Category Archives: Electronic resources

Trial Access: Race Relations in America and Everyday Life and Women in America (Trial Ended)

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[Update: These trials have now ended. If you have any feedback you wish to give regarding these databases, please contact Bethan Davies, VHL Librarian – 2nd March 2023]

I am pleased to announce that the VHL has organised trials of two databases; Race Relations in America and Everyday Life and Women in America, 1800-1920.

The trials for both databases last until the 1st March 2023 – please plan your use of these databases accordingly, and pass any feedback that you have to bethan.davies@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

Race Relations in America title. Image of a group of African American children.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Race Relations in America

Based at Fisk University from 1943-1970, the Race Relations Department and its annual Institute were set up by the American Missionary Association to investigate problem areas in race relations and develop methods for educating communities and preventing conflict. Documenting three pivotal decades in the fight for civil rights, this resource showcases the speeches, reports, surveys and analyses produced by the Department’s staff and Institute participants.

Key themes covered include:

·         Desegregation of schools, industries and public transport – survey material documents the attitudes of the community towards prospective desegregation, as well as analysing the results. The progress of legislation and legal cases can also be explored within the collection, alongside statistical data used in key Supreme Court Cases.

·         Migration of African Americans from the rural South to urban centers, which had a significant impact on American industry and the labour movement, as well as domestic issues such as housing, overcrowding and poverty.

·         The role of the Church in the Civil Rights Movement and in African American communities, from helping to fund organizations like the Race Relations Institute, to the part played in encouraging integration or segregation among their congregations. Other religious and spiritual groups are also covered.

·         Race riots and other racial tensions, which the Race Relations Department worked to diffuse or prevent by aiding communities to identify and address their problems. Alongside surveys created by field workers are reports on specific events, with testimonies from individuals involved in events such as police brutality.

·         Activities of the Civil Rights Movement, including protest marches, sit-in demonstrations, student movements, and legal cases. Reports and correspondence are kept on key organisations, as well as the activities of specific hate groups.

·         Speeches and reports by key figures of the time, including Thurgood Marshall and Rosa Parks, alongside sociologists, activists, psychologists, teachers, ministers, students and housewives.

Alongside this are contextual essays, thematic guides, audio recordings and video interviews, interactive maps of survey locations and data on attendees of Race Relations Institute.

Title Everyday life and women in America. Illustration of a family around a dining table. A text box reads "Discover the Collection: Explore documents from the Sallie Bingham Centre for Women's History and Culture, Duke University and the New York Public Library.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Everyday Life and Women in America, 1800-1920

Everyday Life & Women in America comprises thousands of fully searchable images of monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes. The collection is especially rich in conduct of life and domestic management literature, offering vivid insights into the daily lives of women and men, as well as emphasizing contrasts in regional, urban and rural cultures.

Key themed areas within the collection are:

·         An extensive number of periodicals, with either complete or near complete runs, covering both national and local levels. Titles include society periodicals like Town Topics and general household magazines such as Household News. Periodicals focused on religious, political and social causes are included (like the anarchist Lucifer, The Light Bearer, which later became the American Journal of Eugenics), alongside official publications of clubs, organisations and educational institutions. Topics also cover national events and topics, such as the American Civil War, suffrage movements and race.

·         Documents which refer to, and were aimed for, African Americans, Native Americans and Jewish women. There are also publications aimed at and for white supremacist movements (such as Installation ceremonies; Women of the Ku Klux Klan).

·         A broad collection of popular fiction series and sensational literature.

·         Guidance books, etiquette manuals and advisory literature on the expected behaviour of women and their conduct, marriages, motherhood and house roles.

·         Works and official reports on the role of women in education and the workplace.

·         Rare cookbooks, medical guidance works and collections of home remedies.

·         Fashion advertisements and periodicals, as well as works on the “ideal form of Beauty”.

Alongside this are contextual essays, thematic guides, an interactive chronology of events throughout 1800-1920, and subject search directories.

 

NEW Online Resource: Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000

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Decorative image of women throughout American History.I am pleased to report that Bodleian readers now have access to Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000.

Loosely organized around the history of women in social movements in the United States between 1600 and 2000, the site seeks to advance scholarly debates and understanding of U.S. history while making the insights of women’s history accessible to scholars and students. It features document projects, as well as extensive collections of primary sources. Women and Social Movements in the United States is also an online journal, and our access includes issues up to and including 2019, which feature  document projects and book reviews, as well as a host of other material, including essays, roundtables, and other special features.

Primary source collections within Women and Social Movements in the United States includes:

  • Memoirs, biographies and historical works of women in the U.S. suffrage movement, including the six-volume History of Woman Suffrage, by Stanton, Anthony and others, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, as Revealed in Her Letters, Diary and Reminiscences, as well as an online edition of the biographical dictionary Notable American Women (1971-2004).  
  • An almost complete run of Equal Rights, the official publication of the National Women’s Party, 1923-1954.
  • More than 1,800 items written by black women suffragists, 1831-1965
  • 42 major contemporary published works that examine women’s activism from the time of the Civil War to the mid-1950s.
  • 640 publications from the League of Women’s Voters (1923-1999), taken from the League’s library in Washington D.C.
  • More than 1,850 publications of state and local commissions on the status of women, and 73 reports on gender bias in state courts, 1983-2002
  • Records from the National Consumer’s League from 1904 to 1934.
  • Transcriptions of 25 women’s rights conventions (1848-1870), three national conventions of anti-slavery women (1836-1838) and the conference minutes for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), 1874-1898.
  • Annual reports of the WCTU, 1874-1898.
  • Transcripts of interviews with female US historians who developed the field of women’s history in American academia from the 1960s onwards.

Alongside the above collections, Women and Social Movements in the United States also includes 129 document projects, which present and interpret primary sources, a dictionary of social movements and organisations and a chronology of American women’s history.

This compliments our similar collection, Women and Social Movements, International 1840-present which includes 150,000 pages of conference proceedings, reports of international women’s organizations, publications and web pages of women’s non-governmental organizations, and letters, diaries, and memoirs of women active internationally since the mid-nineteenth century.

You can access Women and Social Movements, United States here, or via the Bodleian Libraries Database A-Z.  Note that you will need to use your Single Sign On to access this resource.

New online resources: Jet Magazine Archive and more!

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I am pleased to report that the Vere Harmsworth Library has used funds to purchase the Jet Magazine Archive for Bodleian Readers.

Jet Magazine Archive covers the civil rights movement, politics, education, and other social topics with an African American focus. When completed, it will include over 3,000 issues providing a broad view of news, culture, and entertainment from its first issue in 1951 through 2014.

Users can search across the articles using full-text search, or select specific issues, years or themes. Each article is indexed with relevant keywords. Researchers can also view images and advertisements within each issue.

Our previous trial only provided access to the issues released from 1980-1989. Our access now includes issues published from 1970-2014, the bulk of the archive. Issues published from 1951-1969 will become available in the coming weeks.

Currently the database has only released the issues from the 1980-1989, which are the issues available during our Trial.

You can access Jet Magazine Archive using your Single Sign On here.

The Bodleian Libraries have also purchased new resources which you may find of interest. You can find out more about them via the History Faculty Library blogpost, but two resources of particular interest to Americanists include:

Archives of Sexuality and Gender: LGBTQ History and Culture since 1940, Part 1

These diverse collections will be of interest to those studying modern American history, society and culture. Key coverage includes:

  • Records and papers of key organisations: ACT UP, Gay Activists Alliance, Daughters of Bilitis and the Mattachine Society of New York.
  • Government records and official papers for the National Commission on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, 1983-1994, and on the Bush Administration and the AIDS Crisis.
  • American newsletters and periodicals from key archival collections, such as: the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Historical Society and the Lesbian Herstory Archives, including some of the oldest LGBTQ periodicals published in America.
  • The Lesbian Herstory Archives subject files, which provides the most a hugely detailed information bank on lesbians throughout history, and the Herstory Feminist Newspapers collection, which is composed of US Newspapers written by, about and for women from the 20th Century, at a national and regional level.
  • Personal papers of Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin (both as part of the Daughters of Bilitis and their wider involvement with the women’s rights movement and other social movements).
  • Personal papers of Donald Steward Lucas, (both as part of the Mattachine Society, and the wider homophile movement.)

This is alongside coverage from British and International organisations, governments and newspapers/periodicals. Access here (note that you will need to use your Single Sign on to access).

Kanopy

We now have access to videos in the Kanopy Film Archive, a huge collection of documentaries, classic films and original creations. Collections include those focused on diversity, current events and “Campus Collections”. Films can be saved as favourites, and the majority include closed captions and transcripts. This great resource is a real treasure trove!

Access here (note that you will need to use your Single Sign on to access. You will be asked to create your own personal account, but you don’t need to create one in order to view the films.)

 

 

Trial Access: Jet Magazine Archive (ended 30th March 2022)

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[UPDATE: This trial has now finished as of 30th March, 2022.]

I am pleased to report that the Vere Harmsworth Library has organised trial access to Jet Magazine Archive for Bodleian Readers. The trial will run until the 30th March, 2022.

Jet Magazine Archive covers the civil rights movement, politics, education, and other social topics with an African American focus. When completed, it will include over 3,000 issues providing a broad view of news, culture, and entertainment from its first issue in 1951 through 2014.

Currently the database has only released the issues from the 1980-1989, which are the issues available during our Trial.

Users can search across the articles using full-text search, or select specific issues, years or themes. Each article is indexed with relevant keywords. Researchers can also view images and advertisements within each issue.

The Vere Harmsworth Library has also organised trial access to Colonial America, which you can find out more about on our previous blogpost.

You can access Jet Magazine Archive using your Single Sign On here.

Please send any feedback you have regarding this resource to bethan.davies@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

Trial access: Colonial America (ended 20th March 2022)

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[UPDATE: This trial has now finished as of 20th March, 2022.]

I am pleased to report that the Vere Harmsworth Library has organised trial access to Colonial America for Bodleian Readers. The trial will run until the 20th March, 2022.

Decorative screenshot of the Colonial America database.

Colonial America consists of all 1,450 volumes of the CO 5 series of Colonial Office files held at The National Archives in London, plus all extracted documents associated with them. This unique collection of largely manuscript material from the archives of the British government is an invaluable one for students and researchers of all aspects of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century American history and the early-modern Atlantic world.

Documents can be browsed by title, date, volume, theme, document type and colony/region. They are also indexed with relevant keywords, names, and places. Print and manuscript materials are full-text searchable, thanks to handwritten text recognition technology.

The resource is made up of 5 modules:

Module 1: Early Settlement, Expansion and Rivalries

The first module of Colonial America documents the early history of the colonies, and includes founding charters, material on the effects of 1688’s Glorious Revolution in North America, records of piracy and seaborne rivalry with the French and Spanish, and copious military material from the French and Indian War of 1756-63.

Module 2: Towards Revolution

This module focuses on the 1760s and 1770s and the social and political protest that led to the Declaration of Independence, including legal materials covering the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party. It is also particularly rich in material relating to military affairs and American Indians.

Module 3: The American Revolution

This module charts the upheavals of the 1770s and 1780s which saw the throwing off of British rule in the Thirteen Colonies. Contents include volumes of intercepted letters between colonists, the military correspondence of the British commanders in the field and material produced by the Ordnance Office and the office of the Secretary at War, as well as two copies of the ‘Dunlap’ edition of the Declaration of Independence printed on the night of the 4th-5th July 1776.

Module 4: Legislation and Politics in the Colonies

This module traces the colonies’ legal and political evolution between 1636-1782. Copies of council and assembly minutes record debates on international politics, including Britain’s war with Spain, expeditions against the French in Canada, and trade regulations. Court journals also trace legal cases and trials heard in the colonies, whilst series of official correspondence and revisions of acts reveal attempts to increase jurisdiction of British officials in the colonies, expand settlement, and improve public facilities and trade. The extensive revisions and annotations of these documents also expose the internal (and often personal) political agendas of their creators.

Module 5: Growth, Trade and Development

The preponderant part of this module consists of correspondence with the Board of Trade. There are also details of land grants, financial accounts and documents focusing on American Indian relations, as well as George Vancouver’s despatches to London from his 1791 expedition to the Pacific Northwest. The module contains a number of shipping returns, accompanied by a video interview with Hannah Knox Tucker (PhD candidate, University of Virginia), who discusses these documents and their value for researchers in detail.

You can access Colonial America using your Single Sign On here. 

Please send any feedback you have regarding this resource to bethan.davies@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

New e-Resource – Black Authors, 1556-1922: Imprints from the Library Company of Philadelphia

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[Item originally posted on on the EFL blogpost]

Black Authors, 1556-1922This online collection consists of 550 fully searchable works written by Black authors from Africa, the Americas, and Europe, and spans from the mid-sixteenth century to the early twentieth century. The collection is remarkable for the diversity of its content and contains texts that fall within a wide range of genres, including autobiographies, essays, letters and poems, as well as examples of more unusual genres such as maps and sheet music.

The archive may be browsed by author, genre or subject (such as agriculture, economics and trade, education, government, health, law and crime, literature, philosophy, politics, and slavery and race relations). It is also possible to narrow down search results within a given subject as each is further divided into several subtopics. The archive can also be searched by place of publication and by publisher.

Individual authors include Olaudah Equiano, Ignatius Sancho and Bethany Veney.

The Bodleian Libraries have committed substantial external funding to a one-off set of purchases of electronic research resources deemed to be important to researchers in the University. This follows a project to identify desiderata across all subjects and to list suggestions from readers.

Purchase of this resource was partly funded by the Drue Heinz Fund.

New in Oxford: Time and The Atlantic magazine archive

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I am pleased to announce the the Vere Harmsworth Library has purchased the online archives for The Atlantic and Time magazines.

Both of these magazines greatly add to our 20th Century newspaper and magazine holdings, and provide fascinating primary resources for modern American history, politics and culture.

Time magazine archive (1923-2000)

Published weekly by Time Inc., Time Magazine has focused on conveying to a broad audience both domestic and international news and analysis on a spectrum of subjects.

Intended to be read in under an hour, each issue of Time contains reports of national and international current events, politics, sports, and entertainment. Capturing the relevant news for a given week, the magazine remains an important resource for researchers studying just about any aspect of 20th-Century history and life.

Four covers from Time Magazine's past editions.

An example of magazine covers from Time magazine. Top row, from left to right: Clarke Gable (August 31st, 1936); Jackie Robinson (September 22nd, 1947). Bottom row, from left to right: Richard Nixon (November 5th, 1973, “The Push to Impeach”); Ronald Regan (January 5th, 1981, “The Man of the Year”)

 

Articles and cover pages are fully indexed and advertisements are individually identified, ensuring researchers and readers can quickly and accurately locate the information they seek. The Time Magazine Archive is valuable to researchers of 20th-Century current events, politics and culture, as well as those interested in the history of business, advertising, and popular culture.

The archival collection compliments our current online access to Time magazine via EBSCO Business Source Complete (1990-current), alongside our physical collection held in the BSF.

The Atlantic magazine archive (1857-2014)

The Atlantic was originally created with a focus on publishing leading writers’ commentary on abolition, education and other major issues in contemporary political affairs at the time. Over its more than 150 years of publication. It has featured articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, science and more.

Some of the founding sponsors of the magazine include prominent writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe and John Greenleaf Whittier.

Images of the front covers of the Atlantic Magazine.

Examples of front covers of The Atlantic Magazine. Top row, from left to right: November 1947 (90th Anniversary special); April 1956 (Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman). Bottom row, from left to right: September 2008 (Special Election issue); March 2012 (Special Commemorative Issue to mark 150th anniversary of the Civil War.)

 

The Atlantic Magazine Archive, covers events and political issues through literary and cultural commentary. It includes more than 1,800 issues providing a broad view of 19th, 20th and early 21st-Century American thought.

You may also be interested in our other periodical resources such as The National Review, The Nation, The New Republic and Vogue. For more information on our newspaper and periodicals, please visit our online guide.

New in Oxford: Black Thought and Culture

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Following a trial period, and positive feedback from readers, I am pleased to announce that the Vere Harmsworth Library has purchased access to the online resource, Black Thought and Culture.

This impressive database contains a collection of approximately 100,000 pages of non-fiction writings by major American black leaders—teachers, artists, politicians, religious leaders, athletes, war veterans, entertainers, and other figures—covering 250 years of history. In addition to the most familiar works, Black Thought and Culture presents a great deal of previously inaccessible material, including letters, speeches, prefatory essays, political leaflets, interviews, periodicals, and trial transcripts.

The collection spans from the works of Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois and Ida B. Wells Barnett, to Zora Neal Hurston, Audra Lorde, and Jesse Jackson. Most notably, the collection includes items previously undigitized, and difficult to obtain, such as:

  • The transcript of the Muhammad Ali trial
  • A full run of The Black Panther newspaper, with full-colour images of every page as well as searchable text
  • 2,500 pages of exclusive Black Panther oral histories owned by the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation
  • Selected audio files, heard here for the first time
  • the full run of Artist and Influence journal, tracking African American cultural trends in the 20th Century.

This resource will be of interest to those interested in African American history, politics, literature and culture.

You may access the resource here.

Trial Access: Black Authors and Native American Indians (ended 9th March 2021)

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Note: These trials ended on 9th March, 2021.

I am pleased to report that the Vere Harmsworth Library has organised trial access to two online resources for Bodleian Readers; Black Authors, 1556-1922 and Native American Indians, 1645-1819.The trials will run until the 9th March, 2021.

These trials are running alongside our trial access of Black Thought and Culture, which you can read about in our previous blogpost. 

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Black Authors, 1556-1922

Created from the renowned holdings of the Library Company of Philadelphia, Black Authors, 1556-1922, offers more than 550 fully catalogued and searchable works by black authors from the Americas, Europe and Africa, expertly compiled by the curators of Afro-Americana Imprints collection, the largest existing collection of its kind. Genres include: personal narratives, autobiographies, histories, expedition reports, military reports, novels, essays, poems and musical compositions.

Authors included are Ignatius Sancho, Phillis Wheatley, Olaudah Equiano, Solomon Northrup, Harriet Wilson, Harriet Jacobs, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Frederick Douglass, Bethany Veney, Paul Laurence Dunbar, W.E.B. Du Bois, Charles W. Chestnutt, Booker T. Washington, James Weldon Johnson and hundreds of others.

You can access this resource here.

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Native American Indians, 1645-1819

Native American Indians provides a comprehensive record of Native America in the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries. It Includes more than 1,600 publications, which offer unparalleled insight into the relationship between Native Americans and European settlers, alongside text analysis tools, author biographies and more.

Genres include treaties, transcribed letters from Native American leaders, the minutes of tribal meetings, histories of numerous tribes, missionary reports, captivity narratives, first-hand accounts of battles, trading records, military rosters, expedition logs and maps, trial records, legislative bills, books on Native American languages and grammar, military rosters, governors’ and legislators’ reports, ballads, songs, plays and more.

You can access this resource here.

Please send any feedback you have regarding this resource to bethan.davies@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

 

Trial Access: Black Thought and Culture (ended 1st March 2021)

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Note: This trial ended on 1st March, 2021. decoration only

 

 

 

I am pleased to report that the Vere Harmsworth Library has organised trial access to the online resource, Black Thought and Culture. The trial will run until the 1st March, 2021.

This impressive database contains a collection of approximately 100,000 pages of non-fiction writings by major American black leaders—teachers, artists, politicians, religious leaders, athletes, war veterans, entertainers, and other figures—covering 250 years of history. In addition to the most familiar works, Black Thought and Culture presents a great deal of previously inaccessible material, including letters, speeches, prefatory essays, political leaflets, interviews, periodicals, and trial transcripts.

The collection spans from the works of Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois and Ida B. Wells Barnett, to Zora Neal Hurston, Audra Lorde, and Jesse Jackson. Most notably, the collection includes items previously undigitized, and difficult to obtain, such as:

  • The transcript of the Muhammad Ali trial
  • A full run of The Black Panther newspaper, with full-colour images of every page as well as searchable text
  • 2,500 pages of exclusive Black Panther oral histories owned by the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation
  • Selected audio files, heard here for the first time
  • the full run of Artist and Influence journal, tracking African American cultural trends in the 20th Century.

This resource will be of interest to those interested in African American history, politics, literature and culture.

You may access the resource here.

Please send any feedback you have regarding this resource to bethan.davies@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

You can also find out more about our other two trials for Native American Indians and Black Authors on our new blogpost.