Encyclopedia of Philosophy available online

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Great News! We now have the Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2nd edition online as part of the Gale Virtual Reference Library.

Containing over 450 new articles and over 1000 biographical entries, this is an update of the Encyclopedia of Philosophy edited by Edwards nearly 40 years ago. In some cases 1st edition entries have been simply republished, like H.B. Acton’s entry on “Idealism”. In other cases entries have been entirely rewritten and in others the 1st edition entries have been supplemented by additional entries. As an example of the latter, the 1st edition entry on John Dewey remains, but there is a new article entitled “Dewey, John [Addendum]”. Among the many topics covered are African, Islamic, Jewish, Russian, Chinese, and Buddhist philosophies; bioethics and biomedical ethics; art and aesthetics; epistemology; metaphysics; peace and war; social and political philosophy; the Holocaust; feminist thought; and much more. This is a great place to begin your research on individual philosophers or a specific topic area. The articles on individuals usually have bibliographies that include primary and secondary sources. You can do a Basic Search which searches the article record and full-text, or you can limit your search in different ways using the Advanced Search.

–Fred Rowland

Ancient Maya Emerge From Shadows of Prehistory

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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

Film Indexes Online

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Temple University Libraries is pleased to bring you authoritative information on 200,000 motion pictures via our subscription to Film Indexes Online.

Film Indexes Online provides combined access to the distinguished British Film Institute Film Index International and the unparalleled American Film Institute AFI Catalog in one easy to use database. You can find the link to Film Indexes Online on our new databases page.

Film Index International is a filmography covering around 118,000 films and 685,000 personalities from over 170 countries, detailing directors, full cast and crew lists, credits, release and production information, biographical information, and lists of awards. All eras of film-making are covered. It also includes searchable plot summaries and references to film journals are cited in many of the entries.
The AFI Catalog is the national filmography, providing detailed information on American feature films including full production and cast information as well as extensive plot summaries. The catalog covers about 46,000 American films from 1893-1958 and 1961-1970. More than 17,500 entries cover the early years of American film from 1893 to 1910.

For many years the library provided access to Film Index International via CD ROMs accessible only from within Paley library, and to the print volumes of the AFI Catalog in the Paley reference collection. This new online subscription allows access to both resources from any location at any time via the library website. The combined search empowers you to perform the most comprehensive research using the most authoritative information. This resource is a welcome alternative and compliment to the often incomplete and inaccurate filmographies on the free web. The keyword searches for plots and themes, for example, are far more effective in Film Indexes Online than those in the Internet Movie Database. It will be a valuable resource across the all of the disciplines that have film as a focus of research or that use the medium as a teaching tool.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions about this resource.

—Jenifer Lee Baldwin

Job Market for Historians “Hot”

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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

Oxford Reference Online

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Oxford Reference Online Premium Collection provides the Temple community with access to a first-class collection of reference sources. Reference sources–such as specialized dictionaries and encyclopedias– ideally serve as repositories for the most accepted facts and opinions about a topic, and also serve through references as springboards to further research. The best sources are written by experts and are very carefully edited. This is exactly what we get from the Oxford University Press, the publishers of the sources and this service.

The range of the collection is impressive. It contains over 100 dictionary, language reference, and subject reference works published by Oxford University Press. (See a list) It is a fully-indexed, cross-searchable database of these books, giving Temple unprecedented access to a comprehensive information resource.

The Collection contains titles from the Oxford Companions Series that provide coverage of specialized areas, for instance: The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization , The Oxford Companion to the Body, or The Oxford Companion to English Literature. The Collection also has a growing collection of Maps and Illustrations and subject Timelines beginning in the Twentieth Century, which links to entries and articles in the sources. All entries and articles include details about how to cite them.

Temple Libraries have long been buyers of almost all of these highly-regarded sources in print. Bringing them together online in a cross-searchable platform extends not only the physical range of the sources to anywhere a Temple person might have access to a computer–but also extends the range of the sources in print and online by suggesting, in response to searches on keywords, areas and titles one might not think of looking in.

Rick Lezenby
Paley Library Reference Librarian

Biblical Archaeology Society Archive

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The library has recently subscribed to the Biblical Archaeology Society (BAS) Archive.

This resource is aimed primarily at undergraduate students but also relevant for interested faculty and graduate students. It consists of the contents of the three popular magazines from the Biblical Archaeology Society (Biblical Archaeology Review; Bible Review; and Archaeology Odyssey), five online books (Ancient Israel; Aspects of Monotheism; Feminist Approaches to the Bible; The Rise of Ancient Israel; and The Search for Jesus), and over 10,000 downloadable images that can be freely used in slideshows and powerpoint presentations. Archaeology Odyssey, covering classical archaeology, is the only publication in this collection that does not address biblical themes. Currently, the coverage goes from the start of each magazine through December 2003. Subscription year 2004 will be added within a few months. The founder and editor-in-chief of the Biblical Archaeology Society, Hershel Shanks, is widely credited with bringing the biblical world to a popular audience. The magazines feature many scholars and authorities in their respective fields. This is a good place to go for overviews of current biblical and classical archaeological issues and discoveries and for articles on the ancient Near East and Mediterranean worlds. Check it out today.

–Fred Rowland

More than a Thousand New E-Journals

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All Elsevier, Blackwell, Cambridge journals now available online!

Temple University Libraries is pleased to announce online access to virtually the entire journal collections of three major publishers: Elsevier, Blackwell Publishing, and Cambridge University Press. In collaboration with the Health Sciences Libraries, the Temple Libraries have licensed access to more than 1500 new titles. These new collections are especially strong in the sciences, technology, and medicine; offer substantive collections in the social sciences; and include a number of important titles in the humanities. A total of 750 Blackwell Publishing journals are now available via the Blackwell-Synergy platform, and 200 Cambridge University Press titles are available via Cambridge Journals Online. Temple has also entered into agreement to provide 1500 Elsevier online journals, almost the entire Elsevier ScienceDirect collection, on a trial basis until the end of 2007.

ScienceDirect

Temple University has reached an agreement with Elsevier to provide access to nearly all of the ScienceDirect journal titles–with the exception of certain society publications–on a trial basis until the end of 2007. ScienceDirect journal content focuses on the scientific, technical, and medical fields but includes a significant number of titles in the social sciences as well. We previously enjoyed access to about 550 titles on ScienceDirect. Approximately 950 additional titles will now be available to Temple University researchers. Coverage extends back to 1995. See a list of titles here. Titles showing a green icon have online content available to Temple. We will evaluate the titles over the next two years to decide on permanent subscriptions after 2007.

Blackwell-Synergy

Temple University now has online access to all journals published by Blackwell Publishing (with a few exceptions) via the Blackwell-Synergy platform. Blackwell’s journal collection includes scientific, technical, medical, social sciences, and humanities titles. A total of approximately 750 titles, with access extending back to 1997, are now online. Prior to this, Temple had subscriptions to approximately 260 Blackwell titles, not all of which were online. See a list of available titles.

Cambridge Journals Online

Temple University now has access to all online journals from Cambridge University Press via Cambridge Journals Online. Cambridge journals are in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. See a list of titles here. There are a total of about 200 journal titles, only 80 to which we previously had access. New titles generally extend back to 2003. For titles to which we previously subscribed our access may extend back farther.

To access these important new resources, use Journal Finder to locate individual titles, or select the resource: ScienceDirect, Blackwell-Synergy, or Cambridge Journals Online from our list of full-text databases on the Library website.

Please feel free to contact me or Ask A Librarian about questions or for assistance with these resources.

Gretchen Sneff
Head, Engineering & Science Libraries

African-American Newspapers Expanded

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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

New Reserve Policy

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Faculty often require students to read specific books and journal articles for class. The easiest way to ensure that all students have equal access to the required material is to use Library Reserves. Required books can still be placed on physical reserve in Access Services at the Circulation Desk in Tuttleman. As indicated below, journal articles will now be made available through e-reserves only. Visit this page for more information about e-reserves and to fill out the online form. Students can access articles here. The following is a message from Penelope Myers, Head of Access Services: “Effective Spring 2006 semester Paley reserves will supply articles as e-reserves only. We will have backups of all articles on CD should Diamond ever go down. This is being done as we anticipate that so many students will be wanting to access materials remotely rather than coming into Paley/Tuttleman to check out photocopies, and also with the advent of e-z proxy remote access issues having largely disappeared.” –David C. Murray

New Year: New Databases and E-Books

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More new electronic resources for the New Year:

  • Biblical Archaeology Society Archive: The BAS Archive contains the editorial content of each issue of the bimonthly magazines Biblical Archaeology Review (1975-2003), Bible Review (1985-2003) and Archaeology Odyssey (1998-2003), as well as five books published by the Biblical Archaeology Society.
  • World Development Indicators: Provides direct access to more than 600 development indicators (full list of indicators), with time series for 208 countries and 18 country groups from 1960 onward.
  • Oxford Digital Reference Shelf : 10 more e-books have been added to this collection. They are individually searchable or accessible through our new Oxford Reference Online service.
    • Encyclopedia of Evolution
    • Encyclopedia of Global Change
    • Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment
    • Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages
    • Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium
    • Oxford Dictionary of the Renaissance
    • Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature
    • Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt
    • Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History
    • Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation
  • Smithsonian Global Sound: Includes the published recordings owned by the non-profit Smithsonian Folkways Recordings label and the archival audio collections of Folkways Records, Cook, Dyer-Bennet, Fast Folk, Monitor, Paredon and other labels. It also includes music recorded around the African continent by Dr. Hugh Tracey for the International Library of African Music (ILAM) at Rhodes University as well as material collected by recordists on the South Asian subcontinent from the Archive Research Centre for Ethnomusicology (ARCE), sponsored by the American Institute for Indian Studies. Recordings can be streamed (requires Macromedia Flash Player and Windows Media Player [PC] or Macromedia Flash Player [Mac]) at either 22kbps (default) or 64kbps. Users can create their own playlists after free registration.
  • Encyclopedia of African American Society: This two-volume reference work details the ways in which the tenets and foundations of African American culture have given rise to today’s society. Approaching the field from a “street level” perspective, these two volumes cover topics such as rap music, sports, television, cinema, racism, religion, and literature, among others.
  • Worldmark Encyclopedia of Religious Practices: Worldmark Encyclopedia of Religious Practices presents detailed information on current religious practices around the world, with an emphasis on how religion impacts the daily lives of its followers. Entries cover everything from central doctrines and sacred texts to dietary customs and significant holidays. The three-volume set explores 13 major religions, plus 24 sects, and spans Asia and Oceania, Europe, the Americas, Africa, and the Middle East. Also includes 300 illustrations, belief tables showing how individual religions are unique and what they share with other religions, a glossary, maps, a cumulative index, and much more.

All these items are listed and linked on our new New Electronic Resources page.