Volume 28, Number 2, July 2005

 

APSA Annual Meeting -- Short Course
"Using Archival Sources in Legislative Research: Choosing the Road Less Traveled"
August 30, 2005, 1:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Co-sponsored by the APSA Legislative Studies Section, Congressional Papers Roundtable of the Society of American Archivists, and the National Archives and Records Administration, this short course will be conducted at the Center for Legislative Archives, National Archives and Records Administration, 700 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC.

Legislative archives are rarely used in legislative research. Collections of individual members' papers and committee papers contain valuable qualitative and quantitative data but have largely been ignored by legislative scholars.  These data have the potential to add descriptive detail to research, redress shortcomings in existing data, and generate new avenues of research.  Given the potential wealth of data why have these data sources not been more fully exploited by scholars?  One major reason is that political scientists generally receive little if any training in the use of archival resources.

This short course is intended to provide an introduction to archival research with a focus on the linkage between research design and archival strategy, and getting the researcher ready for that first foray into archival research.  We will also address the use of archival materials in undergraduate and graduate teaching.

By the end of the short course participants should understand: some of the ways that archival; research can enhance political science research; the scope of the U.S. Serial Set and how to perform a basic search; the scope and structure of the collections administered by the CLA; the strengths and limitations of CLA collections; the scope and structure of personal papers of individual members of Congress; the strengths and limitations of member collections; how to work with archivists to enhance research productivity; the structure of a finding aid and how to use it to find materials; how to locate collections that may be salient for research or teaching purposes; how to work with folders and boxes to locate information; the limitations of archival research; how to locate potential funding sources to support research; how to use archival collections to enhance undergraduate and graduate teaching.

Participants will have an opportunity to consult with Short Course facilitators to explore how archival materials could be used in their current research. The Short Course will conclude with a "behind the scenes tour" of the National Archives.

Who Should Attend: Legislative studies scholars interested in innovative data sources; those interested in improving their research by exploiting archival sources and those interested in expanding their knowledge of Congress to improve their teaching.

Participating Political Science Faculty: David Barrett, Vanderbilt University; John Berg, Suffolk University; Larry Evans, William and Mary; Scott Frisch, Cal. State Univ., Channel Islands; Douglas Harris, Loyola University (MD); Sean Kelly, Niagara University.

Participating Archivists: Richard Hunt, NARA; Ida Brudnick, NARA; Jessica Kratz, NARA; Richard Baker, Senate Historian's Office; Ken Kato, House Historian's Office; Rebecca Johnson Melvin, University of Delaware; Marian Matyn, Central Michigan University; Linda Whitaker, Arizona State University.

Contact:  Sean Q Kelly <sqkelly@NIAGARA.EDU>, phone 716-286-8092, fax 716-286-8079.


APSA Annual Meeting -- Working Groups on Political Science

APSA has introduced a program of Working Groups on Political Science at its 2005 Annual Meeting. The Annual Meeting Working Group is a small group of meeting attendees interested in a common topic who agree to attend panels and plenary sessions aligned with the topic and to convene two or more times at the meeting for discussion of them. The idea is to simulate a working group conference experience amidst the panels.

Section Members who are interested in sponsoring or participating in a Working Group in their area of specialization should contact Ebony Ramsey at eramsey@apsanet.org. For more information on organizing or signing up for an AMWG, visit http://www.apsanet.org/section_584.cfm."


APSA Conference on Teaching and Learning
February 18-20, 2006

The American Political Science Association invites political scientists and graduate students to submit proposals for the third annual Conference on Teaching and Learning in Political Science.  This year’s meeting will take place in downtown Washington, D.C., on February 18-20, 2006. 

Using a working-group model, this meeting is a forum for interested individuals to develop models on teaching and learning as well as to discuss broad themes and values affecting political science education. The meeting will consist of 12 tracks constructed around such themes as:

Assessment/Learning Outcomes
Internationalizing the  Curriculum
Diversity and Inequality
Teaching Research  Methods
Community-Based Learning
Simulations and Role Play
Teaching  with Technology

To spark conversation, presenters will make brief presentations on a topic related to their track theme. Individuals interested in applying to participate as presenters should submit a proposal on an idea or model for teaching and learning in political science as it relates to one of the themes listed above.  Proposals should be submitted online by September 15, 2005.

Presentation proposals will be reviewed and selected in a peer-review process. Each presentation can have a maximum of two authors. At the meeting, each selected presentation will be allotted an approximate 12-minute block for the author(s) to present. Co-authors may divide or share presentation time but the total time for each presentation will not exceed 12 minutes. Notices for accepted and rejected presentations will be distributed via email in mid-October. Accepted presentations will be assigned to a specific track. Author(s) will have until the end of October to accept or decline the invitation to present. Presenters will be required to post materials related to their presentation (i.e., formal papers, Power Point presentations, webpages, simulations) online by January 20, 2006, so that all participants may review them prior to the meeting and fellow track participants may prepare comments.

In keeping with the working group model, all meeting participants will attend only one track and should stay for the duration of the entire conference. While not all track participants will be presenters, all participants will be expected to take part in track discussions. Registration for non-presenting conference participants will begin November 15.

For more information or to submit a proposal, please visit the Teaching and Learning Conference webpage at www.apsanet.org/mtgs.

Call for Papers: Democracy and Diversity
Western Political Science Association Meeting
March 16 - 18, 2006
Albuquerque, NM

As societies and nations become increasingly diverse, political institutions both shape and reflect these changes.  Democratic institutions frequently are viewed as the best means of protecting and promoting diverse interests.  Is this an accurate view?  Is it any more or less accurate given the circumstances today where the general enthusiasm accompanying the spread of democracy is tempered by sobering experiences of some countries that ventured down democracy's path (i.e., fraudulent or sabotaged elections, coups, and bloody civil conflict)?  Additionally, when democracy is more broadly understood to include advancing conditions of civil liberties and social equality, there also is evidence of backsliding in some of the "older" democracies, including the United States.  At some point, do the differences among citizens overwhelm democracy and its institutions?  Obviously there will be other important questions or perspectives to consider regarding the specific nature of that diversity, the desired products of democracy, etc.

The theme of "Democracy and Diversity" may be interpreted in a variety of ways and is meant to accommodate the broad range of scholarly interests and overall inclusiveness of our association.  We invite panel proposals that specifically incorporate the conference theme and encourage all authors to generally keep the theme in mind as they develop their papers/presentations.  However, our expectation is that the panels organized within the 20 Sections of the program ultimately will reflect the profusion of subjects, methods and theories that comprise our diverse discipline.

To submit a proposal, please visit the website: http://www.oir.csus.edu/wpsa/aParticipation.asp.

If you need additional information, please contact the chair, Jason Casellas <casellas@MAIL.UTEXAS.EDU>.


Congress to Campus Program

The United States Association of Former Members of Congress

The Congress to Campus Program is designed to address several aspects of the civic learning and engagement deficit among the country’s college-age young people, combining traditional educational content with a strong message about public service. The Program sends bipartisan pairs of former Members of Congress - one Democrat and one Republican - to visit college, university and community college campuses around the country. Over the course of each visit, the Members conduct classes, hold community forums, meet informally with students and faculty, visit high schools and civic organizations, and do interviews and talk show appearances with local press and media.

In the summer of 2002, the Board of Directors of the U. S. Association of Former Members of Congress (USAFMC) engaged the Center for Democracy & Citizenship (CDC) at the Council for Excellence in Government to help manage the Congress to Campus Program in partnership with the Stennis Center for Public Service (Stennis). CDC and Stennis, with the blessing of the USAFMC, agreed to undertake a number of initiatives to greatly increase the number of campuses hosting program visits each year, expand the pool of former Members of Congress available for campus visits, develop new sources of funding, raise the profile of the program and its message in the public and academic community, and devise methods of measuring the impact of the program at host institutions.

[To access full report on Congress to Campus, click here.]

Data on Legislative Voting and Representation

Professon John Carey has established a website at Dartmouth that includes various resources from his field research and data collection in an organized data archive. Of particular significance is the data from a project on legislative voting and representation. That project includes:
Visitors are invited to use any of the data, qualitative or quantitative, that is available on the site. The address of the website is http://www.dartmouth.edu/~jcarey/dataarchive.htm.  Professor Carey's email address, in case of questions, suggestions, or problems related to the data, is john.carey@dartmouth.edu.

Dirksen Center Invites Applications for Grants
DEADLINE: Proposals must be postmarked no later than February 1

The Dirksen Congressional Center invites applications for grants to fund research on congressional leadership and the U.S. Congress. The Center, named for the late Senate Minority Leader Everett M. Dirksen, is a private, nonpartisan, nonprofit research and educational organization devoted to the study of Congress and its leaders.  Since 1978, the Congressional    Research Awards (formerly the Congressional Research Grants) program has paid out $620,000 to support more than 325 projects. Applications are accepted at any time, but the deadline is February 1 for the annual selections, which are announced in March.  A total of up to $35,000 will be available in 2006. 

The competition is open to individuals with a serious interest in studying Congress. Political scientists, historians, biographers, scholars of public administration or  American studies, and journalists are among those eligible. The Center encourages graduate students to apply and awards a significant portion of the funds for dissertation research. Undergraduate or pre-Ph.D. study, research teams of two or more individuals, and organizations are not eligible.

There is no standard application form. Applicants are responsible for showing the relationship between their work and the awards program guidelines. Applications are accepted at any time. Incomplete applications will NOT be forwarded to the screening committee for consideration.

All application materials must be postmarked on or before February 1, 2006. Awards will be announced in March 2006. Complete information about eligibility and application procedures may be found at The Center's Web site: http://www.dirksencenter.org/print_grants_CRAs.htm.  Frank Mackaman <fmackaman@dirksencenter.org> is the program officer.
The Dirksen Congressional Center is a nonpartisan, not-for-profit organization in Pekin, Illinois, that seeks to improve civic engagement by promoting a better understanding of Congress and its leaders through archival, research, and educational programs.

Election Results Archive

Center on Democratic Performance at Binghamton University

The Center on Democratic Performance at Binghamton University is pleased to announce the launch of the Election Results Archive (ERA), a collection of electronic files containing data on election results from around the world.  This unique online database with global coverage provides researchers, policy-makers, scholars, and others interested in elections with information on over 900 elections from around the world.  It includes information on the following:
  • Types of Elections: Results for presidential and national legislative elections.
  • Countries: The Archive currently contains election results from 134 countries that have met a minimum threshold of democratic performance for the year in which the elections took place. 
  • Dates of Elections: The ERA contains results back to 1974, This date was selected because it is frequently cited as a beginning point of the recent phase of democratic expansion (democratic elections in Greece and Portugal).

More election data will be added to this Archive as time and resources permit.

The archive can be searched by country, region, or year and type of election.  Please visit the archive at http://cdp.binghamton.edu/era/index.html

European Consortium for Political Research

ECPR has a new standing group on Parliaments, coordinated by Shane Martin, University of California, San Diego) and Matti Wiberg (University of Turku).

For a number of years the study of legislatures has concentrated on the US Congress. Parliaments in Europe have not been a subject of investigation to any comparable extent. Nevertheless, the body of knowledge is ever expanding on both the long-standing parliaments in Europe and the new institutions of the European Union and Central and Eastern Europe.

The Standing Group's aim is to promote comparative research and theory-building on the institutionalisation, capacity, operation, and performance of legislatures and the dissemination of such research.

For more information, and to register for membership (which is free) please see their web site at: http://www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr/standinggroups/parliaments/index.htm


Parliamentary  Representation in the Internet Age

Economic and Social Research Institute, University of Salford, UK
ESRI has announced a new research project that looks into parliamentarians' use of internet based technologies in the UK and Australia. In particular, they are examining the role of new technologies in shaping the work of MPs and the nature of parliamentary representation. The project is wide ranging, looking at a number of complementary issues, and does involve a range of research activities and methodologies:
  • Regular analyses of parliamentary/MPs websites to assess the function of such sites (over the next two years);
  • Postal surveys of parliamentarians to gauge the attitude toward, and importance of, Internet communication and online participation;
  • Interviews with MPs to understand Internet communication strategies, and their associated benefits and problems;
  • Public opinion survey to evaluate citizen awareness, usage and problems of internet communication with representatives;
  • Focus group assessment of the design and content of parliamentary websites.

For more information, visit the web site at http://www.ipop.org.uk or contact Wainer Lusoli by email at s.lusoli@salford.ac.uk.
State Politics and Policy Quarterly Archive

Announcing the roll out of the new on-line, full-text State Politics and Policy Quarterly Archive.  Every article in every issue of SPPQ is now on-line in pdf format, accessible free of charge to SPPQ subscribers and those whose university libraries subscribe.  Furthermore, non-subscribers may purchase a time-limited “research pass” for a reasonable price.

To access this archive, go to: http://sppq.press.uiuc.edu/sppqindex.html <http://sppq.press.uiuc.edu/sppqindex.html>  and follow the links on the tables of contents to the articles. When you find an article you wish to view, click on the “view pdf” button at the bottom of its page.  If your library subscribes to SPPQ, you will be sent straight to the article in pdf format.  If your library does not subscribe (or if you are connecting from off campus), do one of the following:

1. If you are an individual SPPQ subscriber, set up a personal access account. Simply register with us by using your personal subscription ID number, as shown on your journal mailing label (note: the next issue will be mailed very shortly- save your mailing envelope to get your subscriber number). Alternatively, you can contact the SPPQ access helpdesk at sppq@merlyn.press.uiuc.edu and request your subscriber number.

2. If you are an institutional SPPQ subscriber, you should have already received access to full on-line content automatically. Your on-campus computers can access the archive automatically through the use of institutional IP numbers and, therefore, your students and faculty do not need to login personally. If your institution subscribes to the paper journal but you find that you cannot access the full-text on-line version from your campus, please ask your librarian to fill out our Online IP Registration Form at http://sppq.press.uiuc.edu/ip_submit.html, which will add their institutional IP numbers to our control system.

If you have any questions or difficulties accessing the State Politics and Policy Quarterly Archive, please contact the University of Illinois Press SPPQ help desk at: sppq@merlyn.press.uiuc.edu.

Visiting Scholars Program

APSA Centennial Center for Political Science & Public Affairs

The American Political Science Association recently opened the Centennial Center for Political Science & Public Affairs in its headquarters building in Washington, D.C.  As part of its programs, the Centennial Center assists scholars from the United States and abroad whose research and teaching would benefit from a stay in and access to the incomparable resources available in the nation's capital.  The Center provides to Visiting Scholars the infrastructure needed to conduct their work, including furnished work space with computer, phone, fax, conference space, and library access.

The Center has space to host 10 scholars for extended periods of time, ranging from weeks to months.  Space for shorter "drop-in" stays is also available.  Scholars are expected to pursue their own research and teaching projects and contribute to the intellectual life of the residential community by sharing their work with Center colleagues in occasional informal seminars.

Eligibility is limited to APSA members.  Senior or junior faculty membes, post-doctoral fellows, and advanced graduate students are also strongly encouraged to apply.  A short applicationform is required, and submissions will be reviewed on a rolling basis.  Positions are awarded based on space availability and relevant Center programming.

For more information and an application, please visit the Centennial Center web site <www.apsanet.org/centennialcenter> or call Sean Twombly at (202)483-2512.

Visiting Scholars Program

Carl Albert Center

The Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center at the University of Oklahoma seeks applicants for its Visiting Scholars Program, which provides financial assistance to researchers working at the Center's archives. Awards of $500 - $1000 are normally grantedas reimbursement for travel and lodging.

The Center's holdings include the papers of many former members of Congress, such as Robert S. Kerr, Fred Harris, and Speaker Carl Albert of Oklahoma; Helen Gahagan Douglas and Jeffery Cohelan of California; and Neil Gallagher of New Jersey. Besides the history of Congress, congressional leadership, national and Oklahoma politics, and election campaigns, the collections also document government policy affecting agriculture, Native Americans, energy, foreign affairs, the environment, the economy, and other areas.

Topics that can be studied include the Great Depression, flood control, soil conservation, and tribal affairs. At least one collection provides insight on women in American politics. Most materials date from the 1920s to the 1970s, although there is one nineteenth century collection.

The Center's archives are described on their website at http://www.ou.edu/special/albertctr/archives/ and in the publication titled A Guide to the Carl Albert Center Congressional Archives by Judy Day et.al. (Norman, Okla.: The Carl Albert Center, 1995), available at many U.S. academic libraries. Additional information can be obtained from the Center.

The Visiting Scholars Program is open to any applicant. Emphasis is given to those pursuing postdoctoral research in history, political science, and other fields. Graduate students involved in research for publication, thesis, or dissertation are encouraged to apply. Interested undergraduates and lay researchers are also invited to apply. The Center evaluates each research proposal based upon its merits, and funding for a variety of topics is expected.

No standardized form is needed for application. Instead, a series of documents should be sent to the Center, including:
(1) a description of the research proposal in fewer than 1000 words;
(2) a personal vita;
(3) an explanation of how the Center's resources will assist the researcher;
(4) a budget proposal; and
(5) a letter of reference from an established scholar in the discipline attesting to the significance of the research.
Applications are accepted at any time.

For more information, please contact Archivist, Carl Albert Center, 630 Parrington Oval, Room 101, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019.  Telephone: (405) 325-5401.  FAX: (405) 325-6419.  Email: channeman@ou.edu


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