Tag Archives: Religion

Medieval Collections: Ledgers and Account Books

Spanish Treasury in Peru Account Book, 1571.
Spanish Treasury in Peru Account Book, 1571. (SPC) MSS BH 056 COCH.

As part of the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries (PACSCL) project Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis, the Special Collections Research Center has been cataloging and digitizing its medieval and early modern collections, which include financial ledgers, notated music, a Book of Hours, and philosophical texts.

While illuminated manuscripts are what immediately comes to mind when most people think of medieval manuscripts, Temple’s collections are a little different. We do hold the beautiful Book of Hours: Use of Toul from the 15th century, but the bulk of our medieval and early modern manuscripts are financial or legal documents.

While less artistically inclined, these manuscripts provide a glimpse into the everyday life of the period: how people held and transferred property, how businesses conducted their work, how banks managed their customers’ money, and how governments taxed their citizens.

Banking Ledger, 1593-1595
Banking Ledger, 1593-1595. (SPC) MSS BH 130 COCH.

In that last category, the Spanish Treasury in Peru Account Book is a ledger maintained by the Royal Treasury of Peru in 1571, then under Spanish control. The volume records not only general revenue and expenses, but also the tributes forcibly levied against the native people whose land was colonized by Spain. Another 16th century volume, an Italian Banking Ledger covering 1593-1595, is notable primarily for its extravagant binding and large size: over 19 inches tall. It contains debits and credits for a banking firm based in Rome.

Florentine Grain Dealer Account Book, 1466-1524.
Florentine Grain Dealer Account Book, 1466-1524. (SPC) MSS BH 005 COCH.

An earlier manuscript, the  Florentine Grain Dealer Account Book, which covers the years 1466-1524, contains entries showing payments made for grain, rent, taxes, alms, and other income for this Italian business. The Marcoux Family Estate Account Book, which begins around the same time but continues into the 18th century, documents income for the estate, which was located in Dauphiné, France. The volume contains pages written right side up and upside down, as well as multiple paging conventions—perhaps to be expected in a ledger used for around three hundred years.

Marcoux Family Estate Account book, 1488-approximately 1700-1799?
Marcoux Family Estate Account book, 1488-approximately 1700-1799? SCRC 389 Cochran.

These are just four of the finance-related manuscripts recently digitized for the project. All four belong to SCRC’s Harry C. Cochran History of Business Collection, which was established by Temple University Head Librarian Walter Hausdorfer in 1950. The Cochran Collection includes a wide range of manuscripts and a smaller number of books documenting the evolution of commerce in Europe and the Americas between the 4th and 20th centuries.

The Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis project is funded by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), and aims to digitize and make available online medieval manuscripts from fifteen institutions in the Philadelphia area. Images and descriptive metadata will be released into the public domain and easily downloadable at high resolution via University of Pennsylvania Libraries’ OPenn manuscript portal. Temple is contributing nearly forty manuscripts to the project. SCRC’s digitized manuscripts are also being added to Temple’s Digital Collections website.

–Katy Rawdon, Coordinator of Technical Services, SCRC

LGBT History

The Libraries have acquired on microfilm The Lesbian Herstory Archives, part 7 of the Gay Rights Movement. This collection consists of a full 150 reels of primary-source material along with a 73-page printed collection guide. Media types represented include “clippings, flyers, brochures, conference materials, reports, correspondence, and other printed ephemera”. The earliest documents date to the 1950s and the era of the Daughters of Bilitis organization. Additional information about the nature of the collection is available from the LHA website. The Lesbian Herstory Archives complements existing primary-source printed and digital collections such as the Gerritsen Collection and Women and Social Movements. It also complements GenderWatch and the new-to-Temple LGBT Life, two databases that index journal articles and other secondary sources. LGBT Life in particular contains indexing and abstracts for more than 130 LGBT-specific core periodicals and over 290 LGBT-specific core books and reference works. It also includes comprehensive, full-text coverage of The Advocate (1996 to date) and other important LGBT publications. —David C. Murray

Historic Philadelphia Photographs

A partnership between the Philadelphia City Archives and the for-profit Avencia, Inc. has resulted in the creation of Phillyhistory.org, a website that provides users with an extensive online photo archive, historic streets index, and index to print photographs held in the Archives. According to Avencia, the site now provides access to “more than 20,000 scanned historic images” of Philadelphia (Avencia.com). —David C. Murray

Enhancements to ABC-CLIO History Databases

The recently released version 4.1 of America: History & Life and Historical Abstracts includes: -Cross-database searching between Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life -User-friendly searching, including inverted author names and punctuation alternatives -Ability for users to save search histories to a personal profile -Natural language date searching, in addition to the traditional decade and century searching -Speed improvements for faster searching -A display option for expanding all of a user’s search result records at once -Addition of a “print-this-entry” option for each record in a search results display -Ability to easily limit searches to English language entries only -OpenURL-support for book entries in the Historical Abstracts database –Brian Schoolar (Electronic Resources Librarian)

Sources for the Study of Early America

Over the past semester alone, the Libraries have acquired more than eighty databases. That’s an awful lot of new information to keep up with, even for the librarians! The rapid pace of change means that it can sometimes be difficult to pinpoint the most appropriate database for a specific research need. One way to keep pace is to consult a discipline-specific subject guide. Another, of course, is to frequently read this blog! And so, in the spirit of “keeping up,” I offer the following list of… Full-Text, Primary Source Databases Relevant to the Study of Early America Books Early American Imprints, Series 1: Evans (1639-1800) Early American Imprints, Series 2: Shaw-Shoemaker (1801-1819) Making of America Books (University of Michigan) Pennsylvania County Histories to 1900 Google Books Many important, pre-1900 monographs are available. American Memory Several distinct monograph collections from the Library of Congress: California, First-Person Narratives 1849-1900; The Capital and the Bay: Narratives of Washington and the Chesapeake Bay Region, ca. 1600-1925; Dance Manuals 1490-1900; Nineteenth-Century Books 1850-1877 (see Making of America, above); Puerto Rico Books & Pamphlets 1831-1929; Sunday School Books 1815-1865; Traveling in America 1750-1920; Upper Midwest Books 1820-1910; and Woman Suffrage Books & Pamphlets 1848-1921. Newspapers African American Newspapers: The 19th Century Early American Newspapers, Series 1 (1690-1876) HarpWeek (1857-1877) New York Times (1851-present) Pennsylvania Gazette (1728-1800) Wall Street Journal (1889-present) Journals / Magazines American Periodical Series Online (1740-1900) Making of America Journals (University of Michigan) Ephemera American Civil War Letters & Diaries Digital Sanborn Maps, 1867-1970 Early Encounters in North America Gerritsen Collection: Women’s History Online, 1543-1945 LexisNexis Congressional with the U.S. Serials Set Documenting the American South (University of North Carolina) Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000David C. Murray

International Medieval Bibliography Online

Temple now has access to the premier database for medievalists, The International Medieval Bibliography Online (IMB), which contains over 300,000 articles in thirty different languages. The articles come from journals, conference proceedings, essay collections, and festschriften chosen by a “worldwide network of fifty teams to ensure regular coverage of 4,500 periodicals and a total of over 5,000 miscellany volumes”. Extensive indexing–including separate indexes for subjects, people, places, repositories, and time periods–allows for precise searching. The IMB covers the period from 300 to 1500 CE and the geographic regions of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, making it relevant to scholars of classics, religion, philosophy, art and archaeology, history, literature, and Islamic studies. In addition to the IMB, here are some other electronic resources relevant to the study of various aspects of the Middle Ages: Encyclopedias:

Databases:

–Fred Rowland

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.

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

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