November 4th, 2009 by Daniel Goldstein
I’ve just finished reading Richard Fortey, Dry Storeroom No. 1 (Knopf, 2008), a memoir about the British Museum (Natural History) by the museum’s Trilobite expert. Fortey walks his reader through the different behind the scenes working sections of the museum and introduces the reader to the buildings, the collections, the research and most of all the people who inhabit those spaces.
In one way the book reminds me of James Herriott’s All Creatures Great and Small in that it is a collection of curious facts, stories and anecdotes about (mostly) charmingly eccentric people. But the book has a much more serious purpose as well. It contains a powerful argument for the importance of foundational scientific research–in the museum’s case, systematics–, of the collections of specimens and needed to support it, and of the people who have built up decades worth of taxonomic knowledge. In one powerful passage he states:
But I do understand the primacy of collections as a record of the world, both human and natural. There is more to collections than the golden rule about never throwing things away. There is inherent value in having people who “know their stuff.” The apparently esoteric can suddenly illuminate unsuspected areas of knowledge. those who have devoted their lives to collections–obdurate people, odd people, admirable people–actually make a museum what it is and should be.
Posted in Current Reading, History, History of Science, Uncategorized | No Comments Yet »
September 14th, 2009 by Marcia Meister
UC Davis now has access to the LexisNexis Digital Hearings Collections Part A (1824-1979). This new collection contains full-text, searchable, pdf versions of Congressional committee hearings, including both published and unpublished hearings. Access to this collection is through LexisNexis Congressional.
You must be on campus or logged in through the VPN to access this collection. When you perform a search in the above time frame, you will see at the top of the results list a new format: Hearings–Digital Collection. Click on this link to access the hearings that have been digitized. You can search this collection exclusively by using the Advanced search on LexisNexis Congressional with the Hearings box checked.
This digital collection fills in gaps in the library’s collection of older congressional hearings in print and provides easy access to the content of congressional committee testimony so valuable for understanding the background and variety of views on an issue.
The library has full-text access to U.S. Congressional Serial Set reports and documents through a different service – Readex/Newsbank.
Please contact me if you would like more information or a demonstration of the LexisNexis Digital U.S. Congressional Hearings Collection.
Posted in Government Information, History, Political Science | No Comments Yet »
August 31st, 2009 by Roberto C. Delgadillo
Ethnic minorities in Oregon are the subject of this Oregon State University Library website and the collection “consists of images that document the lives and activities of ethnic minorities in Oregon.” With its streamlined homepage, visitors can focus on the collection and how to search or browse through it. Visitors are also welcome to contribute information on any unidentified photographs, by clicking on “Contact Us”, near the bottom of the homepage. In addition, visitors can also click on the “Browse” link to see every one of the 239 items in the collection. Those users with something more specific in mind should use the “Quick Links” drop down box in the top right hand corner of the homepage. Some of the subject areas that can be searched for are “African Americans”, “Indians of North America”, “Mexican Americans”, “Political Parades and Rallies”, and “Powwows”. The “Indexes” available to search are organized into headings like “Photographer”, “Subject” and “Geographic”, and they can be found below the “Quick Links” drop down box.
Access: http://digitalcollections.library.oregonstate.edu/cdm4/client/cultural/index.html
Tags: Ethnic Minorities
Posted in African and African American Studies, American West, Asian American Studies, Chicano/a Studies, Digital Images, History, Native American Studies | No Comments Yet »
August 31st, 2009 by Roberto C. Delgadillo
Most people may have a sense of how American newspapers reported on the Civil War, but how did journalists over in London approach this four year conflict? The people at the Beck Center at Emory University, in collaboration with Sandra J. Still and Emily E. Katt, created this digital archive of the Illustrated London News during the Civil War years. The initial phase of this archive began in 1988 when Still and Katt began to collect the ten bound volumes of the Illustrated London News that they would eventually digitize with the assistance of the Beck Center. On the homepage, visitors can look over the various articles from the London News by clicking on the “Articles” area and then view the accompanying illustrative material that accompanied each article in the “Illustrations” area of the site. Visitors are also welcome to search the entire text or illustrations via a convenient search engine.
Access: http://beck.library.emory.edu/iln/index.html
Tags: American Civil War (1861-1865)
Posted in Digital Images, History | No Comments Yet »
August 28th, 2009 by David Michalski
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum encyclopedia of camps and ghettos, 1933-1945
[general editor, Geoffrey P. Megargee].
Bloomington, Ind. : Indiana University Press : [Washington, D.C.] : United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
Call no.
Shields Library Humanities/Social Sciences Reference D805.A2 U55 2009 Lib Use Only
Subject
Concentration camps — Europe — Encyclopedias.
World War, 1939-1945 — Concentration camps — Europe — Encyclopedias.
Read press release
Posted in American Studies, Cultural Studies, German, German Language and Literatures, History, Political Science, Religious Studies, Slavic Languages and Literatures, Sociology | No Comments Yet »
August 28th, 2009 by David Michalski
The Oxford encyclopedia of the modern world : [1750 to the present]
Peter N. Stearns, editor in chief.
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2008.
8 Volumes
Call no.
Shields Library Humanities/Social Sciences Reference D205 .O94 2008 Lib Use Only
Contents
Aborigines-business — Cairo-dust — Earth Day-heart disease — Hebrew language and literature-luxury — Macau-Oxfam — Pachinko-skyscrapers — Slave rebellions, American-white slavery — Wildlife-Zulu War ; index.
History, Modern — Encyclopedias.
Civilization, Modern — Encyclopedias.
From publisher’s web site…”
The breadth of knowledge offered within this multivolume set is astounding, with features spanning articles on countries, regions, and ethnic groups; themes involving social history, demography, family life, politics, economics, religion, thought, education, science and technology, and culture; events such as major wars; and extensive coverage of the United States. Detailed articles cover not only the major facts but the interpretations as well and are written for readers who are not specialists in the particular area. Enriched with over 800 halftones and 50 maps, this reference work is essential for any scholar, general reader, collector or curator interested in this rich and varied time in history…”
Posted in American Studies, Anthropology, Cultural Studies, History, Political Science, Sociology | No Comments Yet »
June 18th, 2009 by Daniel Goldstein
“The California Digital Library has licensed three huge segments of the vendor Archivision’s fantastic images of architecture and public art for all UC campuses. The Archivision Base Collection has 16,370 images “representing major Greek, Roman, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, 18th & 19th Century and Modern sites”. Archivision Module One has 5,893 images that build on the above periods and also includes Ancient and Islamic Egypt. Archivision Module Two has 6,395 images of Early Modern and 
Modern European architecture, Islamic Turkey, and more US sites. All the collections include drawings and plans that complement Scott Gilchrist’s stunning photographs. You can explore the more than 28,000 new images through ARTstor – look under “Institutional Collections”. (text courtesy UCSB’s VRC blog, the Red Dot.)
Posted in Classical Studies, Digital Images, History, Medieval & Early Modern Studies | No Comments Yet »
June 17th, 2009 by Daniel Goldstein
I’ve just finished reading Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line, historian Martha A. Sandweiss’ take on the secret marriage of Clarence King, geologist, explorer and author to Ada Copeland, a domestic worker who had been born a slave. The fact of the marriage had been public knowledge since the 1930s, but Sandweiss has built a remarkable book around around it that ties together stories of race and class, economic and social change, adventure and love. Sandweiss discovered that King “passed” as a black man when he met Copeland, and kept from her the secret of his name and his identity as one of the most celebrated men of his day. She found out only in a letter he had written her from his deathbed. The book explores the complexity of this relationship and the question of how King could pull this deception off for more than a decade. More than a microstudy, it is also an extraordinarily rich portrayal of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, and would, I think be a splendid read for an undergraduate course. Sandweiss sums it all up in the final paragraph of the book.
The story of Clarence and Ada King is about love and longing that transcend the historical bounds of time and place. . . . But it is also a peculiarly American story that could take root only in a society where one’s racial identity determined one’s legal rights and social opportunities. At every turn it exposes the deep fissures of race and class that cut through the landscape of American life. . . .
Passing Strange is in the library at Call Number: E 185.625 .S255 2009
Posted in African and African American Studies, American Studies, American West, Current Reading, History, History of Science | No Comments Yet »
June 13th, 2009 by Roberto C. Delgadillo
The Department of History and Civilization and the Library of the European University Institute, Florence, are pleased to announce the official launch of European History Primary Sources (EHPS), an index of scholarly websites that offer on-line access to primary sources on the history of Europe from Medieval and Early Modern History up to the most recent history of the European integration process. The purpose of European History Primary Sources is to provide historians with an easily searchable index of websites that offer online access to primary sources on the history of Europe. As the number of digital archives and collections on the internet continues to grow, maintaining an overview becomes increasingly difficult. EHPS strives to fill that gap by selecting the most important collections of digital primary sources for the history of Europe, either as a whole or for individual countries. EHPS is updated continuously and several collaborative features are introduced in the portal. It is very easy to stay updated on new entries and registered users can bookmark entries, leave comments to add their experiences to the descriptions on EHPS listed websites, complete EHPS abstracts with their own individual experiences and suggest new websites to be included. Since the launch of a beta version in September 2008, EHPS has already attracted significant interest from historians. In order to improve the user experience you are invited to send your feedback and suggestions so that the portal can be developed further. The portal was built and is maintained by Dr. Gerben Zaagsma (University College London) with the open source content management system Drupal.
Access: http://primary-sources.eui.eu/
Tags: Primary Sources
Posted in History, Open Access | No Comments Yet »
June 3rd, 2009 by Daniel Goldstein
There’s a new editorial, “Journals Under Threat,” appearing in 61 international history of science, technology and medicine journals. It was issued jointly by the editors of all 61 journals and should be read by anyone involved in the humanities. (Link to editorial in Medical History via PubMed Central.)
This collaborative editorial critiques an initiative from the European Science Foundation called the European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH). According to the editors, “The ERIH is an attempt to grade journals in the humanities. . . . The initiative proposes a league table of academic journals, with premier, second and third divisions. But, while the editors direct their objections to this specific initiative, their core critique challenges the underlying premise of any journal ranking scheme as it applies to the humanities.
Journals’ quality cannot be separated from their contents and their review processes. Great research may be published anywhere and in any language. Truly ground-breaking work may be more likely to appear from marginal, dissident or unexpected sources, rather than from a well-established and entrenched mainstream. Our journals are various, heterogeneous and distinct. Some are aimed at a broad, general and international readership, others are more specialized in their content and implied audience. Their scope and readership say nothing about the quality of their intellectual content.
We are in a time when academic publishing is under strain and the University of California is confronting a future of sharply reduced state support. As we, collectively and as individuals, are forced to make difficult decisions about what research to fund or not to fund, where to publish, what journals to purchase or to cancel, the temptation is strong to base our choices on seemingly objective measures like the ERIH. This editorial is a strong and timely reminder that despite their allure, such ranking systems are of questionable value. Indeed, the authors of this editorial feel so strongly that the ERIH is antithetical to interests of the research community that they have all asked to have their journals removed from its lists.
Posted in Current Reading, History, History of Science, Publishers | No Comments Yet »
