This is the first issue from the newly launched Intute. (successor to SOSIG )

Welcome to Intute: Social Sciences <http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/blog/?p=9>
We are a free online service providing you with access to the very best web resources for education and research, evaluated and selected by a network of subject specialists.
Intute: Social Sciences brings together the previous services of SOSIG <http://www.sosig.ac.uk/> and Altis <http://www.altis.ac.uk/> and features relevant content from the Virtual Training Suite <http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/vts.html>
We also provide the following Social Science based services:
	*	Conferences and Events Database <http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/conferences.html> 
	*	Departments listings <http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/departments.html> 
	*	Newsround for the Social Sciences <http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/newsround.html> 
and you can personalise your visit by using MyIntute <http://www.intute.ac.uk/myintute/> where you can store searches and records, which you can email to yourself at a later date. 
New this week.

In the News: Political Donations.

Democracy Watch: Australians for political funding reform 
http://www.democracywatch.com.au/ 
Democracy Watch is an Australian pressure group which campaigns for greater ethics in Australian government and politics. It is particularly concerned with issues relating to political ethics, political party funding and political donations. Its website provides information on its aims and campaigns. It includes recent press releases, plus access to news stories about political funding and money in Australian politics and its campaign materials. 

Energy challenge: the energy review 2006 
http://www.dti.gov.uk/energy/review/index.htmlThis site provides access to the full text of the UK government's energy review which was published by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) in July 2006. It consider how to tackle climate change by reducing carbon emissions, how to produce safe clean energy at affordable prices. The case is made for the expansion of nuclear energy. The report contains statistics on coal, gas and electricity supplies, modellings of the costs of different types of energy, forcasts of future needs and discussion of the need to reduce impact on the environment by suing renewable energy sources. The report is in PDF format. 

find more on energy policy http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/cgi-bin/browse.pl?id=120089&gateway=Government%20Policy

Australian government and politics database 
http://elections.uwa.edu.au/ 
This website is maintained by researchers at the University of Western Australia. It provides free access to a wealth of facts and figures about Australian politics from 1890 to the present day. It includes results of all state assembly (lower house) general elections since 1890. Results for the Australian Capital Territory (ACT 1989-) and the Northern Territory (NT 1974-); summary information on political parties which have won more than 2 percent of the vote or won a seat at any of the general elections; lists of government members; dates and summary information about Australian prime ministers. Also avaiable is a searchable glossary of Australian political terms. 

find more on elections in australia. http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/cgi-bin/browse.pl?id=120099&gateway=Politics
MINERVA: Mapping the Internet virtual resources archive
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cocoon/minerva/html/minerva-home.html  
MINERVA is a web archiving project of the Library of Congress. It is creating an electronic archive of key US government websites. Those already accessible include the September 11, 2001 archive, archived collections relating to American presidential elections in 2000 and 2004 and records from the United States Congress. The website provides information on future development policies, plus a collection of articles on the technology involved. 

Staistics on race and the criminal justice system 2005 
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs06/s95race05.doc 
This site contains the 2005 official statistics for the UK as produced by the Home Office. They cover a wide range of topics including: number of stops and searches, arrests and cautions by ethnic group; number of racial incidents, ethnic composition of the prison population, statistics for murder according to ethnic group of the victim and ethnic group of the main suspect and number of current employees from ethnic minorities working within the British criminal justice system. Background information, such as definition of terms used and recent developments in ethic monitoring, are also provided. Users should note that this document is in Word format. 

Observatoire Presidentielle 2007 
http://www.observatoire-presidentielle.fr/ 
Observatoire Présidentielle 2007 is a project of the RIGI Collective, a research group based at the Universite de Technologie de Compiege. Its objective is to study the use of the Internet during the 2007 French presidential election campaign. It is monitoring the existence and content of political blogs by individuals and parties, conducting discussion forums and publishing reports. Information is in French only. 

find more on electronic political communication. http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/cgi-bin/browse.pl?id=120133&gateway=Politics
Afghanistan : EurasiaNet resources 
http://www.eurasianet.org/resource/afghanistan/articles/index.shtml 
EurasiaNet is operated by the Central Eurasia Project of the Open Society Institute (New York, USA). This section of its website provides free access to an archived collection of full text papers and reports relating to political and economic developments in Afghanistan. These date from approximately 2002 onwards. Topics covered include: the political situation and elections, economic conditions, the role of the Taliban and international security. 

find more on afghanistan http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/cgi-bin/browse.pl?id=120160&gateway=Politics
Europe in the UK 
http://www.europe.org.uk/ 
Europe in the UK is a portal of information maintained by the European Commission Representation in the United Kingdom. It provides British citizens with news about all aspects of the European Union, free access to the latest EU documents and reports online and a directory of EU contacts in the UK. The latter includes a listing of local European Documentation centres. Other features of the site include: discussion forums, information on travel in Europe and a calendar of EU events. 

try the specialist Eurostudies area http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/eurostudies/
Encyclopedia of educational technology
http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/ 
 The Encyclopedia of Educational Technology (EET) describes itself as "a collection of short multimedia articles on a variety of topics related to the fields of instructional design and education and training." Edited by Bob Hoffman of the Department of Educational Technology and San Diego State University, it arranges articles into eight major themes: cognition and learning, analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation, or CADDIE. Each article features mulit-media elements ranging from images and tables to Shockwave or QuickTime files. There is also a detailed bibliography of articles referenced in the Encyclopedia pieces, guidance on on making a submission to the Encyclopedia and a link to template files for prospective contributors. 

if you have any questions about this newsletter
please contact Heather Dawson Intute editor government and politics
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