Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies News

MEL’s Database of the Week for 8/27/10

August 27th, 2010

Welcome to Database of the Week — a feature from the Management & Economics Library (MEL). These database snapshots will give you basic information about our most relevant and beneficial online resources.

This Week’s Featured Database: GREENR, from Gale Cengage Learning.

Link: www.lib.purdue.edu/mel, in the pull down Quick Access to Business Databases alpha list right below the Libraries’ search box.

Description/focus: GREENR offers content, including images and videos, on green technologies and issues on the environment and sustainability.

Start with this hint: GREENR is a new database, started just this past summer.  The Basic Search and the Advanced Search display the results so they can be limited with further descriptors. For example, enter Gulf of Mexico as a Basic Search and the 13,794 hits can be narrowed down by a list of subjects that appear on the left, such as Oil Drilling Rigs, or by type of resource in the middle display area, such as Academic Journals, or on the right display area by formats. The GREENR home page also offers general categories (Agriculture and Food Systems, Science and Technology, Social Factors, etc.) that are further broken down into topics such as climate change or wetlands.

Why you should know this database: GREENR covers food systems, environmental law, economics and trade, pollution, ecology, energy, and more.  Besides the academic resources included in text-only databases, GREENR includes podcasts, websites, newspapers, videos, magazines, and case studies.  You can navigate country, organization, and country portals for news, video, and primary source documents.

How this database can be integrated into the curriculum: GREENR has a different look that resembles the web and should appeal to anyone.  It is easy to search or browse by topic, country, or format.  Students will find GREENR easy to navigate, and can use it to find content on a topic or select a subject for an assignment.

Compared to Google: A search in Google for Gulf of Mexico videos results in 22,790 hits compared to 222  in GREENR.  GREENR includes reports from PBS, but the Google results do not highlight PBS reports.

Cost: Paid annually by Purdue University Libraries..

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Database of the Week comes to you from the Management & Economics Library (MEL). Our intent is to give you a brief introduction to a database that you may not know.  If you would like more information about this database, or if you would like a demonstration of it for a class, contact kranlib@purdue.edu.  Database of the Week is archived  at https://blogs.lib.purdue.edu/news/category/MGMT/.  For more Purdue Libraries news, follow us on Twitter (@PurdueLibraries).

If you would like us to promote your favorite database, send an email to mdugan@purdue.edu.