I bet you don’t love new databases as much as the Head of Reference, Randy Souther, does, but here’s hoping you can find some of Gleeson’s new databases useful in your research!
First, head over to Artemis: Primary Sources to search two new additions, The Times (of London) Digital Archive 1785-2008 and Sabin Americana: 1500-1926, or follow their respective links to search them in their native interfaces. On Artemis: Primary Sources you can cross search the two mentioned above, as well as ECCO (Eighteenth Century Collections Online) and the Law Library’s Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises, 1800-1926.
“The golden smile of California opened at once to the world…”(pg. 5, Preface)
I did a search on Yerba Buena (the City’s name before San Francisco was formerly adopted) and received a results page separated into monographs and periodicals. The 1855 monograph The annals of San Francisco : containing a summary of the history of the first discovery, settlement, progress and present condition of California, and a complete history of all the important events connected with its great city : to which are added, biographical memoirs of some prominent citizens caught my attention so I clicked through. Here in Artemis: Primary Sources is the entire full text of this historical book, navigable through Artemis’s interface or available as a PDF download (be patient while the 441 MBs take 15-20 minutes to download). While Gleeson does own several print copies of the original 1855 edition of this title, its full text contents are now digitally searchable. Artemis delivered a tool on the right toolbar that showed me, with hyperlinks, each page on which the term Yerba Buena appears. If you are curious about this great City by the Bay or are doing research on San Francisco, you gotta check out this title, not to mention all of Artemis: Primary Sources! In the very least you’ll discover from whom many of SF’s streets got their names.
A couple other additions are American Periodicals Series Online and The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism. The former bolsters Gleeson’s digital access to historical magazines and newspapers, while the latter offers e-access to something we also hold in print (thanks for the purchase rec, Professor Torres!).
Some of our biggest news, perhaps, is that we are saying goodbye to an old, old standbye, ProQuest Research Library, and saying hello to an old friend in its place, Academic OneFile. Both are multidisciplinary databases that cover a wide range of topics, but the upside to Academic OneFile is that you can cross search it in PowerSearch along with Gale Virtual Reference Library and Opposing Viewpoints, and it plays nice with our grand-daddy, Fusion. Try it and and let us know what your reaction to the switch is!
Great write-up, Kelci. By the way, I do love new databases, but it is primarily about the content they represent, and new and expanded ways of accessing that content.
And that’s why Artemis is so great! I think it’s a big step for the accessing of the content. Very nice, usable interface. Thanks for making good decisions for the USF community on Reference’s behalf!