Millions of ebooks are accessible through the Library and Open Access initiatives such as OpenEdition, and new titles are added daily. The way easiest to find them is by searching OskiCat or Start Your Search from the Library home page.
2) HathiTrust Emergency Temporary Access Service
Also known as UC’s emergency ebook service, it provides access to digital versions of millions of the physical volumes held by libraries across the 10-campus University of California system — plus UC’s two expansive off-site library storage facilities.
Featured work: La peste by Albert Camus. Paris: Gallimard, c1947, 2008.
The Library now provides a contactless pickup service at Moffitt Library for all borrowers who have current Cal 1 or UC Berkeley Library cards. Fourteen libraries are participating in Oski Xpress: Anthropology, Bioscience, Chemistry, Earth Sciences & Map, East Asian, Engineering, Environmental Design, Institute for Governmental Studies, Main (Gardner) Stacks, Mathematics Statistics, Morrison, Music, Physics-Astronomy, and Social Research. Only materials available from the circulating collections of these libraries are available at this time.
Due to COVID-19 service disruptions, the Library is not accepting print or other physical materials (such as DVDs) for course reserves for the remainder of 2021. However, the Library is helping instructors identify digital options for their course readings to ensure they remain accessible to all students — whether they are on campus or learning remotely.
Featured work: Bondanella, Peter, and Federico Pacchioni. A History of Italian Cinema. 2nd ed. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, c2009, 2017.
The Bancroft Library, home to many extraordinary special collections, is one of two libraries on campus that offers limited research appointments for UC Berkeley faculty and students this spring. Access can be provided to Bancroft Library materials that are housed on-site and that are not available online. Please note that access to Bancroft Library collections housed at the Northern Regional Library Facility (NRLF) is expected this semester but those collections are unavailable at this time.
The newspaper/microfilm collections, housed in Doe Library, can also be accessed through the Moffitt Library by special request.
Featured work: Colette. Chéri. Paris: Arthème Fayard & Cie, 1929.
Here’s a list of 350 French ebooks (and a couple in Spanish) acquired last year but just recently batch cataloged. Now available through OskiCat, they are discoverable by author, title, or keyword along with other digital versions by the same publisher L’Harmattan which specializes in topics related to Africa, Europe and the rest of the world. Search by handle “Harmathèque ebooks” to pull up the full list of 1041 titles in Berkeley’s collection.
In the spirit of Open Access Week worldwide, here’s an open access journal Ticontre: Theory Text Translation published at the Università degli studi di Trento provides a platform for open discussion on the literary text that is not only innovative but also keen to acknowledge core components of the European and American tradition.
With particular attention given to the work of emerging and early career scholars, Ticontre engages with medieval, modern and contemporary literature and with studies that deal with broad diachronic frames. As such, the journal also values investigations that engage with classical literatures within a grounded, progressive and reception-focused theoretical perspective.
Ticontre publishes contributions relating to all aspects of the European and American literary traditions. Given its operation within this critical space, the journal does not prioritize any specific national literary tradition. It promotes dialog rather than divisions, and highlights similarities rather than differences in literary traditions. novelist, poet, short story writer, translator and literary critic.
The current issue is dedicated to Italian writer, translator and literary critic Cesare Pavese (1908-1950) and edited by Giancarlo Alfano, Carlo Tirinanzi De Medici, and Massimiliano Tortora with essays by Marina Bianchi, Sofia Pellegrin, Giuseppe Alvino, Alessandro Amenta, Giuliano Rossi, Thea Rimini, and Luca Cortesi.
A a pe gbon ni, a ki i pe go. We put heads together to be wiser, not to be more foolish.
– Yoruba proverb
This visual index is the final post of a spectacular journey that completes The Languages of Berkeley: An Online Exhibition. Since February 2019, we have published one essay per week, showcasing an array of digitized works in the original language. The contributions of so many of you inside and outside of the UC Berkeley Library have been essential to its success. Now that the project is done for now, may it live on in the cloud, continuing to welcome and inspire readers at Berkeley and beyond.
Thanks for visiting.
Claude Potts Librarian for Romance Language Collections
September 21, 2020
The Languages of Berkeley is a dynamic online sequential exhibition celebrating the diversity of languages that have advanced research, teaching and learning at the University of California, Berkeley. It is made possible with support from the UC Berkeley Library and is co-sponsored by the Berkeley Language Center (BLC).
This year’s welcome back newsletter for those working in the romance languages focuses mostly on digital resources. After abrupt closures in March due to the global pandemic, the UC Berkeley Library has recently resumed acquisitions of non-digital formats but the bulk of this material remains in transit or is still being processed. For the most up-to-date information about the evolving services in the Library, please consult the Library services and resources during COVID-19 page.
Dibs Earth by Philip Chapman-Bell on Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
While our print material is still in quarantine, here’s a short list of recently acquired ebooks from Italy. All are available for reading and downloading through Torrossa — Casalini Libri’s full text digital platform.
Without African aesthetics and ingenuity, the collective culture of the world would not be what it is today. This selection of ebooks from independent publisher Éditions L’Harmattan provides a glimpse of the richness of creative expression in Francophone Africa in particular. It has been compiled in memory of the lives of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Adama Traoré and others of African ancestry everywhere who have endured centuries of systematic and institutionalized racism and violence.
Il s’appelle Pierre Loutrel mais on le connaît sous le nom de « Pierrot-le-fou ». Ce criminel violent, passé de la « Gestapo française » à la Résistance, restera dans les mémoires comme le chef d’un redoutable gang français de l’après-Seconde Guerre, les Tractions Avant.
Since April 15, the UC Berkeley academic community has had access to a 60-day trial of RetroNews. While much of this historical French language news collection is freely available through Gallica, the advanced functionality and added content is only available to subscribers. An initiative of BnF-Partenariats, which is a subsidiary of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), RetroNews aims to increase the digitization of its paper press collections which are increasingly at risk of serious damage over time. To explore all of its features, it is necessary to create an account (s’inscrire) after authenticating with your CalNet ID.
RetroNews, a unique digital resource for research and education
RetroNews, which is the French national library’s platform dedicated to historical printed press, offers a vast online archive of French and francophone periodicals. The collection features over 600 newspapers, journals, magazines and reviews, published between 1631 and 1950: the most important titles of the daily press (Le Petit Parisien, Le Journal, Le Matin) but also periodicals of the political spectrum, regional publications and satirical magazines.
Cover of Poezii Complecte (188?) by Mihail Eminovici
Mihail Eminescu, pseudonym of Mihail Eminovici, (1850-1889), was a poet who transformed both the form and content of Romanian poetry, creating a school of poetry that strongly influenced Romanian writers and poets in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Eminescu was educated in the Germano-Romanian cultural centre of Cernăuţi (now Chernovtsy, Ukraine) and at the universities of Vienna and Berlin, where he was influenced by German philosophy and Western literature. In 1874, he was appointed school inspector and librarian at the University of Iaşi but soon resigned to take up the post of editor in chief of the conservative paper Timpul. His literary activity came to an end in 1883, when he suffered the onset of a mental disorder that led to his death in an asylum.
Eminescu’s talent was first revealed in 1870 by two poems published in Convorbiri literare, the organ of the Junimea society in Iaşi. Other poems followed, and he became recognized as the foremost modern Romanian poet. Mystically inclined and of a melancholy disposition, he lived in the glory of the Romanian medieval past and in folklore, on which he based one of his outstanding poems, “Luceafărul” (1883; “The Evening Star”). Eminescu’s poetry has a distinctive simplicity of language, a masterly handling of rhyme and verse form, a profundity of thought, and a plasticity of expression which affected nearly every Romanian writer of his own period and after. His poems have been translated into several languages, including an English translation in 1930, but chiefly into German. Among his prose writings, apart from many studies and essays, the best-known are the stories “Cezara” and “Sărmanul Dionis” (1872).[1]
Romanian, or Rumanian, is one of the Romance languages that is spoken in Eastern Europe, principally in Romania and the Republic of Moldova. It evolved in very different circumstances from its western sister languages such as Spanish and Italian, and was profoundly affected by the Orthodox Church, the Greek and Slavonic languages, and the Ottoman Empire. It has a lexical affinity with Old Church Slavonic.[2] For the latter half of the 20th century, UC Berkeley had a very active program in Romanian. The Russian-born Romance etymologist and philologist Yakov Malkiel, who taught at Berkeley for over 55 years, mentored students who specialized in Romanian linguistics. In 1947, he became founding editor of the prestigious journal Romance Philology which is still published today. ProQuest’s Dissertation & Theses lists more than 227 doctoral dissertations from UC Berkeley that are related in one way or another to Romania and the Romanian language.[3] However in light of funding cuts, Romanian has not been taught at Berkeley in over two years. Graduate students in the interdisciplinary Romance Languages and Literatures (RLL) program may choose Romanian as one of their languages.[4]
The pictured “Poesii” volume from 1883 was the only one published during Eminescu’s lifetime, arranged by Titu Maiorescu. There is evidence that Eminescu died from mercury poisoning over six years, likely due to political reasons involving Austrian secret services. Multiple Romanian researchers have investigated his death. Nicolae Iorga was another important Romanian thinker who was assassinated. The commonly given birthdate of January 15, 1850 for Eminescu may be incorrect. According to his father, Eminescu’s actual birthdate was December 20, 1849. The baby was registered in January 1850 after the 1849 register was closed, so the 1850 date was assigned. The date of January 15, 1850 has been traditionally celebrated due to long-term confusion among biographers.
Contribution by Liladhar Pendse Librarian for East European and Central Asian Studies, Doe Library
The Languages of Berkeley is a dynamic online sequential exhibition celebrating the diversity of languages that have advanced research, teaching and learning at the University of California, Berkeley. It is made possible with support from the UC Berkeley Library and is co-sponsored by the Berkeley Language Center (BLC).
For the most current and relevant publications from Latin America and Spain, ebooks are not always the first format choice, however we continue to build up the Library’s digital holding as funding permits. In light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, collaboration among librarians has taken on a new dimension as we work together to provide access to digital and digitized library resources like never before.
With joint support from the Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences divisions this year, we selected 550 ebooks on a broad range of topics and disciplines in early January of this year. Part of an annual collaboration over the past three years, these digital monographs are brought to us from one of Spain’s most important vendors for ebooks—Digitalia Hispánica. Below we’ve highlighted a few of these newly acquired ebooks from publishers like Arte Público Press, CSIC, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Iberoamericana Vervuert, LOM, Páginas de Espuma, Renacimiento and more.
To browse the entire list of more than 2,600 Digitalia ebooks in Berkeley’s collection, search OskiCat by the handle “Digitalia e-books.”
Liladhar Pendse, Librarian for Caribbean and Latin America Studies Collections
Claude Potts, Librarian for Romance Language Collections
![The Languages of Berkeley [fan]](https://update.lib.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/fan_languages-450px.jpg)
![Amleto, o, Lo specchio oscuro della modernità [electronic resource] : tre secoli di riscritture italiane, 1705-2019](https://update.lib.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Una-Citta_-in-difesa2-213x300.jpg)
