New database - Gallup Analytics

Gallup Analytics is an online analytics platform containing data from the Gallup World Poll, which collects opinions on the most important issues worldwide. Topic areas include: economic confidence, employment, leadership, military and police, religion, food, corruption, and more.

Data can be viewed by demographic and socio-economic groups, and across geographies, and can be exported to create custom data tables, trends, charts and scatter plots.
 

Oxford Scholarship Online - now bigger and better!

We're pleased to say we've recently extended our subscription to the Oxford Scholarship Online database of ebooks. Previously we had access only to the Philosophy collection, but we now have access to ebooks in the fields of economics & finance, business & management, law, political science, sociology and social work. All titles are indexed on StarPlus or you can search and browse the database by subject.

Data Playground - database of political attitudes and choices

The Data Playground enables you to analyse the political opinions of tens of thousands of British people surveyed between February 2014 and May 2015. The data, which has been made available by the British Election Study, can be accessed by anyone who has an interest in politics. It can be used to create graphs and charts without the need for statistical expertise or specialist software. Find out the British public’s attitudes to a range of political issues, such as public spending and immigration, and compare these attitudes to the demographic details of the people surveyed. Please credit the British Election Study when using any of the data.

Visit www.britishelectionstudy.com/data and try it yourself

More information about the Data Playground is available here

New! The Economist

The Library now provides online access to The Economist - a source of information on international news, politics, business, and economics.

Explore the website by clicking on the tabs/drop-down menus located at the top of the screen. From here you can also view the print editions of The Economist from 1997 up to the current edition.

The website provides access to a number of blogs on different subjects including: financial markets, American politics, economics, and business travel. There is also a multimedia library with video and audio clips.

Useful tip: creating a free account will enable you to save articles to a Timekeeper reading list so that you can go back to them later.

Please note: University members get full access to The Economist (excluding The Economist apps and The Economist in audio), so there is no need to subscribe. All links to subscription information are intended for individuals and can be ignored.

Access

Access is available via the StarPlus Library catalogue (make sure that you have signed in by clicking University members at the top of the screen). Find it by typing "The Economist” into the University Collections search box and click Search. Please note: the Library also has the print edition of The Economist. For the online resource click View It on the record marked as electronic resource and then click on the link.

The Pop Up Library is coming to Elmfield!

 

 

 

 

 

 

We'll be in the Elmfield common room on Tuesday 17th March 2pm-4pm. 

Drop by and say hello, and we'll do our best to answer your questions about digital library resources and support for learning and research in politics and sociological studies. Look out for our banner, and we look forward to meeting you.

Lies, damn lies and statistics?

If you've ever doubted the truth of what you read in the papers (and who hasn't?) the Straight Statistics blog is for you.  Set up by journalists and statisticians from pressure group Straight Statistics,  its aim is to expose and correct some of the worst examples of  sloppy or garbled use of statistics.  Some of the examples are hilarious and make for a very entertaining and illuminating read.  You'll find here the stats behind Gordon Brown's infamous encounter with Gillian Duffy, the true cost of public sector pensions, and whether you'll really catch Legionnaire's Disease if you don't put screenwash in your car windscreen washer.

For anyone interested in this topic and in the kind of scare stories which the media relish so much, may I also recommend Ben Goldacre's book Bad Science.

Documents on British Policy Overseas

The University Library has arranged a trial to the Documents on British Policy Overseas database.  This historical collection gathers together tens of thousands of UK Government documents relating to Britain’s international relations, including foreign policy instructions, letters and memos, business reports and more.

The database is produced in collaboration between ProQuest and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. They say "Documents on British Policy Overseas offers researchers the opportunity to see beneath the surface of the major events of the twentieth century. Users can access contemporary accounts and follow the detailed exchanges that shaped British foreign policy from the origins of the First World War and beyond".

The trial  is available to all registered staff and students at the University until 31 July 2010.  Please let us have your feedback.

Oxford Reference Online

The University Library has arranged a trial of Oxford Reference Online (ORO) for all registered staff and students of The University of Sheffield until 9th March 2010.

Electronic access to over 185 reference books and dictionaries is available with almost 1.5 million entries. You'll find both English and bilingual dictionaries of French, German, Spanish and Italian as well as over 45 timelines linking to more than 2,500 key events in 20th-century history in the fields of Art and Architecture; Literature; Performing Arts; Politics and Government; Science, Technology and Medicine; Society; and War.

After connecting to ORO, type in your ucard number in the 'Library card number' box and click 'log-in'.



If you wish to comment on this trial please use the online feedback form.

National Archives release 1979 records

On 30 December The National Archives announced the release of government records from 1979 and highlights are now online.   This being the year Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister,  following the infamous 'winter of discontent',  items of interest include files on industrial policy,  Britain's relationship with Iran and the situation in Northern Ireland.

OECD iLibrary trial

We have another new trial running. This one is  to the OECD iLibrary which is available to registered staff and students of the University of Sheffield until December 2009. Although it's a preliminary version and not yet fully complete nor functional, do take a look and let us have your feedback. There is a Guided Tour of the OECD iLIbrary to help you.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is one of the world's largest sources of comparable statistics, and economic and social data. As well as collecting data, OECD monitors trends, analyses and forecasts economic developments and researches social changes or evolving patterns in trade, environment, agriculture, technology, taxation and more. This trial provides access to all their books, statistics and journals.

Many OECD publications are also freely available online. They can be found either from the OECD website,  via a 'Contains' search on Find it, or from the ESDS International database in MUSE.

Commercial Radio Archive online for the first time

Just received:  a press release about the launch of the UK’s first online commercial radio sound archive.  Thanks to funding from JISC of just over £760,000, the Centre for Broadcasting History based at Bournemouth University has spent the last three years digitising the noteworthy radio dating from 1973 up to the mid-1990's - preserving over 5,000 searchable recordings including the first hour of UK commercial radio in 1973, coverage of five UK general elections and the end of apartheid.

The collection is available online for researchers, lecturers and students
at the LBC / Independent Radio News (IRN) radio news audio archive which
gives access to the catalogue and audio of reports filed by some of the UK’s
leading journalists including Jon Snow, the late Carol Barnes and Dickie
Arbiter.

Among the 4,000 hours of radio are a number of historic events covered by LBC/IRN including:

• The first hour of UK commercial radio including the first commercial radio
news bulletin
• Broadcasts of the Falklands War, the miners’ strike and Northern Ireland
• The live reporting of UK election results from five general elections,
giving a unique sense of the political shaping of the country
• News related to the whole of the Thatcher government
• The whole of the 'Decision Makers' series 1974-86: weekly 30-minute
programmes of political and current affairs analysis which provide a unique
insight into politics and its reportage within the UK at the time
• State President PW Botha’s speech at the opening of the South African
parliament in which he announced that the era of apartheid was over, with
political and journalistic analysis of this event.

The archive was unveiled by internationally-acclaimed broadcaster, radio
historian and academic, Professor Seàn Street, at the Radio Centre in London.

He said: “This was at a time before the Broadcasting Act of 1990 which
brought significant change to the structure of British broadcasting.  The
change in commercial radio since this period is extraordinary. It is
impossible for the young student of radio, born since this time, to imagine
that such independently funded radio could have existed. As a result, it is
vitally important that these programmes be preserved, as part of the
evolving history of post-war British broadcasting.

“This archive forms an important part of the history of radio broadcasting
since it provides an alternative source of radio journalism and news and
current affairs broadcasts to the BBC’s own collection,” he concluded.

Global Barometer Surveys

Global barometer surveys is the first comprehensive effort to measure, at a mass level, the current social, political, and economic atmosphere around the world. It provides an independent, non partisan, multidisciplinary view of public opinion on a range of policy-relevant issues.

Check out this new resource by connecting to the Global Barometer Surveys website. You'll need to be logged in to MUSE but you'll be prompted to do this if you're not already logged in.

Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports - free!

The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Report has been purchased by JISC Collections and is available free of charge to UK Higher and Further Education institutions and Research Councils as part of the UK National Academic Archive.

Covering the period 1974–1996 in the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Eastern Europe, the JISC selection of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports includes a wealth of transcripts of broadcasts and news from around the world all translated into the English language.

The FBIS Daily Report series:

• contains significant, critical material unavailable from any other source. The newspaper, short-wave, radio, and television broadcast texts in many cases exist nowhere else but in the English transcription or translation of those broadcasts which have vanished into the airways.


• shows what the US government knew from the open source intelligence and when they knew it.


• shows what the world thought of the U.S. and its democratic allies, “the West,” in often harsh and critical assessments.

The FBIS Daily Report has been the United States' principal record of
political and historical open source intelligence for nearly 70 years.
it provides an archive of translated broadcasts, news agency
transmissions, newspapers, periodicals, and government statements from
around the world. It also includes many firsthand reports of events as
they occurred.

The archive collection covers the following regions and dates:

* Middle East and North Africa, 1974-1987
* Near East and South Asia, 1987-1996
* South Asia, 1980-1987
* Sub-Saharan Africa, 1974-1980
* Africa, 1987-1996
* Eastern Europe, 1974-1996