Friday 27 August 2010

New sites saved on our delicious page

HerStory Scrapbook
The HerStory Scrapbook focuses on the final four years of the women’s suffrage campaign, as reported by The New York Times. From 1917 - 1920, The Times published over 3,000 articles, letters, and editorials about the women who were fighting for, and against, suffrage. The HerStory Scrapbook includes more than 900 of the most interesting pieces, as if someone had saved the original articles from The Times in a scrapbook.
Watergate Exhibit Background
Various extracts of materials (audio and print) related to Watergate, collated and put online by the Nixon Library.
Florida Digital Military Newspaper Library
The Digital Military Newspaper Library is a pilot project to house, organize and preserve contemporary and historic military newspapers and periodicals. These newspapers represent Naval and Air Force bases from many geographical regions around the state of Florida and will include Kennedy Space Center, a submarine base at King’s Bay Georgia, the Panama Canal Zone, and two newspapers in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Digital Military Newspaper Library's future goal is to present the military perspective by offering full geographical representation of historic through current issues of US military newspapers from Florida and the Caribbean.
US National Archives on YouTube
The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
The Valley Project details life in two American communities, one Northern and one Southern, from the time of John Brown's raid through the era of Reconstruction. The archive contains thousands of original letters and diaries, newspapers and speeches, census and church records, from Augusta County, Virginia, and Franklin County, Pennsylvania.
U S Civil War Diaries
A collection of eight digitised versions of diaries covering the US Civil War
A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates
A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation brings together online the records and acts of Congress from the Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention through the 43rd Congress, including the first three volumes of the Congressional Record, 1873-75.
Ulysses S. Grant Collection at Bartleby.com
Digitised versions of Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs, and first & second Inaugural addresses.
The Papers of Jefferson Davis
The Papers of Jefferson Davis, a documentary editing project based at Rice University in Houston, Texas, is publishing a multi-volume edition of his letters and speeches, several of which can be found on this web site. The site also provides extensive information on Davis and his family and numerous images.
Historical Documents of the United States
Electronic versions of : * Declaration of Independence * U.S. Constitution * The Bill of Rights * The Federalist Papers * Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789 * Guide to American Historical Documents Online * Charters of Freedom from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
The Editorials on Secession Project
When completed, this site will provide access to over 2,000 newspaper editorials detailing the shifting tides of emotion and opinion in the 16 months leading to Southern secession and the American Civil War.
Documenting the American South
Documenting the American South (DocSouth) is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently DocSouth includes fourteen thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs.
WWW guide to American Civil War & Reconstruction September 2006
The American Civil War Homepage
Links to many resources about the Civil War
Foreign Relations of the United States
This digital facsimile of Foreign Relations of the United States is a project of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries in collaboration with the University of Illinois at Chicago Libraries. This is an incomplete run from 1861-1960 with missing volumes being added as they can be acquired and processed.
Hard Hat Riots: an online history project
The site has four sections, each one a different way of entering the story of the hard hat riots. If you click on "Newspapers" or "Photos," you will then be able to explore news stories or photographs from the time period. "Places" allows you to go to one of three sites of conflict on May 8: Wall Street, City Hall, or Pace College. "Hindsight" contains commentary by writers looking back on the events of 1970.
http://delicious.com/vhllib

Thursday 26 August 2010

Building work in September

Starting on Tuesday 31st August, there will be building work going on in the old RAI reception area, next to the library entrance.   The work is expected to be completed by Friday 17th September, and may be noisy at times.   We'll keep the library door closed to minimise this, but we apologise in advance for any disruption.

Wednesday 25 August 2010

Bank holiday closing

The VHL will be closed all day on Monday 30th August for the Bank Holiday.

Tuesday 24 August 2010

New e-resource on trial: ProQuest Black Newspapers (until 23 September)

We now have trial access to ProQuest's Black Newspapers until 23 September. ProQuest Black Newspapers offers online access to important historical newspapers relevant to the study of American history and African-American culture, history, politics, and the arts. Users can examine major movements from the Harlem Renaissance to Civil Rights, and explore everyday life as written in The Baltimore Afro-American, New York Amsterdam News, Pittsburgh Courier, Los Angeles Sentinel, Atlanta Daily World, The Norfolk Journal and Guide, The Philadelphia Tribune, and Cleveland Call and Post.

Access is via OxLIP+ (log in for remote access). Please send any feedback to Isabel Holowaty or Stephen Tuck.

Thursday 12 August 2010

Building projects at the Bodleian Libraries

A notice from the Bodleian Libraries:

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The Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford are undertaking a series of major projects to improve our facilities for preserving our collections, supporting researchers, and delivering services to readers. We are endeavouring to deliver an efficient service to our readers during this time but there may be temporary disruption to services. In particular some noisy works will be carried out in the Radcliffe Camera and Old Bodleian Library during the coming year. We will also be moving a substantial proportion of our collections to a new Book Storage Facility at Swindon starting from November 2010 and temporarily closing the New Bodleian Library for extensive refurbishment.

From July 2010 to December 2011 we strongly recommend planning ahead for your research visit. Please contact:
• admissions@bodleian.ox.ac.uk if you are renewing or applying for a reader’s card for the first time;
• enquiries.sc@bodleian.ox.ac.uk for specific queries about using the Bodleian Libraries’ manuscript archives, rare book collections and other special collections;
• reader.services@bodleian.ox.ac.uk if you have more general research needs or specific queries about the work being carried out.
Tel: 01865 277162 or 01865 277000

The Libraries apologise for this short-term inconvenience whilst we move ahead with these vital projects.
Please see www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk for regular updates and further information about transforming our libraries.  
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The VHL will be largely unaffected, but if you are requesting material here from the Bodleian bookstacks you may experience some disruption as collections are moved.

Monday 9 August 2010

Photocopying, Printing & Scanning: How-to guides

How-to guides for the new photocopying, printing and scanning system are now available to download from the Bodleian Libraries' website, or can be viewed online from the following links:

All these guides are also available in the library, either as copies to take away or as reference copies by the photocopier and computers.

Print, Copy & Scan: new services, new procedures - starting today!

From today, the system for photocopying, printing, and scanning in the Bodleian Libraries (including here at the VHL) is changing.

Readers will have access to a range of new services across all Bodleian libraries: scanning, colour copies, self-service online accounts, discounted double-sided, print jobs that can be collected from any photocopier in any Bodleian library.  For VHL readers this means scanning and colour printing/photocopying will be available for the first time.

How do I use the new system?
How-to-guides are available in the library or from the Bodleian Libraries' web page. I will also post them to the blog. You will need to set up an online account at https://bodleian.pcounterwebpay.com or click on the PCAS icon from any library PC workstation. Credit can be added to your account by using a credit or debit card.  As with the current system though, we will not be able to refund unused credit, so don't go too crazy adding money!

The first time you use the photocopier after creating your account, you will need to link your library card to your account by following the instructions at the photocopier. After linking your card, you just need to swipe your card to pick up print jobs and access copying and scanning.

What will happen to credit on my existing photocopy card?
Once you have set up an account, library staff can transfer credit from the old system to your new account. Simply set up an account and present your old card to library staff. We will need your PCAS username to complete the transaction.

Monday 2 August 2010

New books for July


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