Author: Lucy

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New resource in focus: Rock’s backpages

Rocks back pages logo

We’re looking in more depth at some of the great new online resources we’ve bought recently, to help you get the best out of them.

Rock’s Backpages is an online archive of music journalism, containing over 37,000 articles from the 1950s to the present, including reviews, interviews, letters and features, plus 500 audio interviews.

It covers a wide range of artists and genres: from Aaliyah to ZZ Top; from BB King to PP Arnold; from 10CC to 999; and from The Rezillos all the way to….. The Revillos. Hold tight!

Articles are taken from music publications around the world, such as NME, Rolling Stone, Smash Hits, The Face and Mojo, together with music articles from non-music magazines and newspapers. You can read the work of writers such as Lester Bangs, David Hepworth, Nick Kent, Jon Savage, Caitlin Moran and many more.

Hot tip! Choose Advanced search or Library for a full range of search/browse options, including by genre, artist, journalist or publication. If you want to read the first reviews of The Beatles, analyse how LGBT issues have been handled over the years, or explore Chrissie Hynde’s early years as an NME journalist, you can do it here.

New content is added to Rock’s Backpages every week, and highlighted on the home page. Follow them on Twitter to keep up to date, or listen to the weekly podcast which highlights the latest additions.

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Take off with our new dissertations and project toolkit!

Are you preparing a dissertation or project, or will be doing so soon?

Make sure you visit our brand new interactive dissertations and project toolkit. Based on the extensive experience of staff from the Library and Writing Development Centre, our new guide includes an interactive search planner, which takes you through the different stages of developing your search strategy, and enables you to create and download your personalised search plan.

The search planner is complemented by a project proposal planner, developed by our colleagues in the Writing Development Centre, to help you develop or refine your research proposal.

The guide also points you to further advice on a wide range of relevant skills, such as finding, managing and evaluating information. It also directs you to the key information resources for your subject area.

It’s easy to navigate, with clear text and short videos throughout. We hope you find it helpful, and if you’ve got any feedback, please let us know.

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New specialist humanities resources for 2018/19

Laptop on table

We’re pleased to report that we’ve invested in several exciting new online resources for the new academic year. Whatever your subject interest, you’re bound to find something of interest. Keep an eye on our blog for more in-depth features on these new resources over the next few weeks.

African American Communities

Focusing predominantly on Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, New York, and North Carolina, this collection presents multiple aspects of the African American community through pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, photographs, correspondence, official records and in-depth oral histories.

Race Relations in America

Collection of primary source material covering Civil Rights in the USA from 1943-1970. Content includes photographs, correspondence, audio recordings, data and case studies, together with contextual features to help with interpreting the material.

Literary Print Culture: the Stationers’ Company Archive

The Stationers’ Company Archive is one of the most important resources for understanding the workings of the early book trade, the printing and publishing community, the establishment of legal requirements for copyright provisions, and the history of bookbinding. Explore extremely rare documents dating from 1554 to the 21st century in this invaluable resource of research material.

A bookbinder’s workshop, with the finished products in a domestic scene over on the right. Date: 1875

Rock’s Backpages

The largest database of online music journalism, providing access to thousands of interviews, reviews and articles about artists of all genres, from Aaliyah to ZZ Top. Coverage dates back 50 years, and also includes 500 audio interviews.

Rocks back pages logo

Drama Online

This comprises the text of over 2,000 international plays, from ancient Greek drama to contemporary works; film and audio recordings of productions, and contextual resources relating to drama theory and practice. This summer, we have just enhanced our Drama Online portfolio with the Nick Hern Books collection (400 plays) plus the 2017/18 core update (117 plays).

Digimap Aerial

Digimap is an online map and data delivery service, comprising various collections, including Ordnance Survey and Historic. We now also have access to Digimap Aerial. You’ll need to agree to the new licence before using them: please see our separate blogpost for more details.

Financial Times and Sunday Times upgrade

We have just updated our access to these archives to cover the Financial Times from 2011-2016, and the Sunday Times from 2007-2017 (our ‘page by page’ online archives already go back to the very first editions of these papers in the 19th century). For very recent coverage of the Sunday Times to the present day (text-only content) please visit Lexis. For current coverage of the Financial Times, please visit this page.

financial times newspaper snapshot

New eBook collections

And there’s more! We have also bought access to thousands of new eBooks across many subject areas. Read all about it!

students in library studying

 

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New humanities eBook collections for 2018/19

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We’ve been investing in some major new humanities eBook collections this summer.

Bloomsbury eBooks

We’ve bought five new eBook collections from Bloomsbury, comprising over 150 titles across a wide range of subjects. The new collections are: Education 2018; Film and Media 2017; Linguistics 2018; Literary Studies 2018.

All the new titles are individually catalogued on Library Search, or you can access a full listing of collection contents on this page.

Cambridge Histories Online

We have added eleven new volumes to this major series, covering Ireland, Communism, modernism and slavery, which means we now have access to over 350 Cambridge Histories online.

De Gruyter

We have access to De Gruyter’s entire eBook collection until June 2019 (after which point, we will buy access to the most well-used titles). This collection of almost 27,000 titles covers a wide range of subjects, including linguistics, literary studies, law, philosophy, history, music, classical studies and many more. All titles are individually catalogued on Library Search.

Oxford Scholarly Editions Online

Full text literary works, including editorial annotations, enabling you to track variations between editions. We have now bought the Romantics Poetry collection, to add to the Prose and Drama collections, bringing the total to over 350 titles.

Oxford Scholarship Online: Classical Studies

We have bought 115 Classical Studies eBooks in this collection. All titles are individually catalogued on Library Search, or you can browse them as a whole collection on the OSO site.

Springer

We now have access to thousands more Springer eBooks, bringing the total to over 84,000 titles. These cover a wide range of subject areas, including history, law and criminology, literature, media and culture, language and linguistics, and many fields of social sciences. All titles are individually catalogued on Library Search or you can search/browse on Springerlink.

And there’s more! We’ve also invested in lots of specialist new e-resources for humanities. Read all about it!

 

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Finding and using images

New from the humanities library liaison team!

Every week, we’re giving you quick Twitter tips and tricks to help you get the best out of our resources. We’ve got so many great collections, it can be hard to keep up with what’s on offer. So sit back and let us tweet you to search success!

Earlier this week, we focused on finding and using images. Missed our tweets? Don’t worry, we’ve compiled them all together into a Twitter moment below!

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News and media resources

New from the humanities library liaison team!

Every week, we’re giving you quick Twitter tips and tricks to help you get the best out of our resources. We’ve got so many great collections, it can be hard to keep up with what’s on offer. So sit back and let us tweet you to search success!

Last week, we focused on our news and media resources. Missed our tweets? Don’t worry, we’ve compiled them all together into a Twitter moment below!

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Music and sound resources

New from the humanities library liaison team!

Every week, we’re giving you quick Twitter tips and tricks to help you get the best out of our resources. We’ve got so many great collections, it can be hard to keep up with what’s on offer. So sit back and let us tweet you to search success!
This week, our focus has been #soundandvision, and yesterday we highlighted our music and sound resources.

Missed our tweets? Don’t worry, we’ve compiled them all together into a Twitter moment below!

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Film and television resources: quick tips


New from the humanities library liaison team!

Every week, we’re giving you quick Twitter tips and tricks to help you get the best out of our resources. We’ve got so many great collections, it can be hard to keep up with what’s on offer. So sit back and let us tweet you to search success!

Today, we focused on our film and television resources. Missed our tweets? Don’t worry, we’ve compiled them all together into a Twitter moment below!