The Times Digital Archive, another major newspaper acquisition by Temple Libraries, is a searchable, full-text and full-image archive of every page of the (London) Times from 1785 to 1985. This database has obvious appeal to anyone studying the history of Britain and her Empire. The database complements Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), an important new resource recently discussed in the Library Blog. —David C. Murray
The 5 volume Encyclopedia of Anthropology, edited by H. James Birx and available in the Paley Reference stacks (GN11 .E63 2006), is now also available online as part of the Gale Virtual Reference Library. The Encyclopedia features “over 1000 entries that focus on topics in physical/ biological anthropology, archaeology, cultural/social anthropology, linguistics, and applied anthropology. Also included are relevant articles on geology, paleontology, biology, evolution, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and theology.” All articles conclude with a short bibliography with suggestions for further reading; many articles also include a sidebar. Articles are available as PDF files, which provide an exact reproduction of pages from the print edition, or as e-books displayed on a webpage. An eTable of Contents, an eBook Index, and a List of Illustrations are available on the main search page of the Encyclopedia. “The contributions are authored by 300 internationally renowned experts, professors, and scholars from some of the most distinguished universities, institutes and museums in the world. Special attention is given to: hominid evolution, primate behavior, genetics, ancient civilizations, cross-cultural studies, social theories, and the value of human language for symbolic communication.” All databases are listed in the A-Z database listing linked from the Temple University Libraries website. Please contact me if you have any questions. If you would like to have the Gale Virtual Reference Library / Encyclopedia of Anthropology and other social science databases demonstrated to a class, please call me at 215-204-4581 or email me to set a date for a Library User Education class. Gregory McKinney
For those of you, like me, who remember libraries prior to the advent of digital resources, ECCO will serve as a revelation. In a world of hype and spin, this is the real deal. Even younger, Web-savvy researchers will be utterly amazed by ECCO. According to Thomson-Gale’s “About” page, ECCO is the “most ambitious single digitization project ever undertaken”. It is based on the English Short Title Catalog, and contains the full-text of 150,000 book titles published in Great Britain between 1701 and 1800. ECCO provides, “in essence, [easy access to] every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas” (ibid.).
ECCO complements Early English Books Online (EEBO), another Temple database that contains the full-text of nearly 110,000 English-language titles published between 1475 and 1700. It has never before been possible to quickly and comprehensively search the corpus of printed works spanning the entire history of Early Modern Britain. This opens up possibilities for research virtually unimaginable before the creation of ECCO, EEBO, and other primary source databases. Scholars from every conceivable field of inquiry can potentially benefit from access to ECCO. Obvious examples are history (including the history of science & technology), literature, political science, and even music.
Important Note: The undergraduate researcher, especially, should work closely with his or her professor and/or a librarian to identify reference works and other secondary titles that can provide some context for the primary sources discussed in this post. It is important to understand wider social, political, economic, and military contexts in order to make sense of primary documents preserved in the historical record.
Here are the “old” History News entries, originally posted to the Subject Guide. I wanted to remove them from the subject guide while retaining the ability to track history-related library news over the past two years.
New History Blog Category: History News, a new Library Blog category, will serve as a forum for news, events, and discussion of interest to Temple’s History Department. Find announcements about new library databases, trials, search tips, etc. An RSS feed is available. History News replaces this section of the subject guide.
Posted 11/16/05
Trial Databases Page: The Libraries recently created a trial page for electronic databases. Please see the Library Blog entry on this topic for more information.
Posted 11/4/2005
Find Temple History Theses: Use Diamond to find dissertations and theses written by Temple’s history graduate students. For a complete, chronological list of the nearly 300 titles indexed since 1973 (newest to oldest), click here. To search within this list, perform a keyword search in Diamond as follows:
s:History — Temple University Theses. AND [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”. See also Digital Dissertations, below.
Posted 9/1/2005
New Database: History Reference Center: Ebsco’s History Reference Center“features cover-to-cover full-text for more than 750 historical encyclopedias and non-fiction books. . . . nearly 60 leading history periodicals. . . . 58,000 historical documents; 43,000 biographies of historical figures; more than 12,000 historical photos and maps; and 87 hours of historical film and video”.
Posted 8/18/2005
New History Databases: PA Gazette & African-American Newspapers: Published in Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Gazette, 1728-1800 is often called the New York Times of the 19th Century. African-American Newspapers: The 19th Century includes full-text access to publications such as Freedom’s Journal, the North Star, Provincial Freeman and the Frederick Douglass Papers.
Posted 6/20/2005
New History Database: Early American Imprints: Series I: Evans (1639-1800)and Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker (1801-1819). Based upon the pioneering work of Evans, Shaw, and Shoemaker, Early American Imprints online is the most comprehensive collection of full-text books and broadsides published in the colonies and early United States between 1639 and 1819.
Posted 6/16/2005
Librarian Office Hours in History Department: Catch the history librarian every Monday and Thursday between 10:00 – 11:30 a.m. in Room 937, Gladfelter Hall. Students and faculty can take this opportunity to ask questions about history research, collection development, or any other library-related topic. If for no other reason, please drop by to say hello to your history librarian!
Posted 6/7/2005
Research Guides: Over the course of the next several months look for a number of new history research guides on this site. The first will be guides to Force & Diplomacy and Modern Europe. For those interested in researching the pre-Columbian Americas, please consult Ancient Mesoamerica: A Librarian’s Research Guide.
Posted 1/17/2005
The Encyclopedia of World War II (2004, online version)
An exciting new reference work from ABC-CLIO. Also available in print at Paley Library.
Posted 1/12/2005
New Database Trial: Oxford Scholarship Online
“Oxford Scholarship Online is a groundbreaking online resource, combining OUP’s core scholarly books in four disciplines and powerful research tools into one cross-indexed, fully searchable database. With over 700 classic and newly published titles now available, OSO will be updated quarterly with an additional 200 titles added each year.” Researchers can access Bible-Carrying Christians (2002), the latest book published by the History Department’s own David Harrington Watt.
Trial scheduled to end on 11/13/2004.
Posted 11/15/2004
New Database Trial: History Compass
Offers full-text access to original survey articles published within nine online journals. History Compass also allows the history researcher to access a range of useful reference resources. It allows those involved in the “teaching and research of History to do the following: 1) Teach in a new or unfamiliar area; 2) Keep up with developments in a field and areas related to it; and 3) Ensure that students are exposed only to quality-controlled online content”.
Trial ends on 7/15/2004. Please provide feedback.
Posted 6/21/2004
Evaluating Scholarly Credentials in History
A resource for historians at Temple, this guide details specific tools for determining the quality of a scholar’s academic output. Learn the impact of a journal article or book, or perform a citation analysis on the work of a particular author (who is citing whom, when, and where). Designed primarily for those seeking tenure.
Posted 6/7/2004
Looking for convenient access to history reference material? netLibrary’sReference Center offers full-text access to over 40 reference books in American and world history. Representative titles include A Dictionary of American History, Facts About the Presidents, Encyclopedia of North American Indians, A Concise History of the Middle East, Events That Changed Great Britain Since 1689, The History of India, World Leaders of the 20th Century, and Who’s Who In Ancient Egypt.
Posted 5/12/2004
The War on the Walls is a new online exhibition of historic images taken from the George F. Tyler WWI Poster Collection. Developed by Temple University Libraries, this worthy exhibition features accompanying descriptions and quotations from primary source material, related links to photograph and document images, and powerful zooming capabilities not usually seen in other online exhibits. Jay Lockenour, Associate Professor of History at Temple, wrote one of the essays featured in The War on the Walls. Please remember to sign the guest book.
Posted 5/7/2004
New History Database Trial: Oral History Online
Bring oral history into your classroom! Alexander Street Press’s Oral History Online is the only commercial database of its kind. If you are a member of the history faculty or a history student please provide me with feedback.
Trial ends in May.
Posted 4/30/04
If you haven’t already, take a look at the recently licensed ACLS History E-Book Project. This database contains 1,000 important history books. It will grow in size and become more valuable over time. If appropriate, consider assigning your students readings from this outstanding resource.
Posted 4/30/04
–David C. Murray
I am delighted to be able to announce that the Library has added a market research reports database to our subscriptions. The database is MarketResearch.com Academic. The database is of particular importance for teaching and research in the Fox School of Business, and for advertising students in the School of Communications and Theater. However, it will also support entrepreneurial research in all consumer market categories. Access is unlimited, on campus and remotely, with IP recognition; full downloading of the reports is permitted. The database includes thousands of market research reports, across all consumer industries. Both browse and search access are available. Historical reports are retained, so they remain available for classes that need non-current market research for case studies. The database is availble from the Library Home Page, under “Find Articles via Databases”, in the alphabetical menu and under the Business databases subject menu. Click on this link for an alphabetical list of all databases. A description of the contents can be found here. While the Library has the market research reports from Datamonitor available in several databases, they are quite abbreviated. This is the first significant package of comprehensive market research that we have been able to acquire. Please let me know if you have any questions about the database. —Barbara Wright
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, 1600-2000
AnthroSource joins the list of more than 300 databases which Temple University Libraries provides to Temple faculty, students, and staff for research. Developed by the American Anthropological Association (AAA), it is “the premier online resource serving the research, teaching, and professional needs of anthropologists”. AnthroSource provides online access, with full-text, keyword, phrase, and Boolean searching, to the current issues of 15 of AAA’s peer-reviewed publications through the end of 2006; these include American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, and Medical Anthropology Quarterly. AnthroSource also serves as an electronic archive, with more than 100 years of anthropological material online, for all of AAA’s 31 journals, newsletters and bulletins. Click here to view holdings information. AnthroSource uses CrossRef to dynamically link article PDF files to other publications within and without AnthroSource. All databases are linked from the Temple University Libraries website. Please contact me if you have any questions. If you would like to have AnthroSource and other social science databases demonstrated to a class, please call me at 215-204-4581 or email me to set a date for a Library User Education class. —Gregory McKinney Subject Specialist for Anthropology Temple University Libraries Temple University
Temple University Libraries is now providing access to the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences, an “essential online resource for social and interdisciplinary research”. As with the previous print volumes, the primary focus of IBSS is on the 4 core social science subjects of anthropology, economics, politics and sociology for each of which it “provides one of the most comprehensive and specialist online databases with an impressive breadth and depth of material”. In addition, IBSS promotes the interdisciplinary and comparative nature of contemporary social science research by including selective complementary material in the related subjects of development studies, human geography, environment, gender and sexuality. The more than 2 million bibliographic records in the database encompass a variety of formats: journal articles from more than 2800 journals (including electronic) from all over the world, and from 1020 journals which are no longer being published, with records dating back as far as 1951; more than 370,000 book records; and more than 24,000 selected chapter records from multi-authored books. More than 60 languages and 100 countries are represented in IBSS, with abstracts in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian. The database is updated weekly, with 100,000 new records added annually. IBSS uses the CSA Illumina platform which provides a simple, user-friendly search interface for novice users and powerful searching options for experienced users. The interface is also used by numerous other databases, including Sociological Abstracts, PAIS International, and Criminal Justice Abstracts, to which TU Libraries provides access from their web site. All CSA databases can be searched individually or simultaneously. Although the IBSS database has no full text, it does provide links from IBSS records to the full text of articles in online journals to which Temple University Libraries subscribes. Please contact me if you have any questions. If you would like to have the IBSS database and other social science databases demonstrated to a class, please call me at 215-204-4581 or email me to set a date for a Library User Education class. All databases are linked from the Temple University Libraries Web Site. —Gregory McKinney Subject Specialist for the Social Sciences Temple University Libraries Temple University
Cambridge University Press has just released the much anticipated Historical Statistics of the United States, Millenial Edition Online. This massive update to the now 30-year-old U.S. Census Bureau title of the same name is already available in Paley Library. A 30-day trial to the online edition has been activated. Please provide feedback. Other sources of historical statistics can be found here. —David C. Murray
Please join the Libraries on Friday, April 28, at 4:30 p.m. in the lecture hall of Paley Library for the awarding of the 2nd Annual Library Prizes for Undergraduate Research. Everyone is encouraged to attend the reception.
Winners of the 2nd Annual $1,000 Library Prize for Undergraduate Research, Temple University (in alphabetical order)
Ryan Drummond
“Interstate Station Stop: A Voyage into the
American Frontier Myth”
Architecture 442
Professors John J. Pron, primary advisor
Sneha Patel, secondary advisor
Kate Wingert-Playdon
Kate Cleveland
Steven J. Horowitz
“As Boundaries Fade: The Social Contract in Cyberspace”
Philosophy 298
Professor Paul Taylor, Philosophy
Symbol Lai
“Defining Abolitionism: Antislavery Resistance among
Philadelphia’s African American Community and Women.”
History W397
Professor Elizabeth Varon, History
Honorable Mentions (in alphabetical order):
These will receive $100 bookstore gift certificates.
Denene Michele Wambach
“Crimes Against Civil Liberty: An Analysis of the United
States Government’s Involvement in Guantanamo Bay.”
Political Science 391
Professors Mark Pollack & Megan Mullin, Political Science
Victoria White
“Queer Race in Herman Melville’s Billy Budd”
English 282
Professor Suzanne Gauch, English
The Library Prize was established by the Temple University Libraries to encourage more and better use of its resources and collections, to advance information literacy, and to promote academic excellence at Temple University. Hearty congratulations to all students who submitted their applications into the