Temple Libraries on March 23 acquired Early American Newspapers, Series I (1690-1876), a third major component of the Archive of Americana. “In 1690, Benjamin Harris published Publick Occurrences, the first newspaper in America. The British colonial governor immediately suppressed it, and only one issue was ever published. However, beginning with the Boston News-Letter in 1704, the early American newspaper industry thrived, experiencing particularly strong growth following technological advances in the 19th century. Early American newspapers, published often by small-town printers, documented the daily life of hundreds of diverse American communities, supported different political parties and recorded both majority and minority views” (Readex). “Early American Newspapers, Series I, 1690-1876 offers fully searchable, cover-to-cover reproductions of more than one million pages from more than 650 historical American newspapers, focusing on titles published in the 18th century” (Readex). EAN, Series 1, is based on Clarence Brigham’s famous History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820. —David C. Murray
Category Archives: History News
ArchiveGrid = NUCMC Improved
Manuscript catalogs connect advanced history researchers with important primary documents housed in obscure and not-so-obscure collections all over the country. Generations of scholars have turned to the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC) to track down collections critical to historical research. ArchiveGrid is a new database from the Research Libraries Group (RLG) that also allows researchers to locate relevant manuscript collections. “Thousands of libraries, museums, and archives have contributed nearly a million collection descriptions to ArchiveGrid. Researchers searching ArchiveGrid can learn about the many items in each of these collections, contact archives to arrange a visit to examine materials, and order copies” (ArchiveGrid). RLG is providing free access to ArchiveGrid through May 31, 2006. After this date ArchiveGrid will remain free if RLG receives additional funding to continue the project. If funds are not found, ArchiveGrid will be made available to institutions as a subscription. All records in the NUCMC catalog are said to be available in ArchiveGrid. Given that ArchiveGrid is a brand new resource, researchers should consult both databases for the sake of completeness. Graduate students and senior scholars should cross-check online search results against the print version of NUCMC. —David C. Murray Postscript: History researchers might also wish to consult Ready, Net, Go!, an index/guide to archival research on the web created by the Special Collections Division of the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University.
PA County Histories to 1900
The Libraries are pleased to announce the acquisition of Pennsylvania County Histories to 1900. This database provides full-text access to PA county histories written during the late 19th Century. Philadelphia, Berks, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery counties all receive extensive coverage. Researchers will appreciate the inclusion of beautiful period maps, illustrations, and portraits of individuals. The histories are our main source of information about important local citizens, some of whom received little or no coverage in the regional and national press of the day. Observes Temple historian Greg Urwin, “Nineteenth century county histories customarily listed the names of all the men who enlisted in volunteer units, and often gave their service records. These books also often contained brief biographies of prominent locals (usually men) and descriptions of prominent businesses.” For more on the history of Philadelphia and surrounding counties, check out the following titles in the Diamond catalog: Berks County (Pa.) — History Bucks County (Pa.) — History Chester County (Pa.) — History Delaware County (Pa.) — History Montgomery County (Pa.) — History Philadelphia County (Pa.) — History —David C. Murray
Infomine: A “Library Catalog” for Web Sites
Instructors usually experience frustration when students turn first to Google and other non-vetted sources of information for papers and research projects. Most history professors, for example, would greatly prefer that students not cite an elementary school project on Abraham Lincoln. (Yes, such things have been known to happen.) Let’s face it: The vast majority of web sites indexed by Google are inappropriate for college-level research. And yet the benefits offered by digital information sources are undeniable. What to do about this dilemma? Typically, concerned instructors require students to use a prescribed set of sources vetted by them (or by a librarian). Another solution well worth considering, and one that allows for greater student autonomy, is to use a directory of scholarly web sites. Services such as the Internet Public Library, Librarian’s Index to the Internet, WWW Virtual Library, INFOMINE, Internet Scout Project, Argus Clearinghouse, Digital Librarian, BUBL Information Service (U.K.) and others, diligently strive to separate the Internet wheat from the chaff. INFOMINE — whose tag line is “Scholarly Internet Resource Collections” — will be most useful to academic researchers. “INFOMINE is a virtual library of Internet resources relevant to faculty, students, and research staff at the university level. It contains useful Internet resources such as databases, electronic journals, electronic books, bulletin boards, mailing lists, online library card catalogs, articles, directories of researchers, and many other types of information” (Infomine Welcome). Conceptually it helps to think of directories as library catalogs for web sites rather than print books and journals. Thus, INFOMINE is to scholarly web sites what the Diamond catalog is to Temple’s print holdings. INFOMINE permits access to its records through title, author/publisher, subject (Library of Congress Subject Headings, or LCSH), assigned keyword, description/abstract, and a “full-text” search. What is more, INFOMINE allows users to browse through an alphabetical listing of all titles, authors, LCSH headings, and keywords used in the database! It can be said without exaggeration that INFOMINE’s search and retrieval capabilities are easily on par with those of most modern library catalogs, such as Diamond. In sum, human-powered directories of the type discussed above provide a respite from the dubious results often obtained through software-based search engines such as Google. The various web directories (or catalogs) do suffer from a lack of standardization in the way metadata is searched and presented; novice researchers might find it difficult to quickly switch from one service to another. Students who make the effort will nonetheless discover the benefits of incorporating directories into their research repertoire. Professors, meanwhile, will just be happy that students are using appropriate sources while simultaneously developing their information literacy skills. —David C. Murray
Find History Dissertations
Researchers often ask me how to access history theses and dissertations. The tips in this post will help anyone easily find dissertations produced by history graduate students at Temple and other institutions. For works created under the auspices of Temple’s History Department, use the Diamond catalog. A complete, chronological list of the nearly 300 Temple history dissertations cataloged since 1973 (newest to oldest) can be viewed by clicking here. To search within this list, perform a keyword search in Diamond as follows (copy/paste into Diamond): s:”History — Temple University Theses.” AND [change to keyword of choice] Sample Searches: s:”History — Temple University Theses.” AND military s:”History — Temple University Theses.” AND war s:”History — Temple University Theses.” AND women s:”History — Temple University Theses.” AND mexico Note that in a Diamond keyword search, “s:” tells the computer to return only those records that match a specific subject heading, in this case “History — Temple University Theses”. This particular search will also include dissertations created under the auspices of the Art History Department (i.e. Art — History — Temple University Theses). “Digital Dissertations is the definitive guide to more than 2 million doctoral dissertations and master’s theses. Digital Dissertations help you identify more than 90 percent of the doctoral dissertations accepted each year in North America. The database also covers thousands of dissertations and theses from around the globe. Each dissertation published since July 1980 includes a 350-word abstract written by the author. Master’s theses published since 1988 include 150-word abstracts. Bibliographic citations are available for dissertations dating from 1861, and more than 55,000 new citations are added to the database every year” (UMI/Proquest). Thousands of Digital Dissertation entries include 24-page previews of the full dissertation. Temple dissertations published since the early 1990s can be downloaded, for free, and in their entirety. The best way to find Temple history theses and dissertations in Digital Dissertations is to use the Browse feature. Choose Social Sciences and then scroll to the heading, History. Choose from General History, Ancient, Medieval, African, Middle East, Latin American, United States, etc. Narrow further by choosing “School” from the drop-down menu on the next page. In the adjacent text box enter “Temple University”. —David C. Murray
History Database Trials
The Library is running two history-related database trials: Empire Online and Declassified Documents Reference Service (DDRS). Examine each database by clicking on its title (from this post), or by pointing your browser to the Trial Databases page. Both trials run through March 12, 2006. Quick Overview: Empire Online will appeal to those working on European history and the Colonial and Early National Periods in the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Oceania; DDRS will interest those studying American history and diplomacy during the Cold War (compare to the Digital National Security Archive). Empire Online By 2007, this database will consist of “over 70,000 [page] images [but not OCR-scanned texts] of original manuscripts and printed material, 1492-1962, taken from libraries and archives around the world.” The core of Empire Online consists of documents digitized from the archives of the British Library, the British National Archives (Kew) and the Bodleian Library, Oxford. To date, 463 documents have been imaged. The primary source material is supported by thirteen bibliographic essays written by historians. Each essay contains between 30 and 50 hyperlinks leading back into the primary source material. This unique arrangement means that Empire Online can be used very effectively to introduce undergraduate students to primary sources. Beyond its pedagogic value, Empire Online would no doubt delight faculty interested in easy access to a range of important primary documents in Empire Studies. Empire Online does have its drawbacks. The most significant seems to be the lack of a full-text search engine for the primary sources. (The bibliographic essays are, however, full-text searchable.) While this problem is not fatal given the database’s extensive indexing, it is a serious oversight. Sorely missed also is a side-by-side transcription of manuscripts. This is less of a concern when viewing images of printed sources. Declassified Documents Reference System (DDRS) This is the online version of the long-standing print DDRS. (See the already-subscribed-to Digital National Security Archive for an example of a very similar database.) DDRS “users can query every document in the database for any name, date, word, or phrase. Searches can also be focused according to document type, issue date, source institution, classification level, date declassified, sanitization, completeness, number of pages, and document number. The database ranges from the years immediately following World War II, when declassified documents were first made widely available, through the 1970s. Nearly every major foreign and domestic event of these years is covered: the Cold War, Vietnam, foreign policy shifts, the civil rights movement, and many others.” DDRS exists largely because thousands of researchers over the years have specifically requested the included documents from various presidential libraries. On the other hand, most of the documents available via the Digital National Security Archive were orginally made available through executive agency compliance with the 1966 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The two databases, though similar in purpose, are therefore unique; both are worth checking out. Please provide feedback — favorable or otherwise — on these databases to David C. Murray, History Librarian.
Digital Sanborn Maps
Digital Sanborn Maps, 1867-1970 provides digital access to more than 660,000 large-scale maps of more than 12,000 American towns and cities. In electronic form, Sanborn Maps take on much improved value over the microfilm versions of the same maps, allowing for greater flexibility of use and improved viewing possibilities. Users have the ability to easily manipulate the maps, magnify and zoom in on specific sections, and layer maps from different years. Sanborn fire insurance maps are the most frequently consulted maps in both public and academic libraries. These maps are valuable historical tools for urban specialists, social historians, architects, geographers, genealogists, local historians, planners, environmentalists, and anyone who wants to learn about the history, growth, and development of American cities, towns, and neighborhoods. They are large-scale plans containing data that can be used to estimate the potential risk for urban structures. This includes information such as the outline of each building, the size, shape and construction materials, heights, and function of structures, location of windows and doors. The maps also give street names, street and sidewalk widths, property boundaries, building use, and house and block numbers. Seven or eight different editions represent some areas. Textual information on construction details (for example, steel beams or reinforced walls) is often given on the plans while shading indicates different building materials. Extensive information on building use is given, ranging from symbols for generic terms such as stable, garage, and warehouse to names of owners of factories and details on what was manufactured in them. In the case of large factories or commercial buildings, even individual rooms and the uses to which they were put are recorded on the maps. Other features shown include pipelines, railroads, wells, dumps, and heavy machinery. Founded in 1867 by D. A. Sanborn, the Sanborn Map Company was the primary American publisher of fire insurance maps for nearly 100 years.
Ancient Maya Emerge From Shadows of Prehistory
The intellectual achievements of the Classic Period Maya civilization (c. 250 – 900 C.E.), including the development of a complex, fully functional writing system capable of expressing human speech, continue to fascinate and inspire contemporary observers. Scribes carved or painted glyphs onto limestone stelae, fine polychrome pottery, and other media. They also wrote in bark-paper books, only four of which survived the ravages of time, a jungle climate, and the Spanish Conquest. Fortunately, numerous texts of considerable length remain, as for example the famous riser text on Copan’s Hieroglyphic Staircase. The Classic Maya writing system was well established by 250 C.E. Maya archaeologists and epigraphers have recently discovered a new set of inscriptions at the site of San Bartolo that pushes back the existence of Maya writing hundres of years, to a time referred to by scholars as the Preclassic Period. The discovery is a major breakthrough, not least of which because it suggests that early Maya polities might have been as complex, from a socio-political standpoint, as those that existed during the later Classic Period. Such evidence has been mounting for at least two decades. The precise relationship between the Maya writing system and other Mesoamerican scripts, like the ones that evolved independently in Oaxaca and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, is not well understood. The tortuous process of decipherment of the Classic Period texts has occupied scholars’ attention for roughly the past fifty years. As a result of their hard work, the ancient Maya have finally emerged from the shadows of prehistory. Obtain more information about this exciting discovery at Mesoweb. –David C. Murray
Job Market for Historians “Hot”
According to an article published in the January 27, 2006 edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education, over the past several years the number of history Ph.D. graduates has decreased even as the number of positions on offer at colleges and universities around the United States has steadily increased. While job markets are cyclical, the statistics can only be good news for history graduate students. The addition of more than a dozen new, highly regarded history faculty at Temple over the past several years certainly bears out this trend. –David C. Murray
African-American Newspapers Expanded
African-American Newspapers: The 19th Century is an important, primary resource for the study of U.S. history. Containing over 100,000 articles from seven newspapers including The North Star (Rochester, NY), The National Era (Washington, D.C.), and Freedom’s Journal (New York, NY), African-American Newspapers: The 19th Century provides an extraordinary window into the events and issues that affected the course of American history. When used in conjunction with our 20th Century African-American newspaper holdings on microfilm — e.g. Pittsburgh Courier, New York Amsterdam News, Philadelphia Tribune — Temple students and scholars can now study first-hand the entire sweep of American print media published by people of color for people of color. African-American Newspapers supports the study of social, political, and military history, African-American studies, literature, and a number of other humanities and social sciences disciplines. It does not provide analysis of the primary documents it contains. Instead, students should turn to the secondary literature, scholarly books and journal articles, to help contextualize the articles found in African-American Newspapers. Part IX of this database, acquired recently by the Libraries, brings full-text coverage of The Christian Recorder up to 1887. –David C. Murray