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| By Kimberly G. Allain Campus Resources: Where to Find Information I had an opportunity to discover for the first time the wealth of information available at the Government Documents and Maps section of the University Research Library. It was complete with census information, labor statistics, demographic information, and various maps of regions all over the world. This resource is unique because the information it provides can be used for various purposes. A journalist can look out for and analyze trends in various communities and the United States as a whole. Population data of the diverse communities and their ethnic evolutions are useful to determine how the face of a community is changing, what the potential problems and needs for communities are. Literacy, poverty, wealth, crime, and education statistics are available and can act as a "thermometer" to allow one to get a feel of what the climate is in a particular place and to ignite us to seek understanding of causal relationships of the miscellaneous factors. Map sections allow us to see the boundaries of regions, and to see how those boundaries have changed throughout the years. This lends historical significance in terms of political revolutions and wars that have changed the boundaries of the land. It gives us climatic conditions for the various regions and allows one to infer some anthropological assumptions about a population and its cultural adaptation. The Government Documents and Maps section gives us raw data about the character of our world. How this data is interpreted can make all the difference in the world as to whether it will be useful or harmful. When a journalist is writing, it is important that he/she allow the community to speak to them and through them. The statistics can only give one the results that could have been caused by any number of variables. (Kimberly G. Allain is a junior majoring in Psychology.) |