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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.

    • Becoming a Lean Library

      Lessons from the World of Technology Start-ups
      • 1st Edition
      • Jeremy Nelson
      • English
      Becoming a Lean Library: Lessons from the World of Technology Start-ups provides a guide to the process and approach necessary to manage product development. Using techniques and philosophies pioneered by Toyota's lean manufacturing success, Becoming a Lean Library provides library leadership advice and tips on making the library more nimble, lean, and responsive to technological change. Early chapters introduce the reader to the idea of lean start-ups in libraries, followed by chapters covering library systems, lessons from lean manufacturing, and the build-measure-learn model. Remaining chapters discuss technology change and DevOps as a lean strategy, while also giving the reader the opportunity to earn a professional online "badge" on the subject material of the book.
    • Breaking into Information Security

      Crafting a Custom Career Path to Get the Job You Really Want
      • 1st Edition
      • Josh More + 2 more
      • English
      Whether you want to break into information security, move from one job to another, or transition into management, Breaking into Information Security will help. No other book surveys all the different jobs available in the industry, frankly discusses the positives and negatives of each, and what you need to learn to get into and out of each role. Unlike books that focus on a specific skill set or on how to gain a certification or get a job, this book encompasses the "big picture," including why certifications, if any, are worthwhile for you. In a profession where new career paths aren’t always clear, Breaking into Information Security will teach you how to identify where you are in your career today, understand where you wish to go, and provide proven methods to get there. From entry-level jobs to the extremely specific skills needed to be an InfoSec consultant, this book covers it all, including in-job skill building, working within the community, and building your skills after hours. If you are seeking to advance in the highly competitive field of information security, this book will give you the edge you need to break in.
    • Automating Open Source Intelligence

      Algorithms for OSINT
      • 1st Edition
      • Robert Layton + 1 more
      • English
      Algorithms for Automating Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) presents information on the gathering of information and extraction of actionable intelligence from openly available sources, including news broadcasts, public repositories, and more recently, social media. As OSINT has applications in crime fighting, state-based intelligence, and social research, this book provides recent advances in text mining, web crawling, and other algorithms that have led to advances in methods that can largely automate this process. The book is beneficial to both practitioners and academic researchers, with discussions of the latest advances in applications, a coherent set of methods and processes for automating OSINT, and interdisciplinary perspectives on the key problems identified within each discipline. Drawing upon years of practical experience and using numerous examples, editors Robert Layton, Paul Watters, and a distinguished list of contributors discuss Evidence Accumulation Strategies for OSINT, Named Entity Resolution in Social Media, Analyzing Social Media Campaigns for Group Size Estimation, Surveys and qualitative techniques in OSINT, and Geospatial reasoning of open data.
    • Job Hazard Analysis

      A Guide for Voluntary Compliance and Beyond
      • 2nd Edition
      • James Roughton + 1 more
      • English
      Job Hazard Analysis: A Guide for Voluntary Compliance and Beyond, Second Edition, provides a complete reference for performing JHA and setting up a JHA program. The book identifies the basic job steps and tasks, their associated hazards and risks, and safe operating procedures and hazard controls based on this analysis. Authors James Roughton and Nathan Crutchfield argue that the JHA should be the centerpiece of any risk control and occupational safety and health program. However, the traditional JHA has potential problems in gathering and analysis of task data and, with its focus on the sequence of steps, can miss the behavioral effects and the systems interactions between tools, equipment, materials, work environment, management and the individual worker. The concepts are presented for the JHA, incorporating elements from Behavior-Based Safety and Six Sigma. Readers are taken through the whole process of developing tools for identifying workplace hazards, developing systems that support hazard recognition, developing an effective JHA, and managing a JHA based program that can be easily incorporated into occupational safety and health management systems, thus allowing businesses to move from mere compliance to a pro-active safety management. The book is supported by numerous examples of JHAs, end of chapter review questions, sample checklists, action plans, and forms.
    • Emerging Technologies for Librarians

      A Practical Approach to Innovation
      • 1st Edition
      • Sharon Q Yang + 1 more
      • English
      Emerging Technologies for Librarians: A Practical Approach to Innovation focuses on the practical applications of emerging technologies in libraries, defining the technologies in the context of their use in real situations. Each chapter includes an overview of the use of emerging technologies in a particular work area that is followed by a list of relevant applications. Chapters cover work areas such as advertising, distance learning, metadata. and digital libraries, and also focus on applications, including mobile computing and web conferencing, followed by a conclusion. This book serves as a guide for those interested in learning about, and implementing, the available technologies that enhance library services, and also lists and discusses the types of emerging technologies that are available for a specific area of work.
    • Research 2.0 and the Future of Information Literacy

      • 1st Edition
      • Tibor Koltay + 2 more
      • English
      Research 2.0 and the Future of Information Literacy examines possible congruencies between information literacy and Research 2.0, because the work of today’s researcher mobilizes a number of literacies. From among the various types of relevant literacies, at least three types of literacies can be mentioned in this relation: information literacy, scientific literacy and academic literacy. This book addresses these literacies in the light of the changing research landscape. Broad contexts of the researcher’s abilities, as adaptive and innovative thinking, problem solving skills, self-management and design mindset are also examined. Computational thinking and the computational paradigm in a number of fields of research are taken into consideration, as well. Researchers differ to non-researchers when populating social media, which means that these two different groups require different literacies. The relationship between information literacy and information is approached in a new way. Among the multitude of issues, we introduce a new interface between information literacy and Research 2.0. It encompasses the issues of research data management and data literacy, which represent also a challenge both for the academic library and for the communities of researchers. Similarly, the questions of new metrics of scientific output are addressed in the book.
    • Maximizing Electronic Resources Management in Libraries

      Applying Business Process Management
      • 1st Edition
      • Lenore England + 1 more
      • English
      Maximizing Electronic Resources Management in Libraries: Applying Business Process Management examines the use of Business Process Management (BPM) and the ways it can be beneficially applied to electronic resources management (ERM) to help organize processes in libraries. The book offers librarians a skillset that will make them ready for a variety of library environments. It focuses on the organizational tools offered by BPM, including key elements of ERM functions that lay the groundwork for the present and future use of ERM, and how they will drive methods by which libraries provide access to resources. BPM theories are then reviewed, along with a discussion of present applications of BPM to ERM and a final look at possibilities for future applications.
    • Researching Developing Countries

      A Data Resource Guide for Social Scientists
      • 1st Edition
      • Forrest Daniel Wright
      • English
      Why are some countries rich while others are poor? Why are some well governed while others experience frequent conflict? And how do you measure a country’s true success anyways? Social scientists have attempted to answer these types of questions for decades, and have increasingly turned to data for this task. Researching Developing Countries: A Data Resource Guide for Social Scientists serves as a reference guide for social scientists and students interested in answering these complex questions. The book will also be helpful to librarians serving the social science disciplines. Topics covered in the book include: human development, economics, governance, conflict, demographics, migration and refugees, environment, foreign aid, energy and infrastructure, innovation and entrepreneurship, geography and urban development, and public opinion.
    • The Mindful Librarian

      Connecting the Practice of Mindfulness to Librarianship
      • 1st Edition
      • Richard Moniz + 4 more
      • English
      The Mindful Librarian: Connecting the Practice of Mindfulness to Librarianship explores mindfulness, approaching it in such a way as to relate specifically to the many roles or challenges librarians face. Coinciding with the increased need to juggle a variety of tasks, technologies, ebooks, and databases, the new Association of College & Research Libraries Framework for Information Literacy, and the challenges faced by solo librarians in school libraries which have suffered cutbacks in help in recent years, the time is exactly right for this publication. The authors hope to be helpful in some small way towards improving the joy and quality of life that librarians and library science students experience in their personal lives and jobs. The loftier goal would be to create a new lens from which to view librarianship, having a transformative impact on readers, and opening a new dialog within the profession. The topic of mindfulness is not new; it has been connected to various religious traditions in a wide variety of ways for centuries, most notably Buddhism. In the latter part of the 20th century, however, a secular version was popularized largely by the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn and his work on MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) at the University of Massachusetts’s Medical School. The medical benefits and the overall quality of life improvements from its adoption have exploded in recent years, in particular, the last two decades which have seen mindfulness traditions incorporated into education to a greater degree and with very positive results.
    • Biological and Environmental Hazards, Risks, and Disasters

      • 1st Edition
      • Ramesh Sivanpillai
      • English
      Biological and Environmental Hazards, Risks, and Disasters provides an integrated look at major impacts to the Earth’s biosphere. Many of these are caused by diseases, algal blooms, insects, animals, species extinction, deforestation, land degradation, and comet and asteroid strikes that have important implications for humans. This volume, from Elsevier’s Hazards and Disasters Series, provides an in-depth view of threats, ranging from microscopic organisms to celestial objects. Perspectives from both natural and social sciences provide an in-depth understanding of potential impacts.