The Center Foundation. Access: http://www.tcf.org.

Britt Fagerheim, Utah State University, britt.fagerheim@usu.edu

The Century Foundation is a progressive think tank founded in 1919. Their Web site features an extensive collection of publications and information related to the major areas of interest for the foundation, including “Economics and Inequality,” “Retirement Security,” “Education,” “Health Care,” “Homeland Security,” “Election Reform,” “Media and Politics,” and “International Affairs.” The site is organized around these issues and by type of resource. The resources included on the site include “Publications,” “News and Commentary,” “Press Releases,” “Events,” “Related Research,” and “Links.”

The majority of the publications featured on the site are downloadable documents, such as reports as well as short briefs. Both of these are useful elements for academic library patrons. Undergraduates can find a wealth of information for research papers on these topics. The shorter reports and briefs provide useful background information on a wide range of current policy issues. There are also a handful of abstracts for print publications from the foundation, which are offered for sale.

In addition to the collections of publications within each of the major subject areas, the site provides access to shorter pieces of news and commentary, press releases from the foundation, and information on events sponsored by the foundation or featuring foundation staff members. The resources within “Related Research” and “Links” could potentially be of great use to undergraduates. The “Links” section features annotated Web links to other organizations conducting research in each of the Century Foundation’s major areas of concern.

Finally, the site features a list of Project sites. These are Web sites devoted to specific Century Foundation research areas. Most are written in a continually updated Web blog style and cover topics such as the opposition movement in Iran and the U.S. health care debate.

In addition to browsing by content or format, users can search the site through a basic or advanced search. Within the advanced search, searches can be limited by topic, date, title, description, author, or publisher.

The scope of issues covered and the variety of resources, from in-depth research reports to concise overviews of an issue, plus the continually updated project sites make this Web site a useful resource for students researching the topics within the purview of the Century Foundation.

GlobalHUB. Access: http://globalhub.org/home.

Kate Peterson, University of Minnesota, katep@umn.edu

There is a great desire, and many would say a necessity, to see students graduate with a global perspective. Can technology be used to further this goal? This is the idea behind GlobalHUB. GlobalHUB focuses on global engineering education and cutting-edge technology. GlobalHUB’s mission is to “facilitate a cyber-community of scholars, practitioners, and students that advances global engineering education, eliminates barriers for students seeking a global education, and helps prepare a workforce of globally competent engineers.” It is an example of an Engineering Virtual Organization funded by National Science Foundation (NSF) grants.

This site uses a platform called HUBZero. The hub allows users to post, share, and collaborate on materials such as simulation tools, online presentations, and articles. The platform uses open source building blocks, including MySQL, PHP, and Joomla. The technology was developed at Purdue University in conjunction with the NSF-sponsored Network for Computational Nanotechnology. The first and most successful example of a site using this platform is NanoHUB.org. NanoHUB.org hosts a large user population with more than 90,000 annual visits. The site provides access to hundreds of simulations, teaching materials and practice problems, articles, and preprints. All works have accompanying rankings, reviews, citations, and supporting documents.

GlobalHUB is newer and smaller in scope with around 11,500 visitors. One of the strongest areas of content is the online course,“Engineering Cultures Online 2.0” designed by Gary Downey at Virginia Tech and Juan Lucena from the Colorado School of Mines. The course includes videos that discuss engineering in different countries. In fall 2009, the site hosted a contest for user-created images that aimed to answer the question, “what does global engineering mean to you?”

Overall, the site hints at what it might be. At present it seems to be heavily used by faculty and students at Purdue University. Certainly with models such as NanoHUB.org already in use, the hub appears to have a rich infrastructure. In the case of GlobalHUB, the question is: will a community form to take advantage of it?

Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP). Access: http://www.irp.wisc.edu.

Barbara Valentine, Linfield College, bvalen@linfield.edu

Sociologists, economists, policy makers, students, and others interested in poverty studies will find this site a gold mine of substantive research. Established in 1966 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the nonprofit, nonpartisan IRP has a long history of support for original, interdisciplinary studies “into the causes and consequences of poverty and social inequality in the United States.” With the establishment of a federally sponsored National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan in 2002, IRP is now a designated Area Poverty Research Center (APRC), along with the University of Kentucky and West Coast APRCs.

Institute “affiliates” divide time between regular teaching appointments and research developing theories of poverty and inequality, evaluating social policy alternatives, and analyzing trends on poverty and family welfare, mostly in the Midwest. IRP disseminates findings and trains and mentors “future poverty researchers.”

Starting with links to recent publications, news, and events on the main page, this Web site provides multiple ways to engage in IRP research. Convenient header rollover menus facilitate glancing selectively at content of interest, including links to institute initiatives and activities, research, publications, and related resources. The FAQ answers basic questions about poverty such as “Who is poor?” and “How will we know if welfare reform is successful?” A site map and search engine accommodate further discovery.

The documents themselves are quite academic and full of jargon, so may be daunting to novice researchers in this field. But abstracts and generous explanation surround each piece, helping to convey its context and import. Additionally, the included publications Focus and Fast Focus offer distinct but complementary summaries and nontechnical coverage of selected publications, news, and IRP events.

As institute history has changed over 30 years, the site not surprisingly contains awkward features. For instance, though the top level Search IRP works well in its Google-like way, a “new” IRP Publications field-search engine buried further down seems clunky and may be more confusing than useful to a new generation of searchers. Similarly, some research strands seem abandoned, such as the Special Reports (up to 2003) and Reprints (1993–2004).

Despite the deficiencies, unique content abounds. Browsing this site is an education, not only into the types and depth of research done in this area, but into the history of poverty research itself.