Due Date: March 9, 2005

Let's go to the Rand California website. This database will give you statistics for counties and cities in California. The I.D. and password are: User I.D.: A2036 Password: gavilan

This database is a huge collection of statistics concerning the life, education, health, crime rates and employment of the people of California. I'll show you a few. After you log in and return to the front page, click on the Databases link on the left side of your screen. The next screen will give you several categories to choose from. Click on Community. From the next list that appears, look under the Crime heading and click on Domestic Violence.

From this page, we get to set all our options for the search. In the first group of options, choose Total calls and Total calls per 10,000 people. Next, we choose the counties. You can choose individual cities or towns, but for our example, we'll compare counties. Scroll down to the third level of boxes, labeled State, Counties: A-M and Counties: N-Y. In the first box, highlight Monterey County and in the second box, highlight 3 more: San Benito County, Santa Clara County and Santa Cruz County. To choose several counties within the 2nd box, you need to hold down the control key as you select items. (If you're using a MAC, hold down the command key.) We'll leave the next couple of boxes alone. Notice we're asking for statistics for the years 1987 to 2001. Click on the Submit button.

On the next screen, you should get a table similar to this one, except the dates will continue up to 1999. Look over the results for those 5 years. Between 1997 and 2001, did the figures for Monterey County for total calls per 10,000 persons go up or down?     Out of the 4 counties that we're looking at, only one changed in a direction different from the other 3. Which county is this?

Click on the back button one time to get back to the page where we chose our categories and counties. At the bottom of the page, you'll find a link to Return to RAND California Community Statistics. Click on that. Notice in the list of categories, under Other, there is an option for Housing Prices. Click on that, and on the next page, under the various categories, choose Average single-family home sales price. Then choose an area (either an entire county or a city). Or, you can simply type in an area code. In the box below, describe what area you searched for, and how the Average price changed between 1996 and 2002. You'll get this from the last column on your table.

Another place to visit is the Country Watch database. Go back to the Gavilan Library homepage, and find the link. This database will require a User ID and a password too. Here they are: User ID: gavilan Password: watch

This database will give you information about all 192 countries of the world. Besides political, economic, cultural, business and environmental information about each country, you'll get a list of links to recent news articles that mention the country, plus links to any online publications coming from the country. Select a country from the box in the top right corner of your screen. When you click on the box Select a Country, a list of all 192 countries will appear. Simply highlight the one you want and the program will automatically bring up everything in the database about this country. Key Data, such as population figures, religions, languages, and geographical area will be listed in the right-hand column. News articles will be listed in the center section. At the bottom of the right-hand column will be a green box with links to online publications within the country. And at the very bottom, you can convert American dollars to the currency of the country.

Choose any country, and find answers to these questions: What is the name of your country?     Describe the flag of the country. What are the main languages (official and others)? What is the largest ethnic division?     From the list of news articles given (center screen), quote one headline. What links to online news sources are there for this country? (Right side of the screen) What is the rate of exchange for one American dollar to this country's currency? (bottom of the screen)

Let's Review

In assignments 17 and 18 we covered "limited access databases," meaning that the use of them is restricted to people or organizations who have paid for subscriptions to the databases. You are so lucky that you belong to Gavilan College! Below is a list of the different secret codes for these databases:  Access Science, 7000+ articles from McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology and 115,000+ definitions from the Dictionary of Scientific & Technical terms. I.D.:  gavilan                Password: science Alternative Press Watch, full text articles from 130 newspapers, magazines and journals of the alternative and independent press. I.D.:  gavilan                Password: alternative Country Watch, for general information, statistics, and news about every country of the world.   I.D.:  gavilan                Password: watch CQ Researcher —explores a single "hot" issue in the news in depth each week. Topics range from social and teen issues to environment, health, education and science and technology. I.D.:  gavilan                Password: research EBSCOHost, for indexing, summarizing and some full text of magazine, journal and newspaper articles. EBSCOhost contains three databases:  MasterFILE Premier has articles on all subjects.  Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition has articles on medicine and related subjects.  USP DI Volume II, Advice for the Patient provides patient-oriented drug information. I.D.: gavilan         Password: gavilan Encyclopædia Britannica—for background information on a wide range of topics, including biographies, country information, history, art, politics, and more. I.D.:  gavilan                 Password:  brit Ethnic News Watch, full text articles from over 200 ethnic news sources nationwide. I.D.:  gavilan                Password: watch Literature Resource Center, biographies, bibliographies, and critical analyses on authors from every age and literary discipline.  Covers more than 120,000 writers. Password:  gavilan ProQuest, for indexing, summarizing and some full text of magazine, journal and newspaper articles. Same as EbscoHost, but has a different list of magazines that they index, and a different list for which they've bought full text rights. If you can't find your information in one database, you might try the other one. I.D.: gavilan        Password: quest Rand California; for statistics on counties and cities in the state of California. I.D.: A2036         Password: gavilan   All of these databases are linked from the Gavilan Library Homepage.

Congratulations!

You have almost completed another assignment.

How long did you spend on this assignment?    

After you submit this assignment, go to the Forum board and look for the topic Assignment 18. Discuss these items:  1.  What was your favorite database to use?  Your least favorite?  Why? 2.  Is this class easier or harder than you thought it would be?  How? After you post your own answers, look through the answers posted by other students, and reply to at least one of them.  Don't forget to click on the submit button below. And, of course, check to make sure your name and email address are at the top of this page.

Address of this page: http://hhh.gavilan.edu/jaddleman/lib3/18.htm For questions or comments, contact Jayanti Addleman at jaddleman@gavilan.edu Last updated on Jan 18, 2005