CMMC Communication Thesaurus

How many times have you been searching in the Communication & Mass Media Complete database and not found any results when you know there really should be something?

One tool that may be of help is the Thesaurus. This database feature can be accessed from the upper-right blue navigation menu at the top of the database. The thesaurus is communication-based, so you will only find terms in it that relate to the communication discipline. It's great if the topic you are searching for has a lot of different names (e.g. new media) and you don't want to waste time typing them all into a search box with OR's in between.

So next time you are searching, check out the Thesaurus and don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

News Blogs and Websites Now on NewsBank

NewsBank, a database that provides access to news, is testing out some new content. Users can now search a limited number of news blogs and news websites in addition to their collection of college, local, and national newspapers. If you want to check it out this database, you can access it through the Cook Library website .

Futurity in the Future?

There might be changes on the horizon for how news covers science. Tired of watching science discoveries go unreported (or, in their eyes, be covered poorly), 35 major research universities have banded together to start Futurity, a non-profit internet wire service dedicated to distributing news about their scientific research findings. In a wire story reprinted by the Baltimore Sun, Paul Rogers writes that the goal of this news service is to bypass the traditional shrinking news outlets and go right to the readers. Futurity plans to "provide articles to popular Web sites such as Yahoo News and Google News, along with MySpace and Twitter," writes Rogers.

Might the public learn more about science with this new model for news distribution? It will be interesting to watch...

Health Care Reform Research

The hot topic these days is health care reform. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is a unique funding agency that aims to help create leverage for change in health care and in the broader health policy arena.

Given this mission, they are an important resource for research reports about health related topics. Their latest report examines how health care reforms in Massachusetts are going and what the public thinks of those efforts.

PEJ's News Coverage Index

The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) is non-partisan, non-profit organization that conducts public opinion polling and social science research about news coverage.

As part of their research, PEJ conducts a content analysis of news coverage each week. The report about last week's coverage is now up on their website.

These reports are a great resource for keeping track of how news coverage has changed over time.

Intute: A portal for scholarly communication sites

It's worth taking a peek at Intute, a portal for scholarly websites in communication and other disciplines.

It was created by a consortium of seven universities in the UK and it looks like the Communication and Media Studies section has links to open access journals and research project websites from the various facets of the discipline.