Tag: history

Watch Your Language, Please: Researching Queer History

Posted on by Geoffrey Ross

Evidence of queer history is often elusive, but it can be found throughout the historical record, in both expected and unexpected places. A challenge for the researcher, however, is that libraries and archives have not traditionally described these documents in ways that make them easily discoverable. Aside from its appearance in medical and penal records, queer experience might often not even have been recognizable to librarians, archivists, museum curators, and others charged with collecting and organizing historical documents.

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Morbidity, Macabre, Murder, and Memory: a look into our collections

Posted on by Monica Otoide

There is no secret that humans are drawn to the macabre. Shows revolving around murder, such as CSI and Criminal Minds, carry on for years and spur a number of spin-offs which are often met with success. In the meantime, podcasts like UP and Vanished and My Favorite Murder continue to top the iTunes podcast charts.

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Access to 115 digitized primary source collections from ProQuest

Posted on by Celestina Savonius-Wroth

For the next three years, the Library will provide full access to all of ProQuest’s primary source collections and titles, including some really major collections such as Early European Books Online, newspapers to which we haven’t previously had access (eg, the Jerusalem Post), more installments of British Periodicals, several Civil War-related collections, and ALL of Proquest’s primary source materials digitized from microfilm in their “History Vault,” including labor history collections, Confidential State Department files, INS records, Margaret Sanger’s papers, and much, much more. Please see the complete list at https://www.library.illinois.edu/hpnl/history/proquest-trials/  –there are collections of interest to most fields of history, as well as the arts and humanities more broadly, the social sciences, and some scientific disciplines. In addition to manuscript and printed materials of all sorts, there are streaming videos and recorded sound collections.

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The Watseka Wonder

Posted on by Monica Otoide

“The case of Lurancy Vennum, a bright young girl of fourteen years, has been the subject of much discussion in Watseka during the past year, and there is a good deal in it beyond human comprehension.” – “Mesmeric Mysteries,” Cincinnati Enquirer (Cincinnati, OH), Jun. 22, 1878 [1]

            Ever since Regan MacNeil crawled backwards down the stairs in The Exorcist, possession has been a cornerstone of American horror movies. The very idea of losing control of ourselves to something otherworldly fills us with fear. The fear of possession, of course, has been around since long before the 1970s. Cases of possession have featured on the pages of newspapers across the country since the Salem witch trials in the 1690s. We don’t have to look far to find one such case.

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What can a Czech-American newspaper teach us about the American union?

Posted on by Nadia Hoppe

In August 2016 HPNL and Preservation Services received a fourth round of grant funding for the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a project supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress. The grant supports the funding for the digitization of 100,000 pages of newspapers. For this cycle UIUC focused on immigrant Chicagoland-based newspapers from the late 19th century and early 20th century. As part of this project, I was tasked with producing short essays summarizing the history of two related Czech-American newspapers: Denní hlasatel (Daily Herald) and its weekly counterpart, Týdenní hlasatel (Weekly Herald). The essays were to appear in the Library of Congress powered site, Chronicling America, as well as UIUC’s newspaper portal, the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections (IDNC).

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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Student Life and Culture Archives

Posted on by Monica Otoide

Housed at the southern end of campus, right next to Orchard Downs, is the university’s Student Life and Culture Archive. Dedicated to preserving the history of student life on campus, this archive holds a wide variety of artifacts. From old newspapers to interviews to clothing, they have something that is bound to be of interest to everyone. There is no assignment required to visit, just a curiosity for what you’ll find there.

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New Digitized Newspaper: The Rand Daily Mail, 1902-1985

Posted on by Geoffrey Ross

The Rand Daily Mail was a South African, English language newspaper that became famous in the 1960s for its editorial opposition to apartheid.

It began publication in 1902 as a conservative sheet serving English-speaking whites in “the Rand”—local parlance for the Witwatersrand goldfields near Johannesburg (“rand” is a geological term for an escarpment, so its metonymic use here is similar to the way southern Californians often refer to the San Fernando Valley as simply “the Valley”). South Africa was a country sliced to shreds by conflict: racial, class, and white ethnic conflict. Over five different languages were spoken throughout the nation. Within the Rand, the paper was reliably establishment, though it did occasionally break ranks to support white miners. Continue reading “New Digitized Newspaper: The Rand Daily Mail, 1902-1985″ →

New Online Resource: Christian-Muslim Relations

Posted on by Geoffrey Ross

Christian-Muslim Relations Volumes 1 and 2 (CMR1 and CMR2) cumulate all eight volumes published so far in Brill’s serial bibliography, Christian Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History. CMR1 covers the time period 600-1500. CMR2 claims to cover 1500-1914, but like the four previously-published volumes on which it is based, its coverage seems to extend only as far as 1700.

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New Online Resources: October 2017 Update

Posted on by Geoffrey Ross

History of Science, Technology, and Medicine: Identifies books, book chapters, and journal articles on all aspects of the history of science, technology, and medicine. It is based on four standard bibliographic tools: the Isis Current Bibliography of the History of Science (1913-currrent with expanded retrospective coverage), the Current Bibliography in the History of Technology (1964-current with expanded retrospective coverage), the Bibliografia Italiana di Storia della Scienza (1982-2011 with expanded retrospective coverage), and the catalog of the Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine (1532-current). The Isis Current Bibliography of the History of Science began in 1913 as an annual supplement to the journal Isis. The Current Bibliography in the History of Technology began in 1964 as an annual supplement to the journal Technology and Culture. The Bibliografia Italiana di Storia della Scienza began in 1982 as part of the Biblioteca di bibliografia italiana. These three bibliographies, along with the catalog of the Wellcome Library, form the core of this database.

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