RefWorks for Humanities course: Wednesday 2nd March

Booking opens today for:

RefWorks for Humanities
Wednesday 2 March (week 7), 14:00-17:00, OUCS – Book Here
RefWorks is an online tool which allows you to manage your references, insert them into your work, automatically generate bibliographies and easily switch between citation styles. This introduction is open to all, but the section on importing references will focus on Humanities examples.
Presenters: Kate Petherbridge and Shona McLean

New e-resource on trial until 25 February: Archives Unbound (selections)

The VHL and HFL have set up a trial to selected collections from Archives Unbound, which will run until 25th February.

Archives Unbound offers access to topically-focussed archives of digitised historical documents. The following selections are being trialled:
1. East Germany from Stalinization to the New Economic Policy, 1950-1963
2. The Economy and War in the Third Reich, 1933-1944
3. Witchcraft in Europe and America
4. Federal Response to Radicalism in the 1960s
5. Federal Surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984
6. Overland Journeys: Travels in the West, 1800-1880

Please send your feedback for 1-3 to Isabel Holowaty (isabel.holowaty@bodleian.ox.ac.uk) and for 3-6 to Jane Rawson (jane.rawson@bodleian.ox.ac.uk).

The trial ends 25 February 2011. Access is via OxLIP+, but you will need a password to get through to the resource. In OxLIP+, search for Archives Unbound as a title. Then click on the Weblearn link which is provided in the Legend box on the right-hand side.

PCAS problems

If you've tried to print or photocopy in any of the Bodleian Libraries over the last few days, you may have noticed some problems with the PCAS system, in particular in the afternoons.   It can be very slow to recognise your card swipe or to print out pages.   The PCAS team are on the case and are working hard to fix the problems.  This may mean that they have to reboot the system on occasion, which will cause temporary disruptions.

The problems are particularly bad during the afternoons when a lot of people are using the system.   If your copying/printing is not urgent, you might want to consider waiting until the evening or coming back the next morning.  

We hope that this will all be resolved soon and printing/copying will become a less frustrating experience! 

WISER coming up: Reference Management

Bodleian Libraries will be running the  workshop "WISER: Technology Tools - Reference Management" on  Wednesday 2 February (week  3).  More details...

WISER: Technology Tools - Reference Management
Wednesday 2 February 2.00-5.00
Choosing a reference management package can be tricky. This session introduces the two market leaders, RefWorks and Endnote and two popular free packages, Zotero and Mendeley.  We will discuss some of the pros and cons of each package and factors to consider when making a choice. Participants will also have opportunities to try out the different packages.
Presenters:  Ljilja Ristic, Oliver Bridle and Angela Carritt
Book your place:
University members - please book your place @ http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/itlp/courses/detail/TZW6.
Non university members -  please book your place by emailing usered@bodleian.ox.ac.uk

To find out about more Reference Management sessions taking place during Hilary Term please see "All you need to know about reference management" on the BodWiser blog.

Why not join our WISER mailing list by sending an empty email to wiser-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk or follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/oxwiser.

Reminder: Talks on Serial Set and FBIS, Friday 28th January

August Imholtz (Vice President, Government Publications, Readex) will be in Oxford on Friday 28th January, and will be giving two talks on Readex library resources available to Oxford users.   At 3pm he will be speaking about the US Congressional Serial Set, followed by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports at 3.45pm.  Both talks will take place in Seminar Room 2 at the Rothermere American Institute.

The US Congressional Serial Set, 1817-1994 is a rich collection of primary source material detailing all aspects of American history. It contains all the reports and documents submitted to Congress, as well as the House & Senate Journals, and is a vast resource of over 415,000 documents, including over 70,000 maps.

The Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports include translated broadcasts and print media publications from all around the world, providing a commentary on many major world events from the second half of the 20th century.   Please note we do not have access to the full resource here in Oxford, but only certain regions from 1974-1996 (Middle East, Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Soviet Union).

Both resources are available via OxLIP+.

All welcome!

New sites saved on our delicious page

Here's a summary of the latest sites we've bookmarked on our delicious page: 

New York Heritage

NewYorkHeritage.org is a research portal for students, educators, historians, genealogists, and others who are interested in the Empire State's history. NewYorkHeritage.org is your gateway to hundreds of digital collections about New York State's people, places, and institutions. NewYorkHeritage.org brings together freely accessible digital collections from libraries, museums and archives from all over the state.

Northern New York Historical Newspapers

Northern New York Historical Newspapers are provided by the Northern New York Library Network to enhance access to the region's local history. The online collection currently consists of more than 2,191,000 pages from fifty newspapers.

Long Island Newspapers

Digitised page images of nine local newspapers from Long Island.

HRVH Historical Newspapers - Home

The vision for HRVH Historical Newspapers is to provide access to digitized copies of historical newspapers from the Hudson River Valley region of New York State. The entire contents of the newspaper issues can be searched and browsed in HRVH Historical newspapers.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle Online, 1841-1902

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle was published from 1841 to 1955, then revived for a short time from 1960 to 1963. Because of the enormity of the collection, the digitization of the historic Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper from reels of microfilm has been broken down into more than one phase. Phase I, which can at present be found on this site, covers the period from October 26, 1841 to December 31, 1902, representing half of the Eagle's years of publication. This period includes all of the years for which there is no index as well as the eleven years during which an index was published. Approximately 147,000 pages of newspaper in various digital formats are contained in this online repository. Access can be gained either by date of issue or by keyword searching.

The New York State Digital Collections

The Digital Collections provide a gateway to a variety of rich primary source materials held by the New York State Archives, State Library, and State Museum. Through the collection, you can access photographs, textual materials, artifacts, government documents, manuscripts, and other materials.

Stevens Family Papers | Cornell University Library

This is a collection of correspondence and other papers relating to Robert S. Stevens' work as manager of the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Railway and the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad, and to his investments in Kansas lands. This collection is dated from 1805 - 1899.

Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection

Numbering over 10,000 titles, May's pamphlets and leaflets document the anti-slavery struggle at the local, regional, and national levels. Much of the May Anti-Slavery Collection was considered ephemeral or fugitive, and today many of these pamphlets are scarce. Sermons, position papers, offprints, local Anti-Slavery Society newsletters, poetry anthologies, freedmen's testimonies, broadsides, and Anti-Slavery Fair keepsakes all document the social and political implications of the abolitionist movement.

Cornell University Library Witchcraft Collection

The Cornell University Library Witchcraft Collection is an online selecton of titles from the Cornell University Library's extensive collection of materials on Witchcraft. The Witchcraft Collection is a rich source for students and scholars of the history of superstition and witchcraft persecution in Europe. It documents the earliest and the latest manifestations of the belief in witchcraft as well as its geographical boundaries, and elaborates this history with works on canon law, the Inquisition, torture, demonology, trial testimony, and narratives. Most importantly, the collection focuses on witchcraft not as folklore or anthropology, but as theology and as religious heresy.

Cornell University Library Making of America Collection

The Cornell University Library Making of America Collection is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. This site provides access to 267 monograph volumes and over 100,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints. The project represents a major collaborative endeavor in preservation and electronic access to historical texts. The Making of America collection comprises the digitized pages of books and journals. This system allows you to view scanned images of the actual pages of the 19th century texts.

The Friend of Man (Cornell University Library)

Friend of Man is one of the most significant and little studied newspapers documenting early anti-slavery and other reform movements. The periodical is of special significance because with the exception of religion, scholars know little about the resources of social movements in rural areas such as Central New York, where Friend of Man was published.

HathiTrust Digital Library

The HathiTrust project aims to make available digitised resources from many libraries and research institutions, predominantly in the United States. Full-text is available for many resources.

Online Resources - The State Historical Society of Missouri

Digitised resources from the State Historical Society of Missouri. The collections include runs of two newspapers (Daily Missouri Republican, 1861-1865, and The Columbia Missourian, 1908-1922), selected volumes of the Messages and Proclamations of the Governors of the State of Missouri, as well as a wide range of resources relating to the Civil War in Missouri.

Georgia Historic Newspapers

Searchable issues of a variety of Georgia newspapers, largely from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

http://delicious.com/vhllib

New sites saved on our delicious page, and new post on the resources blog

John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum Digital Archives

The Digital Archives provides access to a growing collection of searchable digitized historical documents, images and materials. Archivists at the JFK Library are working to digitize and make available to the public all of our archival and museum holdings, beginning with the papers of President John F. Kennedy and his administration.

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade database has information on almost 35,000 slaving voyages that forcibly embarked over 10 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the 16th and 19th centuries. You can search and browse the database by voyage and by names.

Google News Archive

Listing and full-text access to thousands of newspaper issues digitised by Google, including many American titles from the 19th and 20th centuries. Once you click on a title, you can browse the page images via a chronology.

Doris Duke Collection of American Indian Oral History (University of Oklahoma)

he Duke Collection of American Indian Oral History online provides access to typescripts of interviews (1967 -1972) conducted with hundreds of Indians in Oklahoma regarding the histories and cultures of their respective nations and tribes. Related are accounts of Indian ceremonies, customs, social conditions, philosophies, and standards of living. Members of every tribe resident in Oklahoma were interviewed. The collection includes the original tapes on which the interviews were recorded, as well as microfiche copies of the typescripts. The digital representation of the typescripts are organized by tribe but may be searched by interviewee, by interviewer, by tape number, or by keyword searching of the full-text of the transcript.

Top 50 American History Blogs (History Masters)

A listing of some recommended blogs covering all periods of American history (and some more global ones too).

University of Mississippi Libraries Digital Collections

Portal to the Digital Collections from the University of Mississippi Libraries. Collections include: Civil War Archive, Integration at the University of Mississippi, Mississippi State Textbook Purchasing Board Minutes, United States v Mississippi Interogatory Answers, Mississippi Women Suffrage Association, CK Berryman cartoons (of Senator Pat Harrison), Presidential Debate Collection Photographs (Obama v McCain), Elijah Fleming Collection and Class of 1861.

Ann Curthoys and Marilyn Lake - Connected Worlds: History in Transnational Perspective (ebook download)

Supplementary reading for MSt US History week 1 HT.

Mapping America - Census Bureau 2005-9 American Community Survey - NYTimes.com

Interactive maps showing local data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey 2005-2009 across the US. Maps are available for race & ethnicity, income, housing & families, and education.

North Carolina Digital Repository

The North Carolina Digital Collections is a collaborative effort, bringing together items held in the physical collections of the State Archives and State Library of North Carolina. The primary focus is on documentary and state government information from and about North Carolina.

A map of American slavery

One of the most important maps of the Civil War was also one of the most visually striking: the United States Coast Survey’s map of the slaveholding states, which clearly illustrates the varying concentrations of slaves across the South. Abraham Lincoln loved the map and consulted it often; it even appears in a famous 1864 painting of the president and his cabinet.

“Transnations” Among “Transnations”? The Debate on Transnational History in the United States and Germany

Core reading for week 1 Hilary Term, MSt US History

http://delicious.com/vhllib

And while I'm posting anyway, here's a quick reminder about the VHL resources blog, which now has a new post on accessing US newspapers in Oxford.  Also, don't forget that as of tomorrow we are open on Saturdays throughout Hilary Term, 10am-2pm!

Microform subject guide now available online

The list of microforms available in the library arranged roughly by subject (the big black folders that live on top of the cabinets) can now also be viewed online.   The online version is just a Google Docs version of the master spreadsheet, so to navigate between different subjects you need to click on the tabs at the bottom of the screen.

I have also extracted and uploaded the list of newspapers we have on microfilm separately.  The links to access both of these lists can be found on our website and also directly below:

• Full microform subject guide
• Newspapers and periodicals

Increase to inter-library loan charges

The cost of submitting an inter-library loan request at the Bodleian Libraries has increased by 50p to £4.50 for a standard loan or photocopy.   International requests have likewise increased to £12.50.

The increases represent a 2 year increase since the charges were last revised 2 years ago, and are in line with a recommendation that was passed by the Curators to apply a 25p annual increase to our charges for inter-library loans and document supply. These increases are modest but will help to cover the costs of the annual price rise imposed by the British library in August of this year and also the VAT increase from 4th January.

A full table of inter-library loan charges can be found on the Bodleian Libraries' website at: http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/services/ill/prices.

Refworks course, Monday 17 January

RefWorks for Sciences and Social Sciences (Monday 17 January 2.00-5.00 pm)
RefWorks is an online reference management tool which allows you to manage your references, insert them into your work, automatically generate bibliographies and easily switch between citation styles. This introduction to RefWorks is open to everyone but the section on importing references will focus on Science and Social Science examples.
Presenter: Nia Roberts.
To book your place:  http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/itlp/courses/detail/TDBL

To find out about more Reference Management sessions taking place during Hilary Term please see "All you need to know about reference management" on the BodWiser blog (http://bodwiser.wordpress.com).

This term's WISER programme will commence in week 3. Check out the WISER programme at http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/wiser and book your places.  Why not join our mailing list by sending an empty email to wiser-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk or follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/oxwiser.

Saturday Opening - Hilary Term

Some good news for the new year!  Contrary to our previously published hours, the library will be open on Saturday mornings throughout Hilary Term, 10am-2pm (0th-8th week inclusive, or 15th January - 12th March).  This is a pilot to see if there is sufficient demand to justify extending Saturday opening outside of Trinity Term next year.   Please make use of the extra hours, and if you have any comments about Saturday opening, please let us know!

American Founding Era Collection - trial extended to 21st January

We've been given a two week extension on our trial access to the American Founding Era Collection until January 21st.  This collection offers digital access to the published papers of several major figures of the Early Republic:

• The Papers of James Madison
• The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution
• The Papers of Thomas Jefferson
• The Adams Papers
• The Papers of George Washington
• The Dolley Madison Digital Edition

For more information about this resource and how to use it, please see this post on our resources blog. 

Access is available via OxLIP+. Please send any feedback to jane.rawson@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

New e-resources: New York Amsterdam News and Pittsburgh Courier

Thanks to a generous donation in support of a research project, we now have access to the archives of two major black newspapers from the 20th century: The New York Amsterdam News, 1922-1993, and The Pittsburgh Courier, 1911-2002. Oxford has had access to The Chicago Defender 1910-1975 for some time now and we are the only institution in Western Europe to have access to three black newspapers. The receipt of the donation was managed by the History Faculty.

The New York Amsterdam News, 1922-1993
One of the leading black newspapers of the 20th century, which reached its peak in the 1940s. The New York Amsterdam News captured the vibrancy and cultural richness of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, advocated for the desegregation of the U.S. military during World War II, and fought against discriminatory employment practices and other civil rights abuses in the 1960s. This resource provides full coverage of seventy years worth of the newspaper's archive.

The Pittsburgh Courier, 1911-2002
The Pittsburgh Courier was once the most widely circulated black newspaper in the United States during the early 20th century. This resource provides access to more than ninety years of the newspaper's archive, including columns and reports from writers such as W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, James Weldon Johnson and Zora Neale Hurston.

Both resources are available via OxLIP+ (use single sign-in for remote access).

Talks on Serial Set and FBIS, Friday 28th January

August Imholtz (Vice President, Government Publications, Readex) will be in Oxford on Friday 28th January, and will be giving two talks on Readex library resources available to Oxford users.   At 3pm he will be speaking about the US Congressional Serial Set, followed by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports at 3.45pm.  Both talks will take place in Seminar Room 2 at the Rothermere American Institute.

The US Congressional Serial Set, 1817-1994 is a rich collection of primary source material detailing all aspects of American history. It contains all the reports and documents submitted to Congress, as well as the House & Senate Journals, and is a vast resource of over 415,000 documents, including over 70,000 maps.

The Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports include translated broadcasts and print media publications from all around the world, providing a commentary on many major world events from the second half of the 20th century.   Please note we do not have access to the full resource here in Oxford, but only certain regions from 1974-1996 (Middle East, Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Soviet Union).

Both resources are available via OxLIP+.

All welcome!

New Books for December

Happy New Year!  The list of new books received in the library during December is now available on our website and LibraryThing page.