New Online Sources for History

The UNH Library is pleased to announce the addition of several more databases with enhanced full-text for both primary sources and scholarly articles. And while these are especially helpful for students and faculty working in history, they are useful for research in other fields, as well.

One new source is the American Antiquarian Society Historical Periodicals Collection (1691- 1837), which provides digital access to an unparalleled collection of American periodicals. The product of a partnership between EBSCO and the American Antiquarian Society, these collections contain over two million pages from some 1,500 periodical titles. The full text content is available through EBSCO’s Historical Digital Archive Viewer, which combines the experience of browsing and reading original sources with the convenience of keyword access, a variety of page views, note-taking capabilities, and numerous downloading options. It is also searchable through the standard EBSCO interface provided by the UNH Library. This content complements that offered by Early American Imprints (1639 – 1819) and eventually will provide full text access to American periodicals published through 1877.

In addition, the UNH Library has expanded it subscriptions to America: History and Life and Historical Abstracts to include extensive full text access. America: History and Life with with Full Text indexes sources on the history of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Coverage is from 1964 to the present from over 1,700 journals and it is updated monthly. The full text version provides full text coverage of nearly 200 journals and over 90 books. It includes abstracts for the remainder. In addition, it includes book and media reviews and citations to abstracts of dissertations as well as journal article citations. It also provides links to full text content provided to the Library through JSTOR, Project Muse, and the History Cooperative.

Historical Abstracts with Full Text indexes sources on world history from 1450 to the present (excluding the United States and Canada). Coverage is from 1955 to the present from over 2,500 journals in over 40 languages. The full text version provides full-text coverage to more than 350 journals and 130 books; it provides abstracts for the rest. In addition, it includes book and media reviews and citations to abstracts of dissertations as well as journal article citations. And like America: History and Life, it provides links to full text content provided through JSTOR, Project Muse, and the History Cooperative.

If you haven’t already, put them to the test and be sure to share this information with your students and colleagues.

New Databases at the UNH Library

As of July 1, 2010, the UNH Library has added the following databases to its online collection. Several include full-text content, audio, or video. Please take the time to check them out and share with your colleagues.

American History in Video provides the largest and richest collection of video available online for the study of American history, with 2,000 hours and more than 5,000 titles on completion. The collection allows students and researchers to analyze historical events, and their presentation over time, through commercial and governmental newsreels, archival footage, public affairs footage, and important documentaries.

Dictionary of Literary Biography features comprehensive literary biographies written by recognized literary scholars and critics, you’ll find profiles of more than 143,000 past and present authors, historians, journalists, screenwriters, publishers, and playwrights. The biographies discuss the lives and careers of the literary figures profiled, along with the critical response to their works.

Humanities Index Retro: 1907-1984 provides citations to articles covering a wide-range of humanities and interdisciplinary fields. The sources include core, scholarly English-language periodicals as well as a number of lesser-known but important specialized magazines published between 1907 and 1984. Among the subjects covered are: Archaeology, Area Studies, Art, Classical Studies, Dance, Film, Folklore, Gender Studies, History, Journalism, Linguistics, Literary and Social Criticism, Literature, Music, Performing Arts, Philosophy, Religion and Theology.

Music Online: Listening provides access to steaming audio in the following Alexander Street Press Music Collections: American Song, Classical Music Library, Contemporary World Music, Jazz Music Library, Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries. Every object in the collection is indexed for subjects, historical events, genres, people, cultural groups, places, time periods, ensembles. As a result, students and scholars can combine keyword and fielded search capabilities to frame creative and highly targeted queries.

Readers Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982 contains comprehensive indexing of the most popular general-interest periodicals published in the United States and reflects the history of 20th century America.

Theatre in Video contains more than 250 definitive performances of the world’s leading plays, together with more than 100 film documentaries, online in streaming video – more than 500 hours in all, representing hundreds of leading playwrights, actors and directors.

Trials for March 2010

It’s not official, but think of March as streaming video month?  Towards that end, the UNH Library has 4 trials running through April 6, all with video content.

1.)    Alexander Street Press – Counseling and Therapy in Video – online collection of video available for the study of social work, psychotherapy, psychology, and psychiatric counseling.

2.)    Alexander Street Press – American History in Video – collection allows students and researchers to analyze historical events, and their presentation over time, through commercial and governmental newsreels, archival footage, public affairs footage, and important documentaries.

3.) Digital Campus by Swank Video (Username: Fdemo087/ Password: Academic1) – provides streaming video from Major Hollywood and independent movie studios. The trial only gives us access to 15 minute samples from a handful of titles, giving us a chance to see how to use the service.  The real collection includes 16,000 titles.  ( You can browse through the list at: http://www.swank.com/digitalcampus/ )   If we decide to use Digital Campus, we purchase only the titles we want from the collection.

4.)    Books 24×7 Leadership Development Channel – collection of videos featuring  business authors, experts, and CEOs.

Please check them out and send us your comments!

EBSCO Providing Enhanced Content Through June

The UNH Library is pleased to announce that EBSCO is is providing the university community with a number of full-text products as a free trial through June 30, 2010. The trial includes full-text of: all content indexed by America: History & Life and Historical Abstracts; the American Antiquarian Society Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 1 and/or Series 2; and the American Theological Library Association Historical Monographs Collection,  Series I (13^th Century to 1893) and Series II (1894 to 1923).

These online Collections contain: comprehensive and rare archival content and historical primary sources; the ability to view all of the original typography, graphics and drawings; an incredible state-of-the art interface, and seamless, cross database searching through the standard EBSCO search page. You can search within specific collections by clicking on those collections from the search page. To view information about specific EBSCO databases, visit their website by clicking here.

We encourage you to take advantage of this free trial. And more importantly, let us know what you think of the database content and functionality. This will help us establish priorities for purchase in the future.

Richardson’s Rules of Order

In conjunction with the American Historical Association Meeting in January, the Cliopatria Group Blog presented its fifth annual awards for history blogging. For a roundup of all of those recognized, you can access a description of awarded here.

For me, of those receiving awards, one stood out. Heather Cox Richardson, assistant professor at UMASS-Amherst,  received an award for the best series of posts on The Historical Society blog site. Her posts are entitled Richardson’s Rules of Order, which are intended to serve as a guide for the students who sit before us in history classes. And they are priceless in their tone and directness.

So if you need help telling students  why they should study history, how to take notes in a history course, the appropriate behavior to display in class, how to read for a college history class, how they should approach discussion sections, how to write successful research papers, what plagiarism is and why it is important, and all the things that professors do when they are not standing in front of a class. It’s all in there!

So, unless you want to come up with all of this stuff yourselves, check out what Heather has to say, right here.

The BLC Virtual Catalog is Back!

The UNH Library is pleased to announce that the new Boston Library Consortium Catalog is ready to be posted live for patron use on Tuesday, January 26, 2010.

We’re using a version similar to the previous Virtual Catalog, but with a more user-friendly interface. Researchers can find books held by BLC libraries, login to request them using their 9-digit USNH ID, and pick up items at the Circulation Desk in Dimond Library or the UNH Manchester Library. If a request is unfilled, one will get an email with links to both ILLiad and Clio (UNH-M). If the request is filled, the user gets a regular hold-pickup notice when the item is available.

You can access the live catalog here:  http://www.library.unh.edu/researchtools/what.shtml

The search defaults to searching books, because the BLC rarely lends other formats. The catalog includes articles in search results, because there is no way to keep them from displaying. However, users can quickly modify their searches using facets.

Please let us know if you have questions about the new interface – the more it is used, the sooner we can work out the bugs with full support of the OCLC implementation team.

And more than anything, thank you for your patience on this migration to a new search platform.

Check Your Facebook Security Settings

If you are a Facebook user, you should be aware of changes to Facebook in December 2009. In order to compete with Twitter, Facebook now permits Google and other search engines to mine unsecured information on your pages. For that reason, you should check your security settings to make sure that your postings and data are out of reach of search engines. In addition, identity thieves have been known to use personal info that may be readily available on Facebook.
A recent article in the New York Times lists three critical settings for your to check, along with step by step instructions. it also includes links to other sources for tightening security while using Facebook.
It only takes five minutes, which could be time well spent.

JSTOR Archive Now in WorldCat.org

OCLC recently announced that WorldCat.org now includes indexing and links to full-text content in JSTOR. This means that scholars using WorldCat can search the contents of over 1000+ scholarly journals and selected monographs; this provides direct access to some 4.5 records for articles in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.

From the WorldCat home page researchers can use the search box and limit by format; in this case you might want to search only articles.  The results will list “JSTOR” if an item is available in full-text. When you click on that item for the full citation, scroll down to “Find a copy online,” click on jstor.com and it will take you straight to the article on the JSTOR site.

If you search from on campus users are authenticated automatically. From off campus, you’ll have to go through Blackboard.

WorldCat will be providing access to other full-text collections in the near future, as well as ways for researchers to customize their use of the site as a discovery tool.

For more information about the collaboration between WorldCat and JSTOR, click here.

National Archives Experience: Digital Vaults

Kennedy family at Hyannis, summer 1963.

The National Archives maintains over ten billion records which help document the American experience. The Archives has selected and digitized over 1,200 of those documents, photographs, maps, and other items and made them available through their online “Digital Vault.” The result is an exciting, interactive site that covers all periods of U.S. history up to the 21st Century. Although I find the flash graphics that play while items are loading a little distracting, this site is a great resource for teachers and students alike. (There is an html version, as well.)  In addition to an ever changing  collection of “vaults” which can introduce users to topics ranging the Age of Discovery to American women in combat roles the site provides users with educational games and assistance in finding more information on a given topic. In addition, one can collect and download images and use them to produce posters, slide shows, or their own games. Images include brief descriptions as well as subject tags so that users can move from an object to a series of related items. Their are instructions, but it’s a lot more fun to click and explore.

Hurricane Digital Memory Bank

This weekend will mark the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall east of New Orleans; it was the catalyst for immediate and long-term suffering on the part of Gulf Coast residents. To add insult to injury, Hurricane Rita struck southwestern Louisiana a few weeks later.

The Hurricane Digital Memory Bank (HDMB) is the largest online archive of Katrina and Rita materials. Over time its collections have grown to include over 25,000 items, ranging from documents and reminiscences to artwork, photographs, and video. The HDMB is the product of a partneership between the Center for History and New Media (CHNM) at George Mason University, the University of New Orleans,  and other national and Gulf Coast area partners.

In 2007, HDMB received the Award of Merit for Leadership in History Award at the American Association of State and Local History’s annual conference in Atlanta.