Encyclopedia of Anthropology

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

Literature Resource Center

The Library is pleased to announce the addition of Literature Resource Center (LRC) to its collection of databases.

A superb resource for the undergraduate literary scholar, LRC is a complete reference literature database, providing access to not only biographical, bibliographical, and contextual information on over 127,000 literary figures from all time periods in every literary genre, but also a rich collection of full-text critical analyses spanning diverse literary movements.

Integrating Gale Group’s three core literary databases — Contemporary Authors Online, Dictionary of Literary Biography, and Contemporary Literary Criticism Select — LRC also comprises critical material from known literary resources, such as Children’s Literature Review, Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism, Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Poetry Criticism, Short Story Criticism, and Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism — in addition to over 200 prominent literary journals.

Searching is seamless. The “Authors By Type” search mode permits the most creative searches, allowing users to search by author ethnicity or nationality, genre, literary movement, or time period. Themes may also be searched, ranging in topics from American identity and dystopia to rites of passage and tragic heroes.

Because of its comprehensive biographical and contextual information, LRC is a truly valuable literary resource and complements well with the Library’s subscription to MLA International Bibliography, the premiere bibliographic database for researching literature and language.

Please feel free to contact me for further information about the resource.

Kristina DeVoe

Importing into RefWorks from Diamond

I was asked about importing from Diamond, our library catalog, to RefWorks. It can be a little tricky, so I offer a few abbreviated steps:

1) When you’re ready to export the records from Diamond, you should select “End-Note/RefWorks” as the format from the list at the left.

2) On the right select “Local Disk.”

3) Click “Submit” and save the file to an easily accessible location.

4) Log-in to RefWorks.

5) From the “References” menu at the left of the RefWorks menu bar, select “Import”.

6) Select “EndNote View” as the “Import Filter/Data Source” and the “Database”.

7) If you want all the imported references to go into a specific folder you can select it next under “Import References into.”

8) Under “Import Data from the Following Text File” click on “Browse” and then find the file you just exported (probably called “export.txt”) and click “OK”.

9) Click “Import” at the bottom.

10) Your records should then be imported. You can view them by clicking on the “Recently Imported” folder link.

If you have any question, ask.

Derik A Badman

Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)

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.

David C.Murray

Library Staff Awards Presented

Staff Recognition Awards were presented to three library staff members on June 1st during a special Temple Libraries luncheon hosted by Larry Alford, Vice Provost for Libraries.

Award recipients were Maryann Collins, Confidential Secretary, Law Library; Jeanette DiPietrantonio, Clerk, Ambler Library; and John Goodheart, Evening Supervisor, Health Sciences Center Libraries. During the luncheon, the following library staff members of Temple’s 20 Year Club were also recognized.

New inductees: Theresa Davis, Special Collections, Paley Library Penelope Myers, Access Services, Paley Library Joanne D. Rempfer, Ambler Library Reached 35 years of service: David Dillard, Reference & Instructional Services, Paley Library Reached 30 years of service: Jeanette A. Dipietrantoni, Ambler Library Stephen E. Pavlo, Law Library William H. Stout, Access Services/Interlibrary Loan, Paley Library.

Maryann-Law.jpg Maryann Collins, Law Library, receives her award from Larry Reilly, Head of Reference at the Law Library Jeanette-PaleyLibs.jpg Jeanette DiPietrantonio, Ambler Library, receives her award from Larry Alford, Vice Provost for Libraries John-HSC.jpg John Goodheart, Health Sciences Center Libraries, receives his award from Mark-Allen Taylor, Director of the Health Sciences Center Libraries

— Carol Lang

The Chron on Refworks

The latest issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education (Volume 52 Issue 40 Page A29) has an article titled “Toss Out the Index Cards” (free online) on bibliographic management software such as EndNote and RefWorks. The University has a license for RefWorks that allows free use by students, staff, and faculty. Follow the link and sign up to give the software a try. As an addition to the article I will note that many of the library’s article databases (including all EBSCO and OVID products) have the ability to automatically export citations into RefWorks with a simple click of the mouse (and a quick log-in to your account). If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. —Derik A Badman

L’Annee philologique arrives!!

At long last, the library has access to L’Annee philologique, the most important database for the study of the ancient Greco-Roman world. L’Annee reflects the international and multidisciplinary nature of classical studies, indexing books, articles, and conference papers from around the world in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and other languages. (You will often find that the abstract to an article is written in a different language than the article itself.) Whether you’re searching for information on the Presocratics, the Homeric Hymns, the archaeological remains of Pompeii, or ancient science and technology, you will find highly relevant and dependable sources here.

L’Annee philologique online is based on the print index of the same name that has been a standard for years among classics scholars. Current online coverage is from print volume 30 (1959) to volume 74 (2003). You can search by Modern Author, Ancient Author, Full Text, Subjects and disciplines, Date, and other criteria. In the case of “Full Text”, this does not mean that you can search the entire contents of articles–this is NOT a full text database. Rather, it means that you can search the entire contents of the article records. This is unusual terminology for users in the United States and reflects L’annee’s European origin.

There are some other important features that might be surprising to non-classicist American users. For the Ancient Author search, you need to input the latinized version of a name, so for instance “liuius”, not “livy”. To search for “livy”, do the Full Text search. Complex searches are also handled differently. You have to build up your search step by step. To combine a Modern Author search with, say, a Subject search, you have to first do the author search, then the subject search, and finally combine the two searches using the boolean operator AND. Once you’ve done all the simple searches describing your topic (and you can have many), the combining and recombining of search sets–using AND, OR, and NOT–is made easy and efficient.

Unfortunately, the Help pages to this database are sparse. Below I’ve listed a bunch of academic library tutorials that I found useful:

–Fred Rowland

Biblical and Other Ancient Manuscripts Online

I was recently trying to track down online images of ancient Christian and Jewish manuscripts. I found quite a few imaging projects that are making ancient Mediterranean manuscripts more and more available to the scholar and layperson. The briefly annotated list below highlights some of the more interesting sites I ran across. (By the way, if anyone knows of any other good sites with images of ancient manuscripts, please let me know. Thanks.)

  • APIS: Advanced Papyrological Information System–“APIS is a collections-based repository hosting information about and images of papyrological materials (e.g. papyri, ostraca, wood tablets, etc) located in collections around the world.” Browse and search the database. Note:Search system gives you the option to “Show records w/images first”. The five collections immediately below are included in APIS.
  • Center for the Tebtunis Papyri–UC Berkley collection from the town of Tebtunis Egypt. “…largest collection of papyrus texts in the Americas.” For images click on “The Collection” and “On-Line Exhibits” on the left-hand side of the page.
    Image Content: from 3rd century BC to 3rd century AD; administrative, legal, business, and religious documents; literary fragments (Homer, Xenophon, Pinder, Euripides)
  • Duke Papyrus Archive–Very easy site to navigate. Search or browse by topic or language. Catalog records included with each image.
    Image Content: “1400 papyri from ancient Egypt.” Includes Old Testament (used by christians), New Testament, and other early Christian manuscripts
  • Princeton University Library Papyrus Homepage–Scroll down the page and click on “Digital Images of Selected Princeton Papyri”.
    Image Content: administrative, religious, literary manuscripts in Greek (including New Testament), Latin, Egyptian, Coptic, Arabic
  • University of Michigan Papyrus Collection–Well-designed site with lots of information on ancient writing. To see images click on “Exhibits” or “APIS” in menu bar at top..
    Image Content: Greek (including New Testament) and Latin papyri
  • Yale Papyrus Collection–Search Yale’s Papyrus Collection Database to view images.
    Image Content: many genres, many languages, many locations, many time periods
  • Biblical Manuscripts Project–Purpose is to make “high quality images and transcriptions of important Bible manuscripts and early printed editions freely available through the Internet.” Scroll down the page for descriptions and links to these excellent images.
    Image Content: New Testament, Old Testament, Hebrew Scriptures
  • Catalogue of New Testament Papyri and Codices 2nd–10th Centuries–no images on this site but lots of links and a nice overview of major collections of New Testament manuscripts.
  • Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts
    Image Content:very sharp images of New Testament manuscripts.
  • Herculaneum Papyri–Search this database of papyri found at Herculaneum, Italy.
    Image Content: Greek literary and philosophical documents
  • University of Manchester Image Collections–Amazing images, select “Rylands Genizah” for Hebrew documents or “Rylands Papyri” for Egyptian, Coptic, Arabic, Greek fragments (including classical authors and New Testament). You must turn off your popup blocker.
  • New Testament Gateway On-Line Images–Very nice list of links to images on other web sites. Try the “Codex W: Images of Mark” link for very readable images of a New Testament manuscript.
  • Online Database of New Testament Manuscripts–Search this database for location and description of New Testament manuscripts held in museums and libraries around the world. This database does NOT contain any images.
  • Oxyrhynchus Papyri–Search or browse this database of papyri found at Oxyrhynchus, Egypt.
    Image Content: from 1st century BC to 6th century AD, Greek papyri,wide range of genres including classical authors and New Testament
  • West Semitic Research Project–Project at USC. Click on the “Educational Site” link to go to images.
    Image Content: ancient religious documents including pages from Leningrad Codex and Dead Sea Scrolls
  • Fred Rowland

    New Market Research Reports Database

    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

    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 1849-1900The Capital and the Bay: Narratives of Washington and the Chesapeake Bay Region, ca. 1600-1925Dance Manuals 1490-1900Nineteenth-Century Books 1850-1877 (see Making of America, above);Puerto Rico Books & Pamphlets 1831-1929Sunday School Books 1815-1865;Traveling in America 1750-1920Upper 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

    David C. Murray