New to the Library: Academic Video Online

The Library has recently purchased access to the large and comprehensive online streaming video resource Academic Video Online from Alexander Street Press. Covering a wide range of subject areas, students and staff can use this resource to find content to meet your learning, teaching, and research interests.

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You can access Academic Video Online from the Databases A-Z list.

Academic Video Online provides us with access to over 50,000 video titles covering subject areas such as Anthropology, History, Criminal Justice, Business, Counselling, Social Sciences, Education, Theatre and Drama, Diversity Studies, Science, etc. There is a wide range of material available including  documentaries, interviews, performances, news programs and newsreels, field recordings, commercials, and raw footage. And you will find thousands of award-winning films, including Academy, Emmy and Peabody winners. Continue reading

5 library databases you didn’t know you needed in your life…

…until now.

The many bibliographic and indexing databases you can access through the Library are fantastic and essential resources for your research and study whether you are an undergraduate, postgraduate or member of staff.

However, the Library subscribes to a large number of different kinds of databases that can be just as useful for your learning, teaching and research needs and we wanted to highlight just a small number of these that you may not have been aware of and might want to explore.

All databases can be accessed via the Databases A-Z list, unless otherwise noted.

In no particular order…

1. Box of Broadcasts (BoB) Continue reading

Olive Schreiner Letters Online

IFOlive Schreiner was an author, feminist and social theorist. Although she received no formal education Schreiner would become one of the most important social commentators of her day.

olive_schreiner_picHer writings include allegories, social theory and novels. One of her most famous novels, The Story of an African Farmer (1883, originally published under the pseudonym Ralph Iron), “secured her reputation as an evocative storyteller, a daring and perceptive freethinker, and feminist” (from Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online).

The Olive Schreiner Letters Online provides you with access to transcriptions of Schreiner’s more than 4800 extant letters located in archives across Europe, the US and South Africa, with detailed editorial notes and background information, thanks to the Olive Schreiner Letters Project. The transcripts include insertions and deletions, omissions and spelling mistakes – so just as Schreiner wrote them. The letters are fully searchable and guides to the archival locations of all her letters are also available.

If you are interested in political history, socialism, feminism, women’s or gender studies, colonialism, imperialism in southern Africa, political and economic change in South Africa after the First World War and much, much more then this is a fascinating resource.

The Olive Schreiner Letters Online (http://www.oliveschreiner.org/) is a freely available resource. It can also be accessed via the Databases pages on the Library website.

The Library holds a number of Schreiner’s books in its collections – Olive Schreiner works in Library (e-books are only available to students and staff at University of Edinburgh).

Caroline Stirling – Academic Support Librarian for Social and Political Science

SPS Librarian Top 5 blog posts 2014 – no. 4

As exams are almost over and semester one nears its end we are reposting our Top 5 blog posts from this year, every day in the final week of semester.

At number 4 an introduction to a new online resource purchased for SPS Media Education Foundation digital films.

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Caroline Stirling – Academic Support Librarian for Social and Political Science

#16days lecture at University of Edinburgh: further reading and research

IFToday, Monday 8th December, the School of Social and Political Science, in partnership with Scottish Women’s Aid and PeaceWomen is holding a 16 Days Lecture. The lecture is being delivered by feminist researcher and writer Cynthia Cockburn and is titled Male violence against women: links between peace and war.

The 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence is an international campaign that started on 25 November, International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and ends on 10 December, Human Rights Day. The campaign hopes to raise awareness about gender-based violence as a human rights issue at the local, national, regional and international level.

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New online resource for SPS: Media Education Foundation digital films

The Library has recently subscribed to the Media Education Foundation (MEF) digital films service via the Kanopy streaming service. MEF produce and provide documentary films and other educational resources to inspire critical thinking about the social, political, and cultural impact of American mass media. IF Continue reading

Top 5 women’s studies library resources

Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the British suffragette movement and one of the most important feminist public figures of all time, was born today (15th July) in 1858. To celebrate her birthday and work we thought we would give you a taster of women’s studies resources here at University of Edinburgh Library.

1. Take a look at the database Women, War & Society (part of Archives Unbound). The First World War had a revolutionary and permanent impact on the personal, social and professional lives of all women. This database is a collection of primary source materials sourced from the Imperial War Museum, London that documents the essential contribution women made to the war in Europe. You can access this and other relevant databases at databases for women’s studies.

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Inspiring Research – International Women’s Day 2014

centredinternationalwomensdayInternational Women’s Day (IWD) was celebrated on 8th March 2014. IWD has been celebrated for over 100 years and this year’s theme was Inspiring Change

The Library subscribes to a number of databases that may inspire you when researching women’s or gender studies. You can find a full list of Recommended databases for women’s studies but a few highlights are:

Women, War & Society: the First World War had a revolutionary and permanent impact on the personal, social and professional lives of all women. Their essential contribution to the war in Europe is fully documented in this collection of primary source materials sourced from the Imperial War Museum, London. These unique documents – charity and international relief reports, pamphlets, photographs and press cuttings – are published for the first time in fully searchable form, along with interpretative essays from leading scholars.

voguearchiveThe Vogue Archive: contains the entire run of Vogue magazine (US edition) from 1892 to the present day, reproduced in high-resolution colour page images. More than 400,000 pages are included. Vogue is a unique record of international popular culture that extends beyond fashion. The Vogue Archive is an essential primary source for the study of fashion, gender and modern social history.

Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures Online: an interdisciplinary, trans-historical, and global project embracing women and Islamic cultures in every region where there have been significant Muslim populations. It crosses history, geographic borders and disciplines to create a ground breaking reference work reflecting the very latest research on gender studies and the Islamic world.

Project Muse: provides access to almost 200 full text journals from 30 scholarly publishers, covering the fields of literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, economics, and many others.

For the full list see databases for women’s studies.

To celebrate International Women’s Day, the editors of the journal Parliamentary Affairs have drawn together recent publications examining the representation of women in parliamentary democracies around the world. All papers are free to access until the end of June 2014. See Virtual Issue: Women’s Representation.
The Library has full access to the journal Parliamentary Affairs available to students and staff of the University, search the Library Catalogue for the Journal Title to get access.

For information on events held at University of Edinburgh to celebrate International Women’s Day 2014 see:
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/equality-diversity/news-events/events/international-women

To watch previous International Women’s Day lectures at the University see:
http://www.ed.ac.uk/about/video/lecture-series/international-womens-day