Clearinghouses & gateways
The WWW
virtual library
The Virtual Library is the oldest catalogue of the web, started by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the web itself and now maintained at vlib.org by Gerard Manning (about VL). It is run by a loose confederation of volunteers, who compile pages of key links for particular areas in which they are expert. The main page overview is divided by 14 broad topics. The following two main subjects are selected by the dedicated interests on:
-
Social
Sciences Virtual Library - maintained by
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
at the University of Florida
- Directories and Data Archives: Relevant sources in Asia, Australia, New Zealand in addition to well promoted sites of Northern America and Europe.
- Social Sciences Resources by Disciplines: A long inventory of specialist sites.
-
Sustainable
development - maintained by
Center for Economic and Social
Studies on the Environment
A comprehensive list of Internet sites dealing with sustainable development, including organisations, projects and activities, electronic journals, libraries, references and documents, databases, directories or metadatabases
Data on the Net - USA
The catalogue contains more than 800 Internet sites of numeric Social Science statistical data, data catalogues, data libraries, social science gateways, addresses and more. The collection is divided into four browsable and searchable parts with description of the main resources:
- Data - over 400 sites that have numeric data ready to download [mainly USA / Canada and few abroad]
- Data Archives - about 100 data Libraries and Data Archives world-wide
- Searchable Catalogues of Data - about 100 catalogues and lists of data from data libraries, archives, vendors
- Distributors and Vendors of Data - about 50 organizations that sell and distribute data for a fee
- Additional sources - about 150 Social Science Gateways
Coombsweb - ANU Social Science Server - Australia
The Coombsweb system is a Social Sciences and Asian Studies networked research facility built around ftp, wais, e-mail and www technologies. The Coombsweb system is provided by the Australian National University (ANU). The main information areas with many related sub-sites are
- Corporate Information: Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies (RSPAS) and Research School of Social Sciences (RSSS)
- Coombsweb Information Resources
- RSPAS Electronic Journals & Newsletters
- Coombsweb Research Tools
- Hosted Web Pages
GESIS SocioGuide: Sources of Social Science - Germany
The access to the information of the browsable Guide is organised by regions and countries:
- Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Other Western European and
Non-European Countries and Eastern Europe.
- Access within a selected region is possible according to either Institutions and Organizations or Subjects; e.g. General Social Science, Sociology, Political Science, etc.
Special SocioGuides are linked to:
- Other Clearinghouses and Virtual Catalogues
- Libraries (only German speaking countries)
- Data Sources
- Methods and Software
- Schools/Theoreticians/Concepts
- Calendars of Events
- University Education (Sociology, only German speaking countries)
- Discussion Lists and Newsgroups
- Scientific Associations /Councils/ Foundations
- Other (journals, electronic text archives...)
SocioSite - Netherlands
SocioSite is an searchable information system of the Sociological Institute at University of Amsterdam, e.g. with main subject areas like
- current access to
Sociology
Departments structured by continental regions and countries for
- Africa
- Asia and Pacific
- Australia and New Zealand
- Canada
- Latin-America
- Middle East
- United States
- exceptionally Research Centres and Expert Centres, Social Science Data Archives world-wide
- Sociological Subject Areas
- access to Language Resources like Dictionaries, Style & Grammar Guides, Thesauri, Acronym Dictionaries and few more.
SOSIG - Social Science Information Gateway - UK
The gateway provide different main social science subjects for browsing
via different Lists of Categories focused geographically as a view on the
world,
on
Europe
or the UK. The
list offers more then 15 subjects with detailed sections:
- Economics
- Education
- Environmental Sciences and Issues
- Ethnology, Ethnography, Anthropology
- Geography
- Government
- Law
- Management
- Philosophy
- Politics
- Psychology
- Social Science General
- Social Welfare
- Sociology
- Statistics
- Women's Studies
Addtionally selective browsing to a particular geographical region (World - Europe - UK) is possible.
- Search is available as simple keyword search and extended search (display titles only, case sensitive, stemming, ranking); Thesaurus function can search alternative terms.