Author Archives: Carr Ross

Streaming Video Available!

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Looking for a film clip to enhance a presentation?

Check out Films on Demand, a streaming video database of nonfiction films from the BBC, Nova, Frontline, Scientific American, History Channel, and many more high-quality producers. When viewing a video, click on “Embed this Video” for a link to insert into your presentation.

For more music and dance videos, see also Naxos Video Library.

Please see Linking to Online Videos for further help with embedding into your project.

Connecting to Library Databases – Security Certificate Problem

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If you use library databases from off campus: Please take note…

The library is currently experiencing a problem affecting the login process when connecting to Library databases from off campus.  Your web browser will generate errors about the security of the connection. Unfortunately, the problem is at the security company’s end, so we cannot immediately fix the problem, and until it is resolved these messages will appear.

These messages are an important part of your security online and we would never recommend that you ignore them.  Any time you see them appear on a site you visit regularly, you should check with the website’s administrators to determine if there is a danger.

In this case, the error messages are being caused by a known problem. The Library and IT are working to resolve the issue. In the meantime, it is safe to continue past the error messages and log in to access the remote databases. The login process is still encrypted, so your information is still safe. We apologize for the confusion. We will be monitoring the situation and will make an announcement when the problem is remedied. 

Here are examples of what the error messages look like in different browsers, with instructions on how to proceed:

This is how the error looks in Firefox:

To proceed, click on “I Understand the Risks” and the message will expand to:

You then click “Add Exception” and see:

Click “Confirm Security Exception” and you should be given the Library login screen.

In Internet Explorer, you will see:

Click “Continue to this website” and you should be taken to the login screen:

In Safari you will see a message like this:

Click ‘Continue’ and you should be passed along to the login screen.

Yale’s Human Relations Area Files (HRAF)

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The long-renowned collections of archaeological and cross-cultural studies known as the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) have now been digitized (eHRAF). The Library has access to both the archaeological and cross-cultural databases, eHRAF Archaeology and eHRAF World Cultures.

Find out why the Abkhasians live so long or how moms rule in the Zuni tribe. And who really had the first tattoo?

Caveat: It’s a bit clunky to use, but you are richly rewarded for your efforts!

Dissertations and Theses Database

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You now have access to the full text, where available, for the dissertations and theses included in the database Proquest Dissertations and Theses: The Humanities and Social Sciences Collection. The database offers full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997 and strong retrospective full text coverage for older graduate works. Each dissertation published since July 1980 includes a 350-word abstract written by the author. Master’s theses published since 1988 include 150-word abstracts. Simple bibliographic citations are available for dissertations dating from 1637.

E-Resources for Researching Women’s History

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National Service Women’s Land Army.
H.G. Gawthorn [S.l. : s.n., 1917]
Library of Congress Prints
and Photographs Division
  • Gender Studies
    GSD covers the full spectrum of gender scholarship and includes several thousand links to freely available and indexed full-text articles. Source documents include professional journals, conference papers, books, book chapters, government reports, discussion and working papers, theses & dissertations, websites and other sources.
  • Women and Social Movements in the United States
    Revolves around projects that interpret and present documents on the history of women in social movements in the U.S. between 1600 and 2000. Includes a dictionary of social movements and organizations, a chronology of U.S. Women’s History, teaching tools with lesson ideas, and quarterly news from the archives about U.S. Women’s History.
  • Sociological Abstracts
    Comprehensive index to journals, books and proceedings in sociology, including women and family issues.
  • Women Writers Online
    The Brown University Women Writers Project is a long-term research project devoted to early modern women’s writing and electronic text encoding. Their goal is to bring texts by pre-Victorian women writers out of the archive and make them accessible to a wide audience of teachers, students, scholars, and the general reader.

Polling and Survey Sources

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  • Gallup Brain
    Dates of Coverage: 1935 – Present
    Searchable database of the thousands of Gallup Polls conducted from 1935 to today. Users can search questions, results, specific surveys, and associated articles. Also houses Gallup Poll and Gallup Management Journal articles that feature in-depth public opinion and management data analyses.
  • Polling the Nations
    Dates of Coverage: 1986 – Present
    Polling the Nations is a compilation of surveys conducted by over 1000 polling organizations in the United States and 100 other countries from 1986 to the present time. The pollsters included in the database are: US polling organizations (e.g., Harris International, The Pew Center); universities (e.g., Rice University, University of Maryland); newspapers (e.g., New York Times, Los Angeles Times); Television news organizations (e.g., CBS, NBS, Fox, CNN); international polling organizations (e.g., Eurobarometer; special interest groups (e.g., Boy Scouts, AFL-CIO)
  • Roper Center Public Opinion Archives
    Dates of Coverage: 1935 – Present
    The Roper Center archives datasets from thousands of surveys with national adult, state, foreign, and special subpopulation samples. These datasets are listed in the Catalog of Holdings. Online access to many datasets are provided through the Roper Express service. US nationwide public opinion polls since 1935 are available through the iPoll service. A full-text retrieval system, the iPOLL online database is organized at the question-level.

Black History Month E-Resources

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The Library has access to a fabulous array of electronic primary and secondary resources for research on Black history. Here are some of our more recent additions:

Social Explorer Database Has 2010 Census Data

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Social Explorer

Bowdoin now has unlimited user access to Oxford University Press’s Social Explorer (we previously had a maximum of 3 simultaneous users). And they have begun adding the 2010 Census data and more. Here’s their press release:

Social Explorer is bringing in the New Year with new data, including 2010 Census Data, making Social Explorer the current and authoritative resource for all US demographic needs.

New Data

Social Explorer, an online research tool containing quick and easy access to demographic information from 1790 to the present, updated on a rolling basis, now includes the below data.

  • 2010 Census Data – all Summary File 1 data is now available in Social Explorer. This means that users have data for all US states and territories, for all summary levels and all variables. Data from the Census includes information such as age, sex, and race.
  • 2010, 2008-2010, and 2006-2010 American Community Survey Data – all new releases of the American Community Survey (ACS) conform to the 2010 Census boundaries and estimates and offer data down to the block group level. The ACS is the replacement of the Census long form, offering data on education, income, immigrations, ethnicity, language disability, home heating fuel, health care coverage, and more.
  • Redistricting Data from the 2010 Census – you can explore the PL-94 census file through our maps and reports. Social Explorer’s customized reports present an extract of these 2010 data along with the 2000 figures to give users a side-by-side comparison of change.