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An introduction on how to find information on the Internet is given at a range of Web sites. The NODE - learninf technologies network (http://theNode.org/) provides an online-workshop covering the topic "finding, evaluating, and using electronic information" in its section "the virtual librarian" (http://thenode.canlearn.ca/virtlibrarian.shtml). The site also provides links to further resources, search engines, and web catalogues.
One of those sites is the Voice of the Shuttle (http://vos.ucsb.edu/). This extensive and well structured site declares itself to be a "Web Page for Humanities Research". The site provides a search engine to find topics within its pages and a gateway to "Search the Net". The site is "woven" by Alan Liu, Professor in the English Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Several contributors have helped to tighten up the network. The site contains overviews on general humanities resources as well as commented links to different themes relevant for the humanities - from Anthropology to History, Literature, Philosophy and "Women's Studies, Gender Studies and Queer Theory".
The Cultural
Studies Page (http://vos.ucsb.edu/shuttle/cultural.html) at the
abovementioned site contains links to resources that cover the intersection
between cultural criticism/theory and selective resources in sociology,
media studies, postcolonial studies, economics, literature, and other fields
chosen to represent the alignments that now signify "culture" for the contemporary
humanities.
The topics include mass culture studies, postcolonial (and colonial)
studies, culture/canon wars, globalism, and intellectuals and knowledge
workers. Though some of the links seem to be outdated, the user is enabled
to discover a great deal of worthwhile pages and sites.
PopCultures.com (http://www.popcultures.com/, formerly: Sarah Zupko's Cultural Studies Center) provides information on and links to journals and archives, papers and articles, theorists and critics, academic programmes and more. A conference calendar lists forthcoming conferences in the field of Cultural Studies, including the calls for papers and all relevant information. Calls for papers for journals and books are available as well. Statements at the bottom of the start page provide readers with an overview of recent changes.
On-line Cultural Studies Resources (http://gradeng.en.iup.edu/cs/) are "based on the collective research of graduate students enrolled in the course Cultural Studies, Cyberspace, Postmodernism". The site offers links to and reviews of resources on postmodernism, pedagogy, pop culture, theorists, critique of CS and essays plus a vast list of futher resources.
In South Africa, web sites are maintained for example by the University of the Witwatersrand (http://www.wits.ac.za/), the University of Cape Town (http://www.uct.ac.za/), UNISA (http://www.unisa.ac.za/), or the Vista University (http://www.vista.ac.za/), the latter also using the Internet for distance education.
A large selection of university homepages world-wide, structured by regions or countries, can be found at the university index Braintrack at http://www.braintrack.com/. Most of the universities offer Studies of Culture at the Humanities or the Social Sciences Faculty. More and more of them have their own centres, institutes or departments for Cultural Studies or Cultural Science. A comparison of the diversity of "Cultural Studies" in different universities is as interesting as the possibility to get information on research activities, staff, and publications.
The University of Natal (Durban, South Africa) (http://www.und.ac.za/) offers for example a graduate programme in Culture and Media Studies (http://www.und.ac.za/und/ccms/index.htm) at the faculty of Humanities.
The School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Akhawayn University in Ifrane/Morocco (http://www.alakhawayn.ma/schools/shss/) "is designed to provide general education courses in communication, languages, and art as well as in market-oriented courses in humanities and social sciences" and "to encourage a dialogue and a convergence of cultures in an academic atmosphere".
Though US-American universities are variously structured, Cultural Studies are at many tertiary institutions part of Communication Studies. The approach of the University of Iowa (http://www.uiowa.edu/) is quite interesting, as the communication scholars and students offer a page on Cultural Studies Resources on the Web (http://www.uiowa.edu/~commstud/resources/culturalStudies.html). Another remarkable faculty there is "Literature, Science and the Arts" (http://www.uiowa.edu/~lsa/), focusing on inter- and transdisciplinary teaching. A newsletter informs about faculty-related topics.
The educational program of the Cultural Studies Department of Claremont Graduate University in California (http://www.cgu.edu/hum/cul/) comprises
cultural change and continuity, the operation of contemporary cultural forms, the construction of knowledge, the emergence and functioning of power relationships, and the shaping of cultural identities and their interactions with other cultural phenomena [...]The department is part of the Center for the Humanities (http://www.cgu.edu/hum/page_one.html). The courses are held by academic experts in various fields from different universities.
At York University in Toronto, Canada a Cultural Studies Programme (http://www.yorku.ca/faculty/finearts/cs/cshome.htm) takes place at the faculty of fine arts, focusing on the interrelations between dance, film and video, music, theatre, literature and visual arts. A selection of Cultural Studies resources is provided at the site by the cultural critic Renate H. Wickens (http://www.finearts.yorku.ca/rwickens/CSsites.html).
At the University of Birmingham
in England (http://www.bham.ac.uk/) the Department
for Cultural Studies and Sociology (http://w3.bham.ac.uk/CulturalStudies/)
is not only offering courses to students. The Department is also the home
of the Birmingham
Research Centre for Cultural Studies and Sociology (CCCS, at: http://artsweb.bham.ac.uk/bccsr/centre.htm).
Links to external pages are offered, as well as the electronic journal
"Cultural Studies from Birmingham"
(http://artsweb.bham.ac.uk/bccsr/).
The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
in the Netherlands (http://www.vu.nl/) houses the Faculty
of Social-Cultural Sciences (http://www.studiegidsen.vu.nl/1999/uk/1/17/1/index.php3).
The organisation, co-ordination and integration of the education and research
activities is arranged by five university departments, among them the Dept.
of Political Sciences and Public Administration, the Dept. of Social Research
Methodology, the Dept. of Culture, Organisation and Management. The faculty
has several partners in Western Europe. One of the sites, dedicated to
students of the Cultural Studies course, is located at the server of the
Department of Cultural
Anthropology/Sociology of Development (CA/SNWS, at: http://casnws.scw.vu.nl/onderwijs/cs/).
The collection of pages aims at helping the students in finding literature
for the course in local libraries and on the Internet. The course is dedicated
to give students an overview of theories and methods of Cultural Studies,
starting with an anthropological approach and research examples, taken
mostly from popular culture.
Another approach to Cultural Studies may be found in the "notes, made for the course Cultural Studies: From Romantic Poetry to Taipei Streets" (http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/Literary_Criticism/cultural_studies/index.html). The concept tries to point out the interrelations among production, consumption, regulation, representation and identity as categories within the circuit of culture. An essay on "Cultural imperialism and globalization" is as well included as examples of literary works treated in the course. It was held at the Department of English Language and Literature at Fu Jen Catholic University, Taiwan (http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/). The mentioned source may serve as a fine example on how a Web-site may serve as a background resource for university courses.
A discussion forum of the Netherlands Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken is devoted to "The Power of Culture" (http://kvc.minbuza.nl/homepage.html). The discussion on "innovative forms of cultural expression, the impact of old and new (mass) media forms and related moral questions" is based on the World Commission Report "Our Creative Diversity", compiled by the World Commission for Culture and Development (UNESCO). It contains the text of the report as well as commentaries and an "Action Plan on Cultural Policies for Development", elaborated at the Intergovernmental Conference in Stockholm (Sweden) 1998. Among the contributions are articles, like the one of Allister Sparks on "South Africa as a Global Pathfinder in Cultural Pluralism" (http://kvc.minbuza.nl/kvcframe.html?/ukverslag_sparks.html).
Cultural Studies and Europe (http://www.inst.at/ausstellung/) is a project of INST, the Research Institute for Austrian and International Literature and Cultural Studies (http://www.inst.at/). Designed as a virtual exhibition, it presents "a programmatic concept which should establish cultural studies as the productive force of the 21st century". The user is lead through key texts, such as "Cultural Concepts" or "Reality and Virtuality", and various major themes covering for example the concept of Europe, information structures and research, and "Culture of Peace". A "Cultural Collaboratory" features contributions of visitors of the exhibition, thus allowing an interactive participation and an on-going enlargement of the collection of texts.
International Cultural Studies (http://www.inst.at/studies/) may be seen as a follow-up project to "Cultural Studies and Europe". This "online research co-operation" of INST aims at the positioning of Cultural Studies within governmental, intergovernmental, non-governmental and global research policies. The project is designed to discuss scholarly standpoints of Cultural Studies. Discussions are structured in sections like terminology, information processes, intercultural exchange, communication processes and cognitive interests, multilingualism and multi-, inter- and transculturalism. Contributions are in German, English and French. Translations of the key contributions to all mentioned languages are available.
More and more magazines and journals appear only within the World Wide Web, thus saving the high costs for printing and mailing. Especially scholarly journals take the opportunity to reach their specialised and international focus group with electronic editions.
NewJour is one of the biggest indexes of journals and newsletters, that are available online (http://gort.ucsd.edu:80/newjour/). The complete archive lists over 7000 titles and is more than 1000 kB large. Alphabetical browsing is as well possible as a look at the list of new titles.
A couple of overviews on scholarly journals for Cultural Studies and/or the different fields of Humanities and Social Sciences are available online. One example is the journals list of the Voice of the Shuttle (http://vos.ucsb.edu/shuttle/journals.html). A few examples on scholarly journals will merely give the potential reader an impression on what is available free of charge via WWW.
Postmodern Culture (http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/pmc/) is a journal for interdisciplinary occupation with cultural theory. The journal is published three times a year, starting in 1990. Every issue consists of an interview, several articles and book reviews. A list of further Cultural Studies journals is provided as well as a list for further reading. The hypertext version of the current issue and full-text versions of back issues are available free of charge. Former hypertext issues are available via the Project MUSE (http://muse.jhu.edu).
CTHEORY (http://www.ctheory.com/) is "an international journal of theory, technology and culture". The weekly publication contains articles, interviews and book reviews as well as "theorisations of major 'event-scenes' in the mediascape". The journal is available via email as well.
TRANS. Internet journal for cultural studies (http://www.inst.at/trans/transeng.htm) aims at being a discussion forum "of transdisciplinary initiatives in the areas of literature, language, libraries and cultural studies". The journal contains contributions in German, English and French on conferences held by INST and its partner organisations. Up to now, the journal consists of seven issues on "European Literature Studies and Linguistics", "Internationalisation, conflict, cultural studies" and "Cultural Studies, Data Bases and Europe" and Austrian Literature in a transcultural perspective. The issues are constantly being expanded.
Applied Semiotics - Sémiotique appliquée (http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/french/as-sa/) is a "journal of literary research on the World Wide Web". The bilingual journal appears semi-annually, each issue featuring contributions on a key theme like "Language and Philosophy" or "Semiotics of Music".
Unfortunately, the Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine (http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/current/toc.html) published its final issue in January 1999. However, all back issues will remain available on-line, providing the reader with articles and book reviews on web usability, online relationship and further topics of computer mediated communication.
Another Web Journal, the CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture (http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/clcwebjournal/) started in 1999. It is published quarterly, aiming at "the publication of work in the study of literature and culture where literature is understood as an artistic expression in an international/global and/or cross-disciplinary context". CLCWeb provides the reader also with a "Library for Research and Information in Comparative Literature and Culture", where bibliographic information on electronic and printed resources may be found.
One of the examples, how deeply library services and Cultural Studies are interdependent is the journal Library Philosophy and Practice (http://www.uidaho.edu/~mbolin/lp&p.htm). The journal contains contributions that "demonstrate the connection between library practice and the philosophy and theory which are behind it". The biennial publication started in 1998, issues are published in spring and fall, covering the field from collection development to user instructions.
The Berkeley Digital Library SunSITE (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/) provides information and support for digital library developers worldwide, offering collections of teaching and training resources and information on research and development. Libweb points at library servers via WWW (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Libweb/) , a service, that is updated daily, listing "over 3000 pages form libraries in over 90 countries". Other helpful pages of the SunSITE are the ones on digital collections (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Collections/) available via WWW. The page on Other Digital Text Collections (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Collections/othertext.html) provides links to a range on fiction archives on the Web.
The abovementioned digital collections are devoted to the collection of digitised texts. From classical Greek texts at The Perseus Project (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu) to resources for mediaeval studies at The Labyrinth (http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/) to text archives collecting literature up to the 20th century, like the Project Gutenberg ("fine literature" in "Plain Vanilla ASCII" at http://promo.net/pg/) or the Electronic Text Center (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/uvaonline.html) at the University of Virginia Library, providing the user with SGML-encoded humanities texts in twelve languages. Another collection of digital texts is Alex - Catalogue of Electronic Texts (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/alex/) including American literature, English literature, and Western philosophy. One of the purposes of the catalogue is to assist the author in demonstrating a concept he calls "arscience, a process of understanding using methods from art and science".
The World Wide Web Virtual Library (http://www.w3.org/vl/) is the oldest Catalogue of the WWW. Founded by Tim Berners-Lee, it is held up-to-date by a network of volunteers, who are in charge of different topics. The index pages are distributed on a few hundred servers world-wide. The information supplied is structured in the main areas Agriculture, Computer Science, Communications and Media, Education, Engineering, Humanities, Information Management, International Affairs, Law, Business and Economics, Recreation, Regional Studies, Science and Society.
Users aiming at access to new books via the World Wide Web may use some of the Internet-bookshops, like Amazon (http://www.amazon.com). A list of bookstores accessible via WWW is available via the Virtual Library (http://www.comlab.ox.ac.uk/archive/publishers/bookstores.html).
Another way to information on new books and journals are publishers' pages on the Web. A selection of publishing houses may be found via the Virtual Library as well (http://www.comlab.ox.ac.uk/archive/publishers.html). Routledge (http://www.gale.com/routledge/) is among the leading publishers in the field of Cultural Studies. Information on publications and publishing activities as well as links to sites of related interest may be found via the "Cultural Studies Resource Centre" (http://www.gale.com/routledge/rcenters/cultural/) at the publisher's pages. Blackwell (http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/) offers a range of publications in the field of Cultural Studies as well. To add more information for the visitors of the site, a page on Cultural Studies Resources (http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/cultural/default.htm) is included, to point the user at resources available on-line. Another publisher's web-site worth visiting is the one of Johns Hopkins University Press (http://www.press.jhu.edu/press/index.htm) allowing readers to have a look at selected chapters of new publications and frequently updated information on electronic publishing projects.
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