The Center for Rural Engagement connects the broad resources of IU Bloomington and its region through collaborative initiatives. The goal of the center is to improve the lives and opportunities of Hoosiers by working with partners to discover and deploy evidence-based, data-informed and scalable solutions to common challenges facing rural communities.
This research guide is a comprehensive compilation of resources, internal and external, designed to aid those involved in the work of the Center for Rural Engagement. It incorporates scholarly resources, government devices, as well as potential professional development opportunities. This guide is created and maintained by Indiana University Libraries in collaboration with the Center for Rural Engagement.
Census materials are located in Wells Library, on the 2nd Floor of East Tower, within Government Information, Maps, and Microform Services.
Decennial Census: The data collected across the United States population every 10 years. The information collected from the 2010 Decennial Census is also available online. IU's collection includes the microfilm editions of the U.S. Decennial Census Publications 1790-1970.
The Economic Census is taken every 5 years and measures American business and economy. Please note that not every industry is included in this census. The U.S. Census Bureau gives a thorough overview of these industries.
Access to statistical content information produced by U.S. federal agencies, states, private organizations, and major intergovernmental organizations. Includes tables, statistical reports, publication abstracts, and datasets. Results are ranked by relevance. Faceted search results can then be filtered by document type, source, date published, geographic area, and more.
Web-based mapping application that lets users create professional-quality thematic maps and reports using demographic, business, and marketing data. PLEASE NOTE: Users may "sign in as guest," or register for an individual account if they would like to save their work.
Allows users to:
-Access thousands of demographic, business, and marketing data variables.
-Develop interactive thematic maps and export high-resolution images to word processing or presentation software.
-Select, sort, and compare data across multiple locations and build custom reports that can be exported to a spreadsheet for additional functionality.
-Explore historical census data to understand how regions change over time and use estimates and projections to analyze current and future trends.
-Make informed personal and business-related decisions by asking questions like “what are the social and demographic characteristics of my neighborhood?” and “where should I locate my retail store?”
Access to data maps, profile reports, demographic data, and data elements and variables. Includes interactive tools that allow users to create and share maps, presentations and tables, or compare and analyze data. Includes access to current and historical demographic data.
The U.S. Census Bureau is the United States' leading source of data about the nation's people and economy. In addition to the census conducted every ten years, the Bureau carries out many surveys to produce a general view and comprehensive study of the United States' social and economic conditions. It also works with counterpart governments throughout the world. The website carries census data and data from other surveys, reports analyzing the data, maps, tools to access the data, information about methodology, and more.
Regional, national and international business, financial, banking and industry publications.
Provides access to peer-reviewed business journals, covering all disciplines of business, including marketing, management, accounting, banking, finance, and more. Indexing and abstracts and full text are available back as far as 1886.
Access to thousands of full-text journals, dissertations, working papers, key business and economics periodicals, country-and industry-focused reports, and major news sources. Its international coverage gives researchers a complete picture of companies and business trends around the world.
Comprised of ABI/INFORM Global, ABI/INFORM Trade & Industry, and ABI/INFORM Dateline. Notable periodicals include The Economist, Sloan Management Review, and the Wall Street Journal.
Please note: Mintel allows access for IUB faculty, staff, and students only. Market research reports covering US and International markets with an emphasis on consumer products and industries. Note: Users must create a personal profile in order to download content from Mintel. Please see more below for additional instructions.
Mintel Reports offers product and industry market research reports covering US and International marketplaces. Each report combines data and analysis of the competitive landscape, supply chain, market-share size and trends, and consumer profiles. Complex demographic issues are broken into easy-to-understand sections, explaining consumer behavior and demonstrating the structure of the market. Reports may be downloaded as RTF (rich-text format) files; tabular data may also be saved as CSV (comma-separated values) files.
Access and downloading instructions:
1. All users will have to agree to the Academic permissions and prohibitions, which prohibits systematic copying, use without attribution, use for commercial purposes, or distribution to non-IUB students and employees.
2. After accepting the above permissions and prohibitions, you must create an individual profile in order to download reports.
3. Select "Log into your profile..." to create a new (or log into an existing) Mintel profile.
4. After logging in, downloading is available by either using the direct download option for a report or by using the My Presentations feature which also offers the direct download option for the report.
PLEASE NOTE: INDIVIDUAL REGISTRATION WITH AN OFFICIAL INDIANA UNIVERSITY EMAIL ACCOUNT IS REQUIRED TO ACCESS THIS RESOURCE. PrivCo is a source for business and financial data on major, non-publicly traded corporations, including family owned, private equity owned, venture backed, and international unlisted companies.
Detailed business and consumer data on businesses in both the U.S. and Canada. Includes directory information, health care, and residential listings. Search by company name, geographic area, business type, SIC code, yellow page listing, revenue, location, number of employees or any combination of the above. In addition to address and phone number, each entry includes officer names and titles, corporate affiliation, business type and size of yellow page advertising. Toll free and fax numbers are given for some companies.
Web-based mapping application that lets users create professional-quality thematic maps and reports using demographic, business, and marketing data. PLEASE NOTE: Users may "sign in as guest," or register for an individual account if they would like to save their work.
Allows users to:
-Access thousands of demographic, business, and marketing data variables.
-Develop interactive thematic maps and export high-resolution images to word processing or presentation software.
-Select, sort, and compare data across multiple locations and build custom reports that can be exported to a spreadsheet for additional functionality.
-Explore historical census data to understand how regions change over time and use estimates and projections to analyze current and future trends.
-Make informed personal and business-related decisions by asking questions like “what are the social and demographic characteristics of my neighborhood?” and “where should I locate my retail store?”
Free resource supporting the search and retrieval of biomedical and life sciences literature with the aim of improving health–both globally and personally. Contains more than 30 million citations and abstracts of biomedical literature.
Available to the public online since 1996, PubMed was developed and is maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), located at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Online database containing more than 27,500 searchable full-text articles from journals published by APA and allied organizations from 1988+.
An online database containing detailed summaries of publications about older adults and aging, including books, journal and magazine articles, research reports, dissertations, and videos.
AgeLine is an online, bibliographic database produced by AARP that focuses on the subject of aging and middle-aged and older adults, particularly addressing the social, psychological, economic, policy, and health care aspects of aging. AgeLine summarizes journal articles, books and chapters, research reports, dissertations, gray literature, and educational videos from many publishers and organizations, including AARP.
Bibliographic coverage of current research focused on social work, human services and related areas, including social welfare, social policy and community development. Abstracts and indexes serials publications and includes abstracts of journal articles and dissertations and citations to book reviews.
Major areas of coverage include crisis intervention, family and social welfare, gerontology, homelessness, policy, planning, professional issues in social work, social development, social work education, and support groups/networks.
Comprehensive database supporting research on crime, its causes and impacts, legal and social implications, as well as litigation and crime trends. Includes U.S. and international scholarly journals, and correctional and law enforcement trade publications, dissertations, crime reports, crime blogs and other material relevant for researchers or those preparing for careers in criminal justice, law enforcement and related fields.
Online tables and charts of basic statistics about the social, political and economic conditions of the United States.
In print, the Statistical Abstract of the United States is a one-volume, comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States. Online it is 1400+ individually indexed tables (with attached spreadsheets), both searchable and browsable. Online edition includes:
-Line-item access to tables
-Updated monthly instead of annually
-Table-specific capabilities for narrowing results by source, data date, subject, type of data breakdown
The Statistical Abstract is a great place to begin a search for statistical information since the footnotes lead you to the original source, which most frequently is more comprehensive.
AGRICOLA is a database produced by the National Agricultural Library (NAL). It contains over 6 million records encompassing all aspects of agriculture and allied discipline.
AGRICOLA consists of two subsets of records:
1. Citations for journal articles that include abstracts (NAL Article Citation Database)
2. Bibliographic records describing monographs, serials, audiovisual materials and online content from around the world (NAL Cataloging Database)
Collection of resources related to environmental science, engineering, biotechnology, bacteriology, atmospheric science, ecology, and biology.
This multidisciplinary database, provides comprehensive coverage of the environmental sciences, and includes scientific journals, trade journals, new sources, conference proceedings, reports, monographs, books, and government publications. .
Major areas of coverage include: Agricultural biotechnology; Air quality; Aquatic pollution; Bacteriology; Ecology; Energy resources; Environmental biotechnology; Environmental engineering; Environmental impact statements (U.S.); Hazardous waste; Industrial hygiene; Microbiology related to industrial & environmental issues; Pollution: land, air, water, noise, solid waste, radioactive; Risk assessment; Safety science; Toxicology & toxic emissions; Waste management; Water pollution; Water resource issues.
Alternative Press Index Archive offers both international and interdisciplinary coverage of a variety of alternative sources, indexing information on topics of cultural, economic, political and social change.
Focus is on the practice and theory of socialism, national liberation, labor, Indigenous peoples, LGBT, feminism, ecology, democracy, and anarchism.
Abstracts to journal articles and citations to book reviews in the international literature of sociology, social work, and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. Includes abstracting and indexing of articles and book reviews drawn from thousands of serials publications, plus books, book chapters, dissertations, conference papers, and working papers.
Open access publishing supports rural communities because it enables faculty, students, and scholarly publishers to share important research with the public at no cost to the reader. The IU Libraries' Scholarly Communication Department is responsible for managing open access publishing for the Libraries. This includes: Open educational resources like course materials and textbooks, open data, open journal articles, and open monographs. Learn more about open scholarship at IU Bloomington by visiting https://openscholarship.indiana.edu/
Visit the IU institutional repository: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/
Visit our open access journals: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/
The Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) defines open access as:
By "open access"...we mean free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of...articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.
Open Access Overview by Peter Suber
Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities
Box inspired by Liberty McCoy @ University of La Verne
Free, full text, downloadable ebooks for books out of copyright in the U.S. Project. Project Gutenberg has the goal of making information, books, and other materials available to the public in forms that are easy to read, use, quote, and search. Includes access to electronic text listings, recent releases, newsletters, articles, and other archives.
Want to search across several repositories at once? SUNY's OASIS search helps instructors quickly find resources by aggregating over 100 sources.
List adapted from the University of Guelph Library
Box inspired by Shatford Library @ Pasadena City College