Social Science sites of the week
New and interesting sites this week
From our blog
http://lselibraryresearch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/social-science-sites-of-week_11.html
In the news this week Greek elections and economics.
See our posting of links to political and election news coverage. http://electionsinthenews.blogspot.co.uk/
Other sources of information on Greek research include
National online archive of PhD theses.
http://phdtheses.ekt.gr/eadd/
This is administered by the National Documentation Centre (EKT). It contains contains the PhD theses from all Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Greece as well as PhD theses awarded to Greek scholars by foreign HEIs that have been recognized by the Hellenic NARIC (Δ.Ο.Α.Τ.Α.Π.).
Helios-National Hellenic Research Foundation. http://helios-eie.ekt.gr/EIE/ NHRF’s institutional repository – provides information on research conducted at major Greek research institutes. These include: Institute of Greek and Roman Antiquity, Institute of Byzantine Research (IBR), Institute for Neohellenic Research (INR),
Institute for Neohellenic Research (INR) Collection, Institute of Biological Research and Biotechnology (IBRB) Collection, Theoretical and Physical Chemistry Institute (TPCI) Institute of Organic and Pharmaceutical Chemistry (IOPC).
Pandektis http://pandektis.ekt.gr/pandektis/ is a subject repository for the humanities and contains research and scholarly records in the fields of the Humanities, History and Culture. Topics covered include: ancient Greek, cartography, Greek culture, Greek press abroad.
French elections.
See our blog posting on useful sites. http://electionsinthenews.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/who-is-francois-hollande.html
Idose published a recent report on the use of social media by French politicians http://www.ideose.com/legislative-2012-deputes-pas-campagne-reseaux-sociaux-internet/
it concluded that 77,50%) did not have a Facebook page, 74% did not have a Twitter account, 66% did not have YouTube or video accounts.
The elus 2.0 website http://www.elus20.fr/
Is a good starting point for keeping up to date with French politics and online initiatives
Netpolitique is also good at highlighting the latest news and studies. http://netpolitique.net/
Queen’s Speech
See the parliament website http://www.parliament.uk/documents/lords-information-office/2012/State-Opening-of-Parliament-BP-web-final.pdf for an explanation of the purpose and procedure of the state opening of parliament.
The Cabinet Office has a film and transcript. http://number10.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/engage/queens-speech-2012 For links to items on other UK government websites sees infoforlocal http://www.info4local.gov.uk/?view=Search+results&query=queen’s+speech+2012&subjects=all&departmentsIds=0&informationTypesIds=all
The BBC has a quick at a glance guide to the bills proposed. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17988236
See news coverage from the Guardian blog. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/queens-speech
The Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9254018/Queens-Speech-2012-the-main-points.html
Full text of all speeches from 1994 onwards can be downloaded from the Parliament website. http://www.parliament.uk/about/how/occasions/stateopening/queensspeeches/
The Monarchy official website also has some background and clips from earlier speeches. http://www.royal.gov.uk/RoyalEventsandCeremonies/StateOpeningofParliament/State%20Opening%20of%20Parliament.aspx
Measuring financial inclusion: the Global Findex Database
http://econ.worldbank.org/external/default/main?pagePK=64165259&theSitePK=469372&piPK=64165421&menuPK=64166093&entityID=000158349_20120419083611
First analysis of the new indexed launched recently by the World Bank which provides individual data on savers and borrowers worldwide. The 61 page report by
Asli Demirguc-Kunt , Leora Klapperfinds that 50% of adults worldwide do not have bank accounts many report problems with access that could be easily solved by changes to government/ public policy. Find out more about the global findex methodology. http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/EXTPROGRAMS/EXTFINRES/EXTGLOBALFIN/0,,contentMDK:23147627~pagePK:64168176~piPK:64168140~theSitePK:8519639,00.html
Download the full database from the World Bank website. http://datatopics.worldbank.org/financialinclusion/
US 2010 Religious Census
Find out which religious groups are having rising membership in the USA.
Summary from the ARDA blog. http://blogs.thearda.com/trend/featured/diversity-rising-census-shows-mormons-nondenominational-churches-muslims-spreading-out-across-u-s/
Download the full details. From the Association of Religion Data Archives. http://www.thearda.com/RCMS2010/
There are also GIS maps for earlier censuses from 1980 onwards.
The ARDA website is a rich source of information about religion in the USA, including membership and attitudes. There is also an international section with links to cross national surveys and national organisations. http://www.thearda.com/internationalData/
For further information on worldwide beliefs see this recent report
A new 22 page report on the international surveys, “Belief about God across Time and Countries,” was issued by the General Social Survey of the social science research organization NORC at the University of Chicago http://www.norc.org/PDFs/Beliefs_about_God_Report.pdf
For further information about the UK see the British Religion in Numbers website. http://www.brin.ac.uk/
Coordinated by staff based at the Institute for Social Change University of Manchester, this has figures from church censuses and some commentary.
EUrel is an EU project which has sociological and legal information on the statuses of religions in EU nations.
Entries give historical background summaries of major laws and encyclopedia style entries with links to the main data sources. http://www.eurel.info/
2011 National Human Development Report for Russia
http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/national/europethecis/russia/name,24360,en.html
Find out more about socio-economic conditions in Russia by reading this major new report.
Prepared by the Faculty of Economics at Lomonosov Moscow State University
Focus is upon modernization and human development.
Covers changes to the economy, organization of economic life. Also useful is the Nations in Transit report from Freedom House. http://www.freedomhouse.org/report-types/nations-transit which tracks social, political and economic transition in post socialist nations. From 1995 onwards.
Europeana : European Digital Library news.
New content added from
Judaica Europeana http://www.judaica-europeana.eu/Search_Europeana_Collections.html
This provides a single access point to material of value for research into Jewish history and culture the network is led by the European Association for Jewish Culture and Frankfurt University Library. It has been co-funded by the European Commission, Rothschild Foundation (Hanadiv) Europe and project partners this includes text, sound files and images.
Search the collections on Europeana. http://www.judaica-europeana.eu/Search_Europeana_Collections.html
See a collection of online exhibitions on the home page. http://www.judaica-europeana.eu/ These include The Star of David and the Tricolore: a crowd-sourcing initiative Stella di David e Tricolore was developed by MiBAC/ICCU by inviting users to provide archival material, publications, stories, videos and photographs relating to the history of the Jews in Italy in the 150 years since Italian unification http://www.culturaitalia.it/opencms/static/stella_di_david_e_tricolore/index_it.jsp
Europeana: European digital library news Newspapers
Will gather together digitized historic newspaper from 17 leading European libraries. This will aggregate existing newspaper holdings on. The European Library and Europeana. Materials will be added over the next 3 years. Special emphasis will be news covering the First World War. At present the site has a blog with information on activity. Content is not visible. http://www.europeana-newspapers.eu/
Harvestories
http://www.harvestories.co.uk/
Interesting oral history site created to store the memories of men and women from the South West of England (mainly Devon). Site funded by the Blackdown hills area of outstanding natural beauty development fund. Users can look on a map and find oral history memories or they can browse by topic. Topics include rural industry, farming, World War II, social activities and specific local areas.
National Library of Medicine – Digital collections.
http://collections.nlm.nih.gov/muradora/welcome.jsp
Provides free access to online books and videos (public health films) covering the history of medicine and health.
Special collections include: Public health film goes to war. http://collections.nlm.nih.gov/muradora/browse.action?parentId=nlm%3ADREPPHFGTW-coll&type=1
see US government films from the 1940s made to educate the public
Cholera online – see printed out of copyright books relating to the medical facts about cholera, cholera outbreak and prevention.
Other topics include historic books on women’s health
e.g. Medicine as a profession for women published in 1860 which discusses women and the medical profession. http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/62630060R
Or the marvelously entitled
Women: their diseases and their treatment published in 1858 by John King http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/67050270R
Which states on page 13 ‘
‘The female who neglects the hygienic rules, or who enfeebles the powers of her system, by a course of thoughtlessness and misgovernment, or by pursuing a fashionable routine of dissipation, will make only an invalid, sterile wife, or, should she unfortunately give birth to offspring, they will be of delicate, sickly constitutions, seldom attaining adulthood. There is no doubt but the decay of once great nations is as much owing to the condition of their women…’
http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.0680
By Lutz Bornman, Max Planck Societ; Loet Leydesdorff
Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)
University of Amsterdam, Interesting 14 page report which uses data from InCites tool of Thomson Reuters to compare citation rates of articles in China, Japan, France, Germany, United States, and the UK throughout the time period from 1981 to 2010. Covers 4 four subject areas: natural sciences; engineering and technology; medical and health sciences; and agricultural sciences citation rates are rising. In China they have been slow but are now starting to increase.
Heather Dawson
LSE Library
