There are quite a few database trials going on at the moment that are relevant to subject areas in the LLC School. The trials can be accessed from the Library’s E-Resources Trials website.
Database trial – CNKI English resources
The Library has arranged a free trial of three English resources from CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure): China Data Insight, Academic Focus, and Journal Translation Project, covering all subject areas in humanities, social sciences, science and technology, and medicine.
The trial has been advertised on the Library E-resources Trials website. The trial is valid until 30th Nov. 2019. EASE login is required for access:
Just click on each database in Step 1 as indicated in the screenshot below to gain direct access:
China Data Insights provides access to more than 1,083 statistical yearbooks with 8,446 volumes and 1.49 million tables. There is a linked Chinese version with more data.
Academic Focus contains 262 English journals published in China, English content translated from top Chinese academic journals and over 2400 conference proceedings.
Journal Translation Project features the bilingual full-text content of 140 top academic journals in China with the English and Chinese versions displayed side-by-side.
CNKI is provider of our two important Chinese resources at the moment: China Academic Journals and China Doctoral and Masters Dissertations Full-text Database, both of which are in the Library’s Databases A-Z list and Databases by Subject for East Asian Studies.
Princeton University Library Research Grants
The following information is relevant to several subject areas in the LLC School: East Asian Studies, Children’s literature, and Portuguese-speaking cultures.
Each year, the Friends of the Princeton University Library, as well as other library and campus funding sources, offer short-term Library Research Grants to promote scholarly use of the Library’s special collections. The award is $1,000 per week (up to four weeks) plus transportation costs. Applications to use unique, not regularly available, East Asian Library materials will be considered as part of these general grants. There is a window of several months to apply each year.
As of Sept. 23, 2019, the 2020-2021 Princeton University Library Research Grants application is open and ready to receive submissions. The deadline to apply is Noon on December 13, 2019. Grants are tenable from May 1, 2020 to April 30, 2021.
Applications will be considered for scholarly use of archives, manuscripts, rare books, and other rare and unique holdings of the Department of Special Collections, including the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library; as well as rare books in Marquand Library of Art and Archaeology, and in the East Asian Library (Gest Collection). Special grants are awarded in several areas: the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies supports a limited number of library fellowships in Hellenic Studies, the Elmer Adler Fund supports research in the graphic arts, and the Cotsen Children’s Library supports research in its collection on aspects of children’s literature. The Maxwell Fund supports research on materials dealing with Portuguese-speaking cultures. The Sid Lapidus ’59 Research Fund for Studies of the Age of Revolution and the Enlightenment in the Atlantic World supports relevant special collections research.
For more information, or to apply, please go to http://rbsc.princeton.edu/friends-princeton-university-library-research-grants
Ban Dainagon Ekotob : a premium replica of the late 12th-century Japanese emakimono (picture scroll)
The Library has just purchased a beautiful reproduction of a late 12th-century Japanese emakimono (絵巻) – a set of 3 illustrated narrative picture scrolls called Ban Dainagon Ekotob (伴大納言絵詞 The Tale of Great Minister Ban). The full-colour painting depicts the events of the Ōtemmon Conspiracy, an event of Japan’s early Heian period. The painting, attributed to Tokiwa Mitsunaga, is over 20 m (66 ft) long and about 31.5 cm (12.4 in) tall. The original art work is considered to be Kokuhō (國寶, or a Japanese national treasure) among six such rare and invaluable picture scrolls. Information about their replica can be found here.
The reproduction was published by Chikuma shobo (筑摩書房) in 1971-1974 in a limited edition of 1000 copies. Our Library copy has the set number ’84’. The 3 hand-scrolls are placed individually in 3 wooden cases, each accompanied with a booklet. The set has been catalogued for the Centre for Research Collections. See the bibliographic record in DiscoverEd here.
The material has been purchased in response to needs for a Japanese Studies course called “Supernatural Japan: doing Japanology through Yokai”. As the course takes a ‘learning by doing’ approach, allowing students to experience Yokai in art, literature to discover the historical and cultural value of Yokai in Japanese society, this set of 3 hand-scrolls will give a rare opportunity of authentic reading experience for students of Japanese Studies or anyone interested in Japanese art, history and culture.
China Families – New Genealogy Website by Bristol University
This is an edited re-blog of a newsletter from the Scotland-China Association.
Were your ancestors out in China? If so, track them with China Families:
China Families is directed by Robert Bickers, Professor of History at the University of Bristol. The database platform allows you to search across 60,000 names of men and women who lived, worked or died in China, between the 1850s and 1940s. The information is drawn from ten different sources, and you can search each one of these individually, but you can also search across all of them. There are many Chinese names here, as well as the names of foreign residents.
In the century before 1950, tens of thousands of foreign nationals lived and worked in China. They could be found in large communities in major coastal cities like Shanghai or Tianjin, as well as in tiny countryside missionary compounds, or isolated Customs stations deep in China’s interior. Often thought to be exotic and obscure, these communities created newspapers, and directories, and their lives and activities were widely recorded. But finding out about ancestors who spent time in China can be difficult, for the records are scattered, and even old cemeteries were destroyed in the 1960s. Therefore, China Families helps uncover a hidden past.
Its companion site Historial Photographs of China makes available over 20,000 photographs of the period, many of them supplied by China families.
Referencing Tutorial
Cite Them Right online, which is in the Databases A-Z list, is a comprehensive guide to referencing almost anything you will come across in the course of your studies or research. It has just launched a Referencing Tutorial.
Direct access to the Tutorial is here. You will have the option to create an account to sign in as an authenticated user so that the Tutorial can remember your progress, or to explore freely without signing in and therefore without remembering your progress.
This tutorial is made-up of 11 short, self-contained topics, which you can explore and revisit at any time.
Content includes:
- What is referencing and why it matters
- What sources are appropriate to reference
- How to avoid plagiarism
- How to insert citations into your text
- Incorporating the work of others into your writing
- Documenting the full reference details
Resource Lists workshop for LLC course organisers
In response to LLC colleagues’ interest and requests, the Library Learning Services will provide a Resources Lists workshop specially for staff of the LLC School who are using or planning to use the Resource Lists for their course teaching.
- Time: 2.00 – 3.00pm Wednesday 17th April 2019
- Venue: Room 1.02 (Computer Lab), 50 George Square
Library staff will be on hand to answer any Resource Lists-related questions and to tell you about the help available to set up a Resource List for your course. To help us manage the session, if you’d like to attend, could you please follow the link below to make a booking:
https://www.events.ed.ac.uk/index.cfm?event=book&scheduleID=34349
The event is also visible to LLC staff in MyEd and is bookable there. We hope to see many of you at the workshop!
Background information
LLC has the largest number (208 as of Jan 2019) of published Resource Lists among all the Schools of the University, though it only represents 27% of our LLC courses.
What you will learn
By the end of this session you will be able to create and edit your own Resource Lists and understand how the Library is using Resource Lists to manage the purchase of books, provide access to copyright compliant scans and manage HUB/Reserve requests.
Why use Resource Lists?
- to improve the student experience
- to make it easier for course organisers to manage the provision of library materials for teaching
About Resource Lists
Resource Lists provide students with easy and consistent access to key course reading materials. The Library currently provides 1900 Resource Lists for courses across every school. Lists can be viewed via the service homepage: http://resourcelists.ed.ac.uk However, most students access their Resource Lists via a link in the left hand menu in the corresponding Learn course.
Resource Lists is the preferred route for Course Organisers to manage the provision of library materials. Once set up, lists are rolled over each June and can be reviewed and edited for the next academic year.
Any resource with a web address can be added to a list, including, books, e-books, book chapters, journal articles and videos. Course organisers assign priority to list items (Essential, Recommended or Further reading) and add notes for students indicating which chapters or pages should be read. The Library uses the priorities and student numbers to inform number of copies purchased and loan periods.
Resource Lists provide students with a number of features to help them manage their course reading. Students can create their own collection, make suggestions for new items to be added to lists and export their lists in their preferred citation style.
There is more information about Resource Lists on the IS website: http://edin.ac/resource-lists
For more information, please contact Library.Learning@ed.ac.uk
Database trial – Shakespeare’s Globe Archive: Theatres, Players & Performance
We have been offered a free trial of Shakespeare’s Globe Archive: Theatres, Players & Performance published by Adam Matthew Digital. Please click here to access the trial. EASE login is required. The trial runs until 8th April 2019.
This collection of documents offers insights into the performance practice in the particular space of the reconstructed Globe Theatre. It details the way in which the theatre was constructed as a place of radical experiment. It documents over 200 performances through prompt books, wardrobe notes & jottings, programmes, publicity material, annual reports, show reports, posters, photographs, music archive and architectural plans. Continue reading
Literature Online – problem update
Back on 31st January I communicated to LLC colleagues about the faulty full-text links to LION’s ABELL records in DiscoverEd and a separate issue of the loss of 1,492 Penguin Classics from the LION platform due to publisher rights. Here is the latest update on the status.
- ABELL indexing issue in DiscoverEd
All the ABELL bibliographical records in DiscoverEd have been removed. This has resolved the problem of faulty full-text indexing, but at the same time removed the ABELL records in DiscoverEd altogether. The LION publisher ProQuest will make the correct bibliographical records available again once LION collections are re-organised and reloaded, hopefully by the end of the first quarter according to ProQuest. This indexing problem only affects ABELL. Other collections in LION, such as full-text journals and books, are still indexed and discoverable at the publication title level in DiscoverEd. Examples:
American Poetry Review as journal title, but not at the article level, e.g. Williamson, Alan: “A Marriage Between Writers: Birthday Letters as Memoir and as Poetry”, in American Poetry Review (27:5) Sep/Oct 1998, 11-13.
Dutt, Toru. Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan: By Toru Dutt … With an Introductory Memoir by Edmund Gosse. Kegan Paul, Trench &, 1885
In the meantime, the current LION platform in our Database list, Literature Online (LION), is functioning as normal. Please do use LION for ABELL searching. At the top of the current LION platform, you will see the following announcement: “Literature Online is now available on the enhanced ProQuest platform and cross-searchable with ProQuest journals, newspapers, dissertations and other relevant content. The new user experience is now available in parallel with the current version through mid-2019. …” Please try LION on the new ProQuest platform which will replace the current platform very soon anyway.
- Penguin Classics
There is no alternative provision of the e-texts of the lost Penguin Classics. Most titles also have the print copies in our Library collections. Please note: if you have provided links to LION Penguin books in your students’ reading lists including those in the Resource Lists, please do remove them and replace them with the permanent links to the possible alternative copies in DisocverEd. If no alternative copy is in stock, please use the Book Recommendation Form.
Thank you very much for your attention. We will update colleagues when the re-organising and reloading of the LION content by the publisher is completed.
Complete contents of LION can be viewed from here: https://literature-proquest-com.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/createCompleteContents.do
Taiwan Resource Centre for Chinese Studies
On 22 November 2018, Director of L&UC Jeremy Upton and Director-general Tseng Shu-hsien of the National Central Library of Taiwan (NCL) signed an agreement on establishing the Taiwan Resource Centre for Chinese Studies (TRCCS) in our Library. Over 25 academic colleagues from several Schools of CAHSS and several PhD students attended the ceremony.
Photo courtesy of Susan Pettigrew
Both Jeremy and Director-general Tseng delivered warm speeches in a very friendly, collaborative atmosphere. In his remarks, Jeremy highlighted the University’s long term connection with China, our Library commitment to supporting teaching, learning and research in Chinese Studies and China related topics across the University. The University’s Assistant Principal (China) Professor Natascha Gentz spoke in warm support of the project on behalf of the University. Director General Mr Jason Chien-Chen Lien of Taipei Representative Office in the U.K., Edinburgh Office, also attended the launch ceremony and made a speech. After the official signing of the agreement, the guests were shown by Dr Joseph Marshall a display of Special Collections items on China.
The worldwide TRCCS project was first launched in 2012 by the NCL of Taiwan to promote international exchange and library collaboration in Chinese studies. We are the 31st TRCCS partner institution in the world, the 3rd in the UK after SOAS and Oxford, and the 1st in Scotland.
Our TRCCS is located within the East Asian Studies Collection on the 3rd floor of the Main Library. Thanks to the hard work of colleagues in the Metadata Services and the Collections Management teams, the initial NCL donation of 748 titles of Chinese books and DVDs (948 items) on a wide range of subjects in arts, humanities and social science, recently published in Taiwan, have already been catalogued and made available for staff and students. There will be further donations of several hundred books each year from the second year onwards. In addition, the NCL will offer us access to about 8 digital resources from Taiwan. Under the project, the NCL and the University Library (together with the department of Asian Studies) will also co-host annual “Taiwan Lecturers on Chinese Studies”, delivered by internationally well-known scholars in the field.
TRCCS in East Asian Studies Collection, 3rd floor, Main Library. The entire TRCCS collection can be retrieved in DiscoverEd by shelfmark search for “TRCCS”.
We believe that the TRCCS project will enable us to fill in a gap in our Chinese print and e-resource collections by systematically acquiring scholarly publications produced in Taiwan. It will play an active role in our efforts to build our Chinese Collection into a national resource centre for Chinese Studies in Scotland.