Library Provides New Databases for the Humanities
The University of Delaware Library announces the availability of four new databases which provide research and learning opportunities to the faculty and students of the University of Delaware, especially in the humanities.
The new databases have been provided with the generous support of the provost, along with reallocation of existing library resources. “I am pleased the databases can be made available,” said Provost Apple. “The Library functions as the “laboratory” of the humanities, providing the primary source materials and findings upon which future research and scholarship is based. This bundle of digitized information is the “gold standard” for the humanities. President Harker and I are delighted that the University of Delaware Library is able now to have it.”
"The acquisition of these new databases will greatly enhance the ability of both students and faculty to conduct significant research in the humanities as well as in other related disciplines. The purchase of these valuable databases is further indication of the president’s and provost’s support for the humanities,” said Dean George H. Watson.
"The newly acquired databases compliment and bolster substantially the existing print-based and electronic resources provided by the University of Delaware Library. Faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates in the arts and humanities will benefit from these important resources for years to come,” observed Ann Ardis, interim deputy dean in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Charles Robinson, professor of English, commented on “the importance of the 19th century newspapers and journals not only to scholars interested in the British (from many disciplines including literature and history and economics and art history and even science) but also to the Americanists who are increasingly interested in the Transatlantic.”
The broadly based databases now available include:
- 19th Century British Library Newspapers, Parts I & II provide serious researchers with the most comprehensive range of national and regional newspapers in Victorian Britain ever made available in a digital collection. The papers themselves have been carefully selected by an editorial board from the British Library whose purpose was to provide a broad yet detailed view of British life in the 19th century: from business to sport, from politics to entertainment and the arts. This invaluable collection is made up of daily and weekly publications and reflects Britain's growing role as a superpower in the 19th century world.
- 17th & 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers are part of the British Library Newspapers collection. 17th and 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers is a full-text, fully searchable digital archive of nearly 1,270 newspapers and news pamphlets from the United Kingdom. Collected by the Reverend Charles Burney, this unique collection of nearly one million pages represents the largest single archive of 17th and 18th century news media available from the British Library. The original Burney volumes are now in a fragile condition and have been restricted from ordinary reading room use. Until now, the only access to this unprecedented collection has been through microfilm. This digital collection, made possible by a partnership between Gale and the British Library, puts these early newspapers into the hands of scholars and researchers and is an invaluable research tool for all disciplines.
- Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive 1902-2005 Founded in 1902, for more than 100 years the Times Literary Supplement has forged a reputation for fine writing, literary discoveries and insightful debate. Since its first issue, the TLS has attracted the contributions of the world’s most influential writers and critics of the 20th and 21st centuries, from T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf to A.N. Wilson and Christopher Hitchens in the 1990s and 2000s. Now the complete run of the TLS from 1902-2005 is available to University of Delaware students, faculty and staff and which enables users to full-text search of every page of every issue of the TLS from 1902 to 2005, discovering a wealth of material in 300,000 book reviews, play reviews, film reviews and more. The value of the TLS Historical Archive for students and researchers lies in its broad cross-disciplinary reach. It is the only literary weekly to offer coverage of the latest and most important publications in multiple languages, across all areas of the humanities and social sciences. With reviews on books from every region of the world, the TLS Historical Archive has developed a voice that is truly international in its scope and appeal. The TLS has long published reviews of non-English language and translated books and devotes special issues to regional surveys of the USA, the Islamic world, France, Germany, Africa and the Far East. In its digital form, the Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive, 1902-2005 becomes a rich research tool allowing users to trace the views of influential opinion makers, the response of their contemporaries, the controversies and debates of the day making it the essential review for modern cultural studies.
- The Making of the Modern World provides access to the full-text of over 60,000 titles from the Goldsmiths' Library of Economic Literature at the University of London Library and the Kress Collection of Business and Economics at the Harvard Business School. The Making of the Modern World offers instant full-text access to the theories, practices, and consequences of economic and business activity in the West, from the last half of the 15th century to the mid-19th century. In more than 11-million pages, it focuses on economics interpreted in the wildest sense, including political science, history, sociology and special collections on banking, finance, transportation and manufacturing.
“This Making of the Modern World is a world renowned collection that boasts materials far beyond the remit of “economic literature,” said James Brophy, professor of History. “These digital archives should be viewed as critical, if not essential, additions to our collection. Because so many of our graduate seminars center on the 18th and 19th centuries, these databases constitute core assets.”
"Having the support of the president and provost for these new databases is wonderful and much appreciated,” said Susan Brynteson, the vice provost and May Morris Director of Libraries.
The new digital resources will be a key addition to the University of Delaware Library’s extensive and strategic investment in primary source historical documents. Such electronic access will greatly facilitate the success of both undergraduate and graduate research seminars in the humanities, and the new digital offerings open up even more ambitious research opportunities.
The electronic library of the University of Delaware Library, which is available 24/7 at [www.lib.udel.edu], provides access for faculty, students and staff of the University of Delaware to a rich array of online library resources including DELCAT, databases, full-text information, electronic journals and newspapers, Subject Guides to the Internet, the Institutional Repository and much more.
The new electronic resources which are licensed for use by University of Delaware students, faculty, and staff are available from the “Databases” page of the Library Web at [www.lib.udel.edu/db/] or directly at [www2.lib.udel.edu/database/apcrl.html].
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