Sociology: Databases

Mass Observation Project: Series II & III (1990s/2000s) now available

Object Lessons Archive 2015-2018

As a result of conversations with academic colleagues across the humanities, the Library has purchased a collection of monographs published as an archival collection from Bloomsbury. The ‘Object Lessons’ series emerged out of The Atlantic Monthly’s heralded short essays and looks in depth at ‘the hidden lives of ordinary things’ from a variety of perspectives and theoretical approaches. Averaging at c.25,000 words, each text focuses on a single topic to offer a fresh and often surprising focus on the materials of the everyday and question the quotidian in a manner that complements the fundamental critical practice of taking nothing for granted.

In addition to being of general interest to anyone involved in cultural studies, and intra-disciplinary research groupings as diverse as the Morgan Centre, the Sustainable Consumption Institute and The Bodies, Emotions and Material Culture Collective, the archive offers a virtual complement to the object-focused scholarship and collection-centred teaching activities undertaken at the Rylands. As usual in addition to the provision of a general link to the collection, all titles owned in the series are also individually indexed on Library search.

The New York Review of Books Archive – newly expanded coverage

At the request of colleagues in SALC, the Library has recently arranged for electronic access to the New York Review of Books archive (ISSN: 0028-7504). Founded in 1963 and more familiarly known as the NYRB, the semi-monthly magazine and its articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs has from its outset punched with significant cultural weight. Aptly summarised in the 2017 obituary of its legendary editor, Bob Silvers, as “the standard bearer for American intellectual life: a unique repository of thoughtful discourse, unrepentantly highbrow, in a culture increasingly given to dumbing down.” Indeed, the “lively literary disputes” conducted in the 'letters to the editor' column of the NYRB have been flagged by The Washington Post as "the closest thing the intellectual world has to bare-knuckle boxing.“

Whether this played a part in the periodical being almost certainly the only one documented on celluloid by Martin Scorsese is moot (2013’s The Fifty Year Argument), but the NYRB remains an independent inter-disciplinary journal of interest and provocation across and beyond the arts and social sciences. Ready electronic access includes current issues and the wealth of its backfiles will be of particular benefit to researchers in History, English and American Studies, Politics, Sociology, Art History, Music and the culturally engaged.

SAGE Research Methods Foundations

In response to academic requests and in-house analysis of demand, the library has added SAGE Research Methods Foundations to its holdings. Forming part of the popular Sage Research Methods database collection - which also includes Books and Reference; Video and Cases (Pt. 1) - this integrated collection offers an invaluable introductory overview for first-time researchers of the major methods topics. In addition to comprehensive coverage of themes and approaches, including their history, development and current critical debates around them, there are also biographical entries for both notable researchers and previously neglected pioneers together with pointers for further reading. Incorporating contributions from the University’s own researchers, the Foundations collection is an excellent starting point for both new PGs embarking on methods courses and those seeking to refresh and revaluate their perspective on an ever-evolving field of practice. To further facilitate discovery all entries in the Foundations collection are also individually indexed on Library Search.

Gender: Identity & Social Change

As a result of consultation with academics from the Faculty of Humanities and colleagues at the Rylands, the Library has arranged for electronic access to the Gender: Identity and Social Change database. Hosted by AM, the collection serves as a valuable reserve of digitised primary materialsdocumenting the changing representations and lived experiences of gender roles and relations, and in particular the struggle for women’s rights, from the nineteenth century to the present. Sourced from institutions from across the United States, Canada, Australia and the UK - including, as a guarantor of worth, the Rylands - contents are grouped under 13 key themes: Women’s Suffrage; Feminism; The Men’s Movement; Education and Training; Employment and Labour; The Body; Conduct and Politeness; Domesticity and the Family; Government and Politics; Legislation and Legal Cases; Leisure and Entertainment: Organisations, Associations and Societies; Sex and Sexuality.

As such the material not only aligns with academic activity undertaken within traditional disciplines such as sociology and history, but also ongoing interdisciplinary research undertaken by research hubs clustered around the social sciences (such as the Morgan Centre and Movements@Manchester) and within SALC, CIDRAL and CSSC, whose work informs the long-running MA in Gender, Sexuality and Culture. The collection also contributes further to the library’s extensive reserves in a fertile area of study – complementing both other large-scale digital archival collections (most notably, the Archives of Sexuality and Gender and Defining Gender, 1450-1910) and the deep repository of physical materials offered at the Rylands, which are of course considerably more extensive than the selection digitised for inclusion in the database.

A variety of secondary features further facilitate study and offer a useful starting point for first-time researchers. These include scholarly essays, highlighted biographies, featured organisations, video interviews and an interactive chronology to provide context to support printed resources and the wealth of visual material offered