DataQuest, an interactive database from the California Department of Education, helps you find facts about California schools and districts. Reports can be generated for schools, districts, or counties for Academic performance Index (API), Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), Alternative Schools Accountability Model (ASAM), Course Enrollments and other measures. Also includes a California School Directory.
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Understanding Economic Statistics: an OECD Perspective
September 22nd, 2009 by Juri StratfordThis volume describes how to use economic statistics in general and OECD statistics in particular. It introduces the main concepts used by statisticians and economists to measure economic phenomena and provides tables and charts with relevant data.
The book describes the production of international statistics and the availability of the data on the Internet. Chapters include coverage of the demand for economic statistics; basic concepts, definitions and classifications; the main producers of economic statistics; and assessing the quality of economic statistics.
This volume is freely available online through the OECD web site.
LexisNexis Digital U.S. Congressional Hearings Collection
September 14th, 2009 by Marcia MeisterUC Davis now has access to the LexisNexis Digital Hearings Collections Part A (1824-1979). This new collection contains full-text, searchable, pdf versions of Congressional committee hearings, including both published and unpublished hearings. Access to this collection is through LexisNexis Congressional.
You must be on campus or logged in through the VPN to access this collection. When you perform a search in the above time frame, you will see at the top of the results list a new format: Hearings–Digital Collection. Click on this link to access the hearings that have been digitized. You can search this collection exclusively by using the Advanced search on LexisNexis Congressional with the Hearings box checked.
This digital collection fills in gaps in the library’s collection of older congressional hearings in print and provides easy access to the content of congressional committee testimony so valuable for understanding the background and variety of views on an issue.
The library has full-text access to U.S. Congressional Serial Set reports and documents through a different service – Readex/Newsbank.
Please contact me if you would like more information or a demonstration of the LexisNexis Digital U.S. Congressional Hearings Collection.
RESOURCE: The Global Terrorism Database
August 31st, 2009 by Roberto C. Delgadillo
The Global Terrorism Database (GTD) is an open-source database including information on terrorist events around the world from 1970 through 2007 (with annual updates planned for the future). Unlike many other event databases, the GTD includes systematic data on domestic as well as transnational and international terrorist incidents that have occurred during this time period and now includes more than 80,000 cases. For each GTD incident, information is available on the date and location of the incident, the weapons used and nature of the target, the number of casualties, and—when identifiable—the group or individual responsible.
The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) is making the GTD available via this online interface in an effort to increase understanding of terrorist violence so that it can be more readily studied and defeated.
Characteristics of the GTD
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*Contains information on over 80,000 terrorist attacks
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*Currently the most comprehensive unclassified data base on terrorist events in the world
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*Includes information on more than 27,000 bombings, 12,000 assassinations, and 2,900 kidnappings since 1970
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*Includes information on at least 45 variables for each case, with more recent incidents including information on more than 120 variables
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*Supervised by an advisory panel of 12 terrorism research experts
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*Over 3,500,000 news articles and 25,000 news sources were reviewed to collect incident data from 1998 to 2007 alone
Access: http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/
CIA OIG Report on Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities (September 2001-October 2003)
August 26th, 2009 by Marcia MeisterThe CIA Special Review of Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities.
As widely reported in the press, the CIA Office of Inspector General has just released material on past detention practices in the ‘War on Terrorism’. The release of this material came about following a FOIA request by the American Civil Liberties Union, and a copy of the OIG report (along with supplemental documents) is currently available on their website.
New document: Political Violence Against Americans
June 22nd, 2009 by Marcia MeisterThe State Department has released the latest version of their report
“Politi
cal Violence Against Americans.” The 2008 report is available at
http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/125224.pdf, and the title is cataloged for the library’s catalog. It was produced by the Bureau of Diplomatic Security’s Office of Intelligence and Threat Analysis (DS/DSS/ITA) to provide readers with a comprehensive picture of the broad spectrum of political violence that American citizens and interests have encountered abroad on an annual basis.
There were no reports produced from 2003-2007, but previous reports are available online or in the library.
RESOURCE: African Elections Project
June 5th, 2009 by Roberto C. Delgadillo
Interest in the election results within various African nations continues to grow, and the African Elections Project is a great source of information on this timely topic. The Project is coordinated by the International Institute for ICT Journalism and a number of additional partners, such as the Open Society Initiative for West Africa and Global Voices. The material on the site is available in both French and English, and currently it covers Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, Malawi, and Niger. Within each country profile, visitors can view the results of recent elections, take a look at relevant weblogs, learn about the various political parties in each country, and also view past news updates. Additionally, visitors can sign up to receive email updates or RSS feeds.
Access: http://www.africanelections.org/
Special Election Resources
April 30th, 2009 by Marcia Meister
The UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Affairs Library has a Special Election, Hot Topics on the May 19th election guide to ballot measures for the May 19th Special Election. The guides provide concise descriptions of the ballot measures including non partisan analyses, official voter information, background materials, pro-and-con websites, newspaper articles and editorials, opinion polls, political endorsements, and financial-contribution records. It also links to a Ballot Initiative Endorsements page for positions on the propositions by major organizations.
OpenSecrets.org Goes OpenData
April 14th, 2009 by Marcia Meister
The Center for Responsive Politics announced on April 13 that it’s putting 200 million data records from its archive directly into the hands of citizens, activists, journalists and anyone else interested in following the money in U.S. politics. The data are available through the site’s Action Center.
To download bulk data from OpenSecrets.org, users must register on the site and agree to prominently credit the Center for Responsive Politics, along with other terms of service. CRP is making its data available through a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license, which allows users to remix, tweak, build upon and share the Center’s work non-commercially. CRP will continue to offer its data to commercial users for a negotiable fee.
The following data sets, along with a user guide, resource tables and other documentation, are now available in CSV format (comma-separated values, for easy importing) through OpenSecrets.org’s Action Center at http://www.opensecrets.org/action/data.php
CAMPAIGN FINANCE: 195 million records dating to the 1989-1990 election cycle, tracking campaign fundraising and spending by candidates for federal office, as well as political parties and political action committees. CRP’s researchers add value to Federal Election Commission data by cleaning up and categorizing contribution records. This allows for easier totaling by industry and company or organization, to measure special-interest influence.
LOBBYING: 3.5 million records on federal lobbyists, their clients, their fees and the issues they reported working on, dating to 1998. Industry codes have been applied to this data, as well.
PERSONAL FINANCES: Reports from members of Congress and the executive branch that detail their personal assets, liabilities and transactions in 2004 through 2007. The reports covering 2008 will become available to the public in June, and the data will be available for download once CRP has keyed those reports.
527 ORGANIZATIONS: Electronically filed financial records beginning in the 2004 election cycle for the shadowy issue-advocacy groups known as 527s, which can raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, labor unions and individuals.
OpenSecrets.org also offers a number of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to give users direct access via web programming to data displayed on OpenSecrets.org. Web developers are already using these APIs to display OpenSecrets data on their web pages and create mashups using live, up-to-date data.
Users can also share CRP data using OpenSecrets.org’s widgets, which can be placed easily on any website or blog. New widgets for the 2010 election cycle are in development.
OpenSecrets.org, an independent website tracking the influence of money on U.S. politics, continues to offer campaign financial disclosure information, data and analysis through it’s website.
RESOURCE: Education Today: The OECD Perspective
April 10th, 2009 by Roberto C. Delgadillo
From Introduction:
This summary report is based on results from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) work produced primarily since 2002 when the Directorate for Education was created, and especially in the past 3-4 years. The background to its preparation is explained in the Foreword by Director Barbara Ischinger. The approach chosen focuses on results and policy orientations which are published and hence in the public domain. Only generalised findings about developments, policy, or practice relevant across most OECD countries have been included. So, not covered are: studies or reviews of single countries; publications which provide exchange of information on promising practice without broader analytic conclusions; work plans and programme intentions; clarifying statements of problems/ challenges/issues.
It is divided into nine sections, devised as a structure to reflect well the different areas of educational work and to bring out policy conclusions and messages. The choice of a larger number of short sections is deliberate in order to allow the key messages to emerge more clearly than they would in a smaller number of extensive “chapters”. We have also included some illustrative charts as visuals to complement the text.
It is produced entirely in modular format rather than as a continuous narrative. Each of the sections is divided into, respectively: Key findings and conclusions and Orientations for policy. Each modular text is introduced by the key message it contains or, where the module is in the form of a list of messages, these are highlighted instead. Each one also includes the title and chapter reference to the OECD report from which it comes, and these titles are brought together in an extensive but not exhaustive bibliography at the end.
In order to stay within manageable limits, this resource is highly selective of all the possible findings and policy orientations regarding education at OECD. As the included texts are removed from the fuller analyses from which they are taken, there is a natural risk of oversimplification with short conclusions taken out of their wider analytical context. For both of these reasons, therefore, it is strongly advised that users looking for more than the headline messages should refer back to the original OECD source for the fuller picture .
Access: http://browse.oecdbookshop.org/oecd/pdfs/browseit/9609021E.PDF