New: Brepols Medieval Collection

Posted on 6 July 2017 by iholowaty

I am pleased to report that Oxford researchers now have access to Brepols Medieval Collection, a major electronic resource for medievalists. It provides online access to books and articles in key subject areas in European Medieval Studies such as Church History & Monasticism, Language and Literature, Manuscript Studies, Philosophy, Theology and History of Science.

This resource was funded thanks to the generosity of the Madeline Barber Bequest.

It comprises two main parts:

Medieval Collection (559+ Brepols monographs).
Medieval Miscellanea Collection (5,000+ book chapters and articles in miscellanies Brepols publications since 1998) – this replaces Brepols Miscellanea Online: Essays in Medieval Studies

Books included are published in series such as Culture et société médiévales, Europa Sacra, Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, Medieval Church Studies, Collection d’études médiévales de Nice, Studies in European Urban History (1100-1800) and more. Please note that not all volumes in a series may have been digitised.

The monographs will currently not be catalogued in SOLO (under investigation). I would expect the books and articles to be indexed in the International Medieval Bibliography (IMB) (Oxford users only). To find Brepols publications in IMB, add “Brepols” to the All Field in Advanced Search.

Please note that you will be directed to the Brepols Online portal which will also include ebooks outwith Brepols Medieval Collection. Look out for the green button which indicates free access:

Also useful:

More library news for medievalists.

Newly received History ebooks: history of medieval papal justice, devout women, Tudor maths, Marxism, Mass Observation

Posted on 4 August 2016 by iholowaty

For a while we’ve been buying many ebooks but also receiving many under the Legal Deposit Libraries (non-Print) Regulations 2013. Especially the latter has led to a vast influx of new titles published by UK publishers. Please note that due to restrictions enshrined in the 2013 Regulations, the eLD books can only be access from one of the many Library PCs in any of the Bodleian Librarians.

Some examples of recently received interesting history books are: New History books 2 August 2016

Salonen, Kirsi, Papal Justice in the Late Middle Ages : The Sacra Romana Rota. London, Routledge, 2016. [accessible on Library PCs only]

Weber, Alison, Devout Laywomen in the Early Modern World. London, Routledge, 2016. [accessible on Library PCs only]

Roberts, Gordon, Robert Recorde: Tudor Scholar and Mathematician. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2016. [accessible on Library PCs only]

Everson, Jane; Reidy, Denis; Sampson, Lisa, The Italian Academies 1525-1700 : networks of culture, innovation and dissent. London: Routledge, 2016.[accessible on Library PCs only]

Wang, Q. Edward ; Iggers, Georg G., Marxist Historiographies : A Global Perspective. London: Routledge, 2015. [accessible on Library PCs only]

Hall, David. Worktown : the astonishing story of the birth of mass-observation. London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2015. [accessible on Library PCs only]

There are many MANY MORE! If you want to find out what is now available to you, then take:

More titles on Cambridge Histories Online available: Cambridge World History and many more

Posted on 5 June 2015 by iholowaty

I’m pleased to report that Oxford readers can now access more titles in the online Cambridge Histories Online portal. The newly added ebooks of interest to historians are:

The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy (2 vols.)
The Cambridge History of Witchcraft and Magic in the West
The Cambridge History of the Second World War (3 vols.)
The Cambridge Economic History of Australia
The Cambridge History of Capitalism (2 vols.)
The Cambridge History of China, Volume 5 (part 2) & Volume 9 (part 2)
The Cambridge History of Scandinavia (to be complete in 2 vols.)
The Cambridge World History (to be complete in 9 vols.)

The catalogue records for these ebooks will appear in SOLO in due course. In the meantime you can find these by searching Cambridge Histories Online in SOLO.

Oxford Handbooks Online – authentication problems (10 Nov 2014)

Posted on 10 November 2014 by iholowaty

Oxford Handbooks Online is currently experiencing technical difficulties via IP authentication. This also affects access off campus via the links in SOLO and OxLIP+.

OHO includes titles such as Oxford Handbook of Medieval Christianity, Oxford Handbook of Fascism, Oxford Handbook of Modern German History and many more.

Access is available off-campus access via http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/. Click on the “Login with Athens/Access Management Federation” link, select “University of Oxford” and log in with your Single Sign-On.

If you get an error message about the simultaneous user limit being reached, then OUP has authenticated you via University IP address, ie you need to try the solution described above.

OUP are working to resolve this issue. We apologise for the inconvenience.

Trial until 6 Dec: Torrossa – scholarly e-books in Romance languages

Posted on 30 October 2014 by iholowaty

Oxford is currently trialling Torrossa, a scholarly e-book platform developed by Casalini. All records are available in SOLO, and the platform can also be accessed directly via OxLIP+.

A wide range of subjects is covered, with over 180 Italian, Spanish, French and Portuguese publishers contributing titles in the fields of history but also language and literature, linguistics, art and architecture, film studies, law, philosophy, theology and cultural studies. The trial gives us access to approximately 4,750 titles. Whilst titles in Italian and Spanish make up the majority, there are also smaller collections in English, French and German.

The trial features selections from Casalini’s multi-publisher collections Edición Española Online and Editoria Italiana Online, as well as single-publisher collections from Arco Libros, Editorial CSIC, Iberoamericana Verveurt, Casa de Velázquez, Bulzoni, Leo S. Olschki and Fabrizio Serra Editore to name just a few.

To be able to access e-books on the Torrossa platform, please make sure your Internet browser is set to allow pop-ups. You may need to configure your browser settings to make sure that Adobe Reader is enabled to open PDF documents as specified in the configuration notes. > Torrossa : browser configuration notes (.pdf)

To familiarise yourself with the platform, please take a look at the introductory presentation below, or simply have a browse! > Introduction to Torrossa scholarly ebooks (.pptx)

The trial runs until 6th December 2014. Please leave any feedback on the History Eresources desiderata LibGuide or email isabel.holowaty@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

Multidisciplinary ebook packages

eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) – Currently Oxford Libraries have over 2100 purchased e-books across all subjects (‘Our Collection’) plus more than 3000 free e-books.
Access to each e-book is normally limited to two simultaneous users.

E Book Library (EBL) – a growing collection of e-books from major academic publishers worldwide in humanities, science and medicine and social studies. The collection also provides 5 minutes free browse to over 200,000 “non-owned” books in the collection, with the option to send purchase requests to library staff.

Ebrary Academic Complete – a collection of around 110,000 e-books from over 500 academic publishers. University members may also download books for 14 day loans (loan limit of 10).

University Press Scholarship Online – 16,000+ titles in 28 subject areas, from Oxford and 17 other leading scholarly presses, e.g. British Academy, Chicago UP, Edinburgh UP, Liverpool UP, Stanford UP, Yale UP, University of California UP, etc.

Humanities

ACLS Humanities E-Books – 1,700 scholarly monographs, mostly history of Britain, Europe, America, Africa, Middle East and Asia.
Cambridge Companions Online – Literature, Classics, Philosophy, Religion and Culture.
Cambridge Histories Online – 250+ titles published since 1960 by CUP
Oxford Handbook Online
Oxford Scholarship Online -1,000+ OUP titles in Classics, Economics and Finance, History, Literature, Philosophy, Political Science and Religion.
Past Masters – Humanities Full Text Works – complete works of individual authors.
Shakespeare Collection – Arden editions and more.

Early printed books

Early English Books Online (EEBO) – printed English books from 1473-1700.
Early English Books Online – Text Creation Partnership (EEBO-TCP) – a growing corpus of electronic full text editions of the EEBO collection.
Early European Books (EEB) – printed European (esp. Danish, Dutch, Italian, some French) books upto 1700
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) – 150,000 books published during the 18th Century.
Making of the Modern World – 61,000 titles published from 1450 to 1850.

Free online books

Google Books Millions of books digitised by Google. Many only available in Snippet View. Be careful you know what exactly you are looking at. Describing multivolume works or different editions is not Google’s strength.

Internet Archive (archive.org) Giant digital library of 1.8 million texts. Excellent also for digitised European books, esp. of the 19th century.

Project Gutenberg “Download over 30,000 free ebooks to read on your PC, Kindle, Sony Reader, iPhone or other device. Project Gutenberg is the first and largest single collection of free ebooks.”

Need more help? Sign up for the Bodleian iSkills course on ebooks

iSkills: e-Books

Date: 21 Nov (wk 6), 9:15-10:30

An overview of academic e-books looking at what is currently available in e-format, how to find and access e-books and how to make the most of e-book functionality. Who is this session for? All members of Oxford University and other Bodleian Libraries readers. Book now.

Location: IT Services Help Centre, 13 Banbury Road
Presenter: Hilla Wait, Jo Gardner

iSkills: e-Book Readers

Date: 21 Nov (wk 6), 10:45-12:15

How useful are e-book readers in academic work? Can they be used for accessing library materials? What are the features to look out for when considering purchase? These and similar questions will be considered with reference to the i-Pad, the Amazon Kindle and Sony Touch e-readers and smart phones. Who is this session for? All members of Oxford University and other Bodleian Libraries readers. Book now.

Location: IT Services Help Centre, 13 Banbury Road
Presenters: Hilla Wait, Ian Chilvers

WISER: eBooks & eBook readers – Thurs 27 Feb.

Posted on 17 February 2014 by iholowaty

WISER: E-books (Thurs 27 Feb 3.00 – 4.00) (wk 6)
An overview of academic e-books looking at what is currently available in e-format, how to find and access e-books and how to make the most of e-book functionality.
Who is this session for? All members of Oxford University and other Bodleian Libraries readers
Presenters: Hilla Wait, Jo Gardner and Ian Chilvers
Venue: IT Services, 13 Banbury Road > Book your place

WISER: E-book readers (Thurs 27 Feb 4.15 – 5.15) (wk 6)
How useful are e-book readers in academic work? Can they be used for accessing library materials? What are the features to look out for when considering purchase? These and similar questions will be considered with reference to the i-Pad, the Amazon Kindle and Sony Touch e-readers and smart phones.
Who is this session for? All members of Oxford University and other Bodleian Libraries readers
Presenters: Hilla Wait, Jo Gardner and Ian Chilvers
Venue: IT Services, 13 Banbury Road > Book your place

Keeping up with Bodleian Libraries training opportunities: Why not follow us on Twitter @oxwiser or visit the BodWiser blog.

Questions? – Please contact usered@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

Access to Oxford University Press materials increased

Posted on 31 January 2014 by iholowaty

Here is some great news for historians. The Bodleian Libraries have signed a new agreement with Oxford University Press (OUP), to significantly increase reader access to all current OUP online content.

Readers can also access over 20,000 e-books, plus extra databases; a considerable increase from the amount of content previously accessible, which was selected on a case-by-case basis by subject librarians. See the full Bodleian news announcement.

Among the new collections fully available are Oxford Scholarship Online, the British Academy Publications and the Oxford Language Dictionaries. The full collections in Oxford Handbooks Online and Oxford Bibliographies Online are also accessible. Oxford Scholarship Online now also includes the ebooks of 14 partner university presses, such as Chicago and Yale.

Links to the e-books and databases can be found in SOLO and OxLIP+.

New additions of interest to historians:

British Academy Publications Online

The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science

Oxford Constitutions of the World

Oxford Handbooks Online

The Oxford Handbook of Fascism
The Oxford Handbook of Latin American History
The Oxford Handbook of Modern African History
The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History
The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History
The Oxford Handbook of Oral History
The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History
The Oxford Handbook of Slavery in the Americas
The Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution
The Oxford Handbook of the Ancien Régime
The Oxford Handbook of the Atlantic World: 1450-1850
The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War
The Oxford Handbook of the History of Medicine
The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism
The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America
The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe
The Oxford Handbook of World History

Enjoy the bonanza and get in touch with library staff if you have any questions.

Trial until 20 Dec: Numérique Premium – French history books online

Posted on 4 November 2013 by iholowaty

I’m pleased to invite Oxford users to trial Numérique Premium. Access is via OxLIP+. There is no remote access.

Numérique Premium is the first French Humanities e-book collection. It contains about 1500 French-language Humanities e-books with the main focus on medieval and modern history but also including politics, history of French-speaking literature, history of cinema all accessible in a user-friendly format (currently in a beta version).

This beta version allows you to a sample of the 2014 Collections. Each collection is made of approximately 80-100 titles and is updated annually.

Please send feedback to isabel.holowaty@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or nick.hearn@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or leave comments on the History databases desiderata & trials site.

84000+ ebooks now available – Ebrary Academic Complete comes to Oxford

Posted on 12 September 2013 by iholowaty

Following a successful trial in Trinity Term 2013, Oxford readers now have access to over 84,000 extra e-books in the Ebrary Academic Complete collection. The books come from 500 prestigious academic publishers and range across all disciplines. The books are all displayed and searchable on SOLO or in OxLIP+ as Ebrary Academic Complete. The ebooks are mounted on the ProQuest platform with multiuser access and and University members also can download ebooks for a 14-day onto mobile devices. The package will be updated regularly. Our subscription runs until August 2015.

History titles include books on all historical periods, covering British and European history with much content on global history. All topics are more or less covered. Publishers include OUP, various US academic presses (e.g. Yale, Princeton, Harvard), Brill, Boydell, etc. There are some de Gruyter titles providing access to German history titles.

Reader comments during the trial described the resource as ‘incredibly awesome’.

Here is what your virtual book shelf could look like:

Selections of ebooks covering middle ages to modern, British to Global history, etc.

Want to learn more about ebooks?

WISER: E-books (Thurs 7 Nov 2.00 – 3.00) (wk 4)
An overview of academic e-books looking at what is currently available in e-format, how to find and access e-books and how to make the most of e-book functionality. Who is this session for? All members of Oxford University and other Bodleian Libraries readers
Presenter: Hilla Wait > Book your place

WISER: E-book readers (Thurs 7 November 3.15 – 4.15) (wk 4)
How useful are e-book readers in academic work? Can they be used for accessing library materials? What are the features to look out for when considering purchase? These and similar questions will be considered with reference to the i-Pad, the Amazon Kindle and Sony Touch e-readers and smart phones. Who is this session for? All members of Oxford University and other Bodleian Libraries readers
Presenter: Hilla Wait > Book your place

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