  Here’s what I got with one search on AMR Corp.

In one easy search I got all this info.  This first page had their business, SIC and NAICS codes, annual sales, SWOT analysis, and officers (plus much, much more).  But beyond this, I am able from this page to get articles (over on the left side) and tons of info using the buttons across the top.  INVESTMENT REPORTS gave me reports from today and older.  FINANCIALS is their income statement.  RANKINGS was really interesting.  It gave rankings of really diverse things (for example, they were listed as a best airline company for gay and lesbian employees, but ranked as one of the world’s companies with the lowest reputation for quality of management.  Ouch.).  RANKINGS also shows market share.  It was there I found out that they had 29% of the medical transportation share in 2006, but by 2008 they had only 1%.  INDUSTRY OVERVIEW gave me both industry overviews and Datamonitor Industry Market Research.  Only problem here was this industry stuff was old.  2009 old.  In business years, that’s nearly obsolete info.

That’s when I decided to take the librarian’s word for it and use what was considered the “best source for in-depth company profiles”: Standard & Poor’s NetAdvantage.  This one I’m not familiar with (which is why I chose Business & Company Resource Center).  Agreed, Standard & Poor’s NetAdvantage had a lot more information that was more current.  But as a non-business person, it was mostly over my head.  But the good news is, everything was really recent.  Stock reports were from this week.  Press release was from today.  Industry survey was from June.

The takeaway from all this is that you’re better off using a few resources from our robust collection instead of just one.  My original intent this morning was to find out a little bit about AMR Corp and what else they owned.  I got that and loads more info by using just these two resources.  Had I really needed to pursue this further, I would have used a few more of the company profiles resources like Mergent Online.  I would have gone to the Business: Industry Profiles page for a list of several sources for current industry info.  And I would have used the  International Directory of Company Histories to get a 7 page history of how AMR Corp got to today.

Finally, if I hadn’t found what I needed after about 5 minutes of searching, I would have asked a librarian.  Cuz I just don’t have that kind of time to spend floundering around.  Obviously, they know their stuff cuz they compiled pages of best sources for my topic.

I guess this is what happens when I listen to the news.  I should just go back to listening to KQ in the morning.

Those of you who know me know I’m obsessed with Moby Dick.  Not nearly as obsessed as Ahab was with him, but still pretty (ridiculously) obsessed.  So I wanted to carve out a little time today to say it was on this day in 1851 that Moby Dick; or, The Whale was published in the US by Harper.  It was published a month earlier in the UK, but this was its American debut.  Hermie was all of 32 when he wrote it.

A Companion to Herman Melville.  I’ll leave off the obvious joke of “perhaps his only one!” and say that this e-book is a fun skim/read if you’re as obsessed as I.  It’s got a chapter called “The language of Moby Dick: Read it if you can” cuz… yeah, that’s its reputation.  A pretty obtuse book.  But there is humor in it, loads of history, more than you’d ever want to know about whaling, a long, boring catalog of whales, and an eye-bleeding chapter on what white is.  And underneath it all, a seriously great story.

Literature Resource Center has got biographies of Melville, reviews and criticism, and topic and work overviews.

Literature Criticism Online has loads of criticism taken from several different sources – some criticisms contemporary to its publication (it was not well received).

Why Read Moby Dick?  This title pretty much says it all.

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex is nearly the same story as Moby Dick but so very much more enjoyable and readable.  You can see how this story inspired Melville to write Moby Dick.  And you can read accounts of the Essex in several newspapers of the day (use Proquest Historical Newspapers to read the articles- search on whaleship essex).

For those of you who want to celebrate but don’t want to lose whole weeks of your life, I highly recommend Sam Ita’s Moby Dick: A Pop-up Book.  Rest assured I do not have this checked out (I have my  own copy.  Doy).

The American artist Rockwell Kent illustrated Moby Dick for the Modern Library publication  (that’s a Rockwell Kent illustration above).  Some of these illustrations can be found in ARTstor.  Also in ARTstor are images from the Gregory Peck film version and Laurie Anderson’s Songs and Stories from Moby Dick – a performance piece she presented in Brooklyn in 1999.  I was there. Cuz I’m just that obsessed.

If you prefer learning through audio, Smithsonian Global Sounds has several sea shanty albums, including the musical film score: Whaler out of New Bedford, and Other Songs of the Whaling Era. If you’re going to listen to sea shanties, you simply cannot skip over the most brilliant compilation of sea shanties sung by some of the best interpreters of the genre: Classic Maritime Music from Smithsonian Folkways. I’m sure a lot of you are going to trust me on this one, but sooner or later your curiosity will get the better of you and you’ll give this a listen. And you will be hooked. Or I suppose I should say you’ll be harpooned.  There’s another really interesting album on Smithsonian Global Sound called American Storytellers, Vol. 3.  On it a few men tell their stories of hunting whales and surviving shipwrecks.  You know, it’s really quite interesting.  There’s also a volume 1 that has similar tales.

If you can overlook the shifting narrative and Hermie’s absurd tendencies to go on and on ad nauseum,  you may join some in considering it the greatest American novel.  I don’t go that far.  But I will say, it’s worth a read (probably not worthy of obsession, but I seem to be stuck with it).  And it was published 160 years ago today. Happy birthday (American) Moby Dick!