Gale Ebooks (formerly named Gale Virtual Library or GVRL) provides a wealth of full-text reference and general subject books in a wide variety of subjects.
Sources offered in the GVRL include multi-volume encyclopedias, biographical collections, business plan handbooks, company histories, consumer health references and history compilations. A wide variety of subjects are covered including arts, biography, business, education, environment, history, law, medicine, multicultural, religion and science.
Provides reports focused on topics of current interest covering a wide range of social, economic, political, and environmental issues. A great tool to use for discovering research topics and gathering background information.
Includes over 310 full-text journals in sociology and social work. This collection provides full-text coverage of many core titles included in Sociological Abstracts and Social Services Abstracts. ProQuest Sociology covers the international literature of sociology and social work, including culture and social structure, history and theory of sociology, social psychology, substance abuse and addiction, and more.
Covers a large variety of topics and is recommended for most research projects. It contains articles from many academic journals, magazines, newspapers, and other credible sources.
Academic Search Complete is the world's largest scholarly, multidisciplinary full-text database designed specifically for academic institutions. It provides access to more than 8,500 full-text journals, including more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals, as well as indexing and abstracts of more than 12,500 journals and more than 13,200 books, reports, conference proceedings, etc. Subjects covered include: anthropology, arts and literature, computer sciences, education, engineering, ethnic studies, humanities, language and linguistics, law, medical sciences, social sciences, etc. Most content is available in printer-friendly, searchable PDFs. Updated daily.
Indexing and abstracting tool covering health, social services, psychology, sociology, economics, politics, race relations and education. Updated monthly, ASSIA provides a comprehensive source of social science and health information and records from over 500 journals published in 19 different countries.
This landmark work describes the state of the art in all the fields encompassed within the social and behavioral sciences
This landmark 26 volume work describes the state of the art in all the fields encompassed within the social and behavioral sciences. It presents thousands of articles that address topics within fields such as: Anthropology, Archaeology, Clinical Psychology, Community Psychology, Crime and Criminality, Demography, Developmental Psychology, Economics, Gender Studies, Geography, Health, Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Justice Studies, Management, Motivational/Emotional Psychology, Personality Psychology and Self, Political Science, Psychiatry, Social Psychology, Sociology, and Urban Studies. It covers overarching topics and methodologies such as institutions and infrastructure, history of the social and behavioral sciences, ethics of research and applications, biographies, statistics, as well as integrative concepts and issues.
iTake-Over: The Recording Industry in the Digital Era sheds light on the way large corporations appropriate new technologies related to recording and distribution of audio material to maintain their market dominance in a capitalist system. All too commonly, scholars have asserted too confidently, how the rise and reign of digital music has diminished the power of major record labels. In iTake-Over, music scholar David Arditi argues otherwise, adopting a broader perspective by examining how the recording industry has strengthened copyright laws for their corporate ends at the expense of the broader public good, which has traditionally depended on the safe harbor of fair use. Arditi also challenges the dominant discourse over digital music distribution, which has largely adopted the position that the recording industry has a legitimate claim to profitability at the detriment of a shared culture. iTake-Over more specifically surveys the actual material effects that digital distribution has had on the industry. Most notable among these is how major record labels find themselves in a stronger financial position today in the music industry than they were before the launch of Napster. Arditi contends that this is largely because of reduced production and distribution costs and the steady gain in digital music sales. Moreover, instead of merely trying to counteract the phenomenon of digital distribution, the RIAA and the major record labels embraced, and then altered, the distribution system. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the RIAA lobbied for legislation, built technologies, and waged war in the courts in order to shape the digital environment for music distribution. From mp3s to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), from the Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA) to iTunes, the major record labels and the RIAA, instead of trying to torpedo the switch to digital distribution, engineered it to their benefit--often at the expense of the public interest. Throughout, Arditi boldly asserts that the sea change to digital music did not destroy the recording industry. Rather, it stands as a testament to the recording industry's successful management of this migration to digital production and distribution. As such, this work should appeal to musicians and music scholars, political scientists and sociologists, technologists and audio professionals seeking to grasp this remarkable change in music production and consumption.
Since the early 1990s, close to 250,000 children born abroad have been adopted into the United States. Nearly half of these children have come from China or Russia. Culture Keeping: White Mothers, International Adoption, and the Negotiation of Family Difference offers the first comparative analysis of these two popular adoption programs. Heather Jacobson examines these adoptions by focusing on a relatively new social phenomenon, the practice by international adoptive parents, mothers in particular, of incorporating aspects of their children's cultures of origin into their families' lives. "Culture keeping" is now standard in the adoption world, though few adoptive parents, the majority of whom are white and native-born, have experience with the ethnic practices of their children's homelands prior to adopting. Jacobson follows white adoptive mothers as they navigate culture keeping: from their motivations, to the pressures and constraints they face, to the content of their actual practices concerning names, food, toys, travel, cultural events, and communities of belonging. Through her interviews, she explores how women think about their children, their families, and themselves as mothers as they labor to construct or resist ethnic identities for their children, who may be perceived as birth children (because they are white) or who may be perceived as adopted (because of racial difference). The choices these women make about culture, Jacobson argues, offer a window into dominant ideas of race and the "American Family," and into how social differences are conceived and negotiated in the United States.
While the practice of surrogacy has existed for millennia, new fertility technologies have allowed women to act as gestational surrogates, carrying children that are not genetically their own. While some women volunteer to act as gestational surrogates for friends or family members, others get paid for performing this service. The first ethnographic study of gestational surrogacy in the United States, Labor of Love examines the conflicted attitudes that emerge when the ostensibly priceless act of bringing a child into the world becomes a paid occupation. Heather Jacobson interviews not only surrogate mothers, but also their family members, the intended parents who employ surrogates, and the various professionals who work to facilitate the process. Seeking to understand how gestational surrogates perceive their vocation, she discovers that many regard surrogacy as a calling, but are reluctant to describe it as a job. In the process, Jacobson dissects the complex set of social attitudes underlying this resistance toward conceiving of pregnancy as a form of employment. Through her extensive field research, Jacobson gives readers a firsthand look at the many challenges faced by gestational surrogates, who deal with complicated medical procedures, delicate work-family balances, and tricky social dynamics. Yet Labor of Love also demonstrates the extent to which advances in reproductive technology are affecting all Americans, changing how we think about maternity, family, and the labor involved in giving birth. For more, visit http://www.heatherjacobsononline.com/
The Data CAVE provides support and services centering on data-driven research, e-science, and digital humanities data analysis. Services include teaching and consultation on working with data, data management, and data visualization; partnering with researchers in use and visualization of data through charts, infographics, and other tools; publishing datasets in Mavs Dataverse and other repositories; and reviewing data management plans.