GovBlog: UC Berkeley » New Database

OskiCat: Summer 2009

Jesse Silva — Fri, 15 May 2009 15:57:32 +0000

The UC Berkeley Library will be changing its catalog this summer. Gladis and Pathfinder will be gone and OskiCat will take their place. OskiCat will not only make searching for government information at UCB easier, it will also include 3 libraries which house many government documents but were not previously availble in Gladis or Pathfinder. The Libraries are: The Institute of Governmental Studies Library, the Water Resources Center Archives, and the Institute of Transportation Studies Library. OskiCat will all you to recall books checked out by other patrons, a task you had to visit a circulation desk for with Gladis/Pathfinder. For a preview, you can watch this short movie, or visit this webpage for more information. Oskicat will be located at http://oskicat.berkeley.edu when it is available.

United States Congressional Serial Set Now Available through LexisNexis Congressional

Jesse Silva — Tue, 05 May 2009 17:38:56 +0000

UC Berkeley has recently acquired full-text access to the United States Congressional Serial Set (1789-1969) through LexisNexis Congressional. The Serial Set contains the legislative history of United States, and also includes many historic agency annual reports, House and Senate Reports, and many other official government documents (for a more complete summary of what is contained in the Serial Set, click here). Prior to this acquisition, citations to the Serial Set found in LexisNexis Congressional had to be searched in the Readex United States Congressional Serial Set database. With this purchase, you can now search LexisNexis Congressional for all your congressional research needs. Off-campus access to LexisNexis Congressional is restricted to current UCB student, faculty and staff, though anyone in the Library may access the database.

GPO’s Federal Digital System Now Available

Jesse Silva — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:41:44 +0000

Over the past several years, the United States Government Printing Office (GPO) has been working on the Federal Digital System (FDsys), a new search tool for electronic federal government information. FDsys is currently available in public beta and GPO is requesting feedback on it. You can search the collection by keyword or citation, or you can browse the various collections.

Currently, FDsys contains the following collections:

* Congressional Bills (1993-)
* Congressional Documents (1995-)
* Congressional Hearings (1995-)
* Congressional Record (1994-)
* Congressional Reports (1995-)
* Federal Register (1994-)
* Public and Private Laws (1995-)
* Compilation of Presidential Documents (1993-)

By mid-2009, all information in GPO access will be available in FDsys. If you have comments on this new system, please contact GPO directly at pmo@gpo.gov. More information on FDsys can be found here.

New Database: LexisNexis Statistical Datasets

Jesse Silva — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 18:25:29 +0000

The Library has just subscribed to LexisNexis Statistical Datasets. The database provides fast and easy one-stop shopping to more than 5.3 billion (and growing) data points from licensed and public domain datasets. Sources of data include local, state and international governments and organizations. Datasets allows you to customize the data by selecting subjects, variable(s) of interest, and the ability to view your data in side-by-side tables, charts and even maps. Datasets also provides quick graphs and chats for statistics in the news, and when you download or print, you are given citation information from where the data originated. Anyone may access LexisNexis Statistical Datasets from the public computers in the Library, however, off-campus access to is restricted to current UCB faculty, staff and students through the proxy server or VPN.