Wednesday 27 February 2013

Trial until 31 March: Constitutions of the World

Oxford users are invited to trial Constitutions of the World (from the late 18th Century to the Middle of the 19th Century Online). The trial ends on 31 March.

This resource provides online access to constitutional documents from all over the world, written from 1776 to the end of the year 1849. It includes about 1,600 constitutions, amendments, human rights declarations, and draughts of constitutions that never came into force, from this period. These early constitutional documents were collected and examined in archives and libraries all over the world, as part of a project by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation). Using the original documents, experts from American and European universities reconstructed the authentic constitution texts for each country, and annotated them in their respective original languages. Each volume contains a short introduction, a main part with the edited constitution documents of a country, comments and an index.

The online edition is of particular value, being the first publication to provide easy access to all the previously scattered and in many cases unknown constitutions from the early phases of modern constitutionalism, as edited and annotated constitutional texts. This edition offers uniquely rich and valuable source material, supplying comparative constitutional history of the early period of modern constitutionalism with new perspectives.

Users can search the documents full-text or browse the subject index.

Countries covered to date: Europe (United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Lichtenstein, Russia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Croatia, Slovenia, Czechoslovakia, France, Corsica, Monaco, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Malta) Americas: United States, Chile, Colombia, Panama, Haiti and Mexico.

Please send feedback by 31 March to isabel.holowaty@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or leave / view comments on History eResources Desiderata.

Tuesday 12 February 2013

Free access to ProQuest resources during February and March for Black History Month

ProQuest have opened up several of their resources for free access during February as part of Black History Month. You can now access the full text of their collection of African American newspapers, their Civil War Era collection, Black Studies Center and African American Heritage collection until the end of the month. More details and links as follows:

UPDATE: We now have access here in Oxford until the end of March using the following link: https://www.proquest.com/trials/trialSummary.action?view=subject&trialBean.token=IUZK8J9FV2FXZNI52RYR

Historical Newspapers
Access the full text archives of the following titles:
  • Atlanta Daily World, 1931-2003
  • The Baltimore Afro-American, 1893-1988
  • Chicago Defender, 1910-1975 (Note, we have permanent access to this title)
  • Cleveland Call and Post, 1934-1991
  • Los Angeles Sentinel, 1934-2005
  • New York Amsterdam News, 1922-1993 (Note, we have permanent access to this title)
  • Norfolk Journal and Guide, 1921-2003
  • Philadelphia Tribune, 1912-2001
  • Pittsburgh Courier, 1911-2002 (Note, we have permanent access to this title)

Black Studies Center 
A fully cross-searchable gateway to Black Studies including scholarly essays, recent periodicals, historical newspaper articles, reference books, and much more. It combines essential resources for research and teaching in Black Studies, including The Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, Index to Black Periodicals Full Text, Black Literature Index, and the Chicago Defender historical newspaper from 1912-1975.

Civil War Era
Comprehensive full-image primary source materials, previously unavailable digitally, cover a vast range of topics including the formative economic factors and other forces that led to the abolitionist movement and the emancipation of nearly 4 million slaves.

African American Heritage
Groundbreaking digital resource that not only brings together records critical to African American family research, but also connects to a community of research experts.

Friday 8 February 2013

WISER coming up: RefWorks, Keeping up to date, Open access

During week 5 Bodleian Libraries will be running workshops on RefWorks and keeping up to date with new research:

RefWorks for Humanities (Wed 13 Feb 14.00 – 17.00) (wk 5)
RefWorks is an online reference manager which allows you to save citation,  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.
Who is this session for? Postgraduates, researchers and academics and undergraduates wishing to use reference management software
Presenters: Valerie Lawrence and Alice Nelson > Book Now

WISER: Getting information to come to you (Fri 15 Feb 15.30-17.00) (wk 5) 
This session will show you how to set up alerts to journals, databases and websites, so that you receive notifications when new content is added. Participants will have the opportunity to set up RSS feed readers and/or email notifications during the session.
Who is this session for? Postgraduates, researchers and academics.
Presenters: Jane Rawson and Sonya Adams > Book Now

Advance notice that our new session on Open Access at Oxford will take place on 21 February:

WISER: Open Access Oxford - what's happening? (Thursday 21 Feb 11.00-12.00) 
From 1st April researchers funded by RCUK funding councils will be required to make their research papers open access either via free unrestricted access to the final version on the publisher’s web site or by deposit of the accepted manuscript (after peer review) in an open access repository within 6 months (or 12 months for AHRC and ESRC). Come along to a briefing on open access for research publications and Oxford’s position. We will be covering: Green vs. Gold open access publishing; funder mandates and publisher policies; the Oxford Research Archive (ORA) and Symplectic; and how to find more information and help.
Who is this session for?  Research Support staff, administrators, librarians and researchers
Presenters: Juliet Ralph and Linda Atkinson > Book now

Keeping up with Bodleian Libraries training opportunities: Why not follow join our mailing list by sending an empty email to wiser-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk, follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/oxwiser or visit the BodWiser blog at http://bodwiser.wordpress.com.

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.

Questions? - Please contact usered@bodleian.ox.ac.uk