Collection Services

NOW ON TRIAL: Classic Arabic Texts Online

Posted on by UC Berkeley Library

From now through November 21, 2014, we have trial access to a beta version of Classic Arabic Texts Online from Brill.  The trial version includes access to the following texts:

Kitab Futuh al-buldan (Arabic text) | Author: Ahmad b. Yahya al-Baladhuri | Edited by: M.J. de Goeje (1866)

The Kitab Futuh al-buldan by Ahmad b. Yahya al-Baladhuri (d. c. 892 CE), edited by M.J. de Goeje and originally titled Liber expugnationis regionum (Leiden, 1866), offers an account of the early conquests of the Islamic polity. It has the form of a geographical survey of the Caliphate’s territories, describing how each location came under Muslim rule.

Kitab Futuh al-buldan (English translation) | Subtitle: The Origins of the Islamic State | Author: Ahmad b. Yahya al-Baladhuri | Translation by: P.K. Hitti (volume I: 1916) and F.C. Murgotten (volume II: 1924)

The Origins of the Islamic State is the English translation of Kitab Futuh al-buldan, written by Ahmad b. Yahya al-Baladhuri (d. c. 892 CE). The work offers an account of the early conquests of the Islamic polity. It has the form of a geographical survey of the Caliphate’s territories, describing how each location came under Muslim rule. It was translated into English by Philip Khûri Hitti (volume I: 1916) and Francis Clark Murgotten (volume II: 1924).

Mukhtasar Kitab al-Buldan | Subtitle: Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum 1-5 | Author: Ibn al-Faqih al-Hamadhani | Edited by: M.J. de Goeje (1885)

Ibn al-Faqih was the Iranian author of a Geography in Arabic entitled Kitab al-buldan written around the year 903. The original work is lost, but the abridged version, possibly composed around 1022, has survived in a handful of manuscripts. Only three manuscripts were known during De Goeje’s life and he used them all for his edition, which was originally published in 1885. Its introduction includes a summary of Ibn Faqih’s life on the basis of the classical sources by De Goeje. Ibn al-Faqih’s Kitab al-buldan offers geographical and historical details not found in other sources, and it was in itself an important source for later works, for example by Muqaddasi and Yaqut.

As Brill builds out this product, they plan to add the following texts by the end of 2014:

  • Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum (with indices and glossaries) edited by M.J. de Goeje and J.H. Kramers
  • De Goeje’s edition of al-Tabari’s Ta’rikh al-rusul wa l-muluk
  • Origins of the Islamic State by Murgotten and Hitti, the English translation of al-Baladhari’s Kitab Futuh al-buldan

Please send comments and feedback to Shayee Khanaka.

NOW ON TRIAL: ProQuest databases — learn more at PQ Day on 11/13

Posted on by UC Berkeley Library
On Thursday, November 13, a team from ProQuest will be coming to campus to tell us more about some of the products we are considering licensing and to answer our questions.  ProQuest is calling this event “PQ Day,” but the good news for you is that you don’t have to spend a whole day!  A series of short sessions will be offered following the schedule below (note a few repeat sessions).

These sessions are open to all — librarians, faculty, graduate students, etc.  Anyone with an interest in learning more is welcome.
All sessions will be held in 305 Wurster Hall.  It’s a food-friendly room, and ProQuest is planning to bring in snacks, so come hungry and come curious!
A link to all ProQuest resources on trial for UC Berkeley is available at this page.  The trial is currently set to end on November 30, 2014.

NOW ON TRIAL: Reference Universe

Posted on by UC Berkeley Library
From October 15 through November 15, 2014, the University of California has system-wide trial access to Reference Universe.

Reference Universe is a unique finding aid, supporting index-level analysis of a library’s major reference works (e.g., subject encyclopedias, scholarly handbooks, and compendia).

All information regarding the UC system trial, including important details about the content being searched (note that this trial access uses the holdings profile of UCLA — not UC Berkeley) and the access link, can be found at http://www.paratext.com/pdf/uctrialletter.pdf

Some other things to note about this trial:
  • Use Firefox or Chrome – older versions of IE don’t seem to work well.
  • Try the “Show Non-Local Results” to get reference books not owned by UCLA.
Please give this product a look and direct your comments and questions to our local campus coordinator, Myrtis Cochran.

NOW ON TRIAL: Loeb Classical Library

Posted on by UC Berkeley Library

We currently have a 60-day free trial to the Loeb Classical Library (expiring on December 6, 2014).  Our trial has been set up for IP access, so no password is required. Send your comments and questions to John Ceballos.

The mission of the Loeb Classical Library, founded by James Loeb in 1911, has always been to make Greek and Latin literature accessible to the broadest range of readers. The digital Loeb Classical Library extends this mission into the twenty-first century. Harvard University Press is honored to renew James Loeb’s vision of accessibility and presents an interconnected, fully searchable, perpetually growing, virtual library of all that is important in Greek and Latin literature. Epic and lyric poetry; tragedy and comedy; history, travel, philosophy, and oratory; the great medical writers and mathematicians; those Church Fathers who made particular use of pagan culture — in short, our entire Greek and Latin Classical heritage is represented here with up-to-date texts and accurate English translations. More than 520 volumes of Latin, Greek, and English texts are available in a modern and elegant interface, allowing readers to browse, search, bookmark, annotate, and share content with ease.

Key features include:

  • Single- and dual-language reading modes
  • Sophisticated bookmarking and annotation features
  • Tools for sharing bookmarks and annotations
  • Greek keyboard
  • User account and My Loeb content saved in perpetuity
  • Intuitive search and browse
  • Inclusion of every Loeb volume in print
  • Regular uploading of new and revised volumes

 

ERF Update – September 2014

Posted on by UC Berkeley Library

Current number of records in the ERF: 1110

ADDED since last update

Engineering & Physical Sciences

  • ACI Digital Library. Journals, conference papers, and symposium publications from the American Concrete Institute.
  • ASME Digital Library. Journal articles and conference papers from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
  • ChemKnowledge from RightAnswer. Environmental, hazard, and medical information to facilitate the safe management and handling of chemicals.
  • ETDE World Energy Base. Technical reports, conference papers, journal articles, and books on energy-related topics including research and development, policy and planning, renewable energy technologies, and more.
  • Geological Society of America Publications. Journal and e-book archives of the Geological Society of America.
  • ICE Virtual Library. Journals and proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers.
  • International Nuclear Information System. Scientific literature published worldwide on the peaceful uses of nuclear science and technology.
  • Lyell Collection. Journals and book series from the Geological Society of London.
  • MIT Press eBooks Library. e-Books in the fields of computer science and engineering technologies.
  • MRS Online Proceedings Library. Peer-reviewed papers presented at Materials Research Society (MRS) Meetings.
  • National Service Center for Environmental Publications (NSCEP). Reports and other documents from the US Environmental Protection Agency.
  • NTRS: NASA Technical Report Server. An index to technical reports, conference papers, journal articles, and other publications sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA).
  • Quakeline. Indexes journal articles, conference papers, technical reports, and other materials about earthquakes, earthquake engineering, natural hazard mitigation, and related topics.
  • Royal Society of Chemistry eBook Collection. Chemical science books published by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Social Sciences

  • ETHXWeb. An index to materials relating to bioethics and professional ethics.
  • OneSource. Information on public and private companies in the United States, Canada, and rest of the world.
  • Statista. A statistics portal that integrates data from reliable sources on thousands of topics.
  • Statistical Abstract of the World. A collection of the statistical abstracts from many countries.

Arts & Humanities and International & Area Studies

  • Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. Essays and articles on major concepts, thinkers, and debates about the meaning, uses, and value of all the arts.
  • Sixth National Population Census of China Database. Official data released by the Statistics Bureau of China following the sixth decennial census in 2010, including population data for the whole country, 31 provinces and centrally administered municipalities, and 2872 counties.
  • Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum. Bibliography of books and articles on aspects of Greek epigraphy, as well as summaries of Greek inscriptions.

Life Sciences & Health Sciences

  • ETHXWeb. An index to materials relating to bioethics and professional ethics.
  • JSTOR Global Plants. A community-contributed database of high resolution plant type specimen images and other foundational materials from the collections of hundreds of herbaria around the world.
  • National Service Center for Environmental Publications (NSCEP). Reports and other documents from the US Environmental Protection Agency.
  • SafetyLit: Injury Prevention Literature Update & Archive Database. Weekly updates of injury research and prevention literature and a searchable archive of items published beginning in the mid-17th century.

DELETED since last update

  • SNL Real Estate (cancelled)

CHANGED since last update

  • Index to Theses is now called ProQuest Dissertations & Theses: UK & Ireland

Opera in Video from Alexander Street Press on trial through 10/11/14

Posted on by UC Berkeley Library

Opera in Video is a comprehensive collection of operatic performances covering the most commonly studied operas in music history, opera literature, and performance classes. The collection contains 500 hours of video comprising nearly 300 operatic works.

For more information about the content of this resource, visit this page.

We have a free trial to this resource through October 11, 2014.

Please send comments to John Shepard.

OpenEdition Freemium: currently on trial

Posted on by UC Berkeley Library

Through next fall, the Library will have access to an extended trial to one of the most innovative research publishing models coming from Europe. Through a combination of open access (OA) and fee-based subscriptions, OpenEdition Freemium offers an infrastructure for electronic publishing dedicated to academic communication across the humanities and social sciences. OpenEdition is the umbrella portal for OpenEdition Books, Revues.org, Hypotheses and Calenda — four platforms dedicated to electronic resources in the humanities and social sciences. While most of the content is in French and freely available through OpenEdition, an institutional subscription would allow Berkeley to participate in an acquisitions policy that both supports sustainable development of OA and that respects the needs of teaching, research and learning communities: no DRM or download quotas are applied. Other advantages of an institutional subscription is that it would seamlessly integrate all OpenEdition ebooks and journals into our catalogs and bibliographic search tools while also benefitting from a full range of digital formats, some optimized specifically for e-readers, tablets, and smart phones. With the current database trial, UCB affiliates can access html, ePub, and PDF formats for 120 freemium journals and 140+ open access journals in Revues.org in html. For OpenEdition Books, 64 ebooks and 57 OA ebooks also currently available in the same three formats.

OpenEdition is run by the Centre for Open Electronic Publishing (Cléo), a unit that brings together the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the Université d’Aix-Marseille, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and the Université d’Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse.

Send comments, questions, and feedback to Claude Potts.

ERF Update – January 2014

Posted on by UC Berkeley Library

Current number of records in the ERF:  1109

 

ADDED since last update

DELETED since last update

  • Grant Forward (cancelled by campus)
  • ISI Emerging Markets (cancelled)
  • AGU Digital Library Books (cancelled)
  • Webster’s Unabridged (no longer available)


CHANGES since last update

  • World Telecommunication Indicators (now only available on CD-ROM in Data Lab)

ERF Update – May 2014

Posted on by UC Berkeley Library

Current number of records in the ERF: 1088

ADDED since last update

 

  • Art Source. Covers a broad range of related subjects, from fine, decorative and commercial art, to various areas of architecture and architectural design.
  • British Online Archives. Multiple archival collections relating to the politics and history of Britain and its colonized territories.
  • Dictionary of American Regional English. Discover the full panoply of American regional words, phrases, and pronunciations with DARE.
  • Editoria Italiana Online (EIO). Full text collection of Italian e-books and e-journals, mostly in the humanities and social sciences.
  • Encyclopedia of Ancient History. Covers the entire ancient Mediterranean world, including the Near East and Egypt. Extensively illustrated with photographs, figures, and maps.
  • Foreign Office Files for India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, 1947-1971. British Government documents on South Asia for the period between 1947 and 1971.
  • GeoScienceWorld. A portal to journals and conferences in the geosciences; integrated with GeoRef.
  • Getty Publications Virtual Library. Getty’s collection catalogues, translations of art historical research, exhibition catalogues, journals, and material on conservation published since 1966.
  • International Newsstand. Articles from hundreds of newspapers worldwide, plus reports from media monitoring organizations which include broadcast and wire service content. Article content is full text, displayed in ASCII format, not page-image.
  • Jewish Theater under Stalinism – Moscow. Sources on the history of Soviet culture and theater, Jewish avant-garde art, and the Kremlin’s policy toward Jewish society and culture from 1919 until 1949.
  • Leo S. Olschki Collections. The publications of Italian publisher Leo S. Olschki are among the most widely held Italian publications across the Berkeley Library. This online collection comprises nearly 1,200 e-books in the social sciences and humanities and the complete backfiles to six journals.
  • OnePetro. Includes the full text of papers published by the Society of Petroleum Engineers, American Petroleum Institute, NACE International, ISOPE, and more.
  • Oxford Bibliographies Linguistics. A detailed guide to and expert commentary on linguistics scholarship.
  • Oxford Dictionary of Psychology. Authoritative definitions for terms used in all branches of psychology, including psychoanalysis, psychiatry, criminology, neuroscience, and statistics.
  • The Arabidopsis Information Resource (TAIR). Database of genetic and molecular biology data for the model higher plant Arabidopsis thaliana.
  • Verfasser-Datenbank. Articles on literary authors in the German-speaking world from the Middle Ages to the present.

 

DELETED since last update

 

  • In the First Person (no longer being updated)
  • World Registry of Dams (no longer free; we have opted not to subscribe)
  • Korean Studies Information Company (cancelled)
  • Korea AtoZ (cancelled)
  • World News Connection (no longer being updated; International Newsstand is our substitute)

 


Library of Congress Subject Headings of Interest

Posted on by UC Berkeley Library

March 2014

Library of Congress Subject Headings of Interest

Library of Congress Subject Headings can serve as social commentary, as historical milestones, or sometimes, as entertainment. Following are a few that have academic or everyday uses. We hope you enjoy them.

 

Backyard skating rinks  (May Subdivide Geographically)

Bad news  (May Subd Geog)

Ballet dancing for men  (May Subd Geog)

Bees in art

Endangered languages  (May Subd Geog)

Supervolcanoes  (May Subd Geog)

 

~ Jean Dickinson and Jane Rosario

Catalog & Metadata Services