The novel coronavirus pandemic of 2020 has introduced new terms like social distancing and shelter-in-place orders into many American’s everyday vocabulary. Supply chain is another such term, one used to help explain product shortages caused by the pandemic, shortages of products as diverse as ventilators, meat, and hand sanitizer. The NEIU Libraries subscribe to IBISWorld, an online business information resource that allows for the exploration of complex industry supply chains.
IBISWorld uses an industry classification system created by the federal government for the purpose of gathering statistical information. IBISWorld has reports on over 700 industries, and each report shows the supply chain for that industry. IBISWorld can be searched by keyword or company name or five-digit industry classification code. For example, the pandemic has generated numerous news stories about toilet paper shortages. An IBISWorld search using the term “Charmin” or “toilet paper” would return the industry report on Sanitary Paper Product Manufacturing in the US (NAICS 32229a). The report contains a graph of the industry’s supply chain (with links to its components shown in red):
IBISWorld reports, with their chapter and sub-chapter links on the left side, are easy to navigate and can be downloaded as printable PDFs. Access IBISWorld, from off campus, but logging in with your NEIU NetID and password.
by Henry Owen III, NEIU Business Librarian
Since 2014, the NEIU Libraries have recognized outstanding student efforts in the area of library-based research through the annual Library Award for Excellence in Research. The award is given to students who demonstrate outstanding ability to identify, locate, select, evaluate, and synthesize library resources and to use them in the creation of an original research project. Student award winners receive a cash prize of $300 and recognition for their outstanding efforts. We would like to congratulate the winners of the 2020 NEIU Library Award for Excellence in Research!
James is a graduate assistant within NEIU's Learning Success Center, where he consults with students across all disciplines with writing and research needs in order to help them recognize and improve upon their thinking, learning, and writing methods. He plans on graduating in May 2021.
James researched the relationship between spiritual commitment and the reduction of depressive symptoms among Chicago-based Latinx high school students. His bibliography included psychological assessment tools, public opinion polls, and numerous scholarly articles published in journals of medicine, psychiatry, psychopharmacology, psychoanalysis, and the psychology of religion. Among these articles were those that analyzed the validity and reliability of various spirituality measurements; these articles helped James to identify a measurement that did not presume Judeo-Christian values. James consciously addressed “the bias inherent in any examination of spirituality,” as he aptly put it, by utilizing “sources written by a combination of theologians, psychologists, counselors, and other mental health and medical professionals.”
In his own words: “Special thanks to former NEIU librarian Alyssa Vincent for helping me expand upon my research methods and to Dr. Erick Alexeyev for providing feedback throughout the drafting process.”
Anthony entered the Communication, Media, and Theatre MA program in the Fall of 2018, and is currently working on his Master’s thesis, examining themes of gender and sexuality, identity, and performance within drag queen culture. Anthony plans to pursue a PhD and continue his work in queer studies, media and cultural studies, and critical/queer theory.
Anthony’s research description was polished and very thoughtfully articulated, and the topic, while focused, was expansive enough to cover a wide variety of bibliographic sources. He used not only advanced search techniques, interlibrary loan, subject librarian consultations, and specialized reference sources, but proactively responded to the challenges that arose during the research process by conducting his own qualitative study using personal interviews and social media.
In his own words: “I would like to thank Dr. Shayne Pepper, CMT Department Chair, for his continuing guidance, support, and encouragement during my time at NEIU. He truly has become a mentor. I am very grateful for his belief in me and my work. I would also like to thank the former CMT librarian, Alyssa Vincent, for introducing new ways (at least for me) to seek out sources of information relating to my research.”
Erin is participating in the University Without Walls program within NDP. Her depth area is Non-Profit Management. This is her first semester back in school in twenty years!
Erin researched the negative impacts of gentrification and cultural whitewashing both locally and nationally. Her bibliography presented a rich variety of sources from primary documents from the Chicago Tribune to peer reviewed journal articles from the Georgetown Journal of Poverty Law & Policy. The research process Erin described really set her application apart. She demonstrated a nuanced understanding of source selection and deep engagement with the library resources. We were thrilled to hear her share that, "The most important aspect of all of this research was that it was available to me from home, while in lock down."
In her own words: “Thank you to my WIP professor, Sean Carey, who encouraged me to apply for this award, and to Alyssa Vincent, Digital Scholarship Librarian, who took the time to give our class an NEIU Library presentation, which gave me the information and tools I needed to set up my I-Share account and gave us important information on how to access and use the NEIU research databases. The fact that all of this data is available to NEIU students online and from anywhere has been invaluable to me.”
Sebin has been at NEIU for almost a year, after transferring from Oakton Community College last fall. His expected graduation date is 2022; he is double majoring in IT and CS.
Amanda has been at NEIU since last summer. She is planning to graduate in May 2021 with a Bachelors in Computer Science and a concentration in Network and Information Security.
Sebin and Amanda researched the ability of various optical character recognition (OCR) technologies to recognize characters embedded in an image. They used databases including Academic Search Ultimate and Google Scholar to find scholarly journal articles that address the methodologies of OCR algorithms. They decided to focus on Tesseract, an open-source text-recognition technology used by Google OCR for benchmarking purposes. They then searched GitHub for implementations of OCR and found two open-source programs, CRAFT and CLOVA AI; next they searched arXiv to find papers explaining these implementations’ algorithms and models, with an eye towards accuracy and replication. Their research points to the use of OCR technologies to detect harassment in images with embedded text (i.e. memes) on social media platforms.
In his own words: “I could not have done this without the help and support from our Independent Research Professor Rachel E. Trana. I would like to thank her for all the work she has put in and the guidance she has provided me and Amanda.”
In her own words: “This would not have been possible without the support and guidance that Professor Rachel Trana gave to me and Sebin.”