Category Archives: Training

Disability History Hackathon Friday 2 December 2022, 14:00-18:15 – please join us

Snippet from Bodleian Library MS. Bodl. 264, 74v, showing a group of blind men following each other

Bodleian Library MS. Bodl. 264, fol. 74v, Bodleian Library, CC BY-NC. Click to view in Digital.Bodleian.


Calling all staff and students of Oxford University
: are you interested in disability history? Do you like locating quality research materials on the internet? Please join us and a group of volunteers at the Disability History Hackathon on Friday 2 December to find resources for a guide to Disability History resources.Cartoon image of an owl wearing headphones and working on a laptop.

After brief training on advanced Google searches, you will work individually or in small groups on identifying research resources (databases, archives, websites, etc.) on an aspect of disability history of your choice. You will create brief descriptions for each resource.

We expect to spend up to 2 hours on the Hackathon with a tea / coffee break in between and a reception at the end.

You will be able to join in person in the History Faculty, George St, or remotely. All rooms are accessible. This is event is organised for staff and students of Oxford University. Spaces are limited so early booking is recommended. Register here.

What will you get out of it?

  • Discover research materials for disability history
  • Learn advanced Google search from a professional librarian
  • Network with other researchers
  • Join a community-led project to create an online guide for disability history

What do you need?

Photo of a paralysed child strapped in a walking frame and wearing splints. From R.W. Lovett, Treatment of Infantile

Robert Williamson Lovett, Treatment of Infantile Paralysis (1916) – Wellcome Collection, United Kingdom – CC BY

An interest in, knowledge of or enthusiasm in disability resources and/or disability history.

Technical requirements:

  • Remote: computer with Teams or Zoom, camera and microphone
  • Onsite: a laptop; ideally Eduroam wifi account (wifi access can be provided)
  • Recommended: headphones or earphones

More information about the day, handouts, slides, etc. will be shared with participants in advance.

Contact library.history@bodleian.ox.ac.uk if you have any questions.

Digital History Day – 4 March 2015

[Re-blogged from the HFL Blog]

The Digital History Day, to be held at the History Faculty, George Street, gives an introduction to digital tools and methods for historians, focusing on the resources developed and hosted by the Institute of Historical Research.IHR Digital History Day 4 March - poster

In addition to presenting particular tools, including British History Online (BHO) and the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH), the workshop will consider research communication, for example using social media, and the challenges of working with new types of sources.

This is an excellent opportunity for historians to learn and participate in discussions about important issues in the context of our changing academic environment.

All welcome.

Round Table discussion for Faculty staff and graduates

12.30-1.30pm – Rees Davies Room, History Faculty

IHR participants: Simon Baker, Jonathan Blaney, Sarah Milligan and Jane Winters (Institute of Historical Research)

Topics to be covered include big data for humanities research, the importance of digital citation and the ‘problem’ of search.

Workshop
2-4pm, Lecture Theatre, History Faculty

2.00 Digital history at the Institute of Historical Research: an overview – Jane Winters
2.20 Case study I: Bibliography of British and Irish History – Simon Baker
2.40 Big data for historical research – Jonathan Blaney
3.00 Case study II: British History Online – Sarah Milligan
3.20 Communicating your research online – Jane Winters
3.35 Digital citation – Jonathan Blaney
3.50 Questions?

The participants:

Simon Baker joined the IHR in 2004 as assistant project editor for the Royal Historical Society Bibliography of British and Irish History and is currently one of the editors of its successor, the Bibliography of British and Irish History. Previously he worked in the photographic library at the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England; and at the British Film Institute, where he worked in the National Archive (film and television) and the National Library. While at the BFI he was involved in the first moves towards computerisation of data and digitisation projects, as well as subsequent migration and merging of data into other databases and the development of online resources.

Jonathan Blaney joined the IHR in 2007 as project editor for British History Online’s project to complete the digitisation of the Calendars of State Papers. He now continues to work for part of the time on BHO, as well as spending time on other IHR projects, most recently in the field of big data. Jonathan has worked as lexicographer for Oxford University Press and as an editor on the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He subsequently worked for the Oxford Digital Library, where he was a text encoding reviewer on the Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership and Eighteenth Century Collections Online Text Creation Partnership, and also advised on a number of digitisation projects.

Sarah Milligan joined the IHR in 2014 as publishing manager for British History Online. Previously, she worked as an editorial and research assistant with the Map of Early Modern London (MoEML), the Internet Shakespeare Editions (ISE) and the Victorian Poetry Network (VPN), all based at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. She remains a Research Affiliate with MoEML. Her diverse interests include Victorian poetry, early modern London and encoding historical dates.

Jane Winters is professor of digital history and head of publications at the IHR. Currently, she is principal investigator of the Big UK Domain Data for the Arts and Humanities project; co-director of Digging into Linked Parliamentary Metadata; co-investigator of Traces through Time: Prosopography in Practice across Big Data; and publishing editor of the Bibliography of British and Irish History. She is also executive editor of the IHR’s journal, Historical Research, and associate editor of Frontiers in Digital Humanities: Digital History. Jane is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a member of RESAW (Research Infrastructure for the Study of the Archived Web), the Academic Steering & Advocacy Committee of the Open Library of Humanities, the Advisory Board of the Academic Book of the Future project, and the UK Medical Heritage Library.

Open Access Week 2014 at Oxford

Open Access Week 2014 at Oxford

International Open Access Week is now in its 7th year. Visit the OAO website for the programme (20th-24th October), for University staff and students:

1. Open Access, Open Data Publication Platform from Nature Publishing Group: Better Data = Better Science.

Dr Susanna-Assunta Sansone (Associate Director, Oxford e-Research Centre and Honorary Academic Editor, NPG Scientific Data). 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. Susanna is a co-founder of BioSharing (reproducible research) and blogs about Open Data on the Guardian Higher Education Network.

Monday 20th October 2014, 2-3pm, Radcliffe Science Library. Book a place.

2. Open Access Oxford — What’s Happening? (iSkills).

Craig Finlay and Juliet Ralph (Bodleian Libraries). A briefing on OA publishing and Oxford’s position: how to comply with funder mandates inc. new HECFE policy for post-2014 REF.

Tuesday 21st October 2014, 12-1pm, Radcliffe Science Library. Book a place.

3. How Can the Wellcome Trust Help You With Open Access?

Pamela Reid (Wellcome Trust) and Eli Harriss (Bodleian Libraries). Tell the Trust what you need.

Tuesday 21st October 2014, 3-4pm, Knowledge Centre, Old Road Campus. Drop-in session with tea.

4. The Open Library of Humanities: Gold Open Access for the Humanities Without Author-Facing Charges.

Dr Martin Eve (Lecturer in English, University of Lincoln and OLH Co-Founder). OLH is ‘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.

Wednesday 22nd October 2014, 2-3pm, Radcliffe Humanities Building, (Lecture Room). Book a place.

5. Your Thesis, Copyright and ORA (iSkills).

Sarah Barkla and Jason Partridge (Bodleian Libraries). How to deposit your thesis in ORA without infringing third-party copyright : essential guidance for DPhil students.

Thursday 23rd October 2014, 10-11am, Manor Road Building (Seminar Room C). Book a place.

6. The new Charity Open Access Fund (COAF): What Researchers Need to Know.

Margaret Hurley (Wellcome Trust). For researchers funded by Arthritis Research UK, Breast Cancer Campaign, the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research and the Wellcome Trust.

Friday 24th October 2014, 11.30am-12.30pm, Cairns Library, John Radcliffe Hospital. Book a place.

Download the programme (pdf).

Open Access and Monographs Forum

Open Access and Monographs: Oxford forum with publishers and funders.

Wednesday 18 June,  2pm-5.30pm

Radcliffe Humanities Lecture Room

A forum on current challenges and initiatives in open access monograph publishing. This is part of the Bodleian Libraries Open Access series and an opportunity for Oxford academics & researchers to feed into HECFE’s Monographs and Open Access Project (see http://www.hefce.ac.uk/whatwedo/rsrch/rinfrastruct/oa/monographs/).

Programme of speakers:

  • Introduction: Catriona Cannon (Interim Deputy Librarian, Bodleian Libraries)
  • Cecy Marden (Wellcome Trust, HEFCE Expert Reference Group)
  • Frances Pinter (Knowledge Unlatched, HEFCE Expert Reference Group)
  • Rhodri Jackson (OUP and OAPEN-UK JISC-funded project on open access monographs)
  • Geoffrey Crossick (HEFCE Expert Reference Group, Chair)
  • QandA. Panel joined by Sally Rumsey (Oxford Research Archive)

This session is for Academics and researchers, especially in the Humanities and Social Sciences, and is a must for those interested in issues around Open Access.

To book a place please visit http://courses.it.ox.ac.uk/detail/TZ005 .

Reminder – Unstaffed Tomorrow, 30/10/13

A reminder that the Unit Library will be unstaffed tomorrow, 28th October, as we will be attending the Bodleian History Faculty Library Information Fair. Graduate students strongly encouraged to attend!

More information can be found over at the HFL Blog.

We will be back on Thursday, 2.15-4.30pm.

Courses on finding and using images next week

The following sessions are open to members of Oxford University.  History of medicine students and academics are likely to be particularly interested in these courses, given the wealth of relevant images out there, from pictures taken by missionaries to early engravings of the human body.

ARTstor and Bridgeman: Using images in teaching and learning

Tuesday 20 November, 14:00-16:00
The course examines two major digital image collections subscribed to by the University – ARTstor and Bridgeman Education – geared to research and teaching in the humanities, history of science and medicine, and social sciences. Viewing, presenting and managing images are also covered.
Booking at: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/itlp/courses/detail/TIMS

Digital images: Sourcing, adapting and safe keeping

Tuesday 13 November, 09:15-12:15
Digital images are a valuable part of your research, sometimes critically so. This three hour session will introduce you to some of the key issues that you need to be aware of when sourcing, adapting and using digital images. Although the focus is the use of images in an academic context, the ideas covered are equally relevant to your personal image collections.
Booking at: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/itlp/courses/detail/TIMY

(c) Bridgeman Eduction. Results page for a search on Leprosy

Related Links: WISER courses | OUCS courses

Wellcome Unit Seminar Monday 15 October 2012

Social Security Booklet (c) Archives New Zealand

Michaelmas Term 2012 History of Medicine Seminar Series
Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine,
Seminar Room, 47 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6PE

The following seminars will be held at on Mondays at 2.15pm
Coffee will be available from 2.00pm

‘Health and Medicine in Britain and its Empire’
Convener: Professor Mark Harrison

Week 2 – 15 October
John Stewart, Glasgow Caledonian University
“Some Abstract Socialist Idea or Principle”: The Impact of New Zealand’s 1938 Social Security Act on British Thinking about Health Care Reform

About the Speaker

Professor John Stewart is Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare Director and Professor of Health History at Glasgow Caledonian University. His research interests range broadly across modern British history, focussing in particular on the history of health care provision and social policy, with an associated emphasis on the history of child welfare. Specific research topics have included: municipal medicine in inter-war England and Wales; child evacuation policies in wartime Scotland; and welfare provision in ‘peripheral’ areas of the United Kingdom and Europe.

Selected Publications

Related Links

WISER Sessions in Week 6

There are some really handy sessions for historians coming up next week, including one on Online Resources for Historians.

All members of the University and Bodleian Library Readers may attend WISER workshops. Some individual workshops are designed for particular groups (for example researchers or postgraduates). Check the individual class descriptions for more details.

Bodleian Libraries will be running the following workshops in Week 6.

WISER: Finding Stuff – Books etc on SOLO [Wednesday 30 May 14.00 – 14.45] – An introduction to SOLO for finding books, journal titles and other materials in Oxford libraries. The session will cover effective search techniques, placing hold requests for items in the stacks, reservations and using the SOLO eshelf and saved searches. >Book your place online

WISER: Finding Stuff – Journal Articles [Wednesday 30 May 14.45 – 16.00] – This session will focus on finding journal articles for your research using a wide range of databases as well as developing effective search strategies. There will be plenty of time for participants to try out their own searches using databases for their subject. >Book your place online

WISER: Finding stuff – Conferences [Wednesday 30 May 16.00 – 17.00] – Conference papers can be difficult to find but they are valuable because they describe cutting-edge research. This session will enable you to find out about forthcoming conferences and also to locate the published papers of proceedings which have taken place. >Book your place online

WISER: Online Sources for Historians [Friday 1 June 14.00 – 15.15] – A general introduction to the vast range of electronic resources which are available for all historical periods for British and West European history including bibliographical databases, biographical and reference research aids, e-books and ejournals, web portals and collections of online primary source materials. >Book your place online

WISER: Sources for US History [Friday 1 June 15.30 – 17.00] – An introduction to key information sources for the study of colonial America & US history. Starting with finding tools to locate material, examples of source materials will then be shown including archival, microform, printed/online collections & useful web portals & audiovisual collections. >Book your place online. >Book your place online

More Bodleian Libraries workshops – Check http://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/workshops for the full WISER programme and for details of other training opportunities offered by Bodleian Libraries. Why not follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/oxwiser , visit the BodWiser blog at http://bodwiser.wordpress.com or join our mailling list by sending an empty email to wiser-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk

Not a member of Oxford University? – If you are not a current member of Oxford University but would like to attend a workshop please contact usered@bodleian.ox.ac.uk. Please quote your Bodleian readers card barcode number.

If you have any questions please contact usered@bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Digital Humanities Session 8 June 2012

Course Title: Make: Data – Towards a digital toolbox for researchers in the Humanities
Date: Friday 8 June 12:30-13:30
Location: OUCS

The session will present how two DPhil projects in History apply various digital tools (text encoding, data visualisation, corpus linguistics, semantic web) to analyse medieval texts.  The session is aimed at anyone interested in text analysis, particularly in a Humanities context.

Case one
In 1457, a Florentine merchant decided to transmit his experience and knowledge to his sons. He created a manuscript which covers all aspects of human existence. The goal of this project is to analyse the thinking and knowledge of this merchant as it is represented in the text. The manuscript was transcribed and encoded in TEI XML. The transcription was then transformed into a semantically and linguistically annotated corpus. Finally, an ontology is being built to reconstruct and visualise the knowledge of the merchant.

Case two
The project uses eXist for an XML ‘native’ database of an English family’s twelfth and thirteenth century charters and related material. A TEI marked up copy of the text allows publication either on the web or as pdf as well as the normal database query, listing and tabulation functions. Bibliography is fully incorporated using Zotero. The data relating to social and text networks can be extracted and passed to programmes such as NodeXL to enable it to be visualized graphically.

More information and online booking at: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/itlp/courses/detail/TM12Q

Related links: HFL’s Post Grad Training webpage | http://digital.humanities.ox.ac.uk/dhoxss/

WISER sessions on finding stuff next week

Bodleian Libraries will be running the following WISER sessions during week 6:

WISER: Finding stuff – Books etc on SOLO (Wednesday 22 February 2.00-2.45) – Ashort 45 minute session introducing tips and techniques for searching SOLO for books, journals and other materials in Oxford Libraries. We will cover both basic and advanced search techniques and also look at placing hold requests for items in the book stacks and some of SOLO’s personalised features such as the e-shelf and saved searches. The session will take place at Oxford University Computing Services – please book your place online.

WISER: Finding stuff – Journal Articles (Wednesday 22 February 2.45-4.00) This session will focus on using bibliographical tools and indexes to find high quality papers in your research area.  We will look at how to find reliable bibliographical databases in your subject and how to search them effectively to optimize your results. The session will take just over an hour and will include time for you to practice. Please book your place online.

WISER:Finding Stuff – Conferences (Wednesday 22 February 4.00-5.00) – Finding past conference papers and proceedings and keeping up with forthcoming conferences in your research area are important skills for all researchers but can be quite tricky. Next week’s 1 hour workshop on finding conferences will start by looking at where to find forthcoming conference announcements and how to keep up with them and will then move on to look at ways of tracking down elusive conference papers. Please book your place online.

Keep up to date with WISER – Why not follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/oxwiser or visit the BodWiser blog at http://bodwiser.wordpress.com. You can also check the timetable on the WISER web site at http://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/workshops or join our mailing list by sending an empty email to wiser-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk

Not a member of Oxford University? – If you are not a current member of Oxford University but would like to attend a workshop please contact usered@bodleian.ox.ac.uk. Please quote your Bodleian readers card barcode number.

If you have any questions please contact usered@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.