Paid coding and scraping help for SSHRC-Funded Project (Dept of Sociology)

[CGuzman88]

Department of Sociology | University of Toronto
Cinthya Guzman | Ph.D. Student c.guzman@mail.utoronto.ca
on behalf of Dan Silver | Associate Professor dsilver@utsc.utoronto.ca
Job Opportunity

We're studying how the discipline of sociology has evolved over time, in particular how its ideas about sociological theory have changed — what authors to teach, what topics to emphasize, and so on. If you’re interested in the background, here’s a first paper, where we analyzed syllabi, along with some other data.
For the next phase, we are looking at the content and reach of textbooks, over time. The bottom line is that we’re looking for a little bit of help in creating a database from Worldcat listings. I’m wondering if you might be able to help us by writing code for taking it from their API, or scraping if need be. I understand you might be busy or this might not be of interest. If so, maybe you might be able to connect me with somebody else who could, perhaps a CS/Engineering undergrad? I’d of course compensate for the work.

Some more details: Broadly speaking, we are interested in tracing the history of sociological/social theory through the textbooks and books in circulation since the 1950s (or earlier if available). We are mainly interested in tracing how sociological theory has developed in North America, but also are looking to its reach and adaptation elsewhere. By looking into the books that were in circulation since the 1950s, we would be able to trace the canonization of sociological theory and when and how it began to take its current shape.
In the end, we would like to be able to map the presence and demand for these books. Once we have this data, we can conduct a closer examination of which theories and theorists are taught and shifts across time and place.
Worldcat tells us: i) the number of editions of a particular book, and their dates of publication, ii) the number of copies available across all their listed libraries, iii) the geographical location of these copies (e.g. university, city, state, country, lon/lat), iv) author and publisher information, v) language translations, and vi) whether the book has been digitalized.
There’s a few ways we could approach this
Option 1: Through the U of T library, we have already compiled a list of about 400 books we’d like to include. Using this list, we could compile all the relevant information in WorldCat about those books.
Option 2: requires a new term search using “sociological theory” on WorldCat and sets the parameters to only capture: Print book, Ebook, and Continually updated resources. We may need some additional search terms. Using the books this search returns, we would like the same information listed above.
Option 2 will produce a lot of noise, so probably we would go with option 1. For either, though, there’s the question about how to access and compile the data. There’s some info about their APIs here: https://www.worldcat.org though I’m not sure what to make of it.

This might be a big vague, and so happy to discuss further.

[chungkky]

HI Cinthya, I'd be interested in helping out and learning more. You can reach me directly at <kky.chung@utoronto.ca>. I'm in the humanities so this is especially interesting to me. Cheers, - Kathy

…

-- Kathy K.Y. Chung, PhD | Research Associate Records of Early English Drama, University of Toronto http://reed.utoronto.ca https://ereed.library.utoronto.ca On 2018-09-04 10:06 AM, CGuzman88 wrote: Department of Sociology | University of Toronto Cinthya Guzman | Ph.D. Student c.guzman@mail.utoronto.ca on behalf of Dan Silver | Associate Professor dsilver@utsc.utoronto.ca Job Opportunity We're studying how the discipline of sociology has evolved over time, in particular how its ideas about sociological theory have changed — what authors to teach, what topics to emphasize, and so on. If you’re interested in the background, here’s a first paper, where we analyzed syllabi, along with some other data. For the next phase, we are looking at the content and reach of textbooks, over time. The bottom line is that we’re looking for a little bit of help in creating a database from Worldcat listings. I’m wondering if you might be able to help us by writing code for taking it from their API, or scraping if need be. I understand you might be busy or this might not be of interest. If so, maybe you might be able to connect me with somebody else who could, perhaps a CS/Engineering undergrad? I’d of course compensate for the work. Some more details: Broadly speaking, we are interested in tracing the history of sociological/social theory through the textbooks and books in circulation since the 1950s (or earlier if available). We are mainly interested in tracing how sociological theory has developed in North America, but also are looking to its reach and adaptation elsewhere. By looking into the books that were in circulation since the 1950s, we would be able to trace the canonization of sociological theory and when and how it began to take its current shape. In the end, we would like to be able to map the presence and demand for these books. Once we have this data, we can conduct a closer examination of which theories and theorists are taught and shifts across time and place. Worldcat tells us: i) the number of editions of a particular book, and their dates of publication, ii) the number of copies available across all their listed libraries, iii) the geographical location of these copies (e.g. university, city, state, country, lon/lat), iv) author and publisher information, v) language translations, and vi) whether the book has been digitalized. There’s a few ways we could approach this Option 1: Through the U of T library, we have already compiled a list of about 400 books we’d like to include. Using this list, we could compile all the relevant information in WorldCat about those books. Option 2: requires a new term search using “sociological theory” on WorldCat and sets the parameters to only capture: Print book, Ebook, and Continually updated resources. We may need some additional search terms. Using the books this search returns, we would like the same information listed above. Option 2 will produce a lot of noise, so probably we would go with option 1. For either, though, there’s the question about how to access and compile the data. There’s some info about their APIs here: https://www.worldcat.org though I’m not sure what to make of it. This might be a big vague, and so happy to discuss further. — You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. 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