This site, hosted by the U.S. Geological Survey, provides statistics on production, consumption, price, etc. for non-energy mineral resources worldwide. Older data from 1932-1993 are available Minerals Yearbook (see TN23.U612 for the print volumes). Many of the commodities listed in the annual Minerals Yearbook have monthly or quarterly updates published in the Mineral Industry Surveys series, which is housed at the Earth and Mineral Sciences Library as well as being on the Web.
Several books that provide background on the uses of minerals and how they are processed are:
All can be found at the Earth and Mineral Sciences Library, mostly in the Reference area. Selected other resources for specific minerals are listed on the EMS Library’s online resources page for mineral economics.
How
to find books:
Books offer in-depth
treatment of topics but can be somewhat out of date. Try doing a keyword search
for your commodity + "mining".
There are many different databases for articles.
Some cover more journals than others; some cover certain subjects only;
some only have a couple of years of data. In most cases, once you find an article
you need to check the CAT to see if the journal it appears in is available at
Penn State. Some multidisciplinary article databases include:
Some subject databases that have articles in them include:
How to find newspaper
articles:
Newspapers are good sources
of local information, current events and public opinion.
How to find transcripts:
Transcripts are written summaries of radio or television programs or other
oral records. Good examples are the many transcripts of Congressional
hearings, transcripts of NPR radio programs, or television programs such as
Dateline. Transcripts are sometimes
freely available on the Web.
How to find technical
reports:
Technical reports are reports that are written as a result of funded research. The majority are funded by government agencies
such as the Dept. of Defense or NASA. The
information in tech. reports is frequently unique or not reported elsewhere.
Search for maps
as if they were books. If you cannot
find a specific enough map, try looking for something more general, e.g, a
minerals map instead of a map of bismuth resources, or a map of
Web resources:
The Web is an immense, constantly changing resource. Use caution when using Web resources, however.
Be sure you evaluate what you see - who is providing the information?,
are they biased or not?, are they truly knowledgeable?, is the information
up to date?, will the site be there when your instructor goes looking for
it?, etc.
Some useful search tools to help find information on the Web are: