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!

The Curfew

Readers of this blog have probably noticed that I am fond of visual ways of exploring complex issues.  Often that involves maps but sometimes, as with ICED, that means web-based games.  The Curfew is a game (currently in beta) from Channel4 and LittleLoud in the UK with the support of groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, among others.

Set in an authoritarian Britain in 2027, the game allows you to explore, in a compelling, fun way, issues such as privacy, citizenship, security, surveillance, civil liberties, and human rights.  The production values are very high with a mix of live action and computer graphics and, if you login to your Facebook or Twitter accounts, it integrates information about you into the game as an extra creepy bonus.  Give it a look and let me know what you think!

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.

As part of it’s very interesting “Remade in America: The Newest Immigrants and their Impact” series, the New York Times has put up a fascinating interactive map that displays the country of origin for the foreign-born population by county.

This is pretty cool in itself but the demographics fun is multiplied when you notice the slider that lets you look at the map using data from every census back to 1880.  Want to see how the population of your home county has changed over the last 128 years?  Just move the slider and watch the color coding shift.  Want to see where people from a particular county settled, and when?  Just choose one of the countries a drop-down menu and you can see what counties they settled in.  Sadly the list of countries isn’t very long but does cover the most common countries of origin.

A mouse-over of the county will cause the county, it’s number of foreign-born residents, and total population — all for the selected census–to be identified in a bubble.

New York Times–Immigration Explorer

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.

OECD Statistics Portal

The OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) is beta testing OECD.Stat, it’s new statistical data browser.

What does that mean to you? Well, between now and mid-2008 access to OECD statistical data is free while they test out the new browser.

This is an opportunity to look at high quality social and economic datasets related to development and international aid, health, education, energy, and finance.

This page provides a table that lets you browse by topic. A good example of what you will find further inside is the database OECD Gender, Institutions and Development Statistics.

This is a terrific resource and I encourage you to try it out. As always, I’d like to hear what you used it for and what you think it.

Note: Parts of the database may be offline at times. This is a beta test, after all.