Easter closing

A reminder that we will be closed on Good Friday and Easter Monday (2nd-5th April).  We hope everyone has a lovely Easter break!

(Easter image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/stitch/7668006/)

Digital Documents pack for The Great Society Era Special Subject

The History Faculty Library is making document packs for Special Subjects available online for Oxford History students.   The document pack for The Great Society Era is now available on Weblearn (sign in with your Oxford single sign-on to download).

New sites saved on our delicious page

The White House Library of the early 1960s on LibraryThing

This library was selected for the White House in the early 1960s by Yale librarian emeritus James T. Babb, at the request of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. In his foreword to the published catalog of the library (used to create this LT collection), Babb wrote that the library was "intended to contain books which best represent the history and culture of the United States, works most essential for an understanding of our national experience." LibraryThing members have recreated the catalogue of the library from a limited-edition "Short-Title List" printed by the White House Historical Society.

Connecticut History Online

Connecticut History Online (CHO) is a digital collection of over 15,000 digital primary sources, together with associated interpretive and educational material.

Ulysses S. Grant Digital Collection

This digital collection consists of the 31 volumes of the Papers of Ulysses S. Grant (as published by Southern Illinois University Press between 1967 and 2009), along with political cartoons and sheet music donated to the Ulysses S. Grant Association. Other material from the Ulysses S. Grant Collection at the Mississippi State University Libraries will be added in the future.

May 4 Collection: Oral History Project

The May 4 Oral History Project collects, records and provides access to oral history accounts pertaining to the shootings on the Kent State University campus in 1970 and their aftermath. Founded in 1990 by Sandra Perlman Halem, the Project continues to seek first-person narratives and personal reactions to the events of May 4, 1970. It seeks accounts from all viewpoints: members of the Kent community; faculty, alumni, staff and administrators who were on campus that day; National Guardsmen, police, hospital personnel; or other persons whose lives were affected by these historical events. The Oral History Project is conducted by Kent State University Libraries’ Department of Special Collections and Archives and follows the standards of the Oral History Association.

Suffragist Oral History Project

In the early 1970s the Suffragists Oral History Project, under the auspices of the Bancroft Library's Regional Oral History Office, collected interviews with twelve leaders and participants in the woman's suffrage movement. Tape-recorded and transcribed oral histories preserved the memories of these remarkable women, documenting formative experiences, activities to win the right to vote for women, and careers as leaders of the movements for welfare and labor reform, world peace, and the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. The words of these activist women, born from the 1860s to the 1890s, are made accessible for future scholarly research and public information via the Internet. Seven major figures in twentieth-century suffragist history are represented here with full-length oral histories: Alice Paul, Sara Bard Field, Burnita Shelton Matthews, Helen Valeska Bary, Jeannette Rankin, Mabel Vernon, and Rebecca Hourwich Reyher.

Kentuckiana Digital Library

The Kentuckiana Digital Library is a gateway to rare and unique digitized collections housed in Kentucky archives. Search over 550,000 digital images including historic newspapers, photographs, rare Kentuckiana imprints, Sanborn maps, oral histories, and historic issues of the Daily Racing Form.

Studs Terkel: Conversations with America

Conversations with America is a collection of the interviews Studs Terkel conducted for his books and his radio programme. The site is organised into several collections including: Division Street: America (twentieth century urban life in and around Chicago), Hard Times (Terkel interviewed hundreds of people across the United States for his book on the Great Depression of the 1930s. In 1973, he selected several interviews that were included in his book to be broadcast in eleven parts on the Studs Terkel Program on WFMT radio. This gallery includes the interviews in those programs.), The Good War (memories of World War II from a perspective of 40 years of after the events.), and Race (interviews with a cross-section of Americans about their views on race).

C-SPAN Video Library (Beta)

The archives of C-SPAN fully available for free online as streaming video - over 160,000 hours of video footage dating back to 1987. There are plans to upload another 10,000 hours of footage from before 1987 soon. 

http://delicious.com/vhllib

Learning is delightful and delicious

You may or may not know that the VHL has a page on delicious.com where we save links to all sorts of websites that we come across which we think might be useful for our readers.   Hopefully this is building up to be a really useful resource for you all, and might point you in the direction of some great sites on the web that could be helpful for your research.   You can search or browse our list, or get notified when we add new sites by subscribing to the RSS feed.   If you follow us on Twitter then you will already have noticed we are posting directly there from delicious when we save things, and I've just set up an auto-post system for the blog to do the same thing.   If it works (*crosses fingers*) then you will soon see posts on the blog listing new sites as we save them.   Hope this will prove to be a useful service!   If you come across websites that you think other readers might find helpful to be alerted to, then do let us know and we'll add them to our page.

By the way, I've had a bit of a splurge on adding sites today, so the first auto-post is likely to be somewhat larger than subsequent ones will be!

New photocopying payment system delayed

As you may be aware, a new system for photocopying and printing across the Bodleian Libraries was due to be introduced during the Easter vacation.   Unfortunately the change to the new system has had to be delayed and is now expected to take place over the summer.   We'll update you further when we know more, but for now be assured that nothing is changing yet with the way you pay for your photocopying and printing in the library.

Easter vacation opening hours

The library will be open throughout the Easter vacation as normal (9am-7pm, Monday-Friday), but will be closed on Good Friday and Easter Monday (2nd-5th April).

(Easter image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/stitch/7668006/)

US Congressional Serial Set presentation now online

The presentation from today's demonstration of the US Congressional Serial Set is available to download from our website, for anyone unable to come or who would like a copy for future reference.   The presentation briefly sets out the scope of the Serial Set and what it includes (and doesn't include), as well as some demo searches.

Direct link to the presentation

Reminder: US Congressional Serial Set demonstration today!

I will be giving a demonstration of the US Congressional Serial Set database (one of our new e-resources), this afternoon at 2.30pm downstairs in the seminar room at the RAI.   All welcome!

OULS renamed The Bodleian Libraries

Today is the 465th anniversary of Sir Thomas Bodley's birth, and also marks the rebirth of Oxford University Library Services as the Bodleian Libraries.   Our name won't change, as the Vere Harmsworth Library, but our website is now http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/vhl and our email addresses are now @bodleian rather than @ouls (eg, vhl@bodleian.ox.ac.uk).   The central libraries' website is now http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk.   Please update your address book and bookmarks!

For more information, please see: http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/notices/2010_mar_02.

In the spirit of rebranding, I've given this blog a makeover too!

New books for February

The list of books received in the library in February is now available on our website and LibraryThing page.