Intelligenza Artificiale in Italia

artificial intelligence in Italy

Judging by the explosion of new books on artificial intelligence, or AI, being published in Italy,  you might think this Mediterranean country is the the editorial epicenter for one of the hottest interdisciplinary topics. Whether you are in the humanities, social sciences, human sciences,  computer science, or STEM fields, “intelligenza artificiale” as it’s called in Italian will eventually find its way into your coursework or research. Here are just a few of the books on AI to recently reach bookstores in Italy and that have not automatically been sent to the UC Berkeley Library. However, if you are inclined just let your friendly Romance languages librarian know and he’ll be happy to push the first button to initiate this demand-driven order.*

 

*Demand-driven acquisition (DDA), is a model of library collection development in which a library only purchases materials when it is clear that a patron has demonstrated the need for a resource. If implemented correctly, DDA can make it possible to purchase only what is needed, allowing libraries to spend the same amount of money as they previously spent on monographs, but with a higher rate of use.

 

 


Il Tolomeo: rivista di studi postcoloniali

Il Tolomeo

Hard to imagine the UC Berkeley Library as one that may soon not be able to afford new journal subscriptions but for better for worse, that’s where we are heading with serials reduction projects such as the one we undertook last year. It’s a good thing thing the open access movement is still gaining traction. It’s also a good thing universities like the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice are boldly choosing to publish their journals and some of their books this way.

Il Tolomeo: rivista di studi postcoloniali first saw the light of day in 1995, thanks to the work of a group of postcolonial scholars at Ca’ Foscari. The journal publishes peer-reviewed articles, reviews, interviews, and previously unpublished original contributions in the fields of francophone, anglophone and lusophone literatures. It investigates the postcolonial literary phenomenon in all its manifestations, but is particularly interested in contributions which take a comparative, interdisciplinary approach: dialogues between literature and the arts, investigations of hybrid forms such as comic strips and cinema, research which links literary studies with the social sciences, or innovative approaches such as digital and environmental humanities.

For its next issue, Il Tolomeo invites all interested scholars to send their contributions for the upcoming 2024 issue (no. 26). The issue will be divided into a generalist section (on any theme) and a thematic section dedicated to asylum, refugees and postcolonial literatures. The deadline for submitting complete contributions is May 20, 2024.

 


Library updates on Moffitt, NRLF and more

Photo: View of Doe Library from Moffitt Library
View of Doe Library from the 4th floor of Moffitt Library (Photo: Library Communications)

Moffitt Study Space update

The Library has received campus approval to expand the Moffitt study space service begun two weeks ago to include ten rooms reservable for graduate students. It is now implementing the setup and plan to launch the new offering on Monday, April 26. The Library currently offers limited study space on Moffitt Library’s fourth and fifth floors for UC Berkeley undergraduate and graduate students. At the moment, reservations for seats are offered 9 a.m. through 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, and can be made one week in advance.

Norther Regional Library Facility (NRLF) 

Starting this week, UC Berkeley Library cardholders may use OskiCat to request unrestricted materials from NRLF for pickup at Moffitt Library via Oski Xpress. Eligible items will be available for pickup approximately four business days after the time of request. Additionally, NRLF’s electronic article delivery service will expand to all UC Berkeley Library cardholders. Patrons can submit an online request for that service via the “Request an electronic copy from NRLF” link that appears in eligible titles in OskiCat. NRLF remains closed for on-site visits until further notice. The Library’s COVID-19 portal will soon be updated with this information.

OskiCat and Melvyl are retiring on July 27th

In case you haven’t heard, both of these catalogs will be replaced by a new a unified discovery and borrowing system called UC Library Search. You’ll be able to search, borrow, and easily renew print materials from any of the ten campuses in the system.

DH Fair 2021 is coming up!

The DH Fair, to be held on Wednesday April 21st, is an annual event that offers the UC Berkeley community the opportunity to share projects at various stages of development, receive invaluable feedback from peers, and reflect on the field more broadly. This year’s events include a keynote speech from Roopika Risam on Digital Humanities for Social Justice, a panel discussion with Tim Tangherlini and Lisa Wymore on computation for analyzing and choreographing dance in the K-pop and folk music genres, and lightning talks.

Expanded eBook collections from Belgium, France, and Italy

The Library continues to acquire print material but processing has been slow for books that don’t ship with MARC records. Notable ebook acquisitions this spring include Cairn (181 new titles), OpenEdition (1608 new titles), and Torrossa (299 new titles). It takes time to format and load metadata but the new ebooks are generally available right away if you go directly through the vendor platforms.


Featured Publisher – Edizioni e/o

The independent publishing house Edizioni e/o was founded in Rome in 1979 by Sandro Ferria and Sandra Ozzola who had a profound interest in cultural dialogue and exchange. Early on they focused on literary translations into Italian, particularly with writers from Eastern Europe, but soon began to publish writers from their own country as Lia Levi, Gioconda Belli, and Elena Ferrante. In 2005, the founders launched Europa Editions which brings into the English-speaking world some of the Europe’s best contemporary writers. Here are a few of the latest Edizioni e/o titles in Italian that can be found in Berkeley’s collection:

 

 


More Gems from the Rolling Wall

If you haven’t yet read last week’s post by Scholarly Communication Officer Rachael Samberg on Public Domain Day 2019 or the featured story about the 50 works digitized by the UC Berkeley Library in anticipation of this big event, you might enjoy taking a look at those. This blog post calls attention to the thousands of other books, journals and other materials in the romance languages that are no longer protected under U.S. copyright since January 1, 2019 and now available to all through the HathiTrust Digital Library. This collaborative digital repository has assembled an impressive collection of more than 53,000 digitized items published in 1923 that can easily be searched and that includes the literary works highlighted below, many from Berkeley’s print collection:

La ronde de nuit by Sem (Paris: A. Fayard & cie, 1923)

New Instagram feed for Romance Language Collections


 UC Berkeley Romance Language Collections

The new Romance Language Collections Instagram feed brings forth little known and new resources and services in the UC Berkeley Library. Once you start following you’ll instantly receive early notices of new books, e-resources, exhibits, readings and more through your smartphone.


Graphic Novels from Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain

Jacques Prévert n'est pas un poète
Jacques Prévert n’est pas un poète by Bourhis Cailleaux. Marcinelle : Dupuis, 2017.

Here’s a fairly complete list of most of the graphic novels acquired by the Library in the romance languages from southern Europe over the past two years. Some are critical or reference works, and a few English translations have been included as well.

List continues on the library research guide for European Comics & Graphic Novels—>

Fun by Paolo Bacilieri
Fun by Paolo Bacilieri. Bologna : Coconino Press, 2014.

La rentrée littéraire

September is the month when an unusually high concentration of new publications are released to the European market, notably in France and Belgium. While it may take a few more weeks for these books to reach us in Berkeley and get cataloged, some are already making their way to the shelves. Remember, all new books destined for the Main Stacks are first displayed on the third floor of the Moffitt Library and also listed on the recent acquisitions lists for French, Italian and Iberian studies in OskiCat for your convenience. Enjoy!


New e-resources for the Romance Languages

Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism

Digital resources are regularly added to the Library’s holdings. Here are some noteworthy ones acquired in and/or related to the Romance languages this past year:

Beckett Digital Manuscript Project – Digitized collection of Irish author Samuel Beckett’s original manuscripts, as well as a digitized collection of his personal library with his annotations.

BiGLI Online – Online version of the fundamental print bibliography and discovery tool for Italian language and literature. Includes texts, critical and historical surveys, philogical and linguistic notes, essays, monographs, bibliographic reviews, etc. (1981-present).

Brill’s Medieval Reference Library (MRLO) – Contains over 4,000 entries and 200 plus illustrations covering pre-modern European history and culture. The database includes complete coverage of four medieval studies encyclopedias: Encyclopedia of Medieval Chronicle, Encyclopedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles of the British Isles c. 450-1450, Encyclopedia of Medieval Pilgrimage, and Brill’s Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages. Searches can be performed across encyclopedias or limited to one title.Cuban Culture and Cultural Relations, 1959-

Cuban Culture and Cultural Relations, 1959-  Primary-source collection of ca. 45,000 fully-searchable documents from the Casa de las Américas in Havana, documenting the culture and cultural relations of Revolutionary Cuba and countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Includes articles, newspaper clippings, cable messages, interviews, conference memorabilia, etc. This collection is Part 1: Casa y Cultura” of the so-called Archivo Vertical held in the library of the Casa de las Américas. (Brill) [1959 to present]

Encyclopedia of Semiotics – Encyclopedia and guide to concepts in semiotics, sign theory, and cultural studies such as theories, theorists, schools of thought, issues in communications, cognition, and cultural theory. (Oxford University Press)

International Directory of Medievalists – A directory listing names and addresses of approximately 15,000 medievalists and scholars in fields relating to the Middle Ages in 70 countries. This online title continues the print edition.

Italian Reformation Online – Collection of primary texts from the Italian Reformation digitized from the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. Selection of more than 100 rare works offers a synopsis and theological profile of the diversity of the printed manifestations of the Protestant Reformation in the Italian states. (Brill) [15th-17th centuries]

Latin American Anarchist and Labour Periodicals Online – This collection contains the periodicals that have been accumulated by the Austrian anarchist, historian and collector Max Nettlau (1865-1944), together with a number of later additions, held at the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam. The collection of 971 titles provides a richness of documentation pertaining explicitly to the formative anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist episode in the history of Latin American labor movements. The collection contains numerous rare, and in many cases, unique titles that are also discoverable individually through OskiCat. Included, among many others, are the Argentine periodicals La Protesta, La Vanguardia and Acción Obrera; the Brazilian O Exempio, Jornal do Povo and Battaglia; the Chilean Voz del Mar; and the Mexican Ariete, Redención Obrera, Revolución Social and El Sindicalista. (Brill) [1890-1920]

Routledge Encylopedia of Modernism – The REM is a cross-disciplinary resource for students and researchers covering several subject areas: literature, architecture, visual arts, music, dance, theatre, film and intellectual currents. Over 1,000 articles and over 100 images are included. Browsing by subject, movement and place is available to find information across fields and topics.

All new databases are listed on the Library’s A-Z Databases page.


The hidden treasures in Italian Libraries

The ceiling in the reading room of the Biblioteca Vallicelliana in Rome.
The ceiling in the reading room of the Biblioteca Vallicelliana in Rome. Photo by Susan Wright for The New York Times

David Laskin’s article in yesterday’s New York Times gave a delectable overview of some of Italy’s historical libraries as not only keepers of intellectual treasures but as physical spaces to carry out research. While web portals such as Europeana or Internet Culturale are bringing us closer to Europe’s rare books and primary resources, conducting archival research in renaissance libraries such as the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice, the Biblioteca Vallicelliana in Rome, or the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana designed by Michelangelo in Florence will never be completely replicated online.

UC Berkeley may not have paintings by Titian or Veronese decorating its reading rooms, but it is home to one of the most significant Italian collections on the West Coast with medieval manuscripts, incunabula, and early modern works in The Bancroft Library, and an extraordinary collection of 19th and 20th century Italian books and journal runs in the Main Stacks. The Library collects in all divisions of Italian history and literature, from the medieval and renaissance periods to the present. For the 20th and 21st centuries, the collection tends to focus more heavily on new literature(s), literary and cultural theory, cinema, historiography, Italian colonial presence in Africa, national and regional identity politics, and comparative studies with other Romance traditions. The Art History/Classics Library in Doe, the Hargrove Music Library, and the Environmental Design Library are all places on campus where the Italian collection continues to thrive.

Biblioteca Marciana
Biblioteca Marciana in Venice. Photo by Claude Potts