I liked this week's guided tour through the different kinds of sources of information available to economists (and probably most social scientists). Economics is something I am painfully clueless about so it was interesting to read about what economists study (much more than money) and how they are studying it.
I am always interested in free sources of data. I took classes on GIS in my undergrad, and while it was sometimes tedious, the possibilities of what you could do with just a collection of numbers was pretty amazing to me. I think a lot of people conceive of libraries as places where you go to get books and maybe access journals, but especially undergrads probably never consider having to search for data sets. At least at KSU, I think this is probably because we never really had to. We are given data sets to work with in our classes, probably with the assumption that we will develop the skills needed to collect or find our own when we get to that point in our academic or professional careers. Anyway, lists like these http://rfe.org/showCat.php?cat_id=3 could open up possibilities for students and researchers alike to pursue interests of theirs. Our jobs as librarians will be just as much to be able connect patrons to data as it will be to connect them to information...
... and showing them how to use it. http://rfe.org/showCat.php?cat_id=86. More and more we are expected to know how to use computers and computer programs and troubleshoot problems, but working in the sciences or around scientists, we should have some understanding of the kind of programs they use. We should be versed in basic database usage and statistical analysis. It might even benefit us in our own projects.
On the other end of the spectrum from data are Reddit and podcasts, I would say. Both of these sources are great for keeping up to date on new developments and ideas in the field without having to get in to anything too technical. Especially in the case of Reddit, a lot of the articles are relatively short and digestible. Many of the topics on Econtalk sounded fascinating. Something like that would be a great substitute to your normal radio or podcast show in the morning. Here are some more: http://www.learnoutloud.com/subcategory_podcast.php?cat=0&catid=31&level=1&id=51&.
http://guides.lib.purdue.edu/content.php?pid=129114 This was a great LibGuide from Purdue which highlights the different government sources from which we can get economic information. One benefit of these sources is that they are usually free. They are also detailed and extremely relevant. I have seen links to stories and research published by Federal Reserve Banks before. They are available both here http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/default.htm and from the individual banks at :http://www.federalreserve.gov/otherfrb.htm.
Economics is often the topic of either the regular posts or the news story posting over at the Internet Scout. I've posted this before but couldn't resist because it was so topical. With all of the available sources online, I wonder how much of these accounted for the numbers which showed both faculty and students preferring online resources. While those numbers might look alarming at first glance, there are a lot of really great resources out there. It is not such a bad thing when the quality of information and data is so high.
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