Category Archives: Social Sciences

Happy Chinese New Year!

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Image copyright L2F1, reproduced under CC licence from Flickr

Today marks the start of the Chinese New Year, a 15-day celebration of the end of winter and the beginning of a new Lunar year.

It also marks the beginning of a new cycle of the Chinese zodiac, as repesented by 12 different animals of Chinese legend and mythology. 2012 represents the year of the Dragon, a potent symbol of power, strength and good fortune.

To help celebrate the occasion there are a variety of events going on this week  in the Student Union, including 10% off all Oriental produce in the Union Building shop. To find out more, visit the SU home page here.

If you’re interested in finding out more about China, its history and traditions, don’t forget that the Library has quite a range of books on the subject in our geography, history and sociology sections, searchable through Library Catalogue Plus.

Locating London’s Past

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London's Houses of Parliament by Moyan Brenn, reproduced under CC Licence from Flickr

A new JISC funded website, Locating London’s Past, has just been launched, allowing users to take a trip through the city’s history using the latest mapping technology.

Using the website, users are able to explore a fully GIS compliant version of John Rocque’s 1746 map of London using Google maps technology to reveal the distribution of crimes, wealth and poverty, mortality, archaeological finds, voting records and much more.

Locating London’s Past is the result of a collaborative project between the University of Sheffield, the University of Hertfordshire, and the University of London, and has been funded by JISC as part of their commitment to funding open source projects.

Through our own Library Catalogue Plus we have access to a wide variety of historical and geographical resources, including the British Humanities Index, British History Online, Digimap and GEOBASE.

Happy Halloween!

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Halloween Pumpkin by Tasitch, reproduced under CC License from Flickr

It’s that time of year again, for ghosties and ghoulies and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night… also for dressing up, eating lots of sweets and watching horrible old movies on TV!

Halloween is generally considered to be an American tradition (not least the bit about dressing up and eating sweets!) marked by an annual holiday in the States on the 31st October, though its origins stem from the venerable Catholic festival of All Saints Day, or Hallowmas, which is celebrated by Catholics  throughout the world (albeit in a rather more sober fashion!).
 
Indeed, the eponymous Jack-O’-Lantern carved out of pumpkins actually stems from the ancient custom of carving turnips into lanterns as a way of remembering the souls held in purgatory!
 
Contemporary culture has welded Halloween with the horror & supernatural genre of literature, cinema and television, and many famous characters of page and screen – such as Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster – have become as much indelible icons of the Halloween season as the ubiquitous pumpkin.
 
The Library is well stocked with suitably ghoulish material for the occasion; we have a wide range of horror fiction from the literary classics of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, to the shorter supernatural works of M.R. James and H.P. Lovecraft, up to the more contemporary novels of Stephen King, as well as a wealth of critical and cultural studies of the genre in print, on stage and on screen, all easily searchable via Library Catalogue Plus.
 
If it’s movies you’re after, we also stock a variety of horror films on DVD in our High Demand section, including the classics Night of the Living Dead, Aliens and The Shining. We are obliged to point out that we are in no way responsible for any nightmares you may suffer afterwards…! 
 

Domesday Reloaded

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Domesday Books (image copyright Electropod, reproduced under CC License)

The BBC often revisits the past – too often for those who aren’t keen on TV repeats! - but at the moment they’re turning the clock back to a very worthwhile project they embarked on 25 years ago, itself inspired by a historic chronicle of England begun under the reign of William the Conqueror some 900 years ago.

The Domesday Project, begun in 1986, was an ambitious attempt to capture the essence of life in the United Kingdom, as the original Domesday Books had attempted to do nearly a millenium ago. Over a million people contributed to the project, and now the BBC is looking to refresh the venture for the digital age. 

From now until October 31st the BBC are asking people to help bring the project back up to date, by re-examining and updating the data provided by local communities and scholars in 1986. All you have to do is browse an interactive online map on the BBC website, search for a location you know, or try finding articles about something you remember, and then send in your updates, new stories or photos using the links provided. 

To find out more information and download information packs visit the BBC Domesday Reloaded site here.

Don’t forget that the Library has a large and extensive history section itself, including works on local, national and global events, all searchable through Library Catalogue Plus.

Classics for the Digital Age

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The British Library is making over 60,000 classic books available in digital format for the iPad via a new downloadable app.

All of the works date from the 18th and 19th centuries and include novels, poetry and historical accounts. Texts will appear in a fully digitised form, complete with all original page markings and drawings. 45,000 works have been made available so far and the British Library is looking to expand the range by the end of the year.

This is in addition to a scheme the British Library has begun in partnership with Google to digitise 250,000 out-of-copyright works in the library’s collections.

Users will be charged £1.99 a month to access the service, developed by the library in conjunction with the software company BiblioLabs. To find out more about the project visit their website here.

Domesday Reloaded

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Medieval Miracles, from the National Archives UK, catalogue reference 36/284

Interested in social and local history?  A unique snapshop of the UK in the mid-1980s is now available online for the first time.

The Domesday Project was a BBC initiative designed to capture everyday life across the UK using first-hand contributions from the general public. People were asked to write about everyday life and what they thought might still be of interest in a thousand years time! A million people took part, resulting in a fascinating archive of words and images.

Although made available for viewing at the time using the latest Laser-Disc technology, this rapidly became obsolete and the archive has been invisible for many years. Via Domesday Reloaded these personal memories and photos have been resurrected and made available for everyone to enjoy. To bring the project up-to-date and enable comparisons to be drawn, the public is being encouraged to re-photograph images and update text entries.

Overview  of the project: Story of Domesday

The Domesday project (1988?) [Video cassette]. London : British Broadcasting Corporation: 308.142/BRI

For a range of electronic social and historical resources see also the Social Sciences, Newspapers and History categories in MetaLib

Database in Focus: Oxford English Dictionary (OED)

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The Library’s next Database in Focus session takes place next Wednesday 18th May from 10.00AM until 11.00AM in Library Training Room 1, and the database under the microscope on this occasion is the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

Described by its publisher as “the definitive record of the English language”, the OED is widely regarded as the accepted authority on the English language. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of 600,000 words— past and present—from across the English-speaking world.

As a historical dictionary, the OED is very different from those of current English, in which the focus is on present-day meanings. You’ll still find these in the OED, but you’ll also find the history of individual words, and of the language—traced through 3 million quotations, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to films scripts and cookery books.

English & Drama students should find this session of particular interest, as should anyone with an interest in the history of the English language in general.

To book to attend this session:

Staff – either through Staff Development’s booking system, or turn up on the day.

Students – no need to book, just turn up on the day.

See you there!

Longitudinal Studies: Lessons for Research and Policy

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The British Library is hosting a workshop on Tuesday 10th May on the subject of  Longitudinal studies: Lessons for Research and Policy.

The day will focus on longitudinal data sources. This event is organised in conjunction with the UK Data Archive and Longview, and will give you an opportunity to hear talks about major studies, research projects, and their application to policy.

 This event will give you an overview of the issues involved in analysing and using data from large-scale studies which track populations over time. The day will focus on how findings from longitudinal studies can contribute to policy development, with contributions from research and policy perspectives. The event will include talks about longitudinal studies from England & Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

To find out more about the course and make a booking online, visit the ESDS site here.

Sounds Familiar…

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What exactly does Britain sound like? That’s a question the British Library would like to answer, and to help they’ve just launched an interactive survey called UK SoundMap, to map and preserve sounds from across the UK.

Anyone can get involved with this research project just by recording their surroundings and then describing them with simple comments and tags. You simply need to download a free recording application.

These files are then made available almost instantly in an MP3 format and are referenced on a interactive map displayed on the website. The recordings and data will be retained permanently and made accessible to the nation for years to come. The project is set to run for a year through to the end of next Summer and is expected to accumulate over 10,000 recordings.

This project may be of most interest to students studying (or about to study!) the Communication and Media Studies degree in the Department of Social Sciences. The library itself hosts a variety of databases on Metalib which may also be of interest, including Communications Abstracts, Linguistics and Language Behaviour Abstracts, and Film & Sound Online.

Food, Glorious Food

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British WW2 era Ministry of Food poster (copyright Imperial War Museum)

The current global economic climate is taking a bite out of everyone’s pocket, but there’s a pair of exhibitions examining eras when things were even worse than they are now!

 The Imperial War Museum in London is running The Ministry of Food, which examines how the British public adapted to food shortages during the Second World War, learning how to be both frugal and inventive on the ‘Kitchen Front’.

Marking the seventieth anniversary of the introduction of food rationing in Britain, the exhibition shows that growing your own food, eating seasonal fruit and vegetables, reducing imports, recycling, and healthy nutrition were just as important in 1940 as they are today.

In a similar vein, the National Agricultural Library in Maryland is running  When Beans Were Bullets: War-Era Food Posters, a free-t0-access online exhibition, which has images of home front food posters created by the American government during the first and second world wars. They are subdivided by time span, there is also discussion of posters designed to appeal to women. Each image has credits, copyright information and discussion of the content. A number of promotional film clips from advertisements can also be downloaded from the website.

It’s certainly fascinating to compare and contrast the messages, themes and imagery of the posters from the two countries, and likely to prove of vast interest to historians and students of the period, as well as people interested in food and nutrition, and artists and graphic designers too!

You can find out more about the Imperial War Museum exhibition here, and the American equivalent here.