Information Center
at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies

In support of continuing research projects, the Andrew Young School information center provides to the college faculty and researchers some 1,500 volumes, with about 45 current subscriptions including newsletters, working papers, journals, yearbooks and directories in economics and fiscal policy. Many items are gifts from faculty. In the past year about 1,200 publications and conference announcements were circulated to faculty and graduate research assistants, with 10 percent of the items kept in-house. The information center's role is to collect, catalog and make available relevant literature and electronic resources. We work with the college faculty and their research assistants to help them access and interpret the ever-changing information databases. We have access to Web sites, journals and data sets in such areas as public finance, economics, domestic and international policy studies, especially taxation and revenue issues.

The information center's catalog of resources on DBTextworks lists almost 4,000 records of subscriptions, government documents, books, CDs and data sets for AYSPS researchers. This catalog is now accessible via Internet connection through the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies Web site, with journal holdings and data sets listed. Gardner Neely manages the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies Library/Information Center.

This year, new data CDs and annual books that were added include the following:

• World Bank Africa Database 2004
• IMF International Financial Statistics
• IMF Government Finance Statistics
• Global Development Finance 2003 from World Bank
• European Tax Handbook of International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation
• Corporate and Individual Taxes 2003-2004: Worldwide Summaries
• The 2003 Georgia County Guide CD from the University of Georgia
• Regional Economic Information System from the Bureau of Economic Analysis
• State Legislative Sourcebook 2004
• OECD Revenue Statistics available from SourceOECD
• State and Local Taxation: 2001 CD by Oldman & Pomp

Online sources from the University System of Georgia's Galileo service and GSU funded research databases provide access to electronic journals through the University Library's Web site. A timesaving feature on this site is FSX, an indexed list of on-campus accessible journals. One can click directly into the full-text article, if it is contracted by Pullen Library or Galileo. Abstracts and full text from such titles as Journal of Applied Econometrics and Journal of Policy Analysis and Management are downloadable for those that register from an on-campus computer.

The Information Center has coordinated with LaLoria Konata, the liaison in policy studies, to gain access to relevant literature via selected Web subscriptions. PolicyFile, a Web-based abstracting service, covers a wide range of public policy research that draws its content from policy think tanks, university research programs and research organizations. Electronic journals are more easily accessible via the Web. Among these is JSTOR, which allows access to back issues from different publishers, including, for example, Oxford University Press and Wiley InterScience. Web of Science, from ISI's Social Science Citation Index, allows users to track the citation process of academic papers. From Oxford University Press, users can print articles from such periodicals as Journal of African Economies, Economic Inquiry, Oxford Economic Papers, and the Journal of International Economic Law.

On Galileo, users have access to highly specialized academic literature through ProQuest and Ebsco. Both of these now allow users to e-mail articles found through their search engines. Lexis-Nexis has added a statistical search engine, which allows searching of abstracts and table names of governmental data sources. On Galileo, selected databases now have an export feature, allowing users to e-mail plain text or HTML records to a Web-based e-mail address, or to export citations and abstracts to a bibliographic manager, such as EndNote.

Galileo also has selected databases, such as OCLC FirstSearch, which have character settings for non-English text, including Spanish, French, and several Asian languages.

Georgia archives are being added on the menu of Galileo's interface to serve scholars in search of state history sources including the Civil War and civil rights history in Georgia. GeorgiaNet gives links to state agencies, councils and commissions, maintained by many state agencies, including the Georgia Department of Revenue.

Major literature services such as Ingenta and Factiva (formerly called Dow Jones Interactive) have large libraries of full text journals and abstracts in most academic disciplines. Ingenta provides both document delivery of a large catalog of journal articles on demand, as well as table of contents service e-mailed to users by their selection of journals.

The Information Center Web site features international tax literature links, pertinent publishers, suppliers and data centers, and links to the university library's menu.

The university online catalog, called GIL (Galileo Interconnected Libraries), allows users to search the university libraries catalog, to search by format, to indicate the status of a checked-out book, and to renew it, to find a stored journal, as well as to send e-mails with citations via Web-based e-mail. These improvements have proven very successful with traveling faculty on assignment oversees in developing countries and elsewhere.

The Information Center provides orientation to economic, public administration, and social science literature sources available at the information center and the university libraries. Services to visiting scholars and international students are provided in coordination with LaLoria Konata at the University Library.