Category: Arts and Humanities

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New resource in focus: Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (Romantics Poetry)

We have recently added a new module, Romantics Poetry, to our Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (OSEO) collection.

OSEO enables you to explore old works in new ways. It brings together authoritative editions of major works, so you can explore variations between editions, annotations and extensive notes side by side with the texts, or you can just read the texts on their own.

The new module means we now have access to 272 Oxford editions, containing 344 works, including poetry, prose, drama, essays and correspondence, in the following categories: Romantics Prose; Romantics Poetry; 18th Century Drama; 18th Century Prose.

You can browse by work, edition or author, or search in highly specific ways (e.g. just search within notes or stage directions) to pinpoint exactly what you want. The editions are individually catalogued on Library Search, but we’d recommend searching for works and editions via the OSEO interface itself.

Various export and personalisation options are available.

If you haven’t used OSEO before, we’d strongly recommend watching this introductory video, so you can understand the potential of this resource and how to use it.

Have you used Oxford Scholarly Editions Online? Please feel free to post your comments and experiences by clicking Leave a comment below.

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New resource in focus: Race Relations in America

Continuing our series of blogposts exploring our brand new humanities e-resources in more depth…

We have recently bought access to Race Relations in America. This is a collection of primary source material covering Civil Rights in the USA from 1943-1970.

This archive contains a huge range of primary sources. Before you dive in, we’d recommend clicking Introduction, in which you can learn more about its scope and features.

The sources come from the records of the Race Relations Department of the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries in New Orleans, and comprise many different types of material, including pamphlets, audio recordings, survey data, photographs and speeches. These sources are supplemented by secondary materials such as contextual essays, maps and thematic guides to give you ideas for interpreting and exploiting the archive.

You can browse or search the archive contents by clicking Documents (to browse) or one of the two search options. You can filter your search in various ways, e.g. by document type, year or theme. If you just want to view images or listen to audio, click the relevant buttons on the top menu.

Have you used Race Relations in America? Please feel free to post your comments and experiences by clicking Leave a comment below.

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New resource in focus: African American Communities

Continuing our series of blogposts exploring our brand new humanities e-resources in more depth…

We have recently bought access to 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 in the 19th and 20th centuries, through pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, photographs, correspondence, official records and oral histories.

This archive contains a huge range of primary sources. Before you dive in, we’d recommend clicking Introduction, in which you can learn more about its scope and features.

The primary sources include many different record types, including pamphlets, images (including 360 degree view), official records and oral histories. These sources are supplemented by contextual essays to give you ideas for interpreting and exploiting the archive.

You can browse or search the archive contents by clicking Documents (to browse) or one of the two search options. You can filter your search in various ways, e.g. by document type, year or theme. If you just want to view images, click Image Gallery.

Have you used African American Communities? Please feel free to post your comments and experiences by clicking Leave a comment below.

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New resource: Westlaw All Books

We’re pleased to announce that following a successful recent trial, we have now bought access to Westlaw All Books.

This upgrade gives us access to an extra 250 law reference works online, covering over 50 areas of law, including 71 loose-leaf titles. No more worrying about whether the book is on the shelf or not: the information is always at your fingertips!

The new titles are likely to be of interest to students in business, accounting and finance, planning, and engineering, as well as law.

The new titles are individually catalogued on Library Search, or you can access them all by logging into Westlaw, and clicking on Books on the menu across the top of the page.


Thanks to everyone who used the trial and gave us feedback.

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New resource in focus: Literary Print Culture

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

Continuing our series of blog posts exploring our brand new resources in more depth…

We have recently bought access to Literary Print Culture: the Stationers’ Company Archive. This 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 the 16th to 21st century in this invaluable resource of research material.

This archive contains a huge range of primary sources. Before you dive in, we’d recommend clicking Introduction, in which you can learn more about its scope and features.

The primary sources include many different record types, relating to finance, membership, court, trade and charity. More recent sources include photographs and oral histories. These sources are supplemented by contextual essays and other commentary to give you ideas for interpreting and exploiting the archive.

You can browse or search the archive contents by clicking Documents (to browse) or one of the two search buttons. You can filter your search in various ways, e.g. by document type, year or theme.

For some of the documents in the archive, you can now use handwritten text recognition to enable you to search the handwritten items effectively. Split screen viewing enables you to view a document and its index simultaneously.

Have you used Literary Print Culture? Please feel free to post your comments and experiences by clicking Leave a comment below.

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Drama Online: what’s new?

The Library has subscribed to Drama Online for a few years.  This resource contains the text of over 2,000 international plays, from ancient to contemporary, together with contextual resources. It’s likely to be of interest to anyone studying literature, languages (ancient to modern), film studies and media.

We’ve recently upgraded our subscription to include the Nick Hern Books collection (over 400 plays) together with the 2017/18 core update (117 plays).

All the plays are individually catalogued and searchable via Library Search, or you can search/browse them all in various ways on the Drama Online site.

For example, using the options at the top of the screen, you can browse by title, author, genre and time period, or if you click Find Plays on the home page, you can add in other search filters, such as number of roles or scenes. Select Context and Criticism for access to a wide range of e-books about drama.

When viewing a play text, click Play Tools to analyse the speaking parts and appearances of different characters throughout the play.

Finally, follow @dramaonlinelib for news and features about this fantastic resource!