Resource Trial: Naxos Library

Naxos Music Library

Calling all music lovers! We are currently trialling six Naxos Library products:

Naxos Music Library is the most comprehensive collection of classical music available online. Currently, it offers over 2,831,415 tracks of fine recorded music.

Naxos Music Library Jazz is a comprehensive collection of Jazz music available online. Over 28,952 albums (272,292 tracks) are available and new albums are added weekly.

A wide range of content, from legendary historical performances to contemporary world music. Recordings of over 32,000 artists are represented.

Naxos Works Database is your trusted resource for information about vocal, chamber and orchestral works. Use the database to find details about composers and their works, instrumentations, durations, publishers and work introductions.

Naxos Video Library is a performing arts video library with over 4362 operas, ballets, documentaries, concerts, masterclasses, competition and musical tour videos as well as footage taken from recording sessions. 

Featuring a comprehensive collection of classic audiobooks and high quality independent publisher productions.

Naxos provide training videos on using the collections on their YouTube channel.

Newcastle University staff and students can access the sign-in information via this Word document. The trial runs until 31st October 2023.

NB Trial now extended to 10th of November.

To help us evaluate it, please email us your feedback, or leave a reply on this blog.

Women’s Magazine Archive

After a successful trial earlier in 2023, we are very pleased that the Library has been able to secure access to the Women’s Magazine Archive I-III.

Available in three separate collections, Women’s Magazine Archive provides access to the backfiles of the foremost titles of this type, including Good HousekeepingLadies’ Home Journal, and Woman’s Day, which serve as canonical records of evolving assumptions about gender roles and cultural mores. Other titles focus on narrower topics but deliver valuable source content for specific research areas. Parents, for example, is of particular relevance for research in the fields of children’s education, psychology, and health. Elsewhere, SeventeenCosmopolitan, and Essence disclose trends in and responses to the changing roles and experiences of teenage, young adult, and African-American women respectively.

In combination, the publications here cover topics such as family life, home economics, health, careers, fashion, culture, and many more; this material serves multiple research areas, from gender studies, social history, and the arts, through to education, politics and marketing/media history.

Issues are scanned from cover to cover in high-resolution colour, ensuring that the original print artefacts are faithfully reproduced and that valuable non-article items, such as advertisements, are included.

You can search the resource in different ways, including by Basic or Advanced Search:

Women’s Magazine Archive – Basic and Advanced Search options

For more support on using the Basic and Advanced Search, see the ProQuest Platform support guides.

You can also search within a Publication, or for a specific issue of a publication:

Women’s Magazine Archive – publications search

Viewing individual pages is made easy, with options to download the PDF or browse the full issue:

Women’s Magazine Archive – viewing the full text of an individual issue

Access the Women’s Magazine Archive using your Newcastle University credentials via the Library Search record here.

This resource will be useful for researchers in a number of subjects, including History, English, Media, and Sociology – we hope it is useful, and always, get in touch with the Liaison team should you need any further support in using the Women’s Magazine Archive I-III.

AM Modules – Empire Online and Church Missionary Society Periodicals 1 & 2

After a trial of several AM (Adam Matthews) Collections modules earlier in 2023, the Library has acquired two new resources – Empire Online, and Church Missionary Society Periodicals 1 & 2.

Church Missionary Society Periodicals digitises publications from the CMS, South American Missionary Society and Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, encompassing issues from 1816-2009. Thousands of pages with detailed metadata enable new research opportunities in the fields of missiology and world Christianity, as well as a unique perspective on global history and cultural encounter.

The documents include reports on missionary work, serialised journals and letters, birth, marriage, and death announcements, fiscal reports and reflections on worship, making them an extremely rich source. 

You can access the Church Missionary Society Periodicals 1 & 2 via Library Search here.

Empire Online is an interactive collection of primary source documents sourced from leading archives around the world. Material in the collection spans five centuries, charting the story of the rise and fall of empires; from the explorations of Columbus, Captain Cook, and others, right through to de-colonisation in the second half of the twentieth century and debates over American Imperialism.

The wealth of documents spans five centuries and includes manuscripts, rare printed materials, letterbooks, periodicals, diaries, photographs and more.

Material in Empire Online has been sourced from a wide range of reputable institutions, with a particularly strong core of documents and images from the British Library. However, the focus is not only on the British Empire; there are a number of documents and secondary resources which relate the story of the Empire from the French, Spanish, Portuguese, and German points of view, as well as that of indigenous peoples from Africa, India and North America.

You can access the Empire Online database via Library Search here.

For both databases, you could start by heading to the Introduction tab for an overview on the collection, a handy tour of the website and its key features, and information on copyright:

Empire Online Introduction
Empire Online Introduction

The Documents tab allows you to browse through the full range of documents available in the collections, and includes handy filters to narrow your results Document Type (Empire Online only), Library (Empire Online only), Title (CMS Periodicals only), and Issue Date (CMS Periodicals only).

Church Missionary Society Periodicals Documents
Church Missionary Society Periodicals Documents

Additionally, the Advanced Search is available and allows researchers to build more complex searches:

Empire Online Advanced Search
Empire Online Advanced Search

Empire Online offers an option to view the sources in a chronological format, and the CMS Periodicals offers an option to view the sources on a map format:

CMS Periodicals Maps
CMS Periodicals Maps
Empire Online Chronology
Empire Online Chronology

Both databases offer extensive support, search tips and advice under the Help tab.

Please get in touch if you need any more support using the databases, but we hope that they will be of interest to your research!