A new business database is now available via Oesterle Library: Ward’s Business Directory of U.S. Public and Private Companies.

You can turn to Ward’s to look up current sales, market share, and company information for U.S. companies. And by using the database’s Advanced Search features, you can order companies by industry, geography, or sales/market share data.

Ward’s is accessible from the library homepage, the library’s Articles pages, and from the Research by Subject page for Business.

The latest addition to Oesterle Library’s collection of databases is Asia Studies Online, a full-text database featuring expert reports on 55 Asian countries. Subject areas covered include business, government, economics, social issues, the environment, and more.

Most of the database’s content is drawn from research reports published by think tanks and scholarly institutions focused on the study of Asia (such as the Berkeley APEC Study Center), as well as by prominent governmental and nongovernmental organizations working in Asia (such as the Asian Development Bank). The database also includes articles from academic journals (such as the Journal of Global Buddhism). All Asian countries are covered, plus Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Rim, and Pacific island nations.

You can access Asia Studies Full Text Online from the library’s homepage, Articles pages, or from the Research by Subject page for East Asian Studies.

New to Oesterle Library: SocIndex a full-text database featuring articles, books, and conference papers focused on sociology.

SocIndex offers the complete coverage of 428 sociology journals from 1908-present, plus some issues of 136 other titles in the field. The database also includes more than 700 books and thousands of conference papers on sociology topics.

You can access SocIndex from the library’s homepage, Articles pages, or from the Research by Subject page for Sociology.

Want to hear a Bollywood movie tune, a Delta blues song from the twenties, a Beethoven symphony, a classic American protest song, or the harmonies of an a capella singing group from Ghana? With the addition of five new music databases from Alexander Street Press, Oesterle Library now offers more than 50,000 tracks of music from around the world in streaming audio.

The five new databases–African American Song; American Song; Classical Music Library; Contemporary World Music; and Smithsonian Global Sound–each include thousands (and in some cases, tens of thousands) of recordings of great music, ranging from medieval to modern. The databases include the original recordings of American legends like Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie, as well as thousands of folk and popular songs recorded for famous labels like Folkways. Classical compositions are often represented by several different high-quality recordings of performances by first-rate musicians and conductors. Serious students of music, music history, and ethnomusicology will find the rich and expansive content of these databases to be indispensable. And everyone else is sure to find music they’ll enjoy listening to here–whether it be Tejano, Afropop, Celtic, gospel, ragtime, raga, reggae, jazz, or Baroque.

All of the recordings in the Alexander Street Press databases are available to current NCC students, faculty, and staff in streaming audio, on or off-campus. Each database also includes liner notes, CD cover art, and information about the featured artists, composers, albums, recordings, and musical styles. All can be accessed via the “Choose a Database” pulldown menu on the library homepage; on the Articles page; or on the Research by Subject page for Music.

The databases:

African American Song includes more than 16,000 African-American songs; genres include blues, jazz, gospel, ragtime, and more.

American Song includes more than 14,000 American songs; genres include folk, rock, jazz, zydeco, bluegrass, and more.

Classical Music Library includes more than 50,000 classical music recordings of all styles and time periods, as well as substantial reference material on the history of Western music.

Contemporary World Music includes more than 9,000 songs from contemporary artists from around the globe; genres include reggae, Tejano, Afropop, Bollywood, flamenco and more.

Smithsonian Global Sound includes tens of thousands of folk, traditional, classical, and popular music recordings. Here you’ll find the entire published catalog of the Smithsonian Folkways label–the single most important collection of recordings of classic American folk music, and also the best source for field recordings of traditional music from around the globe.

Oesterle Library has just added a new resource for students of accounting, business, and finance: the Risk Management Association’s RMA eStatement Studies database.

The database includes financial ratio benchmarks drawn from the financial statements of companies in over 740 industries. Industry searches may be sorted by title, North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Code, or sector.

The database can be accessed by selecting “RMA eStatement Studies” from the “Choose a Database” pull-down menu on the library homepage (under the Find Articles link), from the Find Articles page, and from the Research by Subject pages for Accounting and Business.

Direct link to the database.

The Oxford English Dictionary–available online via the Oesterle Library wesbite–is the definitive record of how words in English are written and spoken around the world. If you want to know what a word means–or its origin and history of use going back to the Middle Ages–the OED is the place to look.

Since the English language is always changing, the OED is always, changing, too: the dictionary’s editors are constantly working to add entries for new words and revise words to reflect contemporary usage.

In the latest update of the dictionary, new or revised entries include “thingamabob,” “eco-friendly,” “retrovirus,” and even the”F-word.” If you want to check out all of the new entries, try this list from the Oxford website.

by Katy Luxion

From 24 to 452: that’s the increase in full-text journals from SAGE that Oesterle Library gained by purchasing access to the SAGE Premier Database.

SAGE is a leader in the academic publishing market. They publish journals, books, and electronic media. “SAGE Premier is a really exciting addition to the library’s online journal holdings,” says Emily Prather, Technical Services Coordinator at Oesterle Library.

According to Prather, “[The database] includes full text access to 452 journals published by SAGE, spanning a wide range of subjects. Access includes current issues and all of the older issues all the way back to 1999.”

So while you working on researching for an article or a paper remember, you now have over 18 times the resources that you used to at your fingertips from SAGE. A list of all the SAGE Journals is available at http://www.sagepub.com/journalsIndex.nav .

Communication & Mass Media Complete (CMMC) is an impressive new addition to the selection of electronic resources available at Oesterle Library. Students and researchers in communication and media studies have previously had to look in many different areas to find the research sources they need. Fortunately, EBSCO’S Communication & Mass Media Complete now brings together a wealth of information on communication in a single database.

CMMC offers cover-to-cover indexing and abstracts for more than 420 journals and selected coverage of nearly 200 more. Also included: the full text of over 230 journals and over 3,000 Author Profiles, providing biographical data and bibliographic information. The communication and media titles in other EBSCO databases have also been integrated into this collection.

The database has the look and functionality of EBSCO products, including the familiar layout, basic and advanced search screens, and easily navigable results pages. Communication & Mass Media Complete can be located on the Articles page on the library website.

• Communication & Mass Media Complete

Library patrons can find authoritative answers quickly through Credo Reference, an online reference library accessible via the Oesterle Library website. Credo Reference, formerly known as, Xreferplus, features content from hundreds of reference books and covers a broad range of subject areas.

Credo Reference offers a complete reference collection from over 50 publishers. Facts, definitions, concepts, people, places and quotations can be found in dictionaries, encyclopedias, and subject specific sources in numerous subjects. Additionally, some artist entries include high-quality images of artworks.

Credo Reference can be accessed through the library’s website from the Reference Sources page.

• Credo Reference