Brandirectory.com

 Brandirectory.com is a website that defines itself as “the definitive online encyclopedia of brands”

Within the site you can search your favourite brands or product lines to find out the country it  originated from, its value and brand rating. It includes a ratings table that rates the top 500 brand performers.

When you click on a particular brand you can find out more in-depth information about its monetary performance on the stock exchange and ranking over the years, its company history and development.

This website would be a valuable resource for those studying business and business marketing or economics.

Within the Academy Library collection are a number of books on brands, these include:

‘Clicks, bricks & brands’ by Martin Lindstrom.

‘How brands grow : what marketers don’t know’ by Byron Sharp and the researchers of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute

‘No logo brands, globalization, resistance ‘  executive producers, Sut Jhally, Loretta Alper ; producer/editor/camera, Kelly Garner.

image source: zootool.com. viewed 29/5/2012

The Magic of America

The Magic of America  is a digital version, from the Art Institute of Chicago, of  the memoir of Marion Mahony Griffin the wife of Walter Burley Griffin. Marion was an architect and designer in her own right.

“The unpublished manuscript is over 1,400 typewritten pages, and includes more than 650 illustrations, all faithfully reproduced by the Art institute. At the website, visitors can move back and forth between page facsimiles that replicate the original typed pages, and the digitized text. There is also a database of all the images (including page images) that can be both searched and browsed, using drop-down menus of terms: place names, architects, and buildings. “  Source: Scout report

You can also explore the Griffin’s work here at the Academy Library. We have a number of books on both Walter and Marion’s work within the collection. Here are just a few:

‘Grand obsessions : the life and work of Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin’ by Alasdair McGregor.

‘Beyond architecture : Marion Mahony and Walter Burley Griffin : America, Australia, India’  edited by Anne Watson.

‘Walter Burley Griffin, landscape architect’  by Peter Harrison ; edited by Robert Freestone.

Spotlight on reference sources

Oxford Reference Online Premium Collection (ORO) provides a range of fully-indexed, extensively linked, up to date, and cross-searchable dictionary, language reference, and subject reference works published by Oxford University Press, including detailed information across a broad subject range from the Oxford Companions series.

Selected subjects covered include:

• Computing
• Earth and Environmental Sciences
• Economics and Business
• History
• Literature
• Military History
• Physical Sciences and Mathematics
• Politics and Social Sciences
• Science

The Timelines tab allows you to view a timeline of notable events by country or by theme.  The Subjects and Books tab allows you to view across a number of different resources in a particular subject area, there is also a Links tab to external websites for each subject area. For more online Reference resources the Library webpage “Locate online Reference resources”  will give you further advice and guidance on how to locate other titles available online or you can browse through the UNSW Electronic Resources Portal (SIRIUS).

ProQuest maintenance

ProQuest have advised that they will be performing infrastructure maintenance on May 5th/6th, 2012. A twelve (12) hour window will be required for this maintenance. The window will take place Sunday, May 6, 2012, from 12:00pm (Australia Eastern Standard Time) until 12.00am Monday, May 7.

All ProQuest, Chadwyck-Healey, and Illumina products will be affected.

New resource trial : GeoFacets

GeoFacets trial until 28/3/2012

Access through this link: GeoFacets
UNSW would welcome your comments and feedback on this resource.