Social Science sites of the week

This week Russian Elections took place.
See our election blog posting for up to date links.
We particularly recommend
Russia Votes. Surveys and analysis conducted by Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Strathclyde which specialises in studies of the post-soviet nations. Look at recent approval ratings and results from 1996 onwards. Also valuable is the Nations in Transit report from Freedom House which is tracking the rate of democratic change in post-Soviet nations. Download all reports since 2003 from the website.

Graduates in the Labour Market 2012
Graduates in the Labour market 2012
The official data from the ONS show high rates of unemployment and unskilled work amongst recent graduates.
Other sources of analysis on graduate employment trends: include Prospects. The labour market section of their website includes Graduate Market Trends which has updates on overall patterns and those by region. It also produces the report What do graduates do? Get free access to editions from 2009 onwards.
High Fliers Research produced the Graduate market in 2012 which reviews vacancy levels and starting salaries. (scroll to bottom of page).
Association of Graduate Recruiters has comment on the most recent figures. It also has some research reports on its website.

International women’s day was celebrated on the 8th March.
see the official website for latest press releases.
Guardian has data on political representation on its blog. Social Watch released the 2012 Gender Equity Index measuring the gap between women and men in education, the economy and political empowerment.
To celebrate this week
The UNESCO World Atlas of Gender Equality in Education was released.
It provides information and visual graphs of enrolment and gender in primary, secondary and tertiary education, also in adult and youth literacy. A final chapter considers how policies effect gender equality in education.
Get free access to statistics on gender and education from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. They include literacy and access trends.
The World Bank also has some related reports. UN Women provides links to the latest resources and documents produced by UN agencies.

ULAKBIM, Turkish social sciences database
site maintained by the Turkish Academic Network and Information Centre (ULAKBIM) which aims to provide users with a searchable catalogue of references to key social science publications published in Turkish.Subjects covered include: Anthropology, Communication, Economics and Business, Educational Sciences, Geography, History, Philosophy, Political Sciences, Public Administration, Psychology and Sociology
Titles are generally indexes from 2002 onwards the full list is on the website.
Currently just over 200 are included. It can be searched to a certain extent in English. Other science and medical indexes are also available.
Other research repositories in Turkey are listed on OpenDoar.

National ETD Portal South Africa: South African theses and Dissertations
This site is run by the South African National Research Foundation (NRF) in collaboration with the Committee of Higher Education Librarians of South Africa (CHELSA).It provides access to the full text of many thousands of doctoral PHD and some other dissertations produced in South African universities. These cover the full range of science, social science and humanities topics. There is some coverage from as early as the 1970s although there are larger numbers of post 2009 records. Search by keyword or browse.

Old Maps Online
Wonderful free portal for accessing vast collections of historic maps. Created by The Great Britain Historical GIS Project based at The University of Portsmouth, UK and Klokan Technologies GmbH, Switzerland and funded by JISC. Currently cross searches a number of leading collections including maps from the British Library, A Vision of Britain through Time, David Rumsey historic maps, Moravian Library, Mollova mapová sbírka (Czech Republic) and National Library of Scotland Map collections. Type in a place name and select a date. Get lists of maps where you can zoom in on specific locations. Details of date, scale and copyright provided.

Human Rights Watch satellite image and analysis of Homs devastation in Syria.
See the analysis of satellite images derived from specialist company Digital media.
The website also has numerous reports Other images from the United Nations UNITAR UNOSAT website show country situation reports.
For the latest news stories try also the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Human Security Gateway. It links to many recent papers and reports from think tanks,

This week US presidential elections:
Super Tuesday
The Washington Post has great visuals and text explaining the importance of Super Tuesday. Huffington Post has a useful mapping of results.
An increasing issue for discussion is the use of social media in the elections.
ABC news discusses this. Fox Atlanta created a widget for users to monitor social media. The Twitter blog charts the road to this milestone in tweets. Social matica predicted election results based on social media for Super Tuesday. See also its blog for explanation of social media influence and the elections.
The Social Bakers election site also has some social media analysis leading up to Super Tuesday.
Mashable had social media links and postings from users on the day. It also has some postings on Super Tuesday buzz

Luxembourg Income Database (LIS)
This data service includes Household and person-level micro data on income, demography, employment, and expenditures from countries in Europe, North America, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Australasia. Many covering from 1968 onwards. Browse by country. Free registration required for access. The site also includes working papers. These cover topics relating to income employment, poverty many based on analysis of data. Of course Uk academic users should also remeber to search the ESDS catalogues for access to data.It has a useful thematic guide to financial and monetary statistics

Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)
New initiative from OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks) which is seeking to increase knowledge and access to online materials.It is creating a searchable portal of free online eBooks covering the fill range of science and social science topics. Partners are European university presses. See the full list on the website. They include English, German and other foreign language books. Emphasis is upon recently published titles.
If you are looking for online books including the free classics (e.g. project Gutenberg) remember the free listing at the online books page U Penn