5 recommended library resources for LGBT+ History Month

February has seen the celebration of LGBT+ History Month in the UK and you may have enjoyed one of the many fantastic events put on by the University’s Staff Pride Network or the University’s Students’ Association. LGBT+ History Month may be near the end but I wanted to highlight just some of the library resources available to staff and students of the University that will allow you to study and research LGBT+ history further.

1. Books, journals, articles, etc.

The Main Library is co-hosting a ‘micro-exhibition’ with student groups Project Myopia and LiberatEd with a pop-up book display on the ground floor this week. A LGBT+ History Month Resource List has also been put together to highlight the wide range of LGBT+ books available at the University Library. This is just a selection of titles available at the Library and you can use DiscoverEd to find more.

You can also use DiscoverEd to search for and find a large range of journal articles and journals on LGBT+ related research. Or you can go further in your research by using some of the bibliographic databases the Library has access to that will allow you to search for journal articles, abstracts, book reviews, book chapters, reports and proceedings, etc.

2. What to watch?

You can use some of the Library’s moving image and video streaming databases to search for and view films, documentaries, news programmes, interviews, plays, TV programmes, etc. 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

International Women’s Day 2015: Make it Happen

iwd_longOn Sunday 8th March 2015 International Women’s Day (IWD) will be celebrated worldwide. IWD has been observed since the early 1900s and has been sponsored by the United Nations (UN) since 1975. It is an important occasion for promoting women’s issues and rights, especially in developing countries.

This year’s theme is Make it Happen and there are many events happening at the University this year to mark IWD 2015.

The University’s annual International Women’s Day Lecture takes place on Friday 6th March and this year welcomes guest speaker Professor Anneila Sargent. Make it Happen – Women into Science will draw from Professor Sargent’s own experiences to discuss the challenges many women may face when entering a career in science. More information and how to book can be found at http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2015/anneilia-sargent-170215 Continue reading

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

SPS Librarian Top 5 blog posts 2014 – no. 5

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 5, oddly enough is another Top 5, this time Top 5 women’s studies library resources.

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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.

Continue reading

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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Continue reading

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