|
Coverage of the Scholarly Societies Project
|
|
Comprehensiveness:
At present, the best existing print publication
with a scope similar to that of the Scholarly Societies Project
is the
Saur World Guide Sci. Assoc. Learned Soc. (1998), which lists about
17,000 societies and associations.
The latter omits many societies that have been included in the
Scholary Societies Project.
The Editor
of the Scholarly Societies Project estimates that there may
be as many as 25,000 scholarly societies currently in the world. Even
though many of them do not yet have websites, the total number of existing
scholarly society websites that satisfy the
Guildelines for Inclusion must surely be far greater than the number
currently included in the Project.
At present, the Scholarly Societies Project cannot claim to be
comprehensive.
|
|
Category |
Inclusions |
Exclusions |
|
Seat of Society
|
any country
|
none
|
|
Broad vs Narrow Geographical Scope
|
Preference is given to societies of an international or
national scope.
A more liberal policy is adopted for societies founded in the 19th c.
This applies even more so for societies founded prior to 1800, since local
societies have played a very important role in the early history of
scholarship.
|
The exclusion policy follows from the rather vauge inclusion policies
to the left; this area needs some re-examining.
Some societies currently included in the Project will probably be
removed as a result.
|
|
Language of Website
|
all languages (with the exceptions mentioned under
Exclusions)
|
Language is a barrier to inclusion only if it prevents the Editor from
determining basic information about the society
(see Minimum Detail below).
This is generally a problem only when the critical information is
available only in one of the less common languages.
|
|
Subject
|
all academic subjects
|
non-academic subjects
|
|
Goal of the Society
|
societies with
scholarly, academic, or research goals
|
societies only interested in
entertainment, advocacy, or self-help goals,
or in spreading
political propaganda, or religious dogma
[societies devoted to the study of the above phenomena, however, may be
included]
|
|
Existence of a Website for the Society
|
societies must have a website if the society
was founded from 1900 to the present
[exceptions are made only in unusual cases, such as national academies, or
international academic unions]
for societies founded prior to 1900, information will be
provided even if there is no society website (assuming that the
society otherwise complies with the
Guidelines for Inclusion)
|
societies that do not have a website if founded from
1900 to the present, with the exceptions noted to the left
|
|
Extant / Defunct
|
societies must be extant if founded from 1900 to the
present
both extant and defunct societies are included
if founded prior to 1900
|
defunct societies that were founded sometime from 1900
to the present
|
|
Membership Restrictions
|
Preference is given to membership-based societies (in which
a qualified person may apply to become a member)
|
In general, organizations are excluded if the only way that a person can
be a member of the organization is by having a contract to work there, or
by having temporary visiting privileges (the situation with
research centres).
[Some latitude has been granted to organizations with a status similar to
that of national academies or royal societies of broad scope]
|
|
Minimum Detail in Project for Societies founded since 1900
|
The entry in the Project will include the
society name, an English translation of the
society name (if not originally in English), the URL and
URL Stability Index of the website,
the language of the website,
the subject pages in the Project where the website occurs,
the founding year and notes about name changes
(if any), and the geographical scope of the society
|
types of information that are likely to change frequently, such as the
names of officers of the society, the
street address, etc.
|
|
Detail for Societies founded in the 19th Century
|
the same as above, except that URL and
URL-Stability Index are optional (since the society need not
have a website, or even be extant)
|
the same as above
|
|
Detail for Societies founded prior to 1800
|
the same as for societies founded in the 19th century, with
the addition of history pages for a select group of
societies (the history pages give a history of name changes of the
society, the major journals of the society, and contemporaneous
abbreviation for those journal titles)
|
the same as above
|
