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Books in Social sciences

The Social Sciences collection forms a definitive resource for those entering, researching, or teaching in any of the many disciplines making up this interdisciplinary area of study. Written by experts and researchers from both Academic and Commercial domains, titles offer global scope and perspectives.

Key subject areas include: Library and Information Science; Transportation; Urban Studies; Geography, Planning, and Development; Security; Emergency Management.

    • Presenting an Effective and Dynamic Technical Paper

      A Guidebook for Novice and Experienced Speakers in a Multicultural World
      • 1st Edition
      • William B. Krantz
      • English
      Presenting an Effective and Dynamic Technical Paper: A Guidebook for Novice and Experienced Speakers in a Multicultural World is intended for inexperienced speakers as well as those aspiring to improve their communication skills in making either formal or informal presentations on a technical subject. The book focuses on how to make presentations to a cross-cultural audience, including such tactics as how to list the names of the co-authors on your presentation, how to handle eye contact and use humor, both of which can differ across the global spectrum of cultures. The cross-cultural focus of this book relates not only to the audience, but also to the speaker. This book also includes helpful tips for non-native English speakers.
    • Security Metrics Management

      Measuring the Effectiveness and Efficiency of a Security Program
      • 2nd Edition
      • Gerald L. Kovacich + 1 more
      • English
      Security Metrics Management, Measuring the Effectiveness and Efficiency of a Security Program, Second Edition details the application of quantitative, statistical, and/or mathematical analyses to measure security functional trends and workload, tracking what each function is doing in terms of level of effort (LOE), costs, and productivity. This fully updated guide is the go-to reference for managing an asset protection program and related security functions through the use of metrics. It supports the security professional’s position on budget matters, helping to justify the cost-effectiveness of security-related decisions to senior management and other key decision-makers. The book is designed to provide easy-to-follow guidance, allowing security professionals to confidently measure the costs of their assets protection program - their security program - as well as its successes and failures. It includes a discussion of how to use the metrics to brief management, build budgets, and provide trend analyses to develop a more efficient and effective asset protection program.
    • Effective Physical Security

      • 5th Edition
      • Lawrence J. Fennelly
      • English
      Effective Physical Security, Fifth Edition is a best-practices compendium that details the essential elements and latest developments in physical security protection. This new edition is completely updated, with new chapters carefully selected from the author’s work that set the standard. This book contains important coverage of environmental design, security surveys, locks, lighting, and CCTV, the latest ISO standards for risk assessment and risk management, physical security planning, network systems infrastructure, and environmental design.
    • Creating a New Library

      Recipes for Transformation
      • 1st Edition
      • Valerie Freeman + 1 more
      • English
      Creating a New Library: Recipes for Transformation offers ways to make your library group space into one conducive to transformational learning. The book is structured as a cookbook with an introduction to the idea, then directions on its execution. Next, the book gives tips on how to adapt each ‘recipe’ to fit other specific needs, including other kinds of libraries. The layout follows three strands: space, community, and outreach. Each section includes five elements critical to transforming spaces:, fun, stimulation, safety, freedom, and personal. From providing coffee in the morning, to a full Personal Librarian program, this book presents useful and engaging ideas for transformational learning.
    • Lossless Information Hiding in Images

      • 1st Edition
      • Zhe-Ming Lu + 1 more
      • English
      Lossless Information Hiding in Images introduces many state-of-the-art lossless hiding schemes, most of which come from the authors' publications in the past five years. After reading this book, readers will be able to immediately grasp the status, the typical algorithms, and the trend of the field of lossless information hiding. Lossless information hiding is a technique that enables images to be authenticated and then restored to their original forms by removing the watermark and replacing overridden images. This book focuses on the lossless information hiding in our most popular media, images, classifying them in three categories, i.e., spatial domain based, transform domain based, and compressed domain based. Furthermore, the compressed domain based methods are classified into VQ based, BTC based, and JPEG/JPEG2000 based.
    • Stepping Away from the Silos

      Strategic Collaboration in Digitisation
      • 1st Edition
      • Margaret Coutts
      • English
      For over twenty years, digitisation has been a core element of the modern information landscape. The digital lifecycle is now well defined, and standards and good practice have been developed for most of its key stages. There remains, however, a widespread lack of coordination of digitisation initiatives, both within and across different sectors, and there are disparate approaches to selection criteria. The result is ‘silos’ of digitised content. Stepping away from the Silos examines the strategic context in the UK since the 1990s and its effect on collaboration and coordination of exemplar digitisation initiatives in higher education and related sectors. It identifies the principal criteria for content selection that are common to the international literature in this field. The outputs of the exemplar projects are examined in relation to these criteria. A range of common practices and patterns in content selection appears to have developed over time, forming a de facto strategy from which several areas of critical mass have emerged. The book discusses the potential to improve strategic collaboration and coordinated selection by building on such a platform, and considers planning options in the context of work on national digitisation strategies in the UK and internationally.
    • Understanding Political Change

      The British Voter 1964-1987
      • 1st Edition
      • Anthony Heath
      • English
      The central concern of Understanding Political Change is to explore the social and political sources of electoral change in Britain. From the Labour successes of the 1960s through the reemergence of the Liberals as a national force in 1974 and the rise and fall of the SDP to the potential emergence of the Green Party in the 1990s, Dr Heath and his collaborators chart the continually changing mould of British politics. Questions of the greater volatility of a more sophisticated electorate, of new cleavages in society replacing those based on social class, of the Conservative government's deliberate and inadvertent interventions to shape the emerging social structure, and of the influence which the political parties have been able to exert on public attitudes are all addressed with reference to data from the election surveys carried out after each general election since 1964.
    • Elements of Information Organization and Dissemination

      • 1st Edition
      • Amitabha Chatterjee
      • English
      Elements of Information Organization and Dissemination provides Information on how to organize and disseminate library and information science (LIS), a subject that is taught in many international Library Information Science university programs. While there are many books covering different areas of the subject separately, this book covers the entire subject area and incorporates the latest developments.
    • Map Librarianship

      A Guide to Geoliteracy, Map and GIS Resources and Services
      • 1st Edition
      • Susan Elizabeth Ward Aber + 1 more
      • English
      Map Librarianship identifies basic geoliteracy concepts and enhances reference and instruction skills by providing details on finding, downloading, delivering, and assessing maps, remotely sensed imagery, and other geospatial resources and services, primarily from trusted government sources. By offering descriptions of traditional maps, geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, and other geospatial technologies, the book provides a timely and practical guide for the map and geospatial librarian to blend confidence in traditional library skill sets.
    • Physical Security: 150 Things You Should Know

      • 2nd Edition
      • Lawrence J. Fennelly + 1 more
      • English
      Physical Security: 150 Things You Should Know, Second Edition is a useful reference for those at any stage of their security career. This practical guide covers the latest technological trends for managing the physical security needs of buildings and campuses of all sizes. Through anecdotes, case studies, and documented procedures, the authors have amassed the most complete collection of information on physical security available. Security practitioners of all levels will find this book easy to use as they look for practical tips to understand and manage the latest physical security technologies, such as biometrics, IP video, video analytics, and mass notification, as well as the latest principles in access control, command and control, perimeter protection, and visitor management.