Introduction to the SSR and the Web Site Introduction to the SSR and the Web SiteIt has been quite some time since the SSR steering committee of the years '94 - '95 originally created the web page for the organization of the Society for Social Research - the registered graduate student organization representing every student member of the department of sociology at the University of Chicago. Alas, despite that this web page has served a great number of incoming first years since then especially through the generously bequeathed gift of a number of very detailed summaries for the prelim readings, it has not gone through much of overhauls ever since and - the overall impression regarding this web page this year's steering committee had was that it is coming to be increasingly forgotten. Like an old computer coming to be gradually covered with dust as the fed up student loses interest in it, we could see that in recent times the pace of the "visitor counter" that had been embedded in the home page was becoming slower and slower. Clearly, the web page needed some upgrading to keep the department's interest going. And then came the huge additional incentive to do so with the prelim. The prelim reading list has been altered drastically for the cohort of '97, undergoing what is probably the most extensive change among the years for which jaundiced copies of the bibliography are still available somewhere. So here we are, and the SSR steering committee of '98 - '99 is happy to present the revamped web page. The purpose of this web page is as follows - as Chris Swanson, the original creator/administrator of the SSR home page, had written some time ago. "This Web site is intended to provide students and faculty in the Department as well as others in our virtual community with a useful and up-to-date collection of information about the comings and goings of the Department, notices of upcoming events, news postings from the SSR Steering Committee. The Site also includes additional services that will help in navigating the WWW and locating other resources that our users might find helpful, entertaining, or enlightening". I can't put it any better than that, and the purpose of the SSR organization itself and the web page has not changed a bit. It is only that some of the contents have been updated to serve the same purpose better, and here I list specifically what sort of changes I have made.
-Kosuke Nikaido, the web administrator for the years '98 - '99.
- The overall design, the "look and feel", of the web page has been changed considerably. Just for the fun of it, I have introduced somewhat "funkier" background pictures. I hope you like it, if you don't you could always send in comments...
- On the other hand, I have done away with the frames, I don't see any particular advantages added by using the frames - I don't think they make navigation through the links particularly faster or more efficient, even though some people say they do. Instead, on some browsers they seem to make the downloading of graphics much more unstable; and they are technically more difficult for a novice web administrator!
- In honor of the most significant contribution of the former steering committee, I have left this section unaltered.
- As I have noted in the introduction, this section has been created entirely anew to accommodate the heavily altered prelim bibliography of '97 - '98. Actually, the intent of faculty in making this change appears to have been making the summer somewhat easier for students... The new 700 page maximum limit has been placed on each of the 9 sections, as a result reducing the length of the bibliography as a whole considerably. Anyway, I think it is an interesting exercise to compare the bibliography of '94 - '95 to that of '97 - '98, as the changes made in them are likely to reflect shifting trends within the discipline of sociology as a whole, as well as more idiosyncratic changes in the thoughts of faculty members of this particular department. While this section has not been fully completed yet, right now I am giving priority to uploading all the summaries for newly added readings that weren't on the older '94 - 95 list.
- It seemed that the '94 - '95 steering committee have had an idea for this but never have completed. This I have done, and the information is supposed to be correct as of the winter quarter '99.
- Here I will post information regarding departmental events related in someway to the SSR organization, namely the sherry hour, job talks, brown bag lunches, and the Spring Institute. Other information that may be pertinent to the department will also be posted when appropriate.
- At this point this section has not been cmpleted yet but the '98 - '99 steering committee hopes to complete this section before it hands the leadership over to our following cohort next autumn. The idea is that by inscribing procedures for some of the major tasks for the SSR like how to organize the sherry hour or the Spring Institute, we could make the job far easier for the future members of the SSR and consequently, the department it serves.
- Once again I would like to thank Chris Swanson and the '94 - '95 committee, for most of the links are carry-overs from the original home page. I have added a few links that I found, and would like to keep updating this section from time to time as I run into potentially interesting or useful pages.
Lastly, I would like to end by noting that any sorts of comments, suggestions, questions, and opinions regarding the SSR home page are welcome. Needless to say, if you find any kind of technical mishaps or glitches that you would like to see fixed, please do not hesitate to send a message and I will try to fix them as soon as possible. In addition to the ssr1 mail account that is shown at the bottom of the SSR home page, you could send a mail directly to my account knikaido@midway.uchicago.edu (I am writing this because right now I have a slight suspicion that the ssr1 mail account itself may run into an operational problem).
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