Two Historical Databases Added!

Thanks in large part to an FIS grant awarded to Christopher Hagerman (History) and Lanya Lamouria (English), we have been able to purchase these two new databases:

19th Century British Library Newspapers

The 19th Century British Library Newspapers collection contains full runs of 48 newspapers (title list: http://gale.cengage.com/tlist/bl_ncncp.html) specially selected by the British Library to best represent nineteenth century Britain. This new collection includes national and regional newspapers, as well as those from both established country or university towns and the new industrial powerhouses of the manufacturing Midlands, as well as Scotland, Ireland and Wales. Special attention was paid to include newspapers that helped lead particular political or social movements such as Reform, Chartism, and Home Rule. The penny papers aimed at the working and clerical classes are also present in the collection.

Newspaper images can be magnified for easier reading or reduced for on screen navigation. You can save and print article images, create persistent links and email them to others. When trying to print entire newspaper pages, you will need to tile them to make them legible given the differing paper size between newsprint and common office paper sizes.

19th Century UK Periodicals - New Readerships: Women’s, Children’s, Humour, and Leisure/Sports

"19th Century UK Periodicals is a database using content from the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, and other sources, to make available digitised versions of key 19th Century UK Periodicals. There are five series and each series comprises 1.2 million pages. By making this collection of 19th Century periodicals available and turning it into a high-resolution digital format with searchable images, this database presents online access to a key set of primary sources for the study of 19th century history. For the 96 periodicals selected, every front page, editorial, article, poem, recipe, advertisement and classified ad that appeared within their pages for the time period available will be easily accessible from what is a virtual chronicle of history for this period. Users of the database will be able to search every word on every page."

Database Trial - Aluka Digital Library of African Culture

Aluka is a not-for-profit collaboration of educational and cultural institutions with a mission to build a collection of scholarly materials from and about Africa.

The Aluka Digital Library includes a wide variety of high-quality scholarly materials contributed by Aluka’s partners, ranging from archival documents, periodicals, books, reports, manuscripts, and reference works, to three-dimensional models, maps, oral histories, plant specimens, photographs, and slides. The African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes database links high-quality visual, contextual, and spatial documentation. The collection includes photographs, 3D models, GIS data, site plans, aerial and satellite photography, images of African rock art, excavation reports, manuscripts, travelers accounts, historical and antiquarian maps, books, articles, and other scholarly research. Highlighted collections include African Plants, African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes, and Struggles for Freedom in Southern Africa. By aggregating these materials online, the Aluka collections link materials that are widely dispersed and difficult to access, opening up new opportunities for research and teaching. One of Aluka’s primary objectives is to provide African scholars and students with access to scholarly materials originally from Africa, but now out of their reach.

For more information about Aluka or to use the collection, please go to www.aluka.org.

Albion College students and faculty can take advantage of free access to Aluka through December 31, 2007.

Database Trial - Black Studies Center

Black Studies Center is a leading tool that supports research, teaching, and learning in Black Studies, history, literature, political science, sociology, philosophy, and religion.

The Black Studies Center is a digital collection of primary and secondary sources that record and illuminate the Black experience, from ancient Africa through modern times. At its core is Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience™, a series of topical studies that help define the development of Black Studies as an academic field. The Black Studies Center gateway makes it cross-searchable with the historical backfiles of The Chicago Defender, as well as current scholarly journals from International Index to Black Periodicals—Full Text™.

The password is: actrial

The trial ends October 31, 2007.

The Library Adds New Databases!

Through the Library’s affiliation with the Michigan Electronic Library (MeL), we now have access to a number of new online resources, including:

CAMIO: Catalog of Art Images Online - CAMIO is a premiere resource of works of art from around the world contributed and described by leading museums. Showcasing a wide range of fine and decorative art, CAMIO provides high-quality art images for education, research and enjoyment. All content is rights-cleared for educational use. Every work in CAMIO is represented by at least one high-resolution image and a description. Many have additional views of the work, sound, video and curatorial notes.

CINAHL Basic – CINAHL provides indexing for 2,931 journals with 1,000,000 records dating back to 1981, covering nursing, biomedicine, health sciences librarianship, complementary medicine, consumer health and 17 allied health disciplines. In addition, this database offers indexing to health care books, nursing dissertations, selected conference proceedings, standards of practice, educational software, audiovisuals and book chapters. Searchable cited references for more than 1,200 journals are also included. Full text material includes 70 journals plus legal cases, clinical innovations, critical paths, drug records, research instruments and clinical trials.

Educator’s Reference Complete - Educator's Reference Complete is a selection of more than 450 full-text academic journals, hundreds of full-text reports, and many premier reference sources. Included content focuses on educational principles, child development and psychology, and best practices in education.

HeritageQuest - Genealogy and local history database which includes all of the images, and extensive indexing, from the 1790 - 1930 U.S. federal censuses. It offers more than 22,000 digitized book titles, including early family histories and local histories. Additionally, there are more than 250 primary-source documents such as tax lists, city directories, probate records and more. It also includes Periodical Source Index (PERSI), Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty Land Warrant Application Files, the Freedman’s Bank Records, and the U.S. Serial Set Private Relief Actions, Memorials and Petitions. (NOTE: This database replaces Ancestry Plus).

Informe’ - Spanish language journal articles database. Most articles are available in full text. “Una colección de revistas hispánicas con textos completos. Abarca negocios, salud, tecnología, cultura, temas de actualidad y otras materias.” (NOTE: Replaces ClasePeriodica.)

Hand Press Book - The Hand Press Book Database is a unique and growing catalog of European printing in the early modern era or “hand-press period” (15th century to the 1830s). This resource integrates descriptive records for major European national, university and research library holdings. It is especially valuable for research in intellectual history, social history and transmission of thought—as well as the history of printing and the history of the book.

HSTM: History of Science, Technology & Medicine - HSTM integrates four premier tools (Isis Current Bibliography of the History of Science, Current Bibliography in the History of Technology, Bibliografia Italiana di Storia della Scienza and citations from the Wellcome Library) to create an international bibliography for the history of science, technology and medicine. It reflects the influence of these fields on society and culture from prehistory to the present and offers outstanding value for interdisciplinary research. Database records describe journal articles, conference proceedings, books, book reviews and dissertations in all scientific disciplines and related fields. Citations reflect the contents of nearly 9,500 journals.

NoveList - Readers’ advisor resource. Helps to find fiction books. Search by author, title, series, plots, or even books like the one you just finished. Browse lists of award winners, lists of genres, and lists based on age. Create and save lists of your own favorites. Find book discussion guides and more.

SCIPIO: Art and Rare Book Sales Catalogs - This database provides bibliographic access to auction sales catalogs from all major North American and European auction houses as well as private sales—valuable sources of information on the provenance of art objects and rare books, the history of collection, and contemporary and historical market trends.

SIRS Renaissance - Provides dynamic information on the following topics: architecture and design, culture, literature, multimedia, music, performing arts, philosophy and religion, and visual arts. Full-text articles are selected from more than 1,200 domestic and international publications. Many articles are accompanied by full-color images, including art reproductions, photographs, and illustrations.

Links for all of these resources can also be found on the Library's Online Databases page.

EndNote Classes in the Library

We will be presenting several Introduction to EndNote classes in the Library (Mudd 210) for interested students, faculty and staff. The classes will be held:

Wednesday, September 26 from noon - 1:00 p.m.
Thursday, September 27 from noon - 1:00 p.m.
Tuesday, Oct. 2 from 11:00 a.m. - noon

If you are interested in attending one of these sessions, please email Mike Van Houten or call ext. 0293.

The EndNote software can be loaded on any College-owned computer, and allows you to:

- Maintain a database of references to books, journal articles, websites, and other resources;
- Download complete bibliographic references from online databases and electronic journals;
- Insert references from EndNote into word-processed documents with the click of a mouse;
- Generate a bibliography/literature cited section in the correct style (MLA, APA, etc.), whether for a class assignment or for publication in a journal. EndNote 10 currently supports more than 1,000 bibliographic and journal-specific styles.

New Link for the Bibliography of the History of Art

As planned, the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA) database has now been moved from RLG/Eureka to the OCLC FirstSearch platform. Click here to access to BHA at its new address.

You can also find this link on the Library's Online Databases page.

New Special Collections Exhibit - 70 Years of Friendship: Philip C. Curtis, '30, and Russell B. Babcock, '27

Mudd Learning Center Level 3, Special Collections
September 4-December 7, 2007

In honor of the Bobbitt Visual Arts Center exhibition Philip C. Curtis, '30: Sound and Silence, Special Collections has put together an exhibit featuring some of the archival materials used by the students in art history professor Bille Wickre's fall 2006 American Surrealism seminar. Wickre's students performed research in the Russell Babcock Collection of the College Archives, in addition to collections held by the Philip C. Curtis Trust and the Curtis family, to write numerous essays for the exhibition's accompanying catalogue.

The materials in "70 Years of Friendship" attempt to convey the bond between artist Philip C. Curtis and Russell Babcock, one of Curtis' closest friends and greatest supporters, while documenting their individual accomplishments as well. Items in the exhibit include publications, photographs, artifacts, correspondence and images of Curtis' art that span the seven decades of their relationship, including their time together at Albion College.

The exhibit is available during library hours in the display cases outside of Special Collections on the third floor of the Mudd Learning Center for the fall 2007 semester. We hope that you will stop by and take a look!

Questions? Contact the Archivist and Special Collections Librarian, Jennie Thomas at archives@albion.edu or 517/629-0487.