History @ CUL

Digital Resources for the Republic of Letters

A recent review in Reviews in History from the Institute of Historical Research praises the project called Cultures of Knowledge (Cofk).  CofK offers a platform on which early modern intellectual historians can meet virtually and exchange knowledge about early modern networks through the study of their correspondence. The reviewer notes that “the site structure makes sense, everything is explained clearly and everything works, updates are continuous and everything that ends up on the CofK website is worth reading. It is a gem of a resource.”

The reviewer’s one regret is that CofK and other resources for early modern studies are not more well-known.  We can start to rectify that. Here are some projects that early modernists should have bookmarked and consult regularly:

• Cultures of Knowledge: An Intellectual Geography of the Seventeenth-Century Republic of Letters. http://cofk.history.ox.ac.uk/ “The ultimate objective of Cultures of Knowledge is to use the intellectual networks and epistolary cultures of the seventeenth century as a means of connecting transnational interdisciplinary research across the broad field of early modern intellectual history.”
• Early Modern Letters Online (EMLO). http://emlo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/. A union catalog for basic descriptions of early modern correspondence from eight contributing collections.  It hopes to add more institutions and guides over time.
• Mapping the Republic of Letters. https://republicofletters.stanford.edu/ “A collaborative, interdisciplinary humanities research project looking at 17th and 18th century correspondence, travel, and publication to trace the exchange of ideas in the early modern period and the Age of Enlightenment.” The project is described here.

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• e-corpus. http://www.e-corpush.org/ is a French collective digital library “that catalogs and disseminates numerous documents: manuscripts, archives, books, journals, prints, audio recordings, video, etc.” Among the 27 virtual collections are the correspondence of Nicholas Claude Fabri Peiresc (1580-1637) and one on the “Landscape of War” in the 20th century.
• Europeana. http://www.europeana.eu/portal/ Europeana is a growing collective digital library for Europe with contributions from 1500 institutions. There is a small amount of early modern correspondence included.  You can search for correspondence by searching for “what:Correspondence” and then use the “Timeline” display to see material that may be of interest from a particular century.
• Electronic Enlightenment. http://resolver.library.cornell.edu/misc/6993675 A subscription product from the Voltaire Foundation that was announced earlier on this blog.

Expanded Access to NEHGS databases

For a number of years now, the Library has subscribed to 200 data sources made available in electronic form by the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS).  NEHGS does not allow remote access to its American Ancestors web site; one had to use a computer in Olin Library in order to consult the resources.

We have recently been able to add Uris and Kroch libraries to the facilities that can connect to the site.  The data sources available include town and vital records, diaries, court, land, and probate records, and the full text of many genealogical periodicals and books.  It can be a useful supplement to anyone working in New England and New York history.

You can find American Ancestors by searching for that name in the catalog or simply going to http://www.americanancestors.org from a computer in OKU.

Google Scholar Citations

Google has added a new free feature to its Google Scholar database that may be of interest.  Google Scholar Citations allows you to build a profile of your scholarly work.  That profile can be either public or private.  (My profile is here; Google is using Richard Feynman’s profile as an example.)

Once your profile is completed, you can see who has cited you – at least according to the Google Scholar database.  It also presents a graphic display of citations:

You can sign up to be alerted when new citations to your work are added to Google Scholar.  You can select other authors with public profiles and ask to be alerted when new articles are added to their profiles.  And Google promises to use its matching magic to identify new articles by others that may be of interest to you.

An overview of Google Scholar Citations is here, and instructions on how to create a profile are found here.  All it takes is a Google account.

Olin update

The major changes associated with the Olin fire safety improvement project may be over, but that hasn’t stopped the staff of Olin/Kroch/Uris from making incremental improvements to the building.  Three improvements are likely to be of interest to CU historians:

• After many years, we were finally able to install outlets by all of the graduate student carrels on floors 3-7 in Olin. As you can imagine, the graduate students who have commented on the change are very, very happy.
  

  University photography

• Staff recently reconfigured the North Reading Room on the first floor of Olin to consolidate the reference collection, increase the number of user seats, and allow more light into the building.
• Later this year, the library staff offices on the 5th floor will be renovated to become a graduate reading room.  This will replace the former History graduate room on the 6th floor, which has been closed for a number of years because of construction. All of the graduate study rooms will be consolidated in 501 Olin (except for the Classics reading rooms). The construction of 501 is expected to conclude by March 30 2013 and we’ll be able to open it by the fall.

Three new database trials

Readex has offered us trial access through 14 September to two new additions to its digitized newspapers collection, of which we currently own 4 series.  Both can be accessed via the record in the catalog for America’s Historical Newspapers.

Series 8 and Series 9 of Early American Newspapers include full runs through 1922 of important, long-running 19th- and early 20th-century titles from diverse regions of the U.S.  Readex is also offering access to digitized copies of the Washington Evening Star.  The archive, which will eventually cover 1852-1922, documents the “paper of record” for Washington, D.C., which was also an important conservative voice for much of its history.  To access just the Star, follow the link to the Readex newspapers, then open the Newspaper Titles tab and pick the Evening Star.

Proquest is offering through the month of August trial access to all of the titles in its History Vault collection. This consists of digitized version of products formerly available only on microfilm.  The Library has already purchased its Vietnam War and American foreign policy, 1960-1975 and Black freedom struggle in the 20th century collections; we now have access to the NAACP Papers, Slavery and the Law, and Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantations Records, Part 1, as well. Any faculty member or graduate student interested in testing the new resources should contact Peter.Hirtle (at) cornell.edu for login information.  He also encourages feedback on any of these resources.

Alexander Hamilton papers available

The library recently added the digital version of the Alexander Hamilton papers to its American Founding Era collection in the Rotunda product from the University of Virginia. It joins the other digital collections in the set to which we already have access: the Adams Papers; the Thomas Jefferson Papers; the Dolley Madison Digital Edition; the James Madison Papers; the George Washington Papers; the Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, and the Founders Early Access program which provides access to transcribed but unedited and unpublished papers from the on-going editorial projects.

The digital edition of The Papers of Alexander Hamilton contains all twenty-seven volumes of the print edition—all the writings by and to Hamilton known to exist, some 12,500 documents—including all editorial annotations.  The catalog record for The Papers of Alexander Hamilton Digital Edition is found here.

History Compass now at CUL

The Library has recently subscribed to History Compass from Wiley-Blackwell. According to its publisher, History Compass is “an online-only journal publishing peer-reviewed state-of-the-field articles of the most important research and current thinking from across the entire discipline.” Articles are published in a number of different sections:

• Africa
• Asia
• Australasia and Pacific
• Britain and Ireland
• Caribbean and Latin America
• Europe
• Middle and Near East
• North America
• World

You can find out more about History Compass at the journal web site at www.history-compass.com.

When History Compass was first published, several faculty members who reviewed it had enough reservations that the Library decided not to subscribe.  A number of recent requests from faculty and students have led to a reconsideration of that decision.  Thoughts on its usefulness are welcome and should be sent to Peter Hirtle at peter.hirtle(at)cornell.edu.

Visualizing Emancipation

Visualizing Emancipation is a new web resource that is of interest for a number of reasons. First, there is its content: it identifies thousands of actions associated with the end of slavery in the United States.  Second, it depicts these actions on an interactive map, thus providing a geographical interface that helps depict when and where slavery was challenged and eventually abolished.  It is thus an interesting example of how geographic information systems can be used to expand the scope of humanities scholarship. Lastly, the project uses as a source and links to the digitized edition of the Official Records of War of Rebellion found in Cornell’s “Making of America” digital collection.  Thus Visualizing Emancipation is also a good example of how rich new resources can be constructed when there is open access to underlying data.

Crowdsourcing James Madison’s Notes

Here is an interesting new experiment in scholarship.  The Center for the Constitution at James Madison’s Montpelier has put online a copy of James Madison’s Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787.  What is unusual is that they are allowing scholars and the general public to add notes and commentary to the text.  Using software called ConText developed in conjunction with the Brookings Institution, the site allows registered users to add historical and theoretical notes to specific paragraphs as well as relate paragraphs to current events. You can then search the text as well as the notes. The Center promises that more documents will be made available for crowdsourced annotation in the future.

Right now, the annotations are fairly rare. It will be interesting to see if the experiment takes off and if the the online version can become an authoritative reference.  You can find the resource at http://context.montpelier.org/, and you can read more about the project in this article.

The Boxer Rebellion and the Great Game in China

David Sibley’s new book, The Boxer Rebellion and the Great Game in China, was published today by Hill & Wang.  You can find an interview with David about the book in this month’s Military History magazine.

Congratulations, David!

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