The Portal is a new destination site for research and information on the voluntary, community and social enterprise sectors. It is a free to use online library and web catalogue with a unique third sector indexing thesaurus, developed by TSRC in partnership with the British Library to help meet the sector’s knowledge sharing needs. Bringing together and preserving reports from third sector organis
ations, academic research, and government studies in one easy to use collection. With thousands of publications already catalogued, the Portal is rapidly building a dynamic and topical resource of relevance to anyone working in, for, or with the third sector throughout the UK and beyond.
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The Portal includes works exploring every aspect of the sector, from theory to activism, from commissioning to impact measurement, from economic analysis to social care, and much more. Content is drawn from a broad range of quality-assessed sources, including:
- TSRC’s own library of research and analysis;
- reports and research from within the sector locally, nationally, and internationally;
- government publications and consultations;
- abstracts for books and journal articles;
- guidance and training materials.
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“Who is it for?”
Anyone can use the Portal, you don’t have to register. Its core target audiences are third sector practitioners, policy makers, and researchers studying the sector.
“Is it free?”
It is completely free to search the catalogue, and most content is available for download without charge. Some external sites, such as academic journals, require paid subscriptions for full access to download their articles, and there is an administration charge if ordering printed copies from the British Library’s Document Supply Centre.
“Are print-only works in the catalogue?”
Yes, books and other off-line items are listed and summarised in the Portal’s index. Direct links to their British Library catalogue entries can be used to contact the BL Document Supply Centre, or to arrange reference collection viewings and interlibrary loans.
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Share and preserve your publications and collections
Vital third sector information resources can too easily disappear from the internet and from specialist libraries and archives, when resources are no longer available for their maintenance. The Portal can help safeguard publications and collections at risk from funding cuts, and can enable your research to reach a wider audience. Please get in touch if you produce or hold relevant material that you would like to see added to the Portal, and it will be assessed for inclusion. We are also committed to signposting and preserving other related resources, such as charity and foundation archives, of use to the third sector and its research community.
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“The Portal is proving to be a first-rate service. Its major benefit is that the contents are moderated so that only good quality material is included”
Peter Halfpenny, Emeritus Professor University of Manchester, Editor Voluntary Sector Review.
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For more information please contact:
Pete Lambert
Knowledge Portal Manager
Third Sector Research Centre
Email: [email protected]
Twitter:
Telephone: 0121 414 3012
