CRInfo: The Conflict Resolution Information Source

What's In, What's Out, How We Decided

Many of the topics covered in this knowledge base have hundreds or even thousands of books, articles, and Web pages on the topic. So we had to decide what to include and what not to include in the "Additional Resources." We used several rules to do this.

Authors were not given any limitations, other than the fact that we wanted authoritative essays that were well-documented, but not "footnoted to death." As is common, graduate student authors tended to footnote more than experienced professionals did, as most experienced professionals wrote what was in their heads, without looking it up. But many then included extensive bibliographies, which we included in the Additional Resources sections. (See below.)

Our goal for the additional resources was to include 5-20 Web resources and 5-20 print resources that provided additional information, some additional explanations of the underlying concept, and other examples and/or case studies that put the concept into practice. As much as possible, we tried to provide a diversity of examples: one from an international conflict, one from an inter-group conflict, one from an environmental conflict, etc. While the Middle East came up a lot, we tried to look at other parts of the world as well. Sometimes we fell short of our goals, and other times there was so much material that it was hard to decide what to put in and what to leave out. In those cases, we had several more criteria:

Additional resources needed to come from credible sources -- the more credible, the better.
They needed to have a significant amount of information that supplemented what was already in the essay, rather than just repeating what was in there already.
They needed to be relatively easily accessible. For websites, we tried to find ones that were likely to be online for awhile. For that reason, we usually avoided news stories and other "ephemeral" Web pages that are here one day and gone the next. But we still have a continuing problem with bad links, for which we apologize, and ask your forgiveness and help. We will be checking them as frequently as we can, but if you find a bad link, please let us know! For print resources, we tried to use books that are likely to be available, at least in major libraries and/or online from such retailers as Amazon.com. But whenever we could, we also provided links to summaries of these books, so that people who cannot access the book itself can still get some ideas from it via the Web.

Unavoidably, authors put in materials they were familiar with. That means they may have missed really good things if they didn't know about them.

When authors didn't provide additional resources themselves (as was common, especially for Web resources, since many people are still not very familiar with or aware of how much good material is on the Web), the Consortium staff looked for outside resources ourselves. We did as well as we could, but if users have other suggestions for better resources, please let us know!

Beyond Intractability Version II
Copyright © 2003-2006 The Beyond Intractability Project
Beyond Intractability is a Registered Trademark of the University of Colorado
Project Acknowledgements

The Beyond Intractability Knowledge Base Project
Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess, Co-Directors and Editors
c/o Conflict Research Consortium, University of Colorado
Campus Box 580, Boulder, CO 80309
Phone: (303)492-1635; Fax: (303)492-2154; Contact



		Sources What's In, What's Out, How We Decided Many of the topics covered in this knowledge base have hundreds or even thousands of books, articles, and Web pages on the topic. So we had to decide what to include and what not to include in the "Additional Resources." We used several rules to do this. Authors were not given any limitations, other than the fact that we wanted authoritative essays that were well-documented, but not "footnoted to death." As is common, graduate student authors tended to footnote more than experienced professionals did, as most experienced professionals wrote what was in their heads, without looking it up. But many then included extensive bibliographies, which we included in the Additional Resources sections. (See below.) Our goal for the additional resources was to include 5-20 Web resources and 5-20 print resources that provided additional information, some additional explanations of the underlying concept, and other examples and/or case studies that put the concept into practice. As much as possible, we tried to provide a diversity of examples: one from an international conflict, one from an inter-group conflict, one from an environmental conflict, etc. While the Middle East came up a lot, we tried to look at other parts of the world as well. Sometimes we fell short of our goals, and other times there was so much material that it was hard to decide what to put in and what to leave out. In those cases, we had several more criteria: Additional resources needed to come from credible sources -- the more credible, the better. They needed to have a significant amount of information that supplemented what was already in the essay, rather than just repeating what was in there already. They needed to be relatively easily accessible. For websites, we tried to find ones that were likely to be online for awhile. For that reason, we usually avoided news stories and other "ephemeral" Web pages that are here one day and gone the next. But we still have a continuing problem with bad links, for which we apologize, and ask your forgiveness and help. We will be checking them as frequently as we can, but if you find a bad link, please let us know! For print resources, we tried to use books that are likely to be available, at least in major libraries and/or online from such retailers as Amazon.com. But whenever we could, we also provided links to summaries of these books, so that people who cannot access the book itself can still get some ideas from it via the Web. Unavoidably, authors put in materials they were familiar with. That means they may have missed really good things if they didn't know about them. When authors didn't provide additional resources themselves (as was common, especially for Web resources, since many people are still not very familiar with or aware of how much good material is on the Web), the Consortium staff looked for outside resources ourselves. We did as well as we could, but if users have other suggestions for better resources, please let us know!