Accessing Historic Newspapers

Four major US papers--Atlanta Constitution (1868-1939), Boston Globe (1872-1924), Chicago Tribue (1849-1986), NYTimes (1851-2004)--are available through Proquest. To access, from the HCHS home page, mouse over "library" and then "edatabases" and then choose (the slightly misleadingly named) link: "NYT Historical". This database should be available for students to use from home with their username and password, however problems with access have been reported. Let me know what people's experiences are and I'll work with the technology department to see if they can be fixed.

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1841-1902) has been digitized by the Brooklyn Public Library and is available here:
http://www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/eagle/index.htm

The Library of Congress has a beta site with several state newspapers (including from New York) available from 1900-1910 here:
http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/

Freedom's Journal: The "first African-American owned and operated newspaper published in the United States. The Journal was published weekly in New York City from 1827 to 1829. All 103 issues have been digitized and placed into Adobe Acrobat format."
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/libraryarchives/aanp/freedom/

Two other places for newspaper links:
http://xooxleanswers.com/newspaperarchives4.aspx
and
http://www.nypl.org/links/index.cfm?Trg=1&d1=2209&d3=Historical+Newspapers

Accessing CIAO from home...

If you want to use the CIAO (Columbia International Affairs Online) from home you must access it from the HCHS Library's page.

1) Go to the HCHS homepage at: http://www.hchs.hunter.cuny.edu
2) Click on "Library" at the top of this page.
3) Under "Full Text Resources" click on the link that says "Columbia International Affairs Online"
4) You'll be taken to a description of the database. On this page, click on the link that says, "CIAO (Columbia International Affairs Online)."
5) You will then be asked for your Hunter username and password. These are the same as your hunter email and should be in the form "Z2012123". You do NOT need to add ".12" to the end of this username.

You will not have to put in your username and password if you're accessing CIAO from school.

Facts About Nations

CIAO

For quick access to general maps and basic facts, try the CIAO database (Columbia International Affairs Online). On the left you'll see a link to "maps/county data." From here you can find basic statistics like a nation's GDP, its military expenditure, death rate, and population. You can also compare the statistics of up to three countries. (All stats from from the CIA World Factbook.)

http://www.ciaonet.org/

NationMaster

If you really want to study a nation's statistics in depth, head to NationMaster.com. This constantly updated site takes data from various governments and NGO's (e.g. UN, WHO, OECD) and makes them available in comparable bar graphs, pie charts, and maps. Note that this is a private site with advertisements. A wide variety of likely and unlikely stats, like: working time to buy a car, age at first marriage for women, roller coasters per capita.
Source and definitions are available for each data set. From the homepage to get started, choose "Select Category" under Facts and Statistics. Note that you can generally choose to compare a "total" or a "per capita" statistic. You can also see correlations between statistics, (e.g. the inverse relationship between the number of McDonalds restaurants per capita and the number of couples with children) but remember: correlation does not necessarily mean that one trend causes another.

http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php

Human Development Index.

The U.N. pubishes each year a Human Development Index. Rather than traditional economic figures like GNP, it tries to assess the quality of life for a nation using factors like life expectancy, literacy, and education. See Wikipedia's page describing the index's formula and this year's rankings at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index

The Happy Planet Index

The Happy Planet Index measures, among other factors, a nation's ecological impact.
"People can live long, happy lives without consuming large amounts of the Earth's resources, a survey suggests. The 178-nation "Happy Planet Index" lists the south Pacific island of Vanuatu as the happiest nation on the planet, while the UK is ranked 108th. The index is based on consumption levels, life expectancy and happiness, rather than national economic wealth measurements such as GDP. The study was compiled by think-tank the New Economics Foundation (Nef)." --from the BBC
The full BBC article is located here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5169448.stm
The Happy Planet Index is located here:
http://www.happyplanetindex.org/introduction.htm

GapMinder
GapMinder provides free very cool software to visualize nation statistics.

"...Gapminder, a Stockholm-based non-profit. Their extraordinary interactive graphs help you visualize complex global trends -- like the distribution of poverty, in different regions of the world, over time. The raw statistics would bore you to tears; the web graphs -- dynamic, colorful and clear -- are utterly compelling. They're worth a look -- not only for their particular content -- but for the possibilities presented by this marriage of technology, information and design. --June Cohen, TedBlog, 2005

Available at: http://www.gapminder.org


GDP, GNP, PPP ???
Confused by all the acronyms? This glossary, provided by World Bank, might help you out:
http://youthink.worldbank.org/glossary.php