Following a successful trial last autumn, we’re pleased to announce that we have now purchased access to the Readers’ Guide Retrospective. This database provides searchable access to the archive of the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature covering 1890-1982, including over three million articles from approximately 375 magazines. Full text access is available to many articles though not all. As well as providing access to new content, this database will make it much easier to search for articles in many of the print magazines we already hold in the library, such as The Nation, National Review, The New Republic, Ebony, and Time. A full title list is available at http://www.ebscohost.com/titleLists/rgl-coverage.htm

Access is now available via SOLO and OxLIP+; use single sign-on for off-campus access.

From today until the start of Trinity Term, the library will be open Monday-Friday, 9am-7pm, closed weekends.

We will be closed on Good Friday and Easter Monday (18th-21st April).

To accompany the annual postgraduate history conference, which takes place at the RAI today on the theme of Watergate 40 Years On, we have a small display of some contemporary newspapers which were recently donated to us by Professor Philip Davies (Eccles Centre, British Library). The newspapers date from the summer of 1974 and cover the build up to and immediate aftermath of President Nixon’s resignation on 9th August of that year.

We are grateful to Professor Davies for his kind donation and hope you will enjoy seeing the newspapers while they’re on display.

The new books received in the library during February are now available to be browsed on our LibraryThing page.

The annual History Thesis Fair will take place on Thursday 6 March 2014 (week 7) from 2pm to 4pm in the North Writing School, Exam Schools.  The Fair aims to help you locate relevant source materials for your thesis and to show you how to make good use of tools and resources available to you. I will be there manning the US History Sources stall all afternoon – if you’re thinking about writing your thesis on an American topic, do come and talk to me!

This year the Thesis Fair stalls include:

•     medieval, early modern and modern sources
•     Visual Resources
•     global history: India, Africa & Commonwealth, US, Latin America, etc.
•     Legal History
•     RefWorks for reference management
•     Maps for historians
•     History of Science and Medicine
•     collections in the HFL and college libraries & archives, and many more…

Come along and speak to experts or make an appointment with them for a follow-up discussion. It’s a great opportunity to browse and explore potential sources as you begin to think about your thesis.