Sage Research Methods Online has just started a free public beta test.  And the Library has started an institutional trial too.  The resource, which contains over 100,000 pages of books, journals, encyclopedias and handbooks, is designed to help you choose and implement the best social science research method for your project. You can use the Library’s trial or set up your own. Access is free (registration required) until the formal product launch in January 2011.  Please let me know if you have any feedback about this tool.

And if social science research is your thing, take a look at Methodspace, a social network for researchers that is also from Sage.  It’s free!

From now until May 26^th we have a  trial of the Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA) database.  If you study a topic related to language, linguistics, or speech this may be an important resource for you.  I could envision this being used by students and researchers in fields like Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, Communications, Modern Languages, and the Health Sciences.  Here’s the publisher’s description:

CSA Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA) abstracts and indexes the international literature in linguistics and related disciplines in the language sciences. The database covers all aspects of the study of language including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Complete coverage is given to various fields of linguistics including descriptive, historical, comparative, theoretical and geographical linguistics. The database provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews drawn from over 1,500 serials publications, and also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, and dissertations.

You can access the database here. Please take a look at this tool and tell me what you think of it.  I really appreciate your feedback.

Data Store: World Government Data

If you like your data international, free, and easy to find then the UK newpaper,  The Guardian, has a site for you!

World Government Data draws from publicly available government databases like data.gov for the US and the cleverly named data.gov.uk.  Now you can browse or cross-search government datasets from the UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand, with more sources added as they come available.

Even better, though it’s Open Platform API, the Guardian gives you tools to build visualizations and create apps that use the Data Store.  You can browse some of the apps that have been created so far here.

Does your program  require that you use APA Style for the research papers you write?

Did you go out and buy the brand new 6th Edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association?

Yes? Well, I have some bad news for you.

It seems that the first printing of the 6th edition is riddled with errors. What’s worse is that many of the errors are in the very examples you count on to make sure that your own writing is error-free.

How do you know if your copy of the 6th edition Manual is from the first printing? Two ways:

1. If you have the paperback and you bought it before November 2009 (in case you are reading this in the future), then you have one from the first printing.
2. If you have the hardcover or spiral bound book, just look at the fourth (unnumbered) page of the book. It’s the same page as the copyright and cataloging-in-publication data. At the bottom of the page it will say “First Printing” or “Second Printing”.

So, what can you do to be sure you are looking at the correct examples?  At the moment, all we can do is look at the two PDFs (here and here) of corrections that the APA has posted on their website.

At the moment, the APA has kindly decided that posting the errata in those PDFs is a better option than replacing the defective books with with the corrected second printing.  Don’t agree?   You could always contact APA Style to let them know how you think they should fix this problem.

Update: If you want to exchange your copy for a corrected “second printing” version they should be available after November 2 through the APA Service Center – 800 374-2721.

You can find an interesing story about this on the Inside Higher Ed blog.

Silobreaker

Silobreaker provides a new way to read, search, and use information from thousands of international news sources, blogs, and even academic, company, and government websites.

Provides customizable mapping for local or global news stories, graphs trends in news coverage for topics or people, and shows relationship networks for topics or people. Here (below) is a Network search for Barack Obama:

This resource can be especially useful for tracking media coverage of topics of interest over time, looking at connections between topics, or examining how news stories are discussed in other countries.

Just Launched! ICED Video Game from Breakthrough: building human rights culture.

Not so much a research tool as an interesting use of technology to raise public awareness of a hot social issue, ICED: I Can End Deportation is a free video game that explores the immigration debate from the point of view of immigrant teens. The game, put out by human rights NGO Breakthrough, has sparked a bit of controversy in the news media lately.

The premise of the game involves moving immigrant teens through the maze of American daily life with the goal of obtaining citizenship. Along the way the teens must make the right choices and give the right answers in their interactions with Immigration authorities to avoid detention and deportation.

This isn’t the first time that a video game launch has fed debates over contentious social and political issues. What makes this game so interesting is that the game itself is being used as an issue-advocacy tool. Clearly the importance of video games as an informative and persuasive medium is growing.