Reference Reviews

Doug's Student Reference Room

Title: Global Issues in Context
Publisher: Gale
URL: http://www.gale.cengage.com/globalissues

Global Issues in Context is an entirely new kind of database for Gale, one that will surely be imitated by other content providers. Dispensing with the old tab-style design, this new product offers collapsible result lists with frequent options to “view more.” Each page offers multimedia content, often combinations of images, text, video and audio. The look and feel is more akin to CNN’s Web portal or to Google’s customizable iGoogle pages than to a traditional research database. From the homepage, users can select one of the featured topics from a list of eight major categories:

• Business and Economy
• Health and Medicine
• Conflict and Diplomacy
• Science and Technology
• Envinronment and Climate Change
• Society and Culture
• Government, Politics and Law
• Women, Children and the Family

A few topics currently in the news are listed under a photo representative of the category; under “Conflict and Diplomacy,” for example, the user can click to the Iraq War or the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Clicking on the photo or category title yields several dozen related topics, with more than 250 topics included within the eight categories, with an overall focus on important issues and events of concern around the world. When a topic is selected, the opening page typically includes an embedded video and related topics in the left column; the right column offers podcasts, primary sources, contact information for organizations and websites. The center of the page is headed by the first two paragraphs of a lengthy overview, with an option to view the full overview. Beneath the overview are articles of six types. “Global Perspectives” are essays that reach beyond U.S. borders in authorship and perspective. “Reference” offers overview articles from the rich library of Gale’s vast reference collections; “Statistics” provides charts, graphs and statistical tables. “News,” “Magazines” and “Academic Journals” provide deeper content, again with substantial contributions from non–American sources. The effort throughout the collection is not to provide a pro and con format, but to offer a wide range of perspectives on issues. With most features on a page, a few selections are offered, almost always with an option of viewing more on additional pages. This organizational scheme keeps the user aware––without being overwhelmed––that additional content is available. Users can also access content via the homepage’s “Country Finder.” This is a Google Maps–based feature that allows users to click on a flagged country, then select from a pop–up menu among the country portal, a country profile based on content from the Worldmark Encyclopedia of Nations, or from current issues related to that country. The “World News” section of the main page is where users—the librarian, teachers and students—can choose from among more than a hundred newspapers around the world and set up RSS feeds to keep current on key issues. Powerful advanced searching allows the researcher to limit by a wide range of fields, including title, subject, keyword, publication title, document and content type, date, format and lexile level, an especially useful tool for locating content for struggling readers. Attractive, easy to use, interactive and rich in Gale’s deep content holdings, this database sets a new standard for interface design and is highly recommended for high school, public and college libraries.