We’ve found a friend! No, really, The Society Pages would like to formally introduce you (assuming you haven’t yet met) to the Scholars Strategy Network.
Let us explain. By now, our readers know a few things about The Society Pages (TSP, as we like to call it; social science that matters and all that):
- We ask scholars to share their knowledge in a way that’s publicly accessible, but never dumbed-down
- We give away our content for free online
- We’re non-partisan and our authors speak for themselves
Well, as it turns out, these are just a few of the things we share with Theda Skocpol’s big new initiative, the Scholars Strategy Network (of course, these are also a few reasons we signed on as SSN members ourselves earlier in the year). Not even a year old, the SSN now boasts over 100 members and has 8 regional chapters. What really makes the network unique is its goal of providing information not just for the public, but for policy makers who want to draw on solid social science and practical recommendations from leading researchers.
Through their policy briefs and “basic facts” pieces, SSN helps the evidence-based research of academia find its way into government in the most direct way possible: by informing citizens and their elected officials. These short, accessibly written briefs summarize key research findings, present basic facts on timely topics, and spell out policy options on issues of immediate public and political concern. Prepared by a stellar cast of leading scholars (folks like Jacob Hacker, Doug Massey, Ruth Milkman, and Suzanne Mettler), these are really great and useful pieces, and dozens of them are available—all for free—on topics ranging from jobs creation and economic growth to health and education reform, immigration policy, elections, and the environment.
To help SSN expand its reach, we’ll be featuring a number of their policy briefs and “basic facts” pieces in full-text in a special SSN area of our website in the coming months. We’ll also be pointing out particularly relevant pieces for you to go explore on their site (where you can always download a PDF of every article—and for free, did we say that?), highlighting SSN scholars on our Twitter account and in Office Hours interviews, and otherwise inviting you to learn more about the network.
In the meantime, we invite you to sneak a quick peek for yourselves. You’ll see that more than a few friends of and contributors to TSP are involved, including Minnesota’s own Larry Jacobs, one of the four featured scholars for the inaugural month of June. You should can also scroll through SSN’s brand new collection of original research briefs. Close followers of TSP will quickly realize, in fact, that over the past few months we’ve cited or linked to some of this great material already—on immigration policy (Kathy Fennelly), tax cuts and Republicans (Monica Prasad), and the role of government in economic innovation (Fred Block and Matthew Keller), just to name a few.
Anyway, this is all just offer a hearty TSP welcome to the Pages, SSN!
Comments 5
a — October 19, 2012
Please pardon my boorishness in placing this comment here, but I'm not sure where else it should go. Would it be possible to reorganize TSP's front page? A simple "table of contents" would be greatly (GREATLY) appreciated. I'd like to see what content is new, old, and... well, available. None of this is apparent from any page.
Currently the visible articles change daily, though some features take up space for weeks or months ("Rosa Parks"). When I look for new content, I have to check each seperate area on the front page by looking at the smaller title print and trying to remember that esoteric data point, or I scan the 123456 scrolling images in the top header, or just hope to stumble on some new content somewhere.
This is... um... frustrating. Counter-intuitive.
Howzabout a Table of Contents? You can do mouseovers to have your Type+TypeDescription pop up, or even (gaspy gasp) have separate columns similar to email. IE, instead of
TYPE + DESCRIPTION OF WHAT THIS TYPE OF ARTICLE IS + title
(in little, unaligned hotspots like playing cards scattered on a table)
howzabout
TITLE (date) + excerpt + Type + Description of Type (email/blog organization)
or even
TYPE --- Expandable Description of Type
* TITLE (date) + excerpt
* TITLE (date) + excerpt
* TITLE (date) + excerpt (magazine organization)
This format, or something approximating it, would be so much more understandable for anyone who is familiar with email reader/blog organization. Which is, frankly, everyone. And I'd be able to find the stuff I need without wasting gobs of time poking around to see where new cool stuff has been hidden!
TL ; DR -- your site org is TLDR. This info is too cool to be hid like this. Fix plskthx.
Letta Page — October 30, 2012
Dear A:
I apologize for not spotting your comment earlier! We are always looking for ways to improve navigation within what our skeleton crew and platform can do. One thing we're working on are the TSP Topics pages, though there's only one so far and it does not yet have a permanent home on our front page: thesocietypages.org/politics
In the meantime, if you look in the middle of the page, the three most recent "original content" pieces will show up in the center stripe (which pulls from our white papers, special features, editors desk, teaching TSP, changing lenses, roundtables, and office hours), and the most recent six blog posts will show at the bottom of the page. The Contexts content box ("Rosa Parks") will only change every three months, as Contexts is a quarterly publication that is hosted by TheSocietyPages.org online; they only provide new content that often.
One other good idea is to follow TSP on Twitter (@thesocietypages), as we highlight new works as soon as they're published. I realize this doesn't solve your worries, but hopefully it gives you some good ways to find what you're looking for within our structure.
Thanks for reading,
Letta Page, Assoc. Ed.
a — November 14, 2012
Thank you for your comprehensive response. I've been enjoying TSP for... oh, it must be a year or more now, and never understood its organization. They make, um, slightly better sense to me now. This does not help me navigate the vastly different pages in your site(s), nor find new data, but thanks for trying to help.
I hope that your next redesign could possibly consider some of the points I've made. Even a single additional "Site Index" page (industry standard format even) would be massively helpful.
Thanks again.
Letta Page — November 25, 2012
I think you'll enjoy our new feature, the Friday Roundup, which gathers all of the new original TSP content for the week, along with a sampling of what's happening on our Community Pages (our blogs). You helped inspire the feature, and it's already become quite popular!
a — November 26, 2012
I loved today's Friday Roundup! Just found it for myself, and your explanation clears things up. It's VERY helpful. Thank you, this makes everything much easier. *wild applause*