History and Sociology

Students often think about dusty archives and special collections when thinking about primary sources when, in fact, primary sources are available in all types of collections and formats. Widespread digitization efforts have made access to primary sources easier in more than one way: Not only are many primary sources accessible anytime and anywhere on the world-wide web or through the Library’s online collections, but their content can now be reviewed much faster than ever before through simple keyword searches. Where in the past a scholar had to spend many hours reading through page after page of a single source, the student today can quickly find keywords of interest in the text of multiple sources with comparatively little effort.

Falvey has a wide variety of primary sources in its digital collections, such as the complete archives of the New York Times, all 96,000 titles printed in England between 1473 and 1700 through Early English Books Online, 150,000 book titles published in the eighteenth century through Eighteenth Century Collections Online, both series of Early American Imprints and American Periodicals Series Online to name but a few of the more outstanding collections. Many other primary sources remain accessible only via microfilm or microfiche as well as “hidden away” in print volumes spread throughout Falvey’s sizable collection.

In short, primary sources can be anywhere and this is what makes it so confusing for our students. The Library has set up an online primary source research guide to help students with their research. The guide covers definitions and types of primary sources with numerous examples of Library of Congress subjects for primary sources. Hyperlinks take the student into the Library’s catalog and online collections. It concludes with some useful tips on how to evaluate primary sources. Students can also set up a research appointment via an online form.

Never has research based on primary sources been more accessible than today, but even today a visit to an archive is sometimes still the only means of obtaining rare and hard to find sources. The online Primary Sources Research Guide can be found via the Library’s Course & Topics Guides site as well as via the Primary Sources tab on the History Subject Guide.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions or comments that you may have.

Falvey recently acquired the digital edition of the Papers of Thomas Jefferson from the University of Virginia Press. The Jefferson papers are part of the American Founding Era Collection, which includes the papers of other major figures of the early republic such as John Adams and George Washington. The digital collection encompasses volumes 1-33 (1760-1801) of the projected 60-volume print edition published by Princeton University Press. The Library has volumes 1-35 of the print edition. Volume 36 is forthcoming in February 2010.  The digital edition of the Papers of Thomas Jefferson includes the copious correspondence written and received by Jefferson as well as his private notes and documents of historical significance in a fully searchable online environment. Volumes 1-4 of the retirement series are slated to be added to the digital collection in the near future.

The electronic version of Jefferson’s papers presents unique opportunities to Villanova University faculty and students. With a few keyboard strokes interested scholars can find all letters from Jefferson to or from any of his many correspondents. A unique lookup feature for letter authors and recipients (see image below) makes it possible to limit search results to a unique person, inconsistent spelling notwithstanding. Letters that are dispersed over 35 print volumes are brought together on the screen. The full text search feature will find all instances of any word or name in a matter of seconds. Different forms of nouns and verbs are matched through stemming. For instance, fight will be matched to fights, fought, and fighting. Word stemming is also supported for French, since a significant part of Jefferson’s correspondence is in French language: a search for œil or oeil will retrieve documents with the plural form yeux. Other search features are wildcards, phrase searching, automatic “and” queries, and exact form matches. Click here for detailed search instructions.

The correspondence can also be browsed in chronological order or by print volume. Letters can be saved as jpeg files by clicking on the small icon next to the page number at the top of each page. Unfortunately, it is not possible to save search results to a folder or email them. Each document includes a reference to the print volume, a canonical URL and a recommended citation. Please note that the canonical URL lacks Villanova ldap authentication and will hence only work on campus. Please contact me if you need authenticated URLs to individual documents for your students.

At the current time Villanova University has only access to the full text of the Jefferson papers in the American Founding Era collection even though you will be able to see and search the other collections. Links to the digital collection can be found in the Library’s catalog, on the Databases A-Z list and on the history subject guide under the primary sources tab.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions or comments that you may have.

The Biennial ICPSR Meeting will take place next week from Monday Oct. 5 to Friday Oct. 9. Please take a look at the program. This year’s meeting will be completely online, which means that you will be able to follow live presentations, ask questions and join online discussions from your office. No pre-registration is necessary. Log in via the Webinar Session Links in the program to join the online meeting at the time indicated.

Here is a small selection from this year’s program:

• Highlights of 2009 Website - Web 2.0 Enhancements
  Oct. 6, 10:30 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.
  ICPSR Web managers will be present for a live chat/demo of the newly released ICPSR Web site (a prerecorded orientation will also be available for viewing).
• Graphical Displays of Quantitative Information
  Oct. 6, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
  This session will focus on the theoretical concerns and practical issues involved in using visual displays for quantitative information. We will discuss ways to, quite literally, look at your data.
• Tools that Support Data Analysis
  Oct. 6, 1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.
  ICPSR provides an increasing number of tools that support data analysis. This session will provide an overview of them, including: variable-level searching, the sample characteristics tool, the recode syntax tool, subsetting tools, Quick Tables, the Bibliography of Data-related Literature, and data mapping tools.
• Census 2010 & American Community Survey
  Oct. 7, 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
  Discussion of new Census products and information on Census 2010 and the ACS.
• ADD-Health
  Oct. 7, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
  In this session, we will describe access to and analysis of the Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. The session will include a description of how to use the new restricted use contract system to acquire the 33 restricted use files and the public use files.
• Using Data in Teaching (Panel)
  Oct. 8, 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
  This session aims to give instructors helpful hints for using data in teaching. Panelists will include social science faculty who actively use data-based activities in a wide range of courses. They will give participants a brief overview of what they do with their own students and the effects they see from these exercises, followed by a time for interaction among participants and presenters for sharing questions and ideas. Everything from tips for choosing a dataset or topic to creating and evaluating an exercise is fair game for this session.
• Online Data Analysis Tools
  Oct. 9, 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
  The objective of this session is to provide participants with hands-on experience to inform them of, or broaden their knowledge of, the chief online data analysis tool used at ICPSR, Survey Documentation and Analysis (SDA). Recent features of SDA include corrections to standard errors produced for studies with complex sampling designs. This session will provide an overview of the analysis programs offered by SDA and demonstrate some of the analyses that can be run using SDA, including highlights of the new features.
• Quantitative Literacy: Assessment and Enhancement (Panel)
  Oct. 9, 12:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.
  In addition to working on efforts to help instructors more easily bring data into their courses, ICPSR is involved in a project to assess the educational impact of such exercises on students’ quantitative literacy (QL) skills. This session will provide a discussion of what QL means, an overview of related student learning outcomes, and examples of assessment techniques. Panelists will include experts on QL and faculty who have designed and implemented assessment strategies to measure QL in their courses.

RefWorks Library Workshop
Date: Friday, September 18
Time: 5-6 p.m.
Location: Griffin Room, 1st floor, Falvey

Please set up a RefWorks account by clicking on the “Sign up for an Individual Account” link before you come to the workshop and download Write-N-Cite if you bring your personal laptop.

You will learn how to

• – export references from catalogs, indexes, and digital collections,
• – edit references,
• – create folders for different projects,
• – create references from scratch in RefWorks,
• – cite in Microsoft Word with Write-N-Cite (Chicago style).

Please e-mail me at jutta.seibert@villanova.edu if you would like to attend, but have not yet signed up. The workshop is close to full and there is only limited space left.

Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA) makes it easy to search your favorite social science databases simultaneously.  Simply click on the Specific Databases link below the search boxes and select from Sociological Abstracts, Criminal Justice Abstracts, Social Services Abstracts, NCJRS Abstracts, ERIC, PsycINFO, and Communication Abstracts. Next click on Continue to Search and your selection will be listed on the search page under Now Selected: Multiple Databases. Search results will be clearly identified by database of origin. Since not all these research databases use the same subject thesaurus, it is best to avoid subject (descriptor) searches while cross searching multiple databases.

Other helpful features are the export to RefWorks and the QuickBib options. Both can be found by clicking on the Save, Print, Email link from the results screen. QuickBib will format selected records into the citation style of your choice in a matter of seconds.

For more bells and whistles set up a My Research account with CSA. You can find a link in the upper right hand corner of the CSA interface. My Research is your gateway to research alerts via e-mail or RSS feed, a customized search interface, and groups of preferred databases. You can also save unlimited search results and search histories to your My Research account. The price? One more login and password to remember.

Comments? Please let us know what you think.

It’s that time of the year again:  The fall semester is right around the corner and everybody is scrambling to finish his or her syllabus.  Please contact me as early as possible if you plan to bring your class to the Library for a research workshop, even if it will be much later in the semester.  The Library’s classroom tends to get booked quickly.  I find that research workshops are most beneficial when they are scheduled after students have picked their paper topics.

There may be no room in your syllabus for a library workshop, but you feel that your students could definitely use some extra help.  A research course guide is a practical alternative.  Please take a look at some of the online course guides from previous semesters:  art history, criminal justice, history, and sociology. In the past I have often done both, research workshops and online course guides in lieu of handouts.

Last but not least, remember to order books and videos early, so that they will be available in the Library when you or your students need them.

Here is my contact information:
E-mail: jutta.seibert@villanova.edu
Phone: 610-519-7876
Office: 1st floor, Falvey Library

Villanova faculty and students now have online access to the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures (Leiden: Brill, 2007). The Encyclopedia focuses on women and the civilizations and societies in which Islam has played an historic role. It is “an essential reference work for students and researchers in the fields of gender studies, Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, as well as scholars of religion, history, politics, anthropology, geography and related disciplines.” Over 1000 scholars from around the world contributed to the encyclopedia, among them Prof. Hibba Abugideiri who teaches in Villanova’s history department.

The Encyclopedia is organized thematically as follows:

Vol. 1: Methodologies, Paradigms and Sources
Vol. 2: Family, Law and Politics
Vol. 3: Family, Body, Sexuality, and Health
Vol. 4: Economics, Education, Mobility and Space
Vol. 5: Practices, Interpretations and Representations
Vol. 6: Index

The treatment of concepts such as orientalism, harem, and jihad is thorough but still comprehensible to undergraduate students. Each entry includes a bibliography which traces the scholarly literature on any given topic. Cross references are hyper-linked and easy to follow. Entries can be viewed in html or pdf formats, e-mailed and/or printed. Most entries are subdivided by geographic area, but not all geographic areas are systematically covered. A search of the full text of all entries can only be done through the Advanced Search feature. The Quick Search link, which can be limited to Search this publication only, searches only the titles of entries.

Some of the letters used to transliterate Arabic names and terms are not available on standard U.S. keyboards. Two examples are the letters kāf (ﻙ) and ḥā (ﺡ), which are occasionally rendered as ß and £ respectively. Scholars with an Arabic keyboard or those who are familiar with keyboard shortcuts can enter symbols such as £ or ß or can copy and paste them from other sources into the search box. Undergraduate students who are generally not familiar with transliteration issues may not grasp the limitations of certain search terms. Transliteration is also not consistent throughout the Encyclopedia and it is advisable to try different versions in order to catch all instances of a given term, e.g., Ibn Hanbal is also transliterated as Ibn £anbal

Links to the Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures can be found in the Library’s catalog, on the Gender and Women’s Studies subject guide as well as under E-Reference Resources (History, Multicultural Studies, Sociology).

Comments? Please let us know what you think.

Falvey is delighted with its acquisition of 19th Century UK Periodicals.

Series 1 of this collection, entitled New Readerships, consists of  women’s and children’s periodicals, as well as humor and leisure/sport magazines and chronicles the rise of modern magazine culture. Featured are women’s magazines, such as Hearth and Home and the Women’s Penny Paper, satirical titles such as Punch and Fun, magazines aimed at the young, such as Boy’s Own Paper, as well as a number of sports and leisure magazines.

Series 2 of 19th Century UK Periodicals, entitled Empire, includes the complete run of over 90 magazines. Topics range from the abolition of the slave trade within the British Empire in 1807 to the first Opium Wars (1839-42) and the “scramble for Africa” in the 1880s and 1890s.

Records to all magazines in the collection will be added to the Library’s online catalog. Each record will have a link to individual titles. Links to the digital collection itself appear on the Databases A-Z list (under N), as well as on the primary sources tab of the history subject guide.

Comments? Please let us know what you think.

Falvey added over 70 new e-reference titles from Sage to its popular online reference collection.  Some of these titles were already available in print on the Library’s reference shelves, but most of the titles are new in Falvey’s collection and worth a closer look. One can browse the Sage e-reference collection by subject areas such as history, sociology, or criminal justice and search for keywords in individual titles as well as the complete collection.

The Encyclopedia of American Urban History, the Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice, and the Sage Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods are some outstanding new titles in this collection. Among the titles previously owned in print are the Encyclopedia of Juvenile Justice, the Encyclopedia of Social Problems, and the Encyclopedia of Social Theory, to name but a few.

Direct links to individual titles or to the complete collection can be added to WebCT as well as to the Library’s course guides. Links to individual entries are another possibility. A good example is Appendix A: Data on Race and Ethnicity in the United States, 1820 to the Present of the Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society, which includes 60 pages worth of data such as  persons obtaining legal permanent resident status by region and selected country of last residence, 1820-2006.

Noteworthy features of the Sage e-reference collection are a citation tool that offers a choice of three citation styles (APA, MLA and Chicago), numerous active URLs on the further reading lists, and the option to e-mail entries to any e-mail address.

Access to these titles is available via the Library’s subject guides (sociology, criminal justice, history), the E-Reference Resources list and the Library’s catalog.

Comments? Please let us know what you think.

Falvey now offers the university community online access to the Chronicle of Higher Education, “the No. 1 source of news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty members and administrators.” Widely valued for the timeliness and credibility of its news coverage, the Chronicle has won numerous awards for its coverage of political issues with impact on higher education. Popular features include the careers section with its job listings, annual salary surveys, and the scholarly productivity index, ranking 375 Ph.D. granting institutions. In addition, the online Chronicle offers exclusive daily news articles, podcasts and access to its digital archive dating back to 1995.

Because the site license includes off-campus access through LDAP (Villanova email ID and password) authentication, readers who already have a personal or departmental subscription may consider canceling it now. Those who still enjoy holding the print version of the Chronicle in their hands will find it on the periodical shelves on the first floor of the Library.

For quick, convenient access to the online Chronicle, bookmark the link found in the Library’s catalog. Better yet, create an RSS feed to bring the Chronicle’s features to your browser automatically. For information on how to set up RSS feeds and download a free feed reader, check the Chronicle’s web site.

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