Ipsaportal.net

Research Data on the Council of the European Union

berny — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 06:47:21 +0000

This website fills a gap about systematic empirical data and cumulative research related to EU Council activities, from minutes and voting records to studies and analysis authored by scholars and experts. Set up and professionally managed by the Centre for European Research at Göteborg University (CERGU), in Sweden, this site is an attempt to break the somewhat closed nature of the Council and includes several extensive papers about specific topics, such as Voting in the Council from 1994 to 2006, Government Preferences on EU and the impact of EU enlargement on Council decision-making. For further research data, a direct link to the European Legislative Politics Research Group website with more content addressing the EU legislative politics. Despite its quite focused scope, the site provides great material and ideas for larger systematic analysis, while also its direct linkage with the official EU Council website enables the public to access a variety of updated news, voting records, press releases and much more. The site basic structure is functional to its goal of providing easy access to user with any expertise level, with just a few graphical navigational tips and lacking regular updates. Articles can be downloaded in different formats, Excel, SPSS format, STATA, CSV.

IPSA

VISTO STAMPA — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:56:01 +0000

Founded in 1949 under the UNESCO sponsorship, the International Political Science Association (IPSA) promotes the advancement of political science through info-exchange and open collaboration among scholars worldwide. Its recently redesigned website provides plenty of updated news, calls for papers, event schedule and other relevant material — under a simple and effective interface. A direct link to Ipsaportal (on-going project covering the best 300 websites in political science) is provided, while full online access to such publications as the International Political Science Abstracts and the International Political Science Review are restricted to paid subscribers only. The IPSA congress reports and proceeding abstracts are freely available, as well as access to the IPSA Secretariat newsletter (“Participation”) and to research committees and to external resources pages. Also available is a section for international Job Postings, RSS news feeds subscription, and further links to national political science associations affiliated to IPSA, along with a complete French version of the entire content. The Online Paper Room provides free download of complete papers presented at the 2011 World Congress of Political Science and will soon include other relevantpapers from previous IPSA International events.

LSE Research Online

berny — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:40:29 +0000

As an open access collection of publications by the London School of Economics (LSE) researchers, this database was created in 2008 to provide a centralized access to all LSE research outputs, including full-texts of journal articles in pre-publication form. The database content goes back to 1955 and hosts thousands of items (including 1382 items for 2009, 2564 for 2007, 1950 for 2008, and so on) incuding books and book chapters, working papers and theses, essays and more. Items can be browsed by Year, Subject Classification, and Sets – along with a simple keyword search and more complex options. Among the almost 30 departments covered, there are: International Relations (1227 documents), Sociology (693), Government (1890), and Social Policy (2893). The repository aims at creating a central archive of LSE research output, preserving it and making it accessible in the long term, thanks to high-quality metadata (bibliographic description of the item). Although not strictly part of the open access scene (mostly copyright is enforced), the repository is open to the public and its procedure enables researchers to directly upload their own work, after signing a ‘Deposit Agreement’, while the library staff will also complete bibliographic details and add the full text if needed. The LSE initiative is similar to those of other UK institutions, such as British Library

European Social Survey

VISTO STAMPA — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:02:22 +0000

Initiated and seed-funded by the European Science Foundation (and now also by the European Commission and scientific bodies in the over 30 participating countries), the European Social Survey (ESS) provides bi-annual charts, data and surveys related to Europe’s changing institutions and behaviour patterns of its diverse populations. Managed by a professional team, the website provides several data files for each survey and a cumulative data file for the first five rounds of the ESS (last released on 28 March 2012), both as pdf and zipped files. In addition, the download areas hosts more than 220 pdf files, covering history & background, data archive documentation, training courses, and more. The top downloads the ESS Brochure (22,340) and Round 4 Questionnaire (15,880). To access the actual data files, however, a free registration is required. Other sections include ESS EduNet, a training resource mainly developed for use in higher education, includes small extracts from the complete ESS dataset on specific topics (Well-being, Country Level Data, Family, Gender and Work, etc.), and a bibliography with external publications based on ESS activities. With a simple and effective outline, the website has a keyword search in each page and more advanced features, a news bullettin, a page with some (internal and exte

The Universal Digital Library

VISTO STAMPA — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:00:59 +0000

A partnership effort lead by the Carnegie Mellon University, with several servers, mirror-sites and 50 scanning centers hosted all over the world, this ambitious project aims at preserving and making freely available the human knowledge in digital format – planning to reach 10 million books within the next 10 years. The content currently available spans from the XVI century to 2007, in over 20 language and about 50 topics of general interest, from Education to Geography, to Drama, Health, Biology, etc., for a total of over 1,1 million books – even if the while the project seems to have stopped in early 2008. The UDL has books that are both in and out of copyright (that is, published after or before 1923), and adheres to copyright policies of all countries in the strictest possible interpretation. Along with a simple title search and advanced options, such as by year, subject, author, etc. users can also browse the collection by subject, language, year, author or title alphabetical order. For viewing UDL books, users need either a DjVu plugin and/or a Tiff plug-in, while the project has future plans to provide book content directly as pdf files – along with future initiatives aimed at creating digital libraries for newspapers, monuments, and spoken languages. The website is quite simple and easy to navigate, also providing tips and FAQ, but lacks any social option.

Europressresearch

VISTO STAMPA — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:55:55 +0000

The “Europe Project Study Centre” is a joint venture founded in 2005 by the bank Foundation of the Cassa di Risparmio and the University of Bologna aimed at studying public opinion trends and media coverage within the common European awareness. With over 15 top researchers and a professional site management, the project provides right from its homepage a good selction of analysis, research papers and news items that are the core activities of the Centre. Overall the website – provided in English and Italian – includes full-text of 12 two-month Search Analysis for the major EU contries, also available as pdf files, 10 focus papers and a long list of daily articles published on major EU newspapers (with direct links). Also provided are bi-weekly maps of the main articles published in major daily and periodical press dating back to February 2005, sorted by country or as pdf files. The Centre also organized many public initiatives in last three years and published six books on several issue related to EU and public opinion (none available online). The website features a simple outline and easy navigation, but lacks user or social interactions, beside a free newsletter and a simple key-word search window.

Centre for the Study of Political Change (CIRCaP)

VISTO STAMPA — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 07:21:05 +0000

Established in June 1997, the Centre provides research, analysis, data-collection on issues and processes related to political change at the sub-national, national and international levels. Based at the University of Siena, Italy, a team of political and social sciences scholars and researchers covers such issues as European integration, programmes of government and political parties, public opinion and foreign policy. The website hosts a series of publications, including about two dozens of occasional papers, several lectures and book and article reviews, and the Centre’s yearly activity reports dating back to 1998. Quite interesting is the public documentation and data section, with survey questions on subjects ranging from the Kosovo crisis to terrorism outside the US to internal issues related to current Italian and European political scene. All those documents are free to download as pdf files, while the entire site has an open access policy. Along with detailed info on the CIRCaP’s seminars, courses and research areas, also useful is the link page pointing to (mostly European) institutions working in the Political Science field and other databases and resources across the world.

Law Library of Congress

VISTO STAMPA — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 07:18:17 +0000

With approximately 2.65 million volumes, the US Law Library’s collection of primary and secondary sources constitutes the largest legal collection in the world. The collection is also the most comprehensive, covering all of the approximately 260 jurisdictions as well as many former nations and colonies. The collection – part of the Library of Congress info structure and complementary to THOMAS – includes 20,200 serial titles, 83,500 reels of microform and 2.268 million pieces of microfiche. On average, the collection grows annually by 50,000 volumes, 1,700 reels of microfilm, 75,000 pieces of microfiche, 50,000 serial pieces and 50,000 official gazettes. The website offers several layers of crucial information regarding the actual material in the Law Library Reading Room (such as an alphabetical list of law reviews and periodicals) but provides also direct access to hundreds of databases, eResources, and external links to a variety of sources related to law, politics and government fields across the world. The entire site features free access, while a professional design and management assures great quality, updated content and easy navigation to any user.

Latin American Social Science Council

VISTO STAMPA — Sat, 23 May 2009 22:04:05 +0000

This large portal provides open access to several information service databases of social science publications in Spanish and Portuguese, whose library currently hosts more than 10,600 full-text documents (books, magazines, thesis, working papers, etc.) related to social sciences in about 20 countries of Latin America and the Carribean. Other databases provide access to full-text of 84 magazines in the CLACSO network (including more than 8,000 articles of the CLACSO-Redalyc portal) as well as to bibliographic data and research projects authored by network members, covering 259 social science research institutions. Also available is a rich collection of links pointing to more than 170 sites providing open access to over 4,500 multimedia files. Users have multiple options to search particularly in the library (by author, title, region and more) but only in Spanish, with a few dozens of full-texts available also in English and further links to resources already published in the SciELO Social Sciences English Edition. The entire library content is released under a Creative Commons license, while the portal’s basic info is also translated in French and English. Generally up-to-date, the website includes also news items covering digital library issues and member activities, with most pages featuring a printer-friendly format and e-mail options. The overall design is somewhat static and clumsy, offering too much text-based information and lacking a necessary dynamism. No RSS feed available.

Europeana

VISTO STAMPA — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 02:33:10 +0000

An ambitious project aiming at making Europe’s cultural and scientific resources accessible to all, a virtual European library with links to over 20 million digital objects. The database provides free access to millions digital items divided in four groups: Images (paintings, drawings, maps, photos and pictures of museum objects), Texts (books, newspapers, letters, diaries and archival papers), Sounds (music and spoken word from cylinders, tapes, discs and radio broadcasts), Videos (films, newsreels and TV broadcasts). Users can freely access any item and its details page (metadata), and also view the item in original context – but no downloading allowed. The project involves dozens of institutions encompassing all EU countries, as partners or contributors, and includes works from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the British Library in London, the Louvre in Paris along with a variety of hidden treasures form other sources. Under a professional outline and “universal” accessibility features, the interface is provided in 25 EU languages but most information is still in English. Along with a general keyword search box, more advanced search options and a timeline browsing are available. Registered users can save, share, tag items or searches, and the “communities pages” (will) enable to share, discuss, reuse or blog.