Exploring Planet SOSIG: Ariadne, Issue 17

Mutual Mirroring Speeds Access

Internet users in the USA and Europe will be able to discover the best of the Internet much faster (and more cheaply) as a result of a new initiative launched this week. Internet Scout, based in the USA, and SOSIG, based in the UK, will each host a "mirror" of the other's site. The arrangement will result in quicker access and reduced costs for users on both sides of the Atlantic. The "mirror" is a complete copy of the original site, hosted on a server closer to home, so that users can cut down on the number of transatlantic connections they make.

The Internet Scout Project is based in the Computer Sciences Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the USA. The Scout Project is sponsored by the National Science Foundation to provide timely information to the education community about valuable Internet resources, and to develop new tools for effective resource discovery on the Internet. Daily and weekly updates on highly selective resources are provided for K-12 and higher education faculty, staff, and students, as well as interested members of the general public. In addition to the general Scout Report, three subject-specific reports focus on Social Science, Business and Economics, and Science and Engineering, and a catalogue of over 4,500 resources on these topics are searchable at the web site.

SOSIG (pronounced "sausage") is the Social Science Information Gateway, based in the Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT) at the University of Bristol, UK. SOSIG is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to provide access to networked resources and training for social scientists that want to use the Internet. Established in 1994, SOSIG was the first subject-based information gateway in the UK. SOSIG has acquired a considerable reputation among social scientists and offers a catalogue of over 5,000 high quality resources that have been selected and described by subject specialists.

Further collaboration between the two services is planned in the future. The UK mirror of the Scout Report can be found at:
http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/mirrors/scout/report/socsci/index.html

The US mirror of SOSIG can be found at:
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/mirrors/sosig/

UK users should use the local SOSIG service at:
http://www.sosig.ac.uk/

For further information please contact:

Debra Hiom
SOSIG
Institute for Learning and Research Technology
University of Bristol
8-10 Berkeley Square
Bristol, BS8 IHH, UK
Tel: +44 (0)117 928 7117
Fax: +44 (0)117 928 7112

Exploring Planet SOSIG: Sociology

An aspiring editor of sociological sources on the Internet is faced with an interesting problem: virtually every Internet site is of potential sociological interest for one reason or another. So sociologists interested in, say, law enforcement will find value not only in the ‘standard’ sites of relevant organisations and academic institutions both in their home country and abroad, not to mention related databases, catalogues, journals and so on, but will also wish to exploit statistics on crime, policing, punishment, and more general demographic, social and economic data; will plunder reports from government and non-government agencies and pressure groups; of course, will scour newspapers and become involved in discussion groups… The list disappears over the horizon of possibility, and our hapless editor is left wondering where to start, let alone stop.

Figure 1: ........

The strategy adopted in the Sociology section of SOSIG is to concentrate on those resources that are avowedly sociological; it is expected that our sociologist interested in law enforcement will supplement the sources found there with those in other sections, say, Law and Criminology, or Statistics, not to mention a judicious use of SOSIG’s search facility. What follows is a selection, based on partiality, of some significant sites to be found in the Section.

Organisations

The important organisations are

Major research bodies, such as the American Sociological Association [1] and its counterparts in such other countries as Australia [2] and the UK [3].
Academic institutions, especially the more specialised research centres. One good example of this is the Sir Norman Chester Centre for Football Research [4], which by a happy coincidence was added to the SOSIG list during last summer’s World Cup matches.
Special interest / pressure groups, e.g. the very informative Death Penalty Information Center [5].

Journals

Many journals, like the British Journal of Sociology [6] continue to publish in print format, and provide the researcher with, at most, abstracts of articles, as well as more routine information. A good example of a fully online journal is provided by the UK-based Sociological Research Online [7], which has just come to an end of an experimental 3 year period, during which it has been freely accessible, and is expected to continue on a subscription basis.

Theories and Theorists

Sites dedicated to particular theories and to particular sociologists are well represented on the Internet. You can plunge into the mysteries, for example, of Critical Theory [8] or of Postmodernism [9] (the latter being an example of a good quality page constructed by undergraduates); or you can delve into the lives of individual sociologists, e.g. Emile Durkheim [10]. Perhaps the best biographical route, for earlier figures at least, is the intriguingly named Dead Sociologists’ Society [11], which you can supplement with the long chronology and collection of texts provided by A Sociology Timeline from 1600 [12].

Texts and Reference Works

All of the examples listed in the last section offer texts. Many more examples of interest to the sociologist can be found on the Internet. Some are collections of foundational works, others are reports of recent research, or are basic teaching tools. Michael C. Kearl has created an outstanding Sociological Tour Through Cyberspace [13] for his undergraduates at Trinity University, in which he weaves an intricate tapestry of links, commentaries, data and original essays on a number of sociological topics.

Reference works (dictionaries, directories, encyclopedias, gazetteers and so on) abound on the Internet. So does freedom of expression, albeit with a struggle. The compilers of The Red Feather Dictionary of Critical Social Science [14] have attempted a combination of the two: The Red Feather Dictionary is billed as ‘A Teaching Dictionary of Key Words for Progressive, Radical, Critical, Marxist, Feminist, Left-Liberal as well as Postmodern Scholars and Students’.

Mailing List Archives

These are repositories for past postings. You can use them to keep up with recent announcements of conferences or to trace the thread of a discussion. A typical example from the UK, hosted by Mailbase, is european-sociologist [15] archive. The list itself aims to offer ‘discussion, announcements (e.g., conferences, new posts), and information (e.g., research groups) for sociologists and other social scientists working in Europe or on European topics’.

SOSIG is available at http://www.sosig.ac.uk/