Project #1

As I am taking a sociology class this semester, I decided to do my project on different aspects of sociology, including the broad idea of sociology, race, ethnicity and discrimination.

Reference Website #1

1) Race: Are We So Different? http://www.understandingrace.org/home.html
2) The American Anthropological Association
3) This website is about a project by the American Anthropological Association exploring race.
4) Although there are a few things for sale on the website, I believe they are fairly unbiased and for the most part just trying to educate.
5) The purpose of this website is to open people's eye's about the different aspects of race, through history, human variation and lived experiences.
6) This website is very valuable to someone exploring the idea of race and the questions it brings up. This gives views of experiences from real people past and present dealing with racial issues and explains how we can get past judging someone by the color of their skin.
7) There's a resources tab that you can click, leading you to a page that has links for families, teachers and researchers. There are also links for scholarly papers, related websites and more on this page.
8) The information is organized by easy to click and view links, and readily available to all that would like to view it.
9) I'd rate this resource a 9 because it's easy to use and contains a lot of information.
10) The website has a copyright of 2011, so there's a possibility it needs some updating.
11) I would say this is a credible site because it is a project of the American Anthropological Association, which is well known.
12) I don't have any suggestions for improvment. The site is attractive and easy to use.

Reference Website #2

1) The SocioLog http://www.sociolog.com/
2) Julian Dierkes
3) There is no about us information on the website.
4) Julian Dierkes is also using this website to plug his blog and a link for books he has written. Although he is providing a good resource guide to different aspects of sociology it seems as though he has his best interest at heart.
5) The purpose of this website is to provide lists of different sociology departments in Canada and the U.S., in addition to different links for referencing sociology.
6) Students can use this site to explore different institutions with sociology departments, research different topics in sociology and also have contact with other students and professors of their same area of study.
7) You're able to search the site by topic, country, alphabetical and many more options.
8) The information is freely available and very well organized in a column on the left hand side, with clearly titled links.
9) I would rate this resource an 7 because it's fairly straightforward and gives you many options to explore, but some of the links I tried didn't work.
10) It states the website was last updated in 2006, explaining why some of the links I tried didn't work.
11) At first I believed this to be a credible site but once I did more exploring and found that the last update hasn't been for 5-6 years it lost come crediblity because I believe for a website to be completely credible it needs to be constantly updated.
12) A great way to improve the site would be to update it and make sure all the links were working properly.

Reference Website #3

1) Resources for and about Multiracial/Multiethnic Americans http://www.ipl.org/div/pfarch/entry/81356
2) It just says that it is no longer being maintained by ipl2
3) None
4) It seems as though this website was originally educationally sponsored, but no longer being maintained.
5) The purpose of this website is to give resources to students and researchers looking into the topic of multiracial and multiethnic Americans.
6) This website has value to students by providing links to different resources and organizations with more information on the topic they are researching.
7) You are unable to search on this webiste but it does provide you with links to internet resources, books and magazines, organizations and associations and other places to look.
8) All the information is free to anyone looking and is organized by bold black headlines and blue hyper links.
9) This website would be rated a 5 as a reference resource because for how broad the topic is, it doesn't provide as much information and additional links as I would have hoped for.
10) I'm unsure if the content is up to date because it is stated at the top of the site that it is not actively maintained.
11) I wouldn't use this a a credible reference site in itself because of it not being actively maintained. I found that some of the links it listed were credible and run by well known organizations.
12) A great way to improve the site would be to maintain it and update often.

Reference Website #4

1) Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/
2) United Nations sponsors this website.
3) The division for the advancement of women, department of social and economic affairs.
4) This is a government sponsored website, providing straightforward, unbiased information.
5) The purpose of this site is to promote the elimination of discrimination against women worldwide. The site gives information about conventions, history and so much more.
6) This is a valuable site for anyone researching this topic because of the vast amount of information available through it. This site expands the topic into many different directions and smaller topics the further you look into it.
7) A search box is provided at the top of the site, allowing you to search by keyword.
8) All information is freely available and organized in a list on the left hand side of the site with hyper links.
9) I would rate this site an 8 because although it provides an extensive amount of information, I believe it could have been organized slightly better.
10) Although the copyright is 2009, it seems as though all the content is up to date and I would believe that the UN keeps on top of the information they make available to the public.
11) Yes, I would say this is a credible reference site, being run by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
12) The only suggestion I would have to improve the website for reference use is to make the topic hyperlinks larger on the left side and the subtopic links a little smaller because it was hard to distinguish between the two.