ACRL College & Research Libraries News

Association of College & Research Libraries

Internet Reviews

Sara Amato is electronic services and Web development librarian at Bowdoin College, e-mail:samato@bowdoin.edu

Africana.Com.http://www.africana.com.

Africana.Com provides a gateway to contemporary events and news, culture, and history relating to Africa and people of African descent throughout the world. This resource, produced by the co-editors of Encarta Africana, Professors Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Kwame Anthony Appiah, has great potential for undergraduate students in the area of African American studies and possibly sociology.

Africana.Com’s articles are divided into six areas, or Afri Channels: Worldview (selected news articles, updated daily), Lifestyle (fashions and trends), Fast Track (career, business, and education), Heritage (legacy and community), Art Scene (arts and entertainment), and Homefront (home and parenting). The articles consist of original and third-party content from sources such as the BBC. The links to related articles and background entries are particularly useful.

Annotated links lead to related Web sites. The “Africana Links” section is divided into 25 categories, including science fiction, activism and education, and is available from a sidebar on the homepage. Two other useful areas are the News section, offering a daily news roundup, and Book Reviews by Harvard professor Kwame Anthony Appiah and Africana.Com contributors.

Africana Blackboard is a selection of lesson plans for grades K-12, incorporating the Encarta Africana CD and selected Web sites, organized into various subject areas. This section is under development, with many lesson plan titles without links.

The site offers immediate access to a great variety and breadth of resources from its homepage without appearing cluttered or sacrificing clarity. The “Afri Channels” navigation bar appears consistently along the bottom of each page. A dropdown menu on the navigation bar allows the user to jump directly to other sections of the site, including the homepage. Users can search the site by keywords or by entering an exact phrase in quotation marks and then sort the results by date. One of the goals of the site is to promote Encarta Africana, and the CD-ROM is featured prominently.

Some options, such as free email services and radio broadcasts (requiring RealPlayer) are not exceedingly relevant in an academic reference environment. The vast selection of options, however, makes Africana.Com an effective source of information on people, ideas, and issues from around the world. —Britt Fagerheim, Gates Library Foundation, b_fagerheim@hotmail.com

CSPV Violence Literature Database (VīoLit).http ://www. Colorado.EDU/ cspv/infohouse/violit/.

Violence is an epidemic that is destroying America’s homes and communities. CSPV Violence Literature Database is an effort to provide researchers, professionals, and policymakers with resources in the causes and prevention of violence. The Center for

Center for tike Study and Prevention of the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado at Boulder, which was founded in 1992 with a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, maintains this database. VioLit is one of four databases that is offered through CSPV Information House.

Its user-friendly search interface was created by using ShowBase software. Users are able to perform simple and multifield searches. A simple search is performed by typing text in the query box and clicking on the index drop down list box to choose keywords, title, author, year of publication, or record number to search. A multifield search supports advance searching, including boolean operators, numeric operators, comparison operators and the ability to search more than one field at a time. Searching can be enhanced by using partial words, begins with, or browse search options. Search results yield bibliographic records and ordering information for journal articles, books, reports, and literature reviews.

Because the database has not been updated since 1998, researchers will have to search other reference tools for current violent literature. VioLit can be a starting point for locating juvenile violence literature. —Nancy Allen, USFat Sarasota-Manatee/New College, nallen@sar.usf.edu Biz/ed. http://bized.ac.uk/.

This well-organized site, created by a nonprofit consortium working at the Institute for Learning and Research Technology at the University of Bristol, is designed for business and economics students and their teachers.

The Internet Catalogue, the first major link on the site, is a Yahoo-style directory of more than 1,500 Internet resources selected and described by subject experts.

Top-level headings cover accounting, business, economics, financial economics, higher education, human resources, macroeconomics, management, marketing, mathematical economics, organizational management, production, the tourist industry, trade, and commerce. Business students, business professionals, and the public at large will be able to make good use of this directory.

The Virtual Worlds link on the site includes two resources: a Virtual Factory and a Virtual Economy. The factory is based on a bona fide business, Cameron Balloons Ltd. There are four main sections in the factory: the Factory Floor (which includes worksheets, photos, relevant business theories, and an explanation of each main business function), Cameron Balloons (background on the company, its history, and product range), a Cost Breakdown of balloon components, and a Glossary of ballooning jargon.

The Virtual Economy is based on computer models that are similar to those used to keep the British economy on track. It includes case studies, a section on the economic variables in the model, a library of resource materials, and the interactive model itself. Users of the site may change the values of the variables and run the model repeatedly.

The site also includes major links to Learning Materials, Company Facts, and Data. These pages include many online worksheets, datasets, PowerPoint presentations, and other instructional resources. Some will be most useful to students in the UK.

Despite the breadth of Biz/ed, navigation is quite easy. The site includes a persistent navigation bar, a good site map, a search function, and several readily accessible help screens that explain the site section by section.

Biz/ed will be useful both as a quality information resource and as an interactive teaching tool.—Tom Nichol, College of St. Benedict & St. John’s University, tnichol@ csbsju.edu ■