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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.

  • Encyclopedia of Forensic and Legal Medicine

    • 2nd Edition
    • Jason Payne-James + 1 more
    • English
    Encyclopedia of Forensic and Legal Medicine, Volumes 1-4, Second Edition is a pioneering four volume encyclopedia compiled by an international team of forensic specialists who explore the relationship between law, medicine, and science in the study of forensics. This important work includes over three hundred state-of-the-art chapters, with articles covering crime-solving techniques such as autopsies, ballistics, fingerprinting, hair and fiber analysis, and the sophisticated procedures associated with terrorism investigations, forensic chemistry, DNA, and immunoassays. Available online, and in four printed volumes, the encyclopedia is an essential reference for any practitioner in a forensic, medical, healthcare, legal, judicial, or investigative field looking for easily accessible and authoritative overviews on a wide range of topics. Chapters have been arranged in alphabetical order, and are written in a clear-and-concise manner, with definitions provided in the case of obscure terms and information supplemented with pictures, tables, and diagrams. Each topic includes cross-referencing to related articles and case studies where further explanation is required, along with references to external sources for further reading.
  • The Myth and Magic of Library Systems

    • 1st Edition
    • Keith J. Kelley
    • English
    The Myth and Magic of Library Systems not only defines what library systems are, but also provides guidance on how to run a library systems department. It is aimed at librarians or library administrations tasked with managing, or using, a library systems department. This book focuses on different scenarios regarding career changes for librarians and the ways they may have to interact with library systems, including examples that speak to IT decision-making responsibilities, work as a library administrator, or managerial duties in systems departments.
  • Oral Exams

    Preparing For and Passing Candidacy, Qualifying, and Graduate Defenses
    • 1st Edition
    • A. Lee Foote
    • English
    Oral Exams: Preparing For and Passing Candidacy, Qualifying, and Graduate Defenses provides guidance on how to prepare for oral comprehensive and viva voce exams. Topics discussed include the supervisory committee, preparing the seminar, arranging content, mental preparation, question framing, and the types of questions to expect. At its core, the book prepares students to be the best they can be by offering insights into how to interpret and appropriately respond to explicit and implied oral comps questions. This book benefits faculty by helping them prepare new questions, also providing tips on how to mentor their students in preparation for exams. The training included can be used to prepare for intensive qualifying or certification exams, job interviews, and presentations.
  • Securing the Outdoor Construction Site

    Strategy, Prevention, and Mitigation
    • 1st Edition
    • Kevin Wright Carney
    • English
    Securing the Outdoor Construction Site: Strategy, Prevention, and Mitigation offers a holistic view of security planning for vulnerable capital projects, providing the strategic and tactical plans needed to protect large areas with a minimum investment in personnel and equipment. This book is a one-stop reference that provides effective security strategies, methods, and tactics to mitigate the theft of equipment and how to avoid these incidents altogether. In addition, the book outlines the true costs of construction site theft to organizations in terms of lost time, equipment, and brand reputation, along with increased insurance premiums and danger to personnel. It lists the types of theft that regularly occur at sites, explores their underlying causes, and documents their worldwide financial significance. Finally, readers will learn how to conduct a construction site survey with loss prevention in mind, and how to budget for the unexpected.
  • Security Operations Management

    • 3rd Edition
    • Robert McCrie
    • English
    Security Operations Management, 3rd edition, is the latest edition the seminal reference on corporate security management operations for today’s security management professionals and students. The book explores the characteristics of today’s globalized workplaces, why security has a key role within them, and what the greatest concern are to security practitioners and senior managers. Incorporating the latest security research and best practices, updates to Security Operations Management 3rd edition include explorations of the key skills needed by security managers to demonstrate the value of their security program, greater emphasis on identifying and managing risk, and coverage of the latest technological advances in security control, command, communications, and computing. The third edition also delves more deeply than previous editions into online security training practices, as well as investigates the changing roles of women and minorities in security operations.
  • Operational Policy Making for Professional Security

    Practical Policy Skills for the Public and Private Sector
    • 1st Edition
    • Allen Sondej
    • English
    Operational Policy Making for Professional Security: Practical Policy Skills for the Public and Private Sector is a clear, concise, and practical resource for drafting effective, legally defensible security policies. Presented in a clear, step-by-step style that can be tailored to fit the smallest organization to the largest, the book offers the strategies needed for reducing risk through solid policy construction. It is the first book available that provides a step-by-step guide to basic security policy construction, along with helpful hints on how to draft a document that conveys exactly what is intended. The book explores common policy creation pitfalls and how to avoid them, outlining proven methods for implementing and disseminating effective policies throughout any organization. Discussing the core security and safety policies that no organization should operate without, the book covers common types of policies, along with the pros and cons of different policy-making methodologies. It is a one-stop reference on functional security policy-making for organizational leaders.
  • How Libraries Should Manage Data

    Practical Guidance On How With Minimum Resources to Get the Best From Your Data
    • 1st Edition
    • Brian Cox
    • English
    Have you ever looked at your Library’s key performance indicators and said to yourself "so what!"? Have you found yourself making decisions in a void due to the lack of useful and easily accessible operational data? Have you ever worried that you are being left behind with the emergence of data analytics? Do you feel there are important stories in your operational data that need to be told, but you have no idea how to find these stories? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this book is for you. How Libraries Should Manage Data provides detailed instructions on how to transform your operational data from a fog of disconnected, unreliable, and inaccessible information - into an exemplar of best practice data management. Like the human brain, most people are only using a very small fraction of the true potential of Excel. Learn how to tap into a greater proportion of Excel’s hidden power, and in the process transform your operational data into actionable business intelligence.
  • Altmetrics for Information Professionals

    Past, Present and Future
    • 1st Edition
    • Kim Johan Holmberg
    • English
    The goal of any research assessment is to evaluate the value or quality of the research in comparison to other research. As quality is highly subjective and difficult to measure, citations are used as a proxy. Citations are an important part of scholarly communication and a significant component of research evaluation, with the assumption being that highly cited work has influenced the work of many other researchers and hence it is more valuable. Recently we have seen new online data sources being researched for this purpose and disruptive ideas with the power to change research assessment, and perhaps even science as a whole, have been born. Altmetrics is the new research area that investigates the potential of these new data source as indicators of the impact that research has made on the scientific community and beyond, and thus possibly also as indicators of the societal impact of research. This book will present some of these new data sources, findings from earlier altmetrics research, and the disruptive ideas that may radically change scholarly communication.
  • Sustainability in Higher Education

    • 1st Edition
    • J. Paulo Davim
    • English
    Support in higher education is an emerging area of great interest to professors, researchers and students in academic institutions. Sustainability in Higher Education provides discussions on the exchange of information between different aspects of sustainability in higher education. This book includes chapter contributions from authors who have provided case studies on various areas of education for sustainability.
  • You: For Sale

    Protecting Your Personal Data and Privacy Online
    • 1st Edition
    • Stuart Sumner
    • English
    Everything we do online, and increasingly in the real world, is tracked, logged, analyzed, and often packaged and sold on to the highest bidder. Every time you visit a website, use a credit card, drive on the freeway, or go past a CCTV camera, you are logged and tracked. Every day billions of people choose to share their details on social media, which are then sold to advertisers. The Edward Snowden revelations that governments - including those of the US and UK – have been snooping on their citizens, have rocked the world. But nobody seems to realize that this has already been happening for years, with firms such as Google capturing everything you type into a browser and selling it to the highest bidder. Apps take information about where you go, and your contact book details, harvest them and sell them on – and people just click the EULA without caring. No one is revealing the dirty secret that is the tech firms harvesting customers’ personal data and selling it for vast profits – and people are totally unaware of the dangers. You: For Sale is for anyone who is concerned about what corporate and government invasion of privacy means now and down the road. The book sets the scene by spelling out exactly what most users of the Internet and smart phones are exposing themselves to via commonly used sites and apps such as facebook and Google, and then tells you what you can do to protect yourself. The book also covers legal and government issues as well as future trends. With interviews of leading security experts, black market data traders, law enforcement and privacy groups, You: For Sale will help you view your personal data in a new light, and understand both its value, and its danger.