Leddy Library News

Leddy Library has a trial of the new 19th-century British Library Newspapers database.  Users must be on campus to access this trial.  The most comprehensive range of national, regional and local newspapers in 19th century Britain ever made available in a digital collection, 19th Century British Library Newspapers Part I and Part II provide a range of publications to reflect the social, political and cultural events of the times.Taken directly from the extensive holdings of the British Library, the selected publications provide coverage of well-known historic events, cultural icons, sporting events, the arts, culture and other national pastimes. At a time when newspapers were emerging as a prerequisite medium of commercially-minded societies and major cities, their pages — from articles to advertisements — provide researchers with unique, first-hand perspective.

Users can search across a large range of titles, not typically available at any one institution, and can perform full-text searches, use hit-term highlighting and view specific article types

Please note this trial is only available on campus and until June 12, 2012.  Please let us know (LeddyRef AT uwindsor.ca) what you think about 19th Century British Library Newspapers 

Read about Dr Brian Owens’ work to collect materials in anticipation of the bicentennial of the War of 1812. He has a surprising take on the big three legends of the conflict – General Isaac Brock, Chief Tecumseh, and Laura Secord. Click here to read about it in the Daily News.

Leddy Library currently has two active trials of historical resources.  These trials are available only for the specified periods and are available only on campus.  Please let us know if you have any feedback on these trials.

Welcome to British Records on the Atlantic World, 1700-1900 from Microform Academic Publishers (available here until May 2, 2012)

This series brings together a wealth of collections spanning two centuries of Britain’s colonisation, commercial, missionary and even literary relations with Africa and the Americas. Alongside the records of Liverpool merchants involved in the infamous Triangular Trade, there are those of slave plantation owners, of early Anglican missionaries, of naval and customs officials, and of a group of socialists from Lancashire, who maintained a lengthy correspondence over many years with the father of American poetry.

American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 1-5: (Available here until June 1, 2012)

This collection includes digitized images of American magazines and journals never before available outside the walls of the AAS, and is not available for acquisition in digital form from any other source. More than 7,600 periodicals comprised of over seven million pages are available, eclipsing all other online resources in this area.

EXAM HOURS
Thursday April 5 to Thursday April 19

Thursday, April 5 at 8am to Friday, April 13 at 2am (24hrs)
Saturday, April 14: 10am to 2am
Sunday, April 15 at 10am to Thursday, April 19 at midnight (24hrs)

from Leddy Hours

We’d like to welcome David Johnston to the Leddy Library as our new Information Services Librarian.

Dave earned his Master of Library and Information Science from the University of Western Ontario in 2011. He recently completed a contract position as Public Services Librarian at Mount Allison University.

Welcome!

Five Books about Book History: Suggested by Dr. Leslie Howsam

The “book” in “book history” is an umbrella term for everything from marks on stone, to handwriting on parchment, to printed books and magazines, to new digital media. Book history looks at how written communication has been composed, mediated, and received, how it has survived, and how it changes over time. Novelists, historians, librarians and literary critics have written about it, and I’ve chosen five of their books to show you how interesting it can be.

Dr. Leslie Howsam is University Professor in the Department of History at Uwindsor, where she teaches British history and the history of the book. Dr. Howsam is the author or editor of six books, including Old Books and New Histories: an orientation to the study of book and print culture (2006) and Past into Print: the publishing of history in Britain 1850-1950 (2009). She is currently president of SHARP, the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing.

People of The Book: A Novel, by Geraldine Brooks (Viking Press, 2008)

The heroine of this novel is a rare-book expert who is asked to examine a rare and beautiful work called the Sarajevo Haggadah. The story traces and (because it’s fiction) embellishes the true story of an extraordinary book, but the details of restoration and conservation are remarkably accurate.  The clues include an insect wing, a wine stain, salt crystals, and a single hair.

Call # On Order.

Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, by James A. Secord (University of Chicago Press, 2001)

The world knows so much about Darwin that we have forgotten about another book on evolution that made a huge sensation in early Victorian Britain. Historian James Secord tells an important story about scientific ideas by tracing traces the genesis, production, distribution and reception of a single book whose author remained anonymous, and hence a matter for gossip and speculation.

Call # QH363 .S4 2000

Picturing Canada: A History of Canadian Children’s Illustrated Books and Publishing, by Gail Edwards and Judith Saltman (University of Toronto Press, 2010)

Gorgeously illustrated, this book takes us back to the 18th century and forward to the 21st to show how writers and illustrators, and children and their parents, have experienced the genre of illustrated children’s literature in its Canadian manifestation. The authors, scholars of librarianship and English, spent over a decade researching in archives, and interviewing authors, publishers, booksellers and readers.

Call # Z 484 .E39 2010

A feeling for books: the Book-of-the-Month Club, literary taste, and middle-class desire, by Janice Radway (University of North Carolina Press, 1999)

Everyone of a certain age knows about the Book-of-the-Month Club, but Radway’s book will make you think about it in a different way. Radway combines a social-science research method with personal memories of BOMC membership. She uses the theoretical concept of the “middlebrow” to explain the appeal of the “club” that told people in Canada and the US what to read and how to read it.

Call # Z1003.2 .R33 1997

Endymion Spring, by Matthew Skelton (Puffin, 2006)

This fantasy novel for children is appealing to adults, too. It tells the story of Gutenberg’s apprentice (named Endymion Spring) back in the 1450s, and of two kids in 21^st century Oxford who discover a mysterious and magical book in the Bodleian Library.

Call # PS8637.K455 E53 2006

Leddy Libraries’ Librarian Research Series will continue Friday, April 13th at 11:00 with Mita Williams presenting, “The Library as Interface for Public Space and Public Self.” Mita will explore the library’s potential to help bridge the digital divide and to play a key role in facilitating public space and the infrastructure of the Internet  as a means to share and engage with each other. Join us Friday, April 13 at 11:00am, Room 302 West Building, Leddy Library.

Leddy Library now has access to The Vogue Archive.  The Vogue Archive contains the entire run of Vogue magazine (US edition), from the first issue in 1892 to the current month, reproduced in high-resolution color page images. Every page, advertisement, cover and fold-out has been included, with rich indexing enabling you to find images by garment type, designer and brand names. The Vogue Archive preserves the work of the world’s greatest fashion designers, stylists and photographers and is a unique record of American and international fashion, culture and society from the dawn of the modern era to the present day.

In addition to the editorial content, all covers, advertisements and pictorial features have been captured as separate documents to allow for searching and discovery. For advertisements, the featured company and brand names have been assigned to the document records, and all image captions are captured to a high accuracy, allowing accurate retrieval of photographs and illustrations. Contributor names that appear in image credits, such as photographers, stylists and illustrators, are also indexed. You can also limit your search by journal editor, to find items published during the editorship of, say, Diana Vreeland (1963-71) or Anna Wintour (1988-present).

The Vogue Archive also features specialist indexing of full-page images from photo features. This has been newly created by Condé Nast, with expert indexers using controlled lists to apply keywords to each separate image within a document. There are separate designated fields for Fashion Item (e.g. kimono, Breton jacket, scoop neckline), Person Pictured, Company/brand, Designer Name and Material (e.g. chiffon, wool, taffeta).

Our second talk in the Leddy Library’s Librarian Research Series is today, at 11 am in Room 302, West Building, in the Leddy Library.

Art Rhyno will be presenting his talk, Optical Character Recognition for the Masses: Digitization Options for Small Budgets and Big Collections.  Please join us!

Leddy Library is currently offering a trial of ProQuest History Vault.  This trial is available on campus only and can be accessed here.   ProQuest History Vault debuts with three modules of archival collections documenting two of the most important and widely studied topics in 20th Century American History: the Black Freedom Struggle and the Vietnam War. These modules are but the first three in a five-year plan of more than 25 individual modules of rich and varied content that create a full spectrum of archival materials to complement coursework in many areas including African-American studies, women’s studies, history, political science, and more. Institutions can build their collections over time to provide an unparalleled research experience for their students and faculty who would otherwise be unable to access materials held at geographically-dispersed archives.  Please note this trial is available on campus only.  Please let us know if you have any feedback about this trial.