Sweet tooth

I have a sweet tooth. If it's sweet, I'll probably like it! This morning on the local Fox channel there was a story about scarcity and prices. How when something is scarce (oil, water, etc) the price goes up. Basic economics. You probably have figured if I start off by noting I have a sweet tooth....the scarce item must be - sugar.

Looking for the 'real' story in our databases is one of my joys. I must have been a fact checker in a previous life. Opening GALILEO and selecting Databases A-Z, then selecting All Databases. I scrolled through looking for a database I thought might have an article about the sugar shortage and its impact on processed food producers in the United States.

At first glance I selected Business Source Complete which is "a scholarly business database that provides full-text access to many peer-reviewed business related journals, including disciplines such as marketing, management, MIS, POM, accounting, finance and economics".. Nothing-

Back to the All Databases list- Agricola seemed a likely source for information about a sugar shortage. Agricola "contains bibliographic records from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Library and covers every major agricultural subject"...again... Nothing -

Perhaps I need a news story - my favorite newsy source is Lexis Nexis. While scrolling to L, I passed Facts.com which "highlights articles on current issues and controversies in society and science. Additionally, Facts.com contains a World Almanac Reference Database, World Almanac Encyclopedia, Reuters news articles, and World News Digest special features and articles from 1940 - present." CTC has purchased access to this particular resource. I stopped- did a search using sugar in both title and text in World News Digest, nothing current. Redid the search using sugar just in the title- still nothing.

Back to Databases A-Z, All Databases and my scroll to Lexis Nexis. I limited my search to the previous three months, used sugar as my search term, limited the search to Major U.S. and World Publications and TV and Radio Broadcast Transcripts. I sorted the results in chronological order. Victory! In June, July and August there are multiple stories about the shortage of sugar and the rising price of this commodity. Yes, I should have saved time and just gone to Lexis Nexis but I'd have missed the suspense of looking and looking.

If you have a sweet tooth (and are thinking about holiday baking) you might want to read these news stories to see if you need to plan ahead. You'll need the current GALILEO password. You may get that password from your Georgia librarian.


-kls