Research and Education
http://www.electionstudies.org/
Established in 1977 by the National Science Foundation, the American National Election Studies (ANES) remains as vital a national research resource as ever. Their website provides important information about public opinion in the United States along with sophisticated election databases that will be useful to policy makers and social scientists. Along the left-hand side of their site visitors will find the "Reference Library" area, along with the "Data Center", and the equally important "Help Center". A good place to start looking around here is the "Guide to Public Opinion" area. Here visitors are afforded immediate access to tables and graphs that display the "ebb and flow of public opinion, electoral behavior, and choice in American politics over time." The tables and graphs contain data from 1948 through 2004, and they cover everything from partisanship to political involvement. Further along, the "Reference Library" area contains both pilot study and technical reports that may be of greater interest to academics. Additionally, there is a section where visitors can sign up to receive email updates. [KMG]
As more and more baby boomers move into retirement, there is a growing body of scholars who are fascinated with research related to this topic. One such group of scholars exists at Boston College, which serves as the home to the Center for Retirement Research. In a nutshell, their goals are "to promote research on retirement issues, to transmit new findings to a broad audience, to help train new scholars, and to expand access to valuable data resources." Casual visitors may wish to click on the "About the Center" area for a brief overview, and then move on to the "Recent Publications" area. Here they will find reports titled "The Decline of Career Employment", "The Housing Bubble and Retirement Security", and many others. In their "Special Projects" area, visitors can play the "Get Rich Slow" game, which is meant to serve a form of motivation for active engagement in retirement planning. The site is rounded out by a "Data" area which contains a number of germane data sets for scholars, including those that detail home ownership by age and the average retirement age for men during the period 1961 to 2004. [KMG]
Founded in 1949, the Religion Newswriters Association (RNA) works "to advance the professional standards of religion reporting in the secular press as well as to create a support network for religion reporters." Their site is a great place for current members of the RNA, but in many ways it's just as good for those who wish to cut their teeth in this important area of journalism. To start, visitors with an interest in the field may wish to read and download "Reporting on Religion: A Primer on Journalism's Best Beat". The primer offers a basic overview of reporting on religion, along with resources about potential pitfalls. Moving on, the site also has a set of "Best Practices", which includes such down-to-earth advice as "Rely on people power" and "Remain calm amid conflict". The site also includes a section on reporting contests, training opportunities, and a link where visitors can sign up to receive the latest religion news via email. [KMG]
http://med-imag.english.cam.ac.uk/
Medieval Imaginations: Literature and Visual Culture in the Middle Ages is a website created and maintained by the University of Cambridge's Faculty of English. The purpose of the site is to provide access to the "images corresponding to the main episodes dramatized in the English Mystery Plays, because these present the medieval view of human history from the Creation to the Last Judgement." This website is extremely well organized and provides multiple ways of finding images. The "Collection Highlights" link at the top of the page is one way to see some fantastic images with relative ease. Once you have chosen an image, you can view it with or without the applet. Viewing it with the applet allows you to zoom in and navigate in the image. Without the applet, the image quality is the same, but more detailed navigation is not possible. Another way to view images is by century, which can be accomplished by choosing "Timeline" at the top of the page. Visitors can move around from the 12th-16th and once they have chosen a century, they will see a list of clickable images that correspond with the major works of literature of the century. The dates of the image and the medium of the visual (i.e. stained glass, manuscript, etc.) are also included. Visitors can also search via episodes of the English Mystery Plays by using the tool found in the middle of the home page. Once an episode chosen visitors will see, in chronological order, all the images related to that Mystery Play. If you want to read what story a Mystery Play tells, click on "Mystery Plays" at the bottom of the page. From there you can read the story, and also view all of its corresponding images. [KMG]
http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/
The Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs was created in 2006 as part of the office of Georgetown University's President. The mission of the Center is to build knowledge, promote dialogue, and to support action "in the service of peace." On the site's homepage, visitors will be presented with five primary sections, including "Programs", "Events", "People", "Media", and "Databases". Many visitors will want to head straight away for the "Databases" area. Here they will find resources designed for students, scholars, and citizens which address faith, gender, and development, along with faith-inspired organizations in the Muslim world. After having a look there, visitors will want to click on the "Recent Publications" section. There's some really terrific material here, including reports on evangelicals and foreign policy, international religious liberty, and religious pluralism. Finally, visitors who are planning a visit to Washington, D.C. can click on the "Events" section to learn about upcoming talks, lectures, and symposia sponsored by the Center. [KMG]
The World Bank is concerned with many parts of the developing world, but they are particularly interested in the so-called "fragile states". Loosely defined, "fragile states" are countries "facing particularly severe development challenges such as weak institutional capacity, poor governance, political instability, and frequently on-going violence or the legacy effects of past severe conflict." To provide policy makers and others with information on their work in this area, the Bank has created this website. The material on the site includes a number of slideshow features and essays that address the fight against poverty in these countries, along with "best-practices" approaches to solving some of these seemingly intractable problems. Near the bottom of the page, visitors can click on sections such as "Conflict Prevention and Reconstruction" to learn more about the Bank's work in places like the Sudan and also take a look through the tremendously helpful "Economics of Conflict" website. [KMG]
http://www.nea.gov/research/ArtistsInWorkforce.pdf
To anyone who might ask, "Where have all the artists gone?", the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has a very good answer. That answer is parsed out in this well-research 148-page publication titled "Artists in the Workforce: 1990-2005". Released in June 2008, the publication offers a nationwide look at artists' demographic and employment patterns in the 21st century. Working with extensive data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the report also provides detailed information on specific artist occupations. Among other findings, the report notes that there are almost two million Americans who describe their primary occupation as artist, and that as a group, they represent almost 1.5 percent of the U.S. labor force. Not surprisingly, the report also notes that most artists cluster in a very select group of metropolitan areas, including Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Washington, and Boston. Taken as a whole, it's a thoughtful report that will be of particular interest to policy makers and artists alike. [KMG]
Curious minds want to know: "What exactly do Europeans believe?" It's an important and interesting question, and the directors and researchers in charge of the European Values Study (EVS) have been looking into this subject since the early 1980s. Based in the Netherlands the EVS concerns itself with asking Europeans about religion and morality, politics, work and leisure, and relationships. On their homepage, visitors can learn about their work by clicking on the "Organization" area. After learning a bit about their organizational structure, visitors will want to look at previous and current surveys. These are located along the left-hand side of the homepage, and they include surveys from 1981, 1990, 1999, and 2000. While visitors do not have access to the raw data on the site, they can look at the questionnaires and read publications based on this research. However, visitors do have access to the World Values Survey (WVS) data, which is available in the "Values Survey, 1981-2004" section. [KMG]
