Printer-friendly versionBrowse: Strengths and Weaknesses
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Content Selection Criteria and Disclaimer |
System Strengths
- Topic Lists -- One of the strong points of the system is its comprehensive and highly interdisciplinary listing of topics that make it much easier to find contributions from people working in the full range of governance and conflict-related fields. These 1000+ topics are organized around the nine challenges addressed by the Governance Commons plus the organization system used by Beyond Intractability. As extensive as they are, these topic lists are not complete. We welcome suggested additions, deletions, and clarifications. Just use our "spam resistant" e-mail form to send us your thoughts.
- Dual Layer Coverage -- In an effort to be both selective and comprehensive, we have organized the Browse system on two levels. The top-level "Browse Virtual Bookshelves" system focuses on a relatively small number of resources selected and recommended by our research staff . The "Browse More Resources" pages are built around a series of automated, topic-oriented searches that survey the full range of web-accessible resources including the academic literature, the news media, conflict and governance organizations, and even the web as a whole.
- Limited Initial Coverage -- While the current version of the system contains a great deal of information, it is by no stretch of the imagination complete. As a collaborative project, our intention is to mobilize the community of people working on conflict and governance issues and ask them to help us fill out the knowledge base and identify especially useful resources that we should feature.
- "Bad Hits" -- While we continue to work to improve them, our systems for connecting specific resources with specific topics are not perfect and there will occasionally be "bad hits" (with a greater proportion of bad hits encountered on the Browse More Resources pages). The same limitations may lead us to fail to find all available resources on specific topics. To overcome this problem, it's often useful to approach a cluster of related topics.
- Search Database and Algorithm Issues -- The databases and search algorithms used to generate the Browse More Resources pages have limitations that rarely, but occasionally yield results that are inexplicable, inappropriate, silly, and conceivably even offensive. We continue to refine and improve our systems to limit these problems. Still, we ask users to recognize and be patient with the inherent limits of the technology and the imperfect and cumbersome process of putting together these systems. If you find something that seems clearly inappropriate, please let us know and we will promptly address the problem.
Using Virtual Bookshelves
The Virtual Bookshelves allow users to browse approximately 5000+ resources that have been selected as being especially useful by our research staff. The full text of these resources can also be searched. These bookshelves are available for 1000+ topics organized around the Commons' nine challenges plus the Beyond Intractability topics. A sample listing is included below
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Browse Virtual Bookshelves Use the bookshelves simply click on each topic to receive the listing of resources on the topic. For Beyond Intractability, clicking on the topic will take you to an overview essay. You will also have the option of following the stars  to selected additional resources; and following the binoculars  to a search of the Commons database for more information on this topic. For example:Justice » Principles of Justice and Fairness » Types of Justice » Restorative Justice » Retributive Justice » Procedural Justice » Distributive Justice |
Using the Browse More Resources Pages
The Governance Commons and Beyond Intractability select resources to feature on various parts of the site ( including the virtual bookshelves) using a progressive filtering process through which we first assemble "long lists" of information to consider including in the system. These long lists are then reviewed by our research staff to identify "short lists" of much higher-quality resources. From these short lists, we then identify even shorter lists of resources to feature on the New and Featured section and Portal pages as well as other aspects of the site.
The Browse More Resources pages (which are still being refined and improved) provide Commons users with access to the core of this system. These pages are available for each of the nine challenges plus Beyond Intractability. They consist of two sections. The first contains the list of topics with links to the second section which contains lists of links to information on each of the topics in the first section, from different sources. The sample listing of topics below has numbered notes which contain information about the type of information which is now available.
Sample Listing of TopicsNature of Identity DifferencesCulture » Culture and Conflict » Cultural and Worldview Frames » Cultural Security Race » Racial Identity » Psychology of Race » Racial Conflict » Race and Power » Race and Economics » Race and Minority Rights » Racial Issues in Political Campaigns » Race and American Policy Gender » Women and Intractable Conflict » Women and Genocide » Development, Gender and Conflict |
Each of the above links links to an individual topic listing such as the one below.
Sample Individual Topic Listing
Identity Issues
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[1] Where available, this leads to an overview essay and a page of selected resources. (While the overview essay is generally quite useful, the page of selected resources is now dated and in the process of being revised.)
[2] Were available, this will allow users to browse the short list of Commons content that has already been featured in portals pages on this topic. ( We are still in the process of setting up this system.)
[3] Full-text, "preconfigured" search of "short list" Commons content on this topic. Included are approximately 4000 references cited by the Governance Commons. NOTE: This information can also be accessed using the text box search.
[4] Full-text, "preconfigured" search of all of the content found on the websites of the 3000+ organizations that we've identified doing governance work. (Organizations included are defined quite broadly and may include controversial organizations with partisan views in addition to relatively mainstream organizations.)
[5] Full-text searching of selected, high-quality, international, English-language news sources as well as from the [6] full Google News system.
[6] Preconfigured searches this topic in the academic literature on Google Scholar which is now regarded as a quite high quality source for this information.
[7] Access to information on this topic from the social bookmarking site Delicio.us (Underdevelopment)
