Social Science sites of the week
Dear all
Here is the latest weekly round up of new and interesting sites for social scientists
In the news this week Venezuela elections.
See our links to recommended news and anlysis websites.
http://electionsinthenews.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/chavez-wins-election-our-recommended.html
For background information on the state of democracy/ human rights see Transparencie Venezuela http://www.transparencia.org.ve/ which has background information on political violence and corruption in Venezuela.
Human Rights Watch Venezuela http://www.hrw.org/publications/reports?topic=All®ion=83
Amnesty international. Venezuela http://amnistia.me/ has news from the regional branch. The main international site has human rights reports in English from the mid-1990s onwards. http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/venezuela
Other useful political sites include:
Archive of Venezuelan Political Discourse (ARVEPODIS) http://www.archive-it.org/collections/215
Contains copies of over 100 Web sites associated with the Venezuelan political process. The Archive includes blogs, media sites, official government sites, political opposition, and non-partisan and civil society groups, among others. Many of these sites were archived on a daily basis during a three month period in late 2005.
LAPOP Latin American Public opinion project (LAPOP) http://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/venezuela.php
Vanderbilt University provides free access to Latin America barometer public opinion survey data. Access studies and reports relating to Venezuela from 1995 onwards. http://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/pdfs/At-a-glance-v2.pdf
Conservative Party conference 2012.
See our links to news resources here. http://lselibraryresearch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/conservative-party-conference-find-out.html
For historic research try the Bodleian library website which has the official Conservative Party archive. http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/cpa In addition to the catalogue the website also has images of many conservative posters. http://bodley30.bodley.ox.ac.uk:8180/luna/servlet/ODLodl~6~6 There are approx. 100 online from the 1920s-1980s. They include images of leaders and election materials. Copyright displayed on the website
Preparing for Effective Adoption and Use of eBooks in Education http://blog.observatory.jisc.ac.uk/techwatch-reports/ebooks-in-education/ JISC sponsored report. It is in a draft format at present.The 52 page reports considers a number of interesting issues for academic staff and libraries. It begins by examining the fundamentals of eBook technology, reader compatibility with different formats. Page 20 has some interesting eBook scenarios for use in an academic context.
alos online this week an inspirational talk from NetworkED: Technology in Education from Centre for Learning technology at the LSE. Teaching as a design science: developing reliable knowledge of learning technology. http://clt.lse.ac.uk/events/networkED-seminar-series-06.php The seminar uses the findings from a recent ESRC-EPSRC research project to show how the right learning design tools could help the professional teaching community develop reliable knowledge of how best to deploy new kinds of digital technology.
PSE: UK website, Poverty and social exclusion website
http://www.poverty.ac.uk/
Has just been re-launched, with a host of new features to improve access to the project data and findings. PSE: UK is a major collaboration between the University of Bristol, Heriot-Watt University, The Open University, Queen’s University Belfast, University of Glasgow and the University of York working with the National Centre for Social Research and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. It provides free access to definitions of poverty, the full text of In Poverty in the United Kingdom (1979) Peter Townsend and the latest research findings from the groups.
Other key research groupson this topic include Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion ( lse ) http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/case/ which has numerous working papers and reports online covering all the dimensions of poverty.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation website also has a good blog and full text publications covering all dimensions of poverty. http://www.jrf.org.uk/
The American Influenza Epidemic of 1918-1919: A Digital Encyclopedia
http://www.influenzaarchive.org/
The University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine, in partnership with the U-M Library’s MPublishing have launched this free open access site of interest to public health historians.
Separate sections cover the 50 states. Each section contains original newspapers, public health bulletins and essays. The full site is searchable by keyword. Copyright information is displayed.
LSE digital library launches archive of student newspaper the Beaver. 1947-2007/8
http://digital.library.lse.ac.uk/collections/beaver
Fascinating source of social and political history covering the lives of students at this leading London university. It offers insight into womens rights issues, student protests of the 1960s and the history of the London School of Economics. Famous contributors include. Bernard Levin – early contributor to the newspaper, particularly of theatre reviews. Justin Webb – former editor was the BBC’s chief Washington correspondent, now presents the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. Fully searchable by keyword.
Other useful student activism resources
Glasgow Guardian Digital Archive http://www.gla.ac.uk/services/archives/guardian/
The Glasgow Guardian Digital Archive website makes available every student newspaper produced at the University from 1932 to 1935 and 1955 to 2007.
Protests & Social Action at UW-Madison during the 20th Century includes digitised photographs, leaflets audio clips, many relating to racial segregation. http://archives.library.wisc.edu/uw-archives/exhibits/protests/1960s.html
Student protests in 1960s Chapel Hill (University of North California) includes integration sit ins, anti-Vietnam protests. http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/exhibits/protests/
C-span video programmes on the history of student protest in the USA. http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/302390-1 A panel of scholars describe how they have used oral histories to help present a more complete record of protests on college campuses in the 1960s and ’70s.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/perkinsarchive/collections/72157629303816171
Interesting use of flickr. A collaboration between the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) and Perkins school for the blind has made available online the extensive 1880s-era correspondence between Helen Keller, her teacher Anne Sullivan and Sullivan’s mentor at Perkins School for the Blind, Michael Anagnos,
The letters feature detailed descriptions of Helen’s education, documenting both her rapid progress and some of the challenges that she and her teacher faced. The site also links to other resources about Helen Keller, disability and education in the 19th Century.
United Nations Office at Geneva useful League of Nations Archives Resource Guide
http://libraryresources.unog.ch/leagueofnationsarchives
Although intended primarily to provide information to researchers about the contents of the Geneva archive it also serves as a good introduction to League of Nations research in general . It has a special thematic guide on disarmament. Links to key digitised collections. http://libraryresources.unog.ch/content.php?pid=279421&sid=2361880
These include Sean Lester Papers (1929- ) Sean Lester (1888-1959), Irish journalist, diplomat and last Secretary-General of the League of Nations. The Lester Papers primarily covers the period 1929-1946
The League of Nations photographic archive. This includes photos of: Personalities, Assemblies, Councils, delegations, commissions, conferences, http://www.indiana.edu/~league/index.htm
Other sources of online League of nations materials include Northwestern Universities Statistical Yearbook of the United Nations collection 1926-1944. This is a really good source for statistical data predating the creation of the UN, World Bank. It includes trade and commerce by nation, currency statistics and prices. http://www.blogger.com/Full%20text%20http://digital.library.northwestern.edu/league/stat.html
http://archive.org/details/tv
Internet Archive site. This service is designed to help USA citizens better understand the issues and candidates in the 2012 U.S. elections by allowing them to search closed captioning transcripts from relevant television news programs. collection now contains 350,000 news programs collected over 3 years from national U.S. networks and stations in San Francisco and Washington D.C. The archive is updated with new broadcasts 24 hours after they are aired. Older materials are also being added.
Heather Dawson
Library
