Oxford Google Books appearing in SOLO

The Bodleian Libraries have started the process of loading links into SOLO for Oxford books scanned as part of the Google Books project. These are being loaded in batches over the next few weeks, and we anticipate that there will be some 300,000 links to scanned versions of Oxford books available through SOLO by mid-March.

Google scanned several hundred thousand books from Oxford's collections, including many from the VHL stack. The books scanned were all out-of-copyright, mostly from the 19th century.

Please see http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/dbooks/ for more information on Oxford's participation in the Google Books project and how these scanned versions will be findable and accessible in SOLO.

Calling all Historians: Proposed move of the History Faculty Library

Bodleian Libraries is consulting with staff and students of the History Faculty over the proposal to transfer the existing services and collections of the History Faculty Library to the Radcliffe Camera during the Long Vacation 2012.

The proposal will improve:

• Your library: services and collections centred in the iconic Rad Cam. Borrow from Lower Camera.
• Your time: 24 extra hours per week, and all day Saturday and Sunday opening. > more
• Your convenience: Access on a single site to all history collections. > more
• Your books, journals and databases: More funding for books, journals, and databases.
• Your space: More desks and varied spaces > more
• Your library support team: Better and more specialist support for historians offered by re-grouped HFL staff into the History Information Services Team

The proposal has to be seen in the context of the following:

• agreed consolidation of Humanities libraries into fewer sites as a long-term strategic aim;
• continuing aspirations for service improvement set against pressure on finances;
• the likely delay in development of the main Humanities facility at the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter for some years;
• the threat of extremely disruptive building works when a lift is installed in the Old Indian Institute (OII) building in 2012/13 and associated significant and permanent loss of shelf, reader and support space;
• ability to fully fund the move and improvements to working environments.

For more information about the proposal and the consultation, please see the History Faculty Library website at http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/history/about/hfl-move. The HFL is also regularly updating their blog with news about the consultation at http://historyatox.wordpress.com.

Image credit: HFL

RAI Seminar - Inside the Workings of the American Historical Review

VHL readers may be interested in the following Special Seminar, to be held on Wednesday 22 February (16.00-17.30) at the Rothermere American Institute.

Inside the Workings of the American Historical Review

The American Historical Review (AHR) is often regarded as the leading history journal of the Anglophone world. Certainly it has the highest 'impact factor' among history journals, according to the Journal Citation Reports from Thomson Reuters, which measure how often articles are peer-cited. As the official publication of the American Historical Association, since 1895 it has been the journal of record for the history profession in the United States - the only journal that brings together scholarship from every major field of historical study. The most recent issue, for example, includes articles on piracy in the Indian Ocean, colonial governance in three frontiers of the British Empire, the understanding of 'freedom' in nineteenth-century Japan, and US imperialism, and an AHR Conversation on the circulation of information across time and space.

Former editors Konstantin Dierks and Sarah Knott (RAI Senior Visiting Research Fellows) will lead an informal discussion about the inner workings of the AHR, from the journal's ambitions to its article review process to its book review practices. All are welcome.

WISER coming up: Finding stuff (Books, journal articles, conferences)

Next week Bodleian Libraries will be running the following workshops on finding research materials:

WISER: Finding stuff - Books etc on SOLO (Wednesday 22 February 2.00-2.45) - A short 45 minute session introducing tips and techniques for searching SOLO for books, journals and other materials in Oxford Libraries. We will cover both basic and advanced search techniques and also look at placing hold requests for items in the book stacks and some of SOLO's personalised features such as the e-shelf and saved searches.  The session will take place at Oxford University Computing Services - please book your place online.

WISER: Finding stuff - Journal Articles  (Wednesday 22 February 2.45-4.00) - This session  will focus on using bibliographical tools and indexes to find high quality papers in your research area. We will look at how to find reliable bibliographical databases in your subject and how to search them effectively to optimize your results. The session will  take just over an hour and will include time for you to practice. Please book your place online.

WISER: Finding  Stuff - Conferences  (Wednesday 22 February 4.00-5.00) - Finding past conference papers and proceedings and keeping up with forthcoming conferences in your research area are important skills for all researchers but can be quite tricky.   Next week’s 1 hour workshop on finding conferences will start by looking at where to find  forthcoming conference announcements and how to keep up with them and will then move on to look at ways of tracking down elusive conference papers.  Please book your place online;

Keeping up to date with the WISER programme - Why not follow  us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/oxwiser  or visit the BodWiser blog at http://bodwiser.wordpress.com You can also check the timetable on the WISER web site at http://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/workshops or join our mailling list by sending an empty email to wiser-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk

Not a member of Oxford University? - If you are not a current member of Oxford University but would like to attend a workshop please contact usered@bodleian.ox.ac.uk. Please quote your Bodleian readers card barcode number.

If you have any questions please contact usered@bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Graduates: Streamline your research with a Research Skills Toolkit

Need to brush up on your IT and information skills?  Why not come to a Research Skills Toolkit in 8th week? These free 2 hour workshops introduce key software and online tools to streamline your research, hone your searching and information skills and provide opportunities to  meet subject specialists. Topics on offer include:

•     Finding articles, papers, conferences and theses
•     Keeping up to date and current awareness
•     Using Endnote to manage your references
•     Manipulating images using Gimp
•     Managing your thesis with word
•     Analyzising data with Excel pivot tables
•     Podcasting with Audacity
•     Plagiarism and how to avoid it
•     Your thesis, copyright and ORA
•     Finding highly cited journals and measuring research impact

These workshops are open to Oxford graduate researchers in week 8 of Hilary Term. Please attend the session for your division or subject area.  > Find out more and book your place. (Weblearn - Oxford SSO needed to access).

Sessions relevant to VHL readers are on the following dates:

• Tuesday 6th March, 12.00-14.05 - Humanities (general)
• Tuesday 6th March, 14.30-16.35 - Social Sciences
• Wednesday 7th March, 12.00-14.05 - Social Sciences
• Wednesday 7th March, 14.30-16.35 - History

Toolkits take place at Oxford University Computing Services and are run jointly by the Bodleian Libraries and Computing Services.

WISER coming up: Bibliometrics

Want to use bibliometrics to measure your impact or to find highly cited journals?  Come along to Bodleian Libraries 5th week workshops in bibliometrics…

WISER: Bibliometrics I - Who's citing you?
Wednesday 15 February 2.00 - 3.00
An introduction to citation tracking as a tool for finding out who has cited your work. We will cover citation tracking using Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar and will include time for you to use each tool to find citations to your own work.
Presenters: Juliet Ralph and Karine Barker  
Book Now

WISER: Bibliometrics II – tools of the trade
Wednesday 15 February 3.15-4.15
An introduction to tools such as Web of Science and Scopus for calculating research impact in the Sciences and Social Sciences. How to find journal Impact Factors, calculate your h-index, find ‘hot’ papers and authors, and compare research output of individuals, institutions and countries.
Presenters: Juliet Ralph and Angela Carritt 
Book Now

Keeping up to date with the WISER programme - Why not follow  us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/oxwiser  or visit the BodWiser blog at http://bodwiser.wordpress.com. You can also check the timetable on the WISER web site at http://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/workshops or join our mailling list by sending an empty email to wiser-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk

Not a member of Oxford University? - If you are not a current member of Oxford University but would like to attend a workshop please contact usered@bodleian.ox.ac.uk. Please quote your Bodleian readers card barcode number.

If you have any questions please contact usered@bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Free access to e-resources during February: African American history, Vogue archive

Various subscription e-resources are currently being opened up for free access for a limited time period during February:

• ProQuest History Vault Black History collections [until 10th February]:1.3 million pages of primary source documents relating to the Civil Rights movement.
• ProQuest Vogue archive [until 16th February]: A complete searchable archive of American Vogue, from the first issue in 1892 to the current month, reproduced in high-resolution color page images.
• Black history collections on fold3.com [until the end of the month]: A variety of 19th and 20th century records.

These kind of brief windows of accessibility do open up from various providers every now and then, and can be a great way to get hold of material that is usually locked away only to subscribers. Keep an eye on the blog, or our Twitter or Facebook, for alerts whenever we hear of one.

US Elections Campaigns Archive exhibition

To tie in with the annual Congress to Campus event being held at the Rothermere American Institute on Monday 6th February, we are displaying a selection of items from the Philip & Rosamund Davies US Elections Campaigns Archive until next Friday. 

This archive, donated to the VHL by Professor Philip Davies (Eccles Centre, British Library), contains campaign materials collected from US elections at all levels. The majority of the material dates from the later 20th century, but there are many examples of older items, some of which we have included in this exhibition, such as 19th and early 20th century campaign buttons and ballots from the Civil War era. As well as buttons, posters, bumper stickers, flyers and leaflets, the collection contains many other examples of campaign ephemera - t-shirts, caps, dolls, rain bonnets, jewellry, bars of soap, rain bonnets, playing cards and commemorative plates. Professor Davies continues to add to the archive with each election, and an archivist is currently in the process of cataloguing it in full so that it can be made available to researchers.

Congress to Campus runs throughout the US and UK and brings bipartisan pairs of former Congressmen to colleges and universities to talk to students and impart their insights into the inner workings of US politics. The RAI has hosted the Oxford event for the past few years, offering the opportunity to local sixth form students as well as those studying at the University.