Economic Honours Year Tutorial

By: Aaron Tay Economics resource librarian

aarontay@nus.edu.sg

Contact me

http://bit.ly/nuslibrary

Content

• Basic search skills• Search journal articles• Search theses• Search newspapers• Search statistical data

Resources you can search

WhatBooks

ForOverviews, detailed look

LINC, LINC+Where

WhatJournal articles, conference proceedings

For

Where

Recent developments

Databases, ejournals, LINC, LINC+

WhatNewspapers

ForReactions, recent happenings

Factiva, LexisNexis, microformsWhere

WhatTheses

ForIn-dept treatment of topics

LINC,LINC+, theses databasesWhere

WhatStatistical data

ForQuantitative information

Statistical databases, internetWhere

Basic search skills

• Boolean operators

• Parenthesis

• Truncation/Wildcards

Boolean operators

UniversityCollegeOR

University

College

University ReturnsANDReturns

University

EducationSex

NOTEducation

Sex

Education

Truncation/Wildcards (*?)

UsageVariation in spellings

ExamplesImprovingement*e

Truncation/Wildcards (*?)

UsageVariation in spellings

ExamplesOrgani ?esz

Parenthesis

()Control order of operations

Examples

Reduction AND Poor OR poverty

)(

(

4 + 5 X 10 = 54

)

Identify search terms

• Synonyms• Narrower/broader term• Related term • Alternate spellings

SamplePoverty reduction in Thailand

(poverty or poor) and (improve* or reduc*)

(government* or state* or public) and (poli* or regul*

or legisla*)

Thailand South-East Asia

ASEAN

(poverty or poor) and (improve* or reduc*) and Thailand

Journal articles

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2

3

EconLit

• Producer: The American Economic Association• Coverage: 1969 – present• Provides bibliographic references and abstracts of

journal articles, book chapters/reviews, working papers from RePEC, some dissertations, etc. More details.

• Contains more than 350,000 records on accounting, consumer economics, monetary policy, labor, marketing etc.

• One of the major resources for Economics , mostly citations, some full-text.

http://ovidsp.ovid.com

EconLit log-in

• ID = nustrain• Password: trainingtraining

nustrain

Econlit – Hands on

Poverty reduction in Thailand

1 2 3

SamplePoverty reduction in Thailand

(poverty or poor) and (improve* or reduc*)

Thailand South-East Asia

ASEAN

(poverty or poor) and (improve* or reduc*) and Thailand

Econlit multi-field

Multi field search

Scopus

• Producer: Elsevier • Coverage: 1841-1996 (17 million records) , 1996- (16

million records)• Largest abstract and citation database covering

science, technical, medial, social science• Use this to supplement your search to go beyond

Economics for multi-disciplinary papers.

Basic search

1

Scopus – Hands on

Poverty reduction in Thailand

(poverty or poor) and (improve* or reduc*) and Thailand

12

Refining results

Results page

123

Exporting result-scopus

12

Qns: What to do if you cannot get your journal articles?

Ans: Document Delivery Service (DDS)

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2

3

• All requests must be approved by Supervisor• Free, but maximum 3 requests for Honours years

Newspapers

http://newspapers.nl.sg/

Theses

keywords1

1. To search all theses in the library

1

keywords

2. To search all NUS economic theses

• university singapore economics

2

3. To browse all NUS theses

HD30 yyyy3

Proquest dissertations and theses

• Producer: Proquest UMI• Includes over 2 million master's theses and

dissertations, with over 60,000 titles added every year from Universities in United States and Canada.

• Provides full text access for many items.

Statistical data

Statistics basics

Select the following • Geographic coverage : Region, Country or

Country aggregate (e.g ASEAN)• Statistic series (e.g. Real GDP : US$ at 2005

prices)• Chronological coverage (e.g. 1980-2000

monthly)

EIU Country data• Producer: Economist Intelligence Unit

• Geographic Coverage: 150 countries, 45 regional aggregates (e.g ASEAN).

• Chronological coverage :1980- (annual) , 1993- (monthly, quarterly).

• 317 series (statistic data on macro indicators – Inflation, GDP, interest rates, trade balance of payments, demographics etc)

• Includes forecasts (figures will appear in green)

• Other EIU databases include– EIU MarketIndicators & Forecasts– EIU CityData – EIU Commodities

EIU Citydata

Knowing where to look

Statistical Sources• Access via E-Resources>Databases>By

type>Statistical Data and Economics subject guide

International• EIU CountryData, EIU CityData,

EIU Market Indicators and Business Forecast• International Financial Statistics • World development Indicators Online• SourceOECD (OECD Stat)• Statistics Database (World Trade Organisation)

Statistical Sources II

Business/industry related/Finance • Global Market Information Database (GMID) • ISI Emerging Markets• Frost & Sullivan• Orbis and Osiris

Statistical Sources III

Singapore• Yearbook of statistics, Singapore (print & web)• SingSTAT Time Series• Statlink• Singapore 1000 (CDROM)• Statistics on Singapore : annotated

bibliography

More statistics database

Country statistics

• Search the site of the countries' official body (e.g. department, ministry, bureau, agency etc) responsible for statistics

• http://www.census.gov/main/www/stat_int.html• http://isi.cbs.nl/directory.htm

List of statistical agencies

Tips for looking for statistics

• If subject is topical and/or country, you can try looking at websites of international or regional organizations devoted to the subject.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_organizations

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intergovernmental_organizations

Tips for looking for statistics

• Don’t neglect print! Search LINC with subject heading . e.g China statistic

Subject Guides

Proxy BookmarkletUse Library Proxy Bookmark

to access Full-text

Search PluginsFor Internet Explorer 7 &

Firefox 2.0+ (beta)

What are Search Plugins?

• Allows you to do a direct search from your internet browser search box

• Saves time from having to visit a page & then inputting your search query

• How to install these plugins?How to install these plugins?

– http://bit.ly/searchpluginhttp://bit.ly/searchplugin

What is a Proxy Bookmarklet?

• Inserts the NUS library proxy stem (libproxy1.nus.edu.sg) into the URL of the article.

74

VendorUser NUS Library Proxy server

I want article X I want article X

Okay you are recognized, here is article X.

Here is article X

How to install the Proxy Bookmarklet in my browser?

• Click on the link below and follow the instructions:

– http://bit.ly/nuslibproxyhttp://bit.ly/nuslibproxy

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Need Help?

• Advisory Service atInformation Desk,Central Library,Level 5

• Email me: aarontay@nus.edu.sg

• Tel: 6516 2030