March 29, 2008
Extracting the Good, But Leaving the Bad: My Search for Valuable Internet Resources on Sociology
This week, I continued the search for valuable online resources that I began weeks ago. While there is a superfluous amount of information sources online, I used the Webby Awards and IMSA criteria to decipher between what is a reliable versus weak source. Described below and available in the link roll of this blog, I have found ten exceptional websites. My favorite of the websites is VALPO. It is aesthetically pleasing in it's simple, but organized layout. Each week the website posts a current important topic, and I am constantly fascinated by the subject matter. However, the website would benefit from being more interactive. A site that does a wonderful job inviting viewers to share insight and opinions is A Very Public Sociologist. This site is a blog that is well laid out with noteworthy discussions and informative posts. However, the authors do not establish their authority anywhere on the page-this is certainly a weak point for the blog. While A Very Public Sociologist only has one main flaw, SocioSite is an example of a page that is highly useful and academic, but faulty in multiple areas. It links to numerous famous sociologists, but it is unattractive, boring, and lacking much other information. Even with these errors, this web page has been extremely useful to me-in fact, just last week I utilized the database supplied on the page. A similar site is the American Sociological Association, which has a simple interface, but is of high value. It provides an interactive forum for sociologists online. Furthermore, I am quite impressed by Cyberspace and Web Sociology as it directly discusses sociology online. It is easy to navigate, but could be more descriptive in its material. All Academic is another great resource. The website is useful for finding articles on abstract subjects, although many times you have to pay to view the entire article. Spoil the Kids provides many articles and viewers can read them for free. The articles focus on sociology of childhood. Because the site is so wonderful, it would be great if the producers of Spoil the Kids had other sociological websites that focused on more topics. Furthermore, Sage Journals is a blog with many posts on sociology, but it is quite frustrating to navigate. A blog that is easier to navigate is The Global Sociology blog. It has outstanding posts, however the posts need to be more concise. Lastly, another fantastic blog is Y for Yendetta. This blog is well-written and credible, but not always relevant to my research. These online sources exemplify the outstanding information and discussion that the internet houses.
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2 comments:
JLS,
Your post offered nine noteworthy sociology websites, each of them different but all were highly informative. Although, I would have liked to have see SocioSite only once; instead of adding a link to the same website twice under different names, you could have pointed out both pages with only one link, and added another website. I liked the fact that you mentioned using Sociosite yourself and I believe that served as a strong point on your post. You did a good job of describing each site and blog and as I clicked on the link I believed you description was accurate, though I believed your transitions could have been better by comparing the site with another instead of just starting the sentence with a new post. It is unfortunate that the majority of websites did not offer any interaction because it can be such a useful component to any site. I also would have liked to have seen a graphic in your post of a site of a blog you particularly liked. I believe that this would have greatly added to the post, and would have helped draw the eye in. I thought that that you should have left VALPO to the end since it was your favorite website, like the saying goes 'save the best for last.' I appreciated that you mentioned your previous post, however I believe you could have benefited from a longer closing statement. Overall it was a good post, and I believed you did a wonderful job of using the Webby awards and IMSA criteria.
Cheers for the plug :) I was wondering what you meant by me and my compadre not establishing our authority. Is this because we haven't written a short 'about the authors' piece, or that we don't offer enough opinion?
Whatever the case I've added you to our blogroll.
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