NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY; 2011-3

RAMSEY LIBRARY JOINS ICPSR

Ever mindful of our role in facilitating undergraduate and faculty research, Ramsey Library is very pleased to announce its membership, on behalf of the University community, in theInter-University Consortium for Political & Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan. Many faculty will be intimately familiar with this international consortium of about 700 academic institutions and research organizations which has since 1962 provided leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for the social science research community. ICPSR’s preeminent data archive offers more than 500,000 files of research in the social sciences including 16 collections of data in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields. Note that ICPSR does not provide publications, reports, or ready-made statistics. What ICPSR does supply are the numeric raw data used to create publications, reports, and figures.

All UNC Asheville staff, students, and faculty have access to the extensive ICPSR data holdings via any campus computer. Access is direct and quick by accessing the ICPSR Web site at www.icpsr.umich.edu. First-time users will be asked to create an ICPSR MyData account; thereafter, you will need your email address and password to download data. Content downloaded from this world’s largest collection of digital social science data can be used for secondary research, instructional activities, and to write articles, papers, theses, etc.

The library has just acquired access so this is a bit new for us. NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY will be sharing more information as its assimilated, but wanted to let everyone know of its current and future availability as soon as we could. More later. In the meantime, please check out the more detailed information available at:

Political Science (PDF 328K)
Social Sciences (PDF 180K)
Sociology (PDF 328K)
Instruction and Learning (PDF 811K)
Specialty archives (PDF 333K)
Resource Center for Minority Data (PDF 340K)
2011 ICPSR SUMMER PROGRAM IN QUANTITATIVE METHODS

ICPSR recently announced the 2011 Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research. The main component of the ICPSR Summer Program is held on the campus of the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. Lectures and workshops on a wide variety of topics in research design, quantitative reasoning, statistical methods, and data processing are presented in two four‑week sessions. The first session runs from June 20, 2011 until July 15, 2011. The second session runs from July 18, 2011 until August 12, 2011. The contents of the two sessions are largely independent of each other, although some second‑session workshops do assume that participants are familiar with material from first‑session courses.

The 2011 ICPSR Summer Program will also offer a number of three‑ to five‑day workshops on both statistical and substantive topics throughout the summer. Most of these shorter workshops take place in Ann Arbor, but there are several that will be held in other locations: Amherst, MA; Bloomington, IN; Chapel Hill, NC; and (for the first time) Berkeley, CA.

The application form, registration instructions, fee structure, and further information about the ICPSR Summer Program are all available on the ICPSR web site:http://icpsr.umich.edu/sumprog/.
RECENT NEWS OF NOTE

On the general theme of “rules (?)”, here’s some news you may have missed:

E-Books’ Varied Formats Make Citations a Mess for Scholars, By Tushar Rae
E-book readers use different page-numbering systems, forcing academics to find other ways to provide the citations that are crucial to scholarship. But, Anita White-Carter let NOTES know that Amazon plans “real” page numbers in Kindle books sometime in the coming months!

A Digital Library Guru Discusses New Rules on Sharing Scientific Data
Sayeed Choudhury predicts that the step by the National Science Foundation will lead to broader participation in science activities.

A Classic ‘Nontextbook’ on Writing, By James M. Lang
A third edition of “Writing With Style” proves once again why the book has been so popular.

The Poetry Foundation has just released a “Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Poetry.” It can be found online at:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/downloads/FairUsePoetryBooklet_singlepg_2.pdf