Internet Reviews

Dawn Behrend

Dawn Behrend is associate librarian and dean of university libraries at Lenoir-Rhyne University, email: dawn.behrend@lr.edu

AgEcon Search. Access: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu.

Since 1995, the University of Minnesota (UMN) Libraries and Department of Applied Economics, under an international advisory board, have cohosted AgEcon Search, the largest open access agricultural and applied economics digital library of full-text PDFs. Subtopics include resource, energy, environmental, agricultural, and consumer economics. The site is indexed by RePEc, Google, and Google Scholar, and currently hosts 204,925 records in 2,600 collections across 28 languages, 390 organizations, and 74 countries. Contributing groups are mainly academic departments, government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, or professional associations. A few single-entry or empty submissions—such as Quaestum—are understandable when the self-deposit process is just getting started.

Files include book chapters, reports, working or discussion papers, journal articles, conference papers or presentations, theses/dissertations, and preprints. Search by title or browse a list of more than 160 journals. Records hyperlink author names to searches for exact matches, identifying related records. The advanced search allows users to filter results by specific date, time range, and type of date. Further customization is available, i.e., 10–100 results displayed, sorting options, focus on citation file format, or specific collection. The left column includes facets for filtering by publication type, coauthors, subjects, journal title, volume, and issue number. Free personal accounts save and share searches or subscribe to alerts.

Director Shannon Farrell reports 15,000 daily visitors from over 170 countries, and 9,000 new entries in 2024. She encourages librarians to contact her to upload institutional grey literature and open access content at no cost. UMN may occasionally negotiate fees for ingesting materials, especially for digitizing older content. Authors can request non-citation of their work while allowing metadata display, and all submissions grant a nonexclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free license for use and distribution. As the system is intended for long-term, perpetual “data accessibility, fixity, and usability,” withdrawal is only under special circumstances. The website does not allow automated harvesting of content beyond citation. AgEcon Search is a valuable resource for academic libraries, providing free access to global scholarly works in agricultural, environmental, and applied economics. With advanced search tools, curated collections, and contributions from nearly 400 organizations in 74 countries, it enhances access to grey literature and open access content not typically found in traditional databases. - Jennifer Stubbs, Bradley University, jastubbs@bradley.edu

Database of Religious History. Access: https://religiondatabase.org/.

The Database of Religious History (DRH) bills itself as “The world’s first comprehensive online quantitative and qualitative encyclopedia of religious cultural history.” The site contains many entries, recruits active experts, and has answers to questions that have been asked. The project partners with Harvard University, Stanford University, the Templeton Religious Trust, and other institutions. It is based at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver as an independent academic initiative.

There are four main functions in using the site, grouped as Browse, Visualize, Analyze, and Get Involved. Browse lets you explore without signing in. Visualize employs wonderful maps and other graphics to let you see how religion developed. Analyze offers data and tools to use in understanding what one is discovering. Get Involved offers scholars and professionals a way to immerse themselves and their research on the site.

Scholars who work with the Get Involved function become important contributors. An editor reviews the material submitted before it is published on the site. Contributing scholars must be at the level of a PhD student or above. One may contribute by responding to current entries or starting a new entry and answering questions for it. Polls are used extensively to answer questions in building entries.

It is extremely helpful for a site user to watch the two very short videos on the home page to get a good overview of the site and how it works. There is also a much longer, comprehensive video on the bottom right of the home page that goes into more detail.

Religion and theology students are welcome to use the database for research, and they may find information that’s relevant to their research question or topic of study. The beautiful visual displays, maps, and interesting information on the site make it a pleasure to use. However, it’s important to note that the database is not necessarily comprehensive. For example, when typing Lutheranism into the search box and making a query, nothing comes up. A search on Luther summons material, but just four entries. Naturally, the entries in the database reflect the contributed topics of its academic participants.

The Database of Religious History is a fact-filled and visually appealing database that provides fascinating information and gets scholars involved. The information there will appeal to student researchers, too. —Robert Cagna, Lenoir-Rhyne University and Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, robert.cagna@lr.edu.

United Nations: Outreach Programme on the Holocaust. Access: https://www.un.org/en/holocaustremembrance.

Established by the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 60/7 in 2005, the program has a goal to “mobilize civil society for Holocaust remembrance and education, in order to help to prevent future acts of genocide.” The programme is an “expression of the United Nations’ commitment to countering hatred, and to building a world in which everyone can live with dignity and in peace.”

Links from the homepage enable users to locate information on a variety of topics related to the Holocaust. Several outreach initiatives are available via the About Us link, including Remember and Reflect (voices of survivors), Commemoration (annual observance in memory of Holocaust victims), Education (a wide variety of education resources available in the official languages of the UN: Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, Spanish, and English), Working Together (a global network of partnerships, creating educational resources, professional development workshops, and extending the work of the programme to a wider audience), and Outreach (organizes year-long education and remembrance outreach, defends human rights, and resists antisemitism via briefings discussions, workshops, and films).

Additional links from the homepage enable users to locate information on News and Updates (videos, working papers, presentations, and discussions), International Day (Holocaust Remembrance and Education, archive available), Events (discussions, professional development, and student workshops), Exhibitions (permanent and archived), Education Resources (poster sets, multimedia, publications, and reports), UN Information Centres (remembrance activities archived), and Beyond the Long Shadow: Engaging with Difficult Histories (discussion series, viewable from 2020–2022; topics include “Race” and Racism: Roots of Atrocity Crimes, Fight Hate Speech: Global Perspectives).

Additional resources include Key Documents (Resolution A/RES/76/250, combating antisemitism), Related Programmes (UN Office on Genocide Prevention and Responsibility to Protect, Outreach Programme on Transatlantic Slave Trade and Industry), and Human Rights (information/resources on protecting human rights, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and UN High Commissioner for Refugees).

This is a well-developed, user-friendly website with a wealth of information on the Holocaust, genocide, and human rights. Translation of the site into one of the six official languages of the UN ensures ease of use for a variety of users. An excellent product of the United Nations, providing crucial education and resources to the world on the Holocaust, highlighting the important work of remembrance, and working to prevent future genocides and protect human rights. - Karen Evans, Indiana State University, Karen.Evans@indstate.edu.