The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe Online Version launches

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research today launched the Online Edition of the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, whose aim is to “make accurate, reliable, scholarly information about Eastern European Jewish life universally available online free of charge.” This online edition contains the information from the printed 2008 YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe (published by Yale University Press), which provides the history and culture of Jews in Eastern Europe from the beginning of their settlement in the region to the present. But there’s added content in this online edition: interactive maps, more color photographs, rare letters and documents, video and audio clips.

At the home page, researchers can Explore a Topic by clicking into pages on Arts, Daily Life & Places, Language & Literature, History & Politics, and Religion. Each of those subsequent pages includes an essay, slideshow (or other visual element), a short “teaser article,” and links to other articles. There’s a Media Gallery with almost 1,400 items, each linked to related articles including: 50 audio recordings ranging from cantorial, klezmer and theatrical performances to children’s choral music and excerpts from wedding services; 70 video clips including street scenes, horses and cattle, brass bands, public gatherings, political events, children at school and summer camp: and 192 new documents from the YIVO archives that have never before been presented to the public, including such items as: letters from Leon Trotsky; manuscript notes by Sholem Aleichem; an invitation to a service at the Great Synagogue in Warsaw in honor of a visit from the President of Poland in 1930; and a ration card from the Warsaw ghetto.

To access this freely-available site, just go to: http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org, but be prepared to want to spend a lot of time there — it is a truly remarkable resource.

At your service,
Cheryl

EEBO Interactions; a new social forum

ProQuest has just launched EEBO Interactions, a Web 2.0 social networking community those goal is to connect scholars working with the database Early English Books Online (EEBO) in an online forum. It enables scholars around the world to share their informed ideas about the works in the collection.

Contributions can consist of a simple comment on the date of a work, or be as lengthy as full essays complete with bibliographies and links to other research resources. Contributions will be reviewed by an editor to ensure that they’re relevant and appropriate, and that other users may edit or discuss them.

Anyone with an interest in the print culture of the Early Modern period can search and read the contents of EEBO Interactions. Harvard scholars can register and create a profile in EEBO Interactions to communicate with colleagues via email and create and edit contributions.

Take a look at EEBO Interactions; I’ll be interested in hearing your reactions to it.

At your service,

Cheryl

Graduating This Spring? Sign Up for an Alumni RefWorks Account

Harvard graduates can sign up for an alumni account that will allow the use of RefWorks as long as Harvard continues to subscribe to it. To create an alumni account, just go to the Harvard Citation Tools iSite: http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=citationtools&pageid=icb.page334472.

You can find instructions at that page for backing up references and creating your own alumni account.

At your service,
Cheryl

Maps with an Attitude

Tomorrow a new exhibition opens at the Harvard Map Collection: Maps with an Attitude: Cartographies of Propaganda and Persuasion, explores ways maps have been used to express points of view by examining more than a dozen maps which framed major conflicts of the 20th century, from World War I to the Bosnian War.

Items on display include a pre-World War I map depicting the nations of Europe as individuals; a World War II map, produced just after the start of the blitz in England, portraying the number and site of every English bombing raid in Germany; a 1955 map produced by Time magazine portraying communist China and the U.S.S.R. as a red-hued landmass looming over Japan, South Korea and U.S.-controlled Formosa; and a map portraying Sarajevo from 1992 to 1995, ringed by Serb tanks and rocket launchers.

Maps with an Attitude: Cartographies of Propaganda and Persuasion will be on display in the Harvard Map Collection in Pusey Library through August 14, 2010. Click here for the Map Collections' hours, and click here for directions to the Map Collection.

At your service,
Cheryl

Harvard Undergraduates Eligible for MIT Borrowing Privileges

As of April 5, 2010, Harvard undergraduates are eligible for MIT borrowing privileges (HCL and MIT have had a reciprocal borrowing program for faculty, staff, and graduate students since 1995). Harvard students can enroll for MIT library privileges either online at the HCL web site or in person at the Library Privileges Office in Widener Library Room 130 (M-F, 9am – 4:45 pm), where you’ll just need to present a valid Harvard ID.

You’ll receive a form to complete and take to the Hayden Library at MIT (14W-100, 160 Memorial Dr., Cambridge) where you’ll get a library pass valid through the end of the spring term. You can borrow from the Dewey (social sciences and management), Hayden (humanities), Lewis Music, Library Storage Annex (by appointment only), and Rotch (architecture and planning) libraries. This pilot for undergraduates will be assessed after 14 months, with both Harvard and MIT collecting data and conducting surveys to determine the program’s value.

For additional information about MIT borrowing privileges visit the HCL website or just call the Library Privileges Office at 617-495-4166.

At your service,
Cheryl

Do You Use JSTOR? Tell Me About It, Please

If you use JSTOR for your research, and have particular likes and/or dislikes about the current version of the database, please let me know what they are. As you can see from this blog post at my other blog, for Library Journal, I have some issues with it, and their Associate Director for
Education & Outreach has invited me to talk with her and one of their product managers about the database. I would like to gather information from scholarly researchers on what works well for you, and what might not work so well, so I can share it with the JSTOR folks.

You can simply comment to this blog, or to my e-Views blog, or send me e-mail directly (at: claguard@fas.harvard.edu) if you have any information you'd like to share.

Thanks for your help, and I continue to be --
At your service,
Cheryl

Books in Books: an online exhibition

Houghton Library launched today a new online exhibition, Books in Books: Reflections on Reading and Writing in the Middle Ages. It's a joint project of the Houghton Library and Jeffrey Hamburger, Kuno Francke Professor of German Art & Culture, and Chair, Medieval Studies Committee, and is a complement to the General Education Program course “Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding 16, Openings: The Illuminated Manuscript” taught by Professor Hamburger. A physical exhibition of the same name opens April 5th in Houghton Library.

If you're interested in medieval manuscripts, take a look at Houghton's Digital Medieval Manuscripts, a good resource for studying the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in Western Europe. It gives strategies for searching Houghton's medieval manuscripts plus links to bibliographies related to these materials.

At your service,
Cheryl