Des ressources pour civilisationnistes sur le réseau
Internet
Practical remarks and reflections on the usefulness of Internet resources for students of British society and politics
Observations pratiques et réflexions sur l'utilité
des ressources Internet pour l'étude de la Civilisation britannique
Michael Parsons, Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour
Back to British area studies home page
The World Wide Web is widely touted as a vast mine of information of all kinds, but it is also often criticised for being anarchic and almost overwhelmed by trivia. Some accounts of life on the web are wildly enthusiastic, others jaded. There is some justification for the criticisms: it is not always easy to find the information you want, always assuming it is available on the Internet in the first place, and the volume of data being transferred over the network means that access can be slow, sometimes painfully slow. Despite these shortcomings, however, there is a great wealth of information for us, as students of British society and politics, which makes it worth our while to separate the wheat from the chaff, without spending too much time in the process. The purpose of this paper is to help do just that, by giving a few leads as to where to find genuinely useful information. I have concentrated on contemporary politics and society, partly because that is where my own personal interests lie, and partly because there is probably more available on the Internet in that area than, say, in the field of philosophy or the history of ideas, though there is so much on the Web that there are a huge number of resources of use to academics from all disciplines.
At this stage I ought to specify that while I refer sometimes to Internet,
and sometimes to the Web, I intend to focus on the (World Wide) Web, in
other words, in practical terms, the resources that you can access by means
of an Internet browser or navigator such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft
Internet Explorer. I neither intend to go into practical details (though
would be happy to do so individually if that would be of use) nor to look
at the practicalities of electronic mail which most people are already
familiar with. Colleagues not yet connected to the Internet will have to
contact their computing services department, and, if necessary, bend the
arms of directeurs de département ou d'UFR, doyens,
présidents, or whatever.
http://www.univ-pau.fr/~parsons/brcivhom.html
As the Internet is a very fast-changing medium, I have included a number
of links to sites of interest in the British
studies information and resource web site I created recently (if
this was an Internet page, you could just click on the underlined text
and go there directly-the reader so inclined can type the above address
into his or her Internet browser now and skip the rest) (of course it
is a Web page, so you can). This presents several advantages: it can
be easily updated to account for new resources or sites which have moved
to new addresses; it can include information which is not available from
other sites on the Web; and, finally, it makes access to the resources
listed significantly easier, as one only has to click on the links to go
straight to the site. This is much more convenient than having to type
the entire address (or URL: Universal Resource Locator). For this reason
I will not be giving the URLs of the resources I comment on: all of them
can be accessed via my web site.
Who puts the information there - and why?
Most web sites are free; there is no need to pay or subscribe to access them. This may gradually change, but for the moment, only highly specialised information providers generate revenue directly from their clients. A number of sites make money by selling advertising space: network-users are presumably of interest to advertisers, especially if it is possible to tailor the advertising to fit the user's profile. These would include the major on-line newspapers such as the Electronic Telegraph or interactive Times and Sunday Times, and indeed most of the on-line newspapers require you to register giving various (relatively innocuous) details about yourself: age, profession, and so on. Access remains free, but one assumes that this information is 'sold' to advertisers, or, to be more precise, makes it easier for the newspapers to sell you to the advertisers. The fact that access is through the username and password you submit means that they can generate statistics on the frequency with which you connect and the kind of information you regularly access. Other frequently visited sites like those of the 'search engines', to which I will be returning shortly, also carry a lot of advertising. However, it would appear that few such pages are as yet fully profit-making. The amount of advertising is limited by what the user is prepared to accept, and above all by how long the user is prepared to wait for advertising images to be transferred before getting fed up and going to a competitor's site. Too much advertising kills advertising, one might say.
Most web pages, however, are created and maintained by people who want
to give publicity to the information they contain. It is important to bear
this in mind when considering whether one is likely to find the information
one is looking for, and, perhaps even more importantly, when assessing
how reliable that information is once you have found it. There is absolutely
no guarantee that the information on the Internet is 'true' - though
it must be said that the ease with which information can be circulated
by e-mail, and particularly, through discussion groups, means that any
blatantly incorrect propaganda could quickly become counter-productive.
However, few people would bother to write to point out, for example, that
the British National Party has a somewhat xenophobic bent. All in all,
critical distance is necessary here as much as (if not more than) anywhere
else.
Site-seeing: a guided tour
There is a wide range of resources of potential interest to civilisationnistes,
which can usefully be broken down into the following categories:
1) Government information, statistics etc. and other official or semi-official sources
Governments and government departments want to publicise their actions, but it is of course crucial to keep up one's critical guard. This information is easy to find, using the CCTA Government Information Service search facility. This will indicate whether the key words you look for are found in files in various Departments and offices. In particular, press releases are archived.
Hansard has a site which allows access to a number of Parliamentary Reports, with not only the Commons and the Lords, but also reports of Committees. It is not clear whether there is any intention of publishing and archiving them all on the Internet: but I suspect that would be too good to be true, especially as there would be competition here with CD-ROMs - which generate revenue. There may, of course, ultimately be a subscription-based Web access.
There is a site for No. 10 Downing Street, which includes biographies of Prime Ministers past and present, biographies of Cabinet Ministers, speeches, transcripts and interviews, and the text of the Queen's speech, accompanied by a text offering explanation of what it contains. The photograph on the home page shows a policeman standing on duty, and not the present incumbent. Perhaps it was felt it would be preferable to allow for change in the near future without having to modify the site's main page. It is also possible to 'visit' the building. The 'Welcome to No. 10' page does feature a photograph of John Major, and you can even download a sound file and hear him welcome you to the Internet site. There are a number of high quality photographs of the rooms and paintings etc. Finally, in the interests of fairness, it is only right to point out that the 'speeches, transcripts and interviews' page includes links to Labour's site and to the Liberal Democrats'.
There are other places where extensive background information on politics
can be found. There is an official Parliament site, and the Parliamentary
Channel has a whole series of in-depth articles on how Parliament functions
and so on. It also has maps and information on all constituencies and their
MPs. The BBC has a site which shows not only programme schedules and information
about its broadcasting activities, but also has a substantial amount of
archived information about programmes, which in some cases includes scripts
(for example for the recent series 'The People's Century'). During last
year's Party Conference season, the BBC kept open a Conference service
with a very comprehensive collection of speeches and other documents, and
included background texts on how composite motions are put together and
so on. Some of this is still there, but some has been removed. One can
assume that the next season will also be covered in this way. Coverage
of the coming general election is provided by at least three sites offering
press reviews, poll data and copious background information, as well as
an opportunity to air your views on the subject. Finally the Monarchy has
very recently opened an Internet site.
2) Sites maintained by political parties, trade unions, pressure groups, etc.
Political parties and pressure groups are major users of the Internet, and the fact that this year's general election campaign is the first in British history to have this dimension has undoubtedly accelerated this development. The smaller parties and pressure groups are in no way disadvantaged in this respect: if anything, it is especially attractive to a very small party or pressure group to turn to a medium which is relatively cheap - though this must be counteracted by the fact that Internet access is still restricted to a minority, albeit a growing, and perhaps disproportionately influential one.
The major parties have fairly comprehensive sites, with extracts from manifestos and photographs. There has been a rapid improvement in the quality of these pages over the last year or so, no doubt as the parties realise the impact they may have. Dissident groups within the parties also have their pages: Labour Left Briefing features a cartoon of Tony Blair which leaves little doubt that he is not their hero, and the Conservatives also have electronic thorns in their side: the Conservative 2000 Foundation and the Conservative Way Forward group for example. More committed Eurosceptics have joined the Referendum party, which has a rather dull site.
The minor parties are just about all there too, from the serious to the more frivolous: though I have not been able to return to the Raving Loony Monster party site which seems to have had to change its address recently. I wait with bated breath to see what it has come up with!
The Trade Unions have some pretty impressive pages, which can most easily be accessed through the TUC site.
Pressure groups and think tanks of all kinds have their web outlets.
One might mention the Adam Smith Institute, which includes texts written
in deep blue letters against a pale blue background. Charter 88 gives information
about its own activities but also provides links to other groups interested
in constitutional reform and concerned with defending civil liberties.
3) Academic sites
Academics are always looking for ways of publishing their material, and the ease with which research work in particular can be 'published' on the Internet means that this is a growing field. All British Universities have a web site, and this can be invaluable. Apart from anything else, it means that one can find addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses of colleagues, a feature which is as yet insufficiently implemented in France, though things are changing very fast indeed. Information is also provided on the courses offered, research groups, and so on.
However, the 'central' academic sites which provide the official description of the university's activities (which can be quite substantial) are nothing compared to the various sites produced by departments and individuals. These can range from the directly academic, through the useful, to the bizarre. Among the academic and decidely useful, pride of place must be given to the collections of political links which provide thematically or alphabetically ordered links to a huge range of political sites, as well other information such as MPs' e-mail addresses. The Social Sciences Information Gateway provides access to a vast volume of sociological information. Keele's British area studies page lists an impressive number of sites.
Many academics, individually or collectively, have begun creating their own sites devoted to their particular research areas. The choice is as wide as the range of research itself, so it is clearly impossible to list these pages. However, as an example, I looked for pages on John Stuart Mill, and found a number of articles and the complete text of On Liberty (as well as many other texts).
The bizarre is perhaps too diverse to be described. One academic site
(Surrey) boasts a comprehensive data base of BBC's Doctor Who series.
If you need to know who was the actor who played the time-travelling Doctor
in 1975, and hear extracts from various programmes in 'Real Audio' then
you can find this information at various sites in the UK and the USA. This
is one site I am referring to in these pages which is not listed on my
web pages, so any Doctor Who aficionados will have to search the
Web using Lycos, Yahoo, WebCrawler or any other Internet
search engine.
4) Sites maintained by media organisations, and especially on-line newspapers and journals
A growing number of newspapers and journals are providing some kind of on-line service. The best in the UK are, in alphabetical order, the Electronic Telegraph, The Scotsman and the Times and Sunday Times. The Telegraph site includes a first-class search facility. This will look through articles going back to November 1994 in search of the key words you have chosen. Unfortunately, the search page specifies that the service is still experimental and remains free - for the moment. I would personally be very sorry if it became restricted (unless it was very cheap!) It is extremely useful when you want to find some information on something recent, which you will not be able to find in any of the usual reference books, but for which you may not have an exact date. For example, I recently wanted to find some information on the new Bankside Globe theatre, and had a dozen or so articles on the subject within less than a minute. The Times and Sunday Times have arguably a more attractive presentation (including photographs) and allow you to set up a 'customised' access according to your personal preferences. You can, for example, choose to start with the politics pages, or sport, or whatever.
The Times Higher Education Supplement gives you access to the Job advertisements, but also provides, among other things, some useful background charts on student numbers and University funding over the years.
Lecturers in civilisation britannique wanting to give their students up-to-date circulation figures for newspapers can get them 'from the horse's mouth' at the Audit Bureau of Circulation's web site.
Programme schedules for TV and radio are available in particular from
the BBC's site and from British Sky Broadcasting.
5) Discussion groups, news groups etc.
Distribution lists can be useful - but they can become a thorough nuisance. When you subscribe to a distribution list, you receive all the messages sent in by any other member of the list, including yourself. Many of these lists are moderated, so totally irrelevant or inappropriate messages are weeded out by an editor. However there can be no guarantee, of course, that the content of the messages will be of any interest to you. It just means glancing through them and deleting most of the messages immediately. It is possible to 'unsubscribe' whenever you wish to do so. Many of you may already be on the SAES distribution list and so be aware of what this means. Despite the need to do a bit of sorting, it is a valuable way of circulating information. The more specific the distribution list, the more likely it is to be of real use.
News groups will usually archive contributions. This means you can look
through the questions and answers which have gradually accumulated, and
which can be searched by key word. However, the rapidly growing volume
of information transferred by these news groups means that 'archives' are
often only kept for a short time. American academics in particular make
wide use of these, and they may range from very scholarly debate to detailed
discussions of limited interest to outsiders. This is a particularly bewildering
area, because things change so fast, and access depends on part on the
news groups to which your Internet Service Provider (for most of us, the
University) subscribes. There are newsgroups devoted to British politics
and society.
6) 'Search engines' to find information elsewhere
Given the enormous volume of information available on the Internet,
it is fortunate that there are a number of effective 'search engines' which
will return the names of sites containing the key words you give. It is
crucially important to be as precise as possible, because otherwise you
will be presented with the first 10 or so of a total of several thousand
sites containing your keywords. While the results of the search are usually
ranked, search results can be unexpected. Nonetheless, if the search criteria
are clear enough (and you can include more sophisticated Boolean operators
or advanced search syntax), you can usually find what you are looking for.
As an example of the advanced search syntax offered by Yahoo!, one
of the most frequently used Internet search engines, (http://www.yahoo.com),
a search for 'python' provides links to sites dealing with the python computer
programming language, a number of sites devoted to the Monty Python BBC
television series and the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail,
and a few sites on the snakes of the same name. If you only wanted the
snakes you could try a search such as 'python -monty +snakes' which yields
only four site matches, all clearly about pythons - not Monty Python,
but snakes. Links to explanations of the advanced search methods are given
in the search pages themselves.
7) Sites providing practical information, etc
This is obviously an unlimited field, but there are some valuable resources.
For example, there is a site which gives you the best routes between two
London underground stations and tells you how long the journey should take -
and cost. Other sites giving travel information include Eurostar, British
Airways, and so on. There are also e-mail address directories, though
for the purposes of finding someone in an academic insitution, it is usually
easier to search through the University web page.
I hope that this modest contribution (which has much to be modest about)
will at least have given those of you are about to begin using Internet
some idea of the kind of information they may be able to find there. Readers
who already do so may find some of the links on my web site useful. However,
I would be particularly keen to keep this up-to-date and therefore would
ask you to e-mail me with any information about relevant sites that are
not listed there.
Michael Parsons, March 1997
e-mail: michael.parsons@univ-pau.fr
Internet 'British studies information and resources' site:
http://www.univ-pau.fr/~parsons/brcivhom.html