Social Sciences Resource Center

The Social Sciences Resource Center (SSRC), located on the first floor of the Bing Wing, is the focus of the Libraries' collections, resources, and services in support of advanced social science research at Stanford. The Center's primary clientele is faculty and students in the seven social sciences departments (Anthropology, Communication, Economics, Linguistics, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology), but the SSRC is fully accessible to other campus users engaged in advanced social sciences and interdisciplinary research.

The SSRC is the home of subject specialists engaged in building and interpreting the social science and government documents collections for the Stanford community. Subject specialists are available in the Center for individual consultations with users, either during office hours or on an on-call or appointment basis. The Center houses a reference collection of approximately 15,000 volumes and provide a wide array of comfortable seating options for browsing selected journals, newsletters, and new books and classic texts in the field. As the home of the Jonsson Library of Government Documents, the SSRC promotes the use of government information in social science research.

Staff at the reception desk can assist users in navigating the Center's services and collections, providing technical assistance with stand-alone CD-ROM workstations and copiers/scanners, and mediating the adjacent agency-classed government documents stack collections.

Other Center activities range from instruction sessions, planned and conducted by subject specialists in conjunction with the faculty, to colloquia, seminars, lectures, and receptions. These events bring Stanford experts or invited guests from other universities, government, or industry for presentations of cross-disciplinary appeal within the social sciences. The Center provides a well-equipped multimedia seminar room, group study rooms, and an open gathering space to accommodate a wide variety of opportunities for bringing social scientists together in an information-rich environment.

The Center serves as the focal point for specialized computing facilities, as well as for academic computing support functions in the social sciences, including computing liaison with academic departments, the Social Sciences Data Service (SSDS), and consulting on the use of statistical applications by Statistical Applications Consulting (SAC) staff. The establishment of the SSRC provides opportunities to further integrate library and computing functions that support the social sciences and especially highlight services that provide access to electronic numeric data. It also helps to raise the visibility of the Statistical Applications Consulting service to social scientists and librarians, and to further integrate this service with the SSDS.

SSRC Collections

The SSRC provides a diverse set of resources in all languages useful for advanced inquiry into and reflection upon social, economic, and political phenomena of interest to Stanford faculty and students, including access to U.S., foreign, and international government documents. Media and formats include print, microform, compact disk, cartridge tape, and online access. The Jonsson Library of Government Documents' bibliographic and full-text databases on CD-ROM are accessible via the campus-wide network (SUNet), Green Library's intranet, and local CD-ROM stations in the SSRC.

The collections complement the instructional and informational collections of the Information Center. They also complement, at the advanced and research levels of inquiry, relevant area studies and interdisciplinary materials found in the Humanities and Area Studies Resource Center. In addition, the SSRC collections complement advanced and research-level materials in other Stanford libraries dealing with cognate areas of social inquiry, such as the Cubberley Education Library, the Crown Law Library, the Jackson Business library, and the Hoover Institution Library and Archives.

Included in SSRC are collections of classic texts, materials of current interest, new titles in the social sciences, and government documents.

Contiguity of Resources

In order to carry out the overall mission and goals of the SSRC, the Center, its collections and resources, and related general stack collections in the LC classes and government document classifications are contiguous to one another.

Hours

The SSRC is open for use during all Green Library open hours. Subject-specific reference assistance is available upon referral from the Information Center, on an appointment basis, and during bibliographers' posted office hours.

Data, Computing, and Statistical Services

The data, computing, and statistical services area in the Social Sciences Resource Center houses the data services offered by the Social Sciences Data Service (formerly the Academic Data Service) and the Jonsson Library; the statistical applications services offered by the Statistical Applications Consultants; as well as general computing support for the social sciences.

Data Services

Data services, in conjunction with the appropriate subject and area specialists, respond to statistical information and data inquiries that cannot be satisfied by the ready reference services of the Information Center, as well as inquiries made directly to subject and area selectors in the Social Sciences Resource Group.

Data services in the SSRC provides assistance with data sources, data transfer, data formats and reformatting, forward migration of data, and user interfaces, as well as a cluster of data extraction stations, access to non-networked data files, printed codebooks, and other reference materials.

Data services also serves the Geographical Information Systems (GIS) needs of social scientists in cooperation with the Branner Earth Sciences Library, as well as with subject and area selectors.

Data services in the SSRC also provides access to social science data for both instruction and research via Web-based interfaces to high demand data sets (often as part of cooperative efforts with other institutions); electronic user guides (which may expand to expert systems for locating and assessing statistical information); and instructional sessions for user groups, classes, and library staff.

Statistical Applications Consulting Services

Data, computing, and statistical services offered in the SSRC includes the services provided by the Statistical Applications Consultants. These include consulting, documentation, data reformatting, Web site maintenance, and training support for faculty and students in the use of data and statistical applications. Services also include answering questions about data management and the use of applications on both the Leland Systems and personal or departmental Macs and PCs.

Services also include special initiatives such as advising Honors Program staff and students, working with the data extraction workstations, and evaluating and recommending software for instructional support in campus clusters. There is a collection of documentation on statistical applications and computing in general in this area.

Consultants are available to answer appropriate questions regarding the use of relevant application software available on workstations in the SSRC Reading Room.