Happy July! Did you know July is one of only two months named for a person? (The other month named for a person is August, for Augustus great-nephew/adopted son-heir of Julius Caesar) Continue reading “July Blog Post: Julius Caesar’s Month”
News
Trial Access to ProQuest’s Electronic Resources Concluding August 2022
[Post by Heather Murphy]
In 2019, the University Library secured trial access to the ProQuest “Access and Build Program” giving faculty, staff, and students at Illinois the ability to search 115 electronic resources. Over the years, the Library supported this evidence-based acquisition program, ProQuest added new databases, and the Library used accumulated credits to purchase those that demonstrated the most use. These multidisciplinary resources spanned the humanities, music and the arts, the social sciences, and some scientific disciplines, and each resource available through the ProQuest Access and Build program was marked in the Library’s catalog as being available on a trial basis. Continue reading “Trial Access to ProQuest’s Electronic Resources Concluding August 2022”
Zion, IL: Utopia on the Prairie
In researching context for newspapers in the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collection I came across the fascinating history of Zion, IL, formerly Zion City, which was created as a utopian community in 1901 by an evangelical and early Pentecostal faith healer named John Alexander Dowie. In its early years the city did not allow drinking, dancing, smoking, card playing, theater, or even driving more than 10 miles an hour. Zion is a small town south of Kenosha and north of Waukegan in Lake County, Illinois. It is currently home to a nuclear power plant but boasts a rich history in American religious movements and utopian city planning. Continue reading “Zion, IL: Utopia on the Prairie”
What’s Missing from this Digital Collection?
Many of our digital collections were created from microfilm surrogates, which is to say that the original print collection was at some point microfilmed (mostly in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s) for sale to libraries. Our own library bought many of these microfilm collections. Because it’s so much less expensive to digitize from microfilm (than from print originals), and because digitizing from microfilm spares those print originals from unnecessary wear and tear, many of our digital collections were created from these microfilm surrogates. You might be wondering how to determine whether a collection was digitized from microfilm. One good sign is if the documents in the collection are displayed in black-and-white (especially low bit-depth black-and-white) rather than color. Collections digitized directly from original print documents will usually display those documents in color. For example, the following: Continue reading “What’s Missing from this Digital Collection?”
Food History Guide
Looking for new and old recipes? Wanting to know more about the history of food? Check out our new Food History Guide!
This new guide to food history has been adapted and expanded from the HIST 200 Guide “Thinking Historically About Food”
New Libguides
New library guides for Religion have been added including
Introduction to Scholarly Research for Undergrads
The International and Area Studies Library is pleased to announce the return of their series “Introduction to Scholarly Research,” which was developed to support undergraduate students with research projects. It is designed to help students become more comfortable with conducting research and writing academic papers. Continue reading “Introduction to Scholarly Research for Undergrads”
6 New Digital Collections
Early Modern England: Society, Culture, and Everyday Life, 1500-1700
Published and unpublished sources selected for their capacity to document the history of everyday life. Sources include court records, administrative records, petitions, wills, inventories, tax records, financial documents, military records, church records, memoirs, diaries, unpublished essays, commonplace books, printed broadsides, and printed books. Also included are 164 objects, such as clothing, jewelry, and home furnishings. The collection is organized around twenty themes: Family life; Birth, marriage, death; Health and medicine; Land and property; Possessions; Work and employment; Poverty; Agriculture; Finance; Trade and economics; Law and order; Politics and government; Foreign affairs; War; Monarchy; Religion; Scholarship, science, and the humanities; Arts, literature, and culture; Travel; and Women’s history. In addition to these themes, documents can be browsed by region and date of creation. Continue reading “6 New Digital Collections”
New Digital Collections for Fall 2021
Historical Newspapers
ProQuest Historical Austin American Statesman
The ProQuest Historical Austin American Statesman comprises the following Austin, Texas newspaper files: Continue reading “New Digital Collections for Fall 2021”
We’ve Reopened!
UPDATE: Beginning Monday, August 9, appointments will no longer be necessary and we will be open Monday through Friday, 1:00 to 5:00. We are also available for virtual research consultations, which you can schedule by emailing us (hpnl@library.illinois.edu). Continue reading “We’ve Reopened!”