Find History Dissertations

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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

Factiva Database, New

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The Factiva database, a product of Dow Jones and Reuters, is now available in the Library’s package of databases. It can be found on the Library Home Page, under “Find Articles”, in the alphabetical list, in the business subject menu, and in the list of new databases. The most important component of the database is the full-text of the Wall Street Journal, but that is only one of 1500 global and local newspapers, 3200 magazines, 500 newswires, 160 media programs, and thousands of Web sites included in Factiva. The database provides company background information from Reuters for more than 42,500 companies. The database is fully searchable by source, company name, industry, region of the world, and time period, using nine different language interfaces, and content is available in more than 20 different languages. An excellent (and brief) online tutorial is available. One important note: The databases is licensed to Temple University Libraries for only SEVEN (7) simultaneous users. This is a significant addition to the Library’s resources, and an important source for business news and information. In addition, the database includes many resources in other disciplines, with numerous journals in the fields of health care, tourism and recreation, sports, the arts (music, film, dance, crafts, literature), agriculture and forestry, and the media, all with global coverage. —Barbara Wright

Retrospective Indexes Online

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Temple University Libraries has recently begun access to the retrospective files of indexes that were once mainstays of many American academic libraries: Readers’ Guide Retrospective (1890-1982) Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective (1907-1984) The Readers’ Guide is important because it indexes citations to general audience magazines before the 1980’s–which is about when most electronic databases begin their earliest coverage. There are 50 periodicals indexed from 1890 to 1899 and an increasing numbers after that. Humanities & Social Sciences Indexes are indexes of more scholarly periodicals than those covered in the Readers’ Guide–a selective number of titles chosen by boards of editors and librarians over the years that fit the criteria of being both important to their respective fields and likely to be held in most academic libraries. These indexes continue today as Humanities Abstracts and Social Sciences Abstracts, to which Temple University Libraries maintains access. In their present form, they are both useful for guiding students to limited sets of well-regarded scholarly periodicals. —Rick Lezenby

History Database Trials

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The Library is running two history-related database trials: Empire Online andDeclassified 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 originally 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.

New Resources in Black Studies, Agriculture, and Music

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More new resources:

— International Index to Black Periodicals (IIBP) IIBP Full Text includes current and retrospective bibliographic citations and abstracts from scholarly journals and newsletters from the United States, Africa, and the Caribbean, and full-text coverage of core Black Studies periodicals. Coverage is international in scope and multidisciplinary–spanning cultural, economic, historical, religious, social, and political issues of vital importance to the Black Studies discipline.

— AGRICOLA PlusTextThe largest online source of key agricultural journals AGRICOLA Plus (AGRICultural OnLine Access) is an extensive bibliographic database of citations to the agricultural literature created by the U.S. National Agricultural Library. It is the definitive agricultural database, providing abstracts and indexing, and full text for hundreds of resources with coverage beginning 1970. The citations describe publications and resources encompassing all aspects of agriculture and allied disciplines. ProQuest Agriculture Journals covers a wide range of agriculture-related topics, such as:

  • Animal and veterinary sciences
  • Plant sciences
  • Forestry
  • Aquaculture and fisheries
  • Farming and farming systems
  • Agricultural economics
  • Food and human nutrition

— RISM: Répertoire International des Sources Musicales = International Inventory of Musical Sources “The International Inventory of Musical Sources (RISM) is an international, non-profit joint venture which aims to comprehensively document the world’s musical sources of manuscripts or printed music, works on music theory and libretti stored in libraries, archives, monasteries, schools and private collections. The organization, founded in Paris in 1952, is the largest and the only global operation that registers written musical sources. RISM documents what exists and where it is stored.” “RISM series A/II: “Music manuscripts after 1600″ is the most comprehensive annotated index and guide to music manuscripts produced after 1600. Fifty years of careful research and joint initiatives sponsored by RISM brings together among others more than 551,000 records by over 19,500 composers into one database which can be easily searched. The manuscripts are found in over 750 libraries and archives in 31 countries…”

— African American Biographical Database The African American Biographical Database (AABD) brings together in one resource the biographies of thousands of African Americans, many not to be found in any other reference source. These biographical sketches have been carefully assembled from biographical dictionaries and other sources. The collection contains extended narratives of African American activists, business people, former slaves, performing artists, educators, lawyers, physicians, writers, church leaders, homemakers, religious workers, government workers, athletes, farmers, scientists, factory workers, and more–both the famous and the everyday person.

Coffee with the Cops Feb. 15th at 8 a.m.

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You are invited to drop in for an early morning cup of coffee on Wednesday, February 15th, starting at 8 a.m. Provided by Campus Safety Services, the free coffee will be located on the first floor of Paley between the elevators and the walkway to Tuttleman. Captain Eileen Bradley will be on hand to chat and answer questions. — Carol Lang

Digital Sanborn Maps

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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.

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