New: Napoleon – Letters and Papers: Sources of a Family

The homepage of the resource, showing a brief introduction and a search box. The introduction reads: "About this database There is hardly any other family who influenced European history between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries as much as the Bonapartes did. From the French Revolution to the Treaty of Versailles, the members of this family influenced all spheres of public and private life in politics, art, literature, science, administration, the military, and even landscaping. To this end, they corresponded in writing with all important contemporaries. "Calling all Napoleon researchers and 19th century French historians! You will be pleased to know that a major resource Napoleon – Letters and Papers: Sources of a Family is available as an Open Access resource.

This database, published by de Gruyter, provides access to the Bonaparte family’s autographs and correspondence. It is a valuable source for the study of French and European history, science, and intellectual attitudes from the late 18th century to the early 20th century.

The project will at first publish the correspondence of Prince Louis Napoléon Bonaparte (who would later become Emperor Napoleon III) until 1838, thereby covering the period that the Bonaparte-de Beauharnais family spent in exile at Lake Constance. A 2023 database update will contain his correspondence until 1873. The database will, for the first time, compile his surviving autographs into a collection that will make it possible to reinterpret the emperor’s personality and biography.

Future plans include adding digitised letter and papers of:

  • Hortense de Beauharnais (launch planned for 2024)
  • Eugène de Beauharnais-von Leuchtenberg (launch planned for 2025)
  • Joséphine de Beauharnais (launch planned for 2026)

(Information has been taken from Overview.)

Image of the transcribed letter on the left with the manuscript letter on the right. The snippet reads: "Londres le 30 Juin 1831 Mon cher Général, Je vous remercie bien de votre aimable lettre. J’ai été enchanté d’apprendre que la Duchesse de Frioul avait uni son sort au vôtre, et comme j’ai une tendre vénération et un véritable attachement pour elle, et que j’éprouve pour vous une sincère amitié, je ne sais qui je dois féliciter davantage ; ou le Général Fabvier d’avoir épousé la Duchesse de Frioul, ou la Duchesse de Frioul d’avoir épousé le Général Fabvier. "

“Londres le 30 Juin 1831 […]” In Napoleon – Letters and Papers edited by Christina Egli and Dominik Gügel. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2023. https://www.degruyter.com/database/NAPO/entry/nt_18300630_a/html

You can search full-text or browse the resource in various ways, including by place and person. Most of the letters will be in French. The correspondence stretches across Europe, esp. Germany, Switzerland, Italy and England.

The letters are transcribed and can be viewed side-by-side with the digitised manuscript letter.

Biographical annotations helpfully identify people mentioned, even if they used an alias.

While you are here, you might also be interrested in:

Oxford Festival of Open Scholarship 6–17 March 2023 – conference programme now live and bookings open

Logo of the Oxford Festival of Open Scholarship 2023What in the world is going on with open access and open research? Come along and hear from an array of national and international speakers – and find out. It’s a great opportunity to explore and debate issues, and jointly look for solutions.

The varied programm will be of interest to researchers, postgraduates and research support staff.

Organised by the Bodleian Libraries, OxFOS will cover a range of topical sessions online, including:

Sessions range between half hour talks and two-hour workshops. Some events are public, and some are restricted to University of Oxford staff and students.

To learn more about OA with a bit of fun, two in-person events are on offer: Open Access Escape Room and Play the ‘Publishing Trap’ board game.

Photo of the board game Publishing trap.Visit the OxFOS webpage for the schedule information and to book sessions.

We hope to interest and inspire you!

New OA journal: Medieval Worlds, 1 (2015)-

Medieval Worlds (ISSN: 2412-3196) is an Open Access double‐blind peer reviewed journal open accesscovering interdisciplinary and transcultural studies of the Middle Ages. It is published semi-annually the Austrian Academy of Science (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften (ÖAW)) and is licensed under the Creative‐Commons‐Attribution NonCommercial‐NoDerivs 4.0 Unported (CC BY‐NC‐ND 4.0).

The journal “encourages and links comparative research between different regions and fields and promotes methodological innovation in transdisciplinary studies. Focusing on the Middle Ages (c. 400 ‐ 1500 CE, but can be extended whenever thematically fruitful or appropriate) medieval worlds takes a global approach to studying history in a comparative setting.

Building upon studies of transcultural relations and processes of cultural hybridization between cultures, both of which have seen dynamic developments in recent years, the main approach chosen by medieval worlds is comparative. Taking such a comparative approach will not only allow researchers to highlight the global interaction within, or hybrid nature of particular cultural spheres, but also shed new light on more specific fields of interest. Moreover, medieval worlds will encourage a critical debate between the disciplines concerning approaches and methods, and thus will help to enrich the methodological frameworks of comparative history.” From http://www.medievalworlds.net/medieval_worlds, accessed 13 Sept 2016.

This journal will be soon added to SOLO and OU eJournals.

Bodleian iSkills Open Access Oxford – what’s happening? 27 July 2-3pm

Through the summer vacation Bodleian Libraries is continuing to run its monthly session on Open Access at Oxford. Please book online by following the title link.

Bodleian iSkills: Open Access Oxford – what’s happening? (Tuesday 27th July 14:00-15:00)

open accessA briefing on open access publishing and Oxford’s position including REF requirements for Open Access and ‘Act on Acceptance’; Green vs. Gold open access options; funder mandates and publisher policies; Oxford Research Archive (ORA) and Symplectic and the OA website/ helpline.

Who is this session for? Oxford University Research support staff, administrators and librarians, researchers and academics.
Presenters: Juliet Ralph and Kate Beeby
Venue: Training Room, Radcliffe Science Library

Keeping up with Bodleian Libraries training opportunities? Why not follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/bodleianskills or visit the Bodleian iSkills blog at http://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/skills/.

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

New: Journal for the History of Environment and Society, 1, 2016-

JHES coverThe new Journal for the History of Environment and Society, 1, 2016- (ISSN 2506-6730) is now listed on SOLO and OU eJournals but is of course freely available at http://www.brepolsonline.net/loi/jhes.

open accessThis is a double-blind peer-review Open Access journal, distributed by Brepols.

It “aims to be a leading on-line and open-access magazine that covers various aspects of environmental history in the broadest sense of the word. Emphasis is upon studies which focus on the historical relations between environmental changes and the social-historical context. Interregional and international comparative articles are getting special attention.

Geographically, the journal is primarily – but not exclusively – focusing on NW-Europe including areas that had historical relations with that broad region. Articles with a more general geographic scope can also be published in the Journal.”

See http://jheswebsite.com/mission.html for more details.

You can set up Table of Content (ToC) alerts and RSS feeds provided by Brepols.

Content of Vol. 1 (2016)

  • Maïka De Keyzer, All we are is dust in the wind: The social causes of a “subculture of coping” in the late medieval covers and belt
  • Ivan Hoste, Denis Diagre-Vanderpelen, Belgian botany in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: from plant hunting to nascent nature conservation
  • Peder Roberts, Dolly Jørgensen, Animals as instruments of Norwegian imperial authority in the interwar Arctic
  • Frank Uekötter, City meets Country: Recycling ideas and realities on German sewage farms

Act on Acceptance and Open Access – briefing sessions for postholders

AOA-deposit-buttonPublishing Oxford historians are invited to attend briefing sessions this term which are designed to update you on the HEFCE policy for the next REF and what you need to do in order to make your research output compliant. Learn about the Oxford University’s Act on Acceptance campaign and how to deposit your journal articles and conference proceedings in Symplectic.

Briefing sessions for Faculty postholders with the History Librarian

Mon. 23 Nov. 12.30-1.30pm, Rees Davies Room, History Faculty
Thurs. 26 Nov. 12.00-1.00pm, Colin Matthew Room, History Faculty

No need to sign up but bring along a laptop for some playtime if you can.

oao-header-bannerBodleian iSkills: Open Access Oxford – what’s happening?

Monday 30th November  12:00-13:00 (Week 8)

Another chance to attend the briefing on open access publishing and Oxford’s position. During the session we will cover “Green” and “Gold” routes to open access; funder mandates and publisher policies; the Oxford Research Archive (ORA) and Symplectic; the HEFCE policy on open access and how to get help via the Open Access web site and helpline.

Presenters: Juliet Ralph and Hilla Wait
Venue:  Radcliffe Science Library, Parks Road

> Book a place

Finding Brill Open Access monographs in SOLO: tips

As more and more monographs also become Open Access, our colleagues in the Bodleian Library are cataloguing those so they can be found and accessed via SOLO.

For instance, if you wanted to find Brill Open Access monographs in SOLO, then simply search for:

“brill online books and journals” “open access”

Brill OA books SOLO search

You can then use the facets on the side to explore which subjects are covered.

Look out for more Open Access monographs. They are freely available and, now that they are integrated into SOLO, should also be discoverable in addition to our purchased and Legal Deposit collections.

Related links

Open Access ‘FOSTER’ event – Tue 21 April 2015

OA Foster event - posterFOSTER PROJECT 2020 Vision : Making your research output compliant

21st April 2015, Keble College, University of Oxford

Full event programme available

This event is free and lunch will be provided. Places are limited, please book online.

This event is designed to update graduate students and researchers at Oxford on Open Access (OA) Policy requirements and expectations with special emphasis on the practical implications for researchers. The intention is to provide information about OA Policies, how to make research compliant, and how to meet REF 2020 requirements.

The programme will include:

  • Keynote presentations from representatives of HEFCE and HORIZON 2020
  • Updates on University OA implementation policy, projects and services created by libraries and academic services
  • Presentations about institutional repositories – Oxford Research Archive (ORA) and ORA-data
  • An insight into open access academic repositories – Zenodo, Europe PubMed Central and arXiv
  • Q&A sessions will provide practical advice on how to make publications freely available

For enquiries about the event please contact ljilja.ristic@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

The event is supported by a grant from the FOSTER project https://www.fosteropenscience.eu/.

#fosteropenscience

Open Access week: 20-24 October

open accessNext week the Bodleian Libraries will be running the following talks and workshops for Open Access week.  These events  will be of particular interest to researchers, academics and postgraduates. > book a place at any of these talks.

In addition, please note that the session next Thursday (iSkills:  Your thesis, copyright and ORA) is particularly relevant to DPhil students all of whom are required to deposit their thesis in the ORA repository.

Open Access: The rise of open data-centric research and publication enterprises – exemplars in the life sciences (Mon 20 October 14.00-15.00)

Dr Susanna-Assunta Sansone (Associate Director, Oxford e-Research Centre and Honorary Academic Editor, NPG Scientific Data) will speak on the rise of open data-centric research and publication enterprises.   Data sharing practices in life sciences and the importance of making yours more easily reusable will also be covered.   Susanna is a co-founder of BioSharing (reproducible research) and blogs about Open Data on the Guardian Higher Education Network.

Who is this session for?   Postgraduates, academics, research staff and anyone else interested in Open Access.

Venue: Training Room, Radcliffe Science Library

iSkills: Open Access Oxford – What’s happening? (Tues 21 October 12.00 – 13.00)

A briefing on open access publishing and Oxford’s position aimed particularly at researchers and academics with a funder mandate to make their publications available on an open access basis. The session will cover Green vs. Gold; funder mandates and publisher policies; Oxford Research Archive (ORA) and Symplectic; OA website/ helpline; what’s new –  update on new HEFCE policy.

Who is this session for?  Current Oxford research postgraduates, researchers, academics, University and Library staff.

Presenters:  Juliet Ralph and Craig Finlay

Venue: Training Room, Radcliffe Science Library

Open Access: The Open Library of Humanities – Gold Open Access for the humanities without author-facing charges (Wed 22 October, 14.00-15.00)

Dr Martin Eve (Lecturer in English, University of Lincoln and OLH Co-Founder) will speak about OLH, ‘a project exploring a PLOS-style model for the humanities and social sciences’. Martin is on the JISC OAPEN-UK project committee, chief editor of Orbit, and writes about Open Access for the Guardian Higher Education Network.

Who is this session for?   Postgraduates, academics, research staff and anyone else interested in Open Access.

Venue:   Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities, Woodstock Road

iSkills: Your thesis, copyright and ORA (Thurs 23 Oct 10.00 – 11.00)

Oxford DPhil students are required to deposit a digital copy of their thesis in ORA (Oxford University Research Archive). Find out how to deposit the digital copy of your thesis and what you need to know about rights and other issues.

Who is this session for?   Doctoral research students.

Presenter: Sarah Barkla

Venue: Training Room, Radcliffe Science Library > Book online

To book a place at any of these workshops please visit http://openaccess.ox.ac.uk/open-access-week-2014-at-oxford/.

Open Access Monographs: Oxford forum, 18/06/14

On Wednesday 18th June, there will be an opportunity for Oxford academics and researchers to debate the issues around scholarly monographs and Open Access. Both publishers and funders will be in attendance, with speakers including Geoffrey Crossick (HEFCE project, Chair), Cecy Marden (Wellcome Trust), Frances Pinter (Knowledge Unlatched) and Rhodri Jackson (OUP; OAPEN-UK project). At the end of the forum there will be a Questions and Answers panel joined by Sally Rumsey (Oxford Research Archive), which should provide for further discussion of the current challenges and initiatives in Open Access monograph publishing. It is anticipated that the dialogue of the forum will feed into HEFCE’s Monographs and Open Access project.

The event will be held at the Radcliffe Humanities Lecture Room between 2-5:30pm. All are welcome, but booking is advised. For further details on the forum and securing your place, see the poster below or visit http://courses.it.ox.ac.uk/detail/TZ005.

OA monographs A4 Jun 2014