Category Archives: Library Loves

JSTOR

JSTOR (short for Journal Storage) is a major source of journals for the Arts and Humanities. If you are studying in these areas you will often find that academic journal articles you need are here.

Login using the link on the Databases A-Z page.

If you are off campus you can use the login above and enter your Username and Password or use the VPN (More information here).

What is JSTOR?
•JSTOR is a research and teaching platform for the academic community to publish, discover, and preserve scholarly content.
• JSTOR includes over 1,400 leading academic journals and primary source materials valuable for academic work, including the most current issues of 174 journals.
• The entire archive is full-text searchable, includes images and multi-media files, and is interlinked by millions of citations and references.
• Founded in 1995, JSTOR is a service of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization.

JSTOR have PDF guide which is a useful quick reference on how to do things.

How to do a basic search

When you first log into JSTOR, you will see the Basic Search box.

Enter your keywords and click the Search button.

How to do an advanced search

To get to Advanced Search, click the Search pull-down in the menu at the top and select Advanced Search.

You can enter your keywords and combine them with AND, OR and NOT, quotation marks, and parentheses, just as you would in Basic Search.

  1. Use the pull-down menu to the left of the search box to select AND, OR or NOT
  2. Include links to external content – includes search results that have full-text content in another database or on the web. You can leave this option selected but it might lead to things we don’t have access for.
    Include only content I can access – eliminates search results with no full-text in JSTOR.
  3. Item Type allows you to narrow do your search by whether you want an article, an ebook, a pamphlet, etc.
  4. Date Range allows you to limit your search to items that were published in a certain time period
  5. Check off the disciplines (subject areas) that you want to search down at the bottom of the Advanced Search page.
  6. Language lets you restrict your search to only documents in English (or another language).

There are also the following short videos to help you:

How to search:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzINvzEBczU

This video shows how to use the Advanced Search feature:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fry3yqEH6Ms

 

Keeping up to date:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsoWTnqhySg

It’s January! And the Library Loves Resources!

Happy New Year!

This month the Library is all about its resources, and keep an eye on our blog, Twitter and Facebook for updates, hints and tips on some of the great resources you can use in your assignments and projects.

We’ll be re-blogging and adding new content throughout the month, but for a sneak peek scroll down to our tag cloud on the right-hand bar, and click ‘librarylovesresources’

What’s more, every other Wednesday for the whole of Spring Term, we’ve teamed up with academic support and are holding drop in sessions in the Bedford Library Teahouse, so come along on and ask us any questions you have about using library resources and academic writing:

Wednesday 15th January 2pm – 4pm

Wednesday 29th January 2pm – 4pm

Wednesday 12th February 2pm – 4pm

Wednesday 26th February 2pm – 4pm

Wednesday 12th March 2pm – 4pm

Wednesday 26th March 2pm – 4pm

Five minutes with the College Archivist

College Archivist
College Archivist, Annabel Gill

Annabel Gill is the College Archivst for RHUL and is based in Founder’s library. Find out more about our collections at www.rhul.ac.uk/archives

How long have you been working at Royal Holloway?

I took over from the previous College Archivist in January 2012 so I’ve been here just under two years.

 Tell us a little about your role.

When I tell people I’m an Archivist the most common reaction is a blank look (although I have been mistaken for an Alchemist on more than one occasion), in the most basic terms I look after the historical records of the College but that description doesn’t really do the job justice. We hold collections from Bedford and Royal Holloway Colleges and from the merged College as well as special collections which include theatre archive material and collections of rare books. My work is really varied, some days I’ll be in the stores checking our pest traps for any unwanted insects or going through new material to sort, list and then catalogue it so it can be used by researchers. Other days are spent answering enquiries about our collections and supervising researchers who have come in to consult the material. I also promote the collections in a number of ways including writing our Archive Item of the Month feature, putting on exhibitions and events, giving talks on the collections and history of the College and running student sessions about using archives. Preservation of the collections is another important part of the job and I am currently working with other staff to find ways to preserve digital records as well as the more traditional paper material.

 What motivates you?

Helping people make connections with history through our collections – whether that is a theatre student in awe that she is holding a letter written by Ellen Terry, being told that your email has made someone’s year because the information in a student record has filled gaps in their family history or hearing current students discussing the similarities between Victorian student rooms and their own. The archives contain such a wealth of information and I’m here to help people discover it.

What do you love about your job?

The variety! No two days are the same and I’m constantly learning new things about the Colleges’ histories from the collections and also from people I meet who tell me about their research or their own experiences at the Colleges.

Focus on an Archive Researcher: Eve Smith

 

Eve Smith is a first year doctoral candidate in the Drama and Theatre department.

Roy Waters as a young manAbove: Roy Waters as a Young Man

Since August I have spent a lot of time sat in a room on the third floor of The Founder’s Building, looking out over the quad and listening to the clock chime the hours away. This room houses the archives of RHUL. It is due to one of the collections within the archive that I received a place to study for a Collaborative Doctoral Award with the Drama and Theatre Department and the Victoria and Albert Museum in January 2013. This collection is called the Roy Waters Theatre Collection and helped to inspire my PhD which is concerned with collectors of theatrical ephemera and the private and public spaces occupied by the collection. The Roy Waters Theatre Collection is a result of Roy’s collecting over a period of forty years. It contains an enormous number of objects related to the theatre such as playbills, posters, autograph letters and photographs, with a particular emphasis on ephemera concerning Oscar Wilde and Noël Coward. The notion that the archive is solely a resource for history students is a great misconception: the breadth and wealth of information contained in the Roy Waters Theatre Collection is an invaluable source for any drama student at RHUL. Indeed, the archives also contain Gay Sweatshop Theatre Company collections and RedShift Theatre Company collections amongst others. Similarly, Blythe House in West Kensington holds the theatre and performance archives for the V&A and is another fantastic archival resource for drama students that I often use.

At this point in my studies, I am more interested in who the collector is, and the motivations for collecting theatrical ephemera rather than the actual content of the collection itself. Since the summer, therefore, I have been working on the personal papers contained within Roy’s collection. Eighty boxes hold Roy’s old bank statements, family trees, diary entries and personal photographs. I have found this research absolutely fascinating and, at times, very amusing (Roy’s diaries and newsletters demonstrate his wonderful way with words and his weakness for gossip!) Roy died in 2010 and it is a privilege to be able to read through the personal papers of a man who, unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to meet. I am now aware of intimate details concerning Roy’s health, his friendships, his daily routine and, vitally, his motivations for collecting. Working with such collections in the archive, and particularly handling such objects, allows the researcher to feel a surprisingly strong connection to the past and develop a genuine relationship with the person behind the collection. This in-depth exploration of Roy has greatly enriched my own research on collections and collectors and I genuinely look forward to going up to the archive to see what I will discover next.

The scale of a collection can be daunting. Roy’s collection is very large. The material housed in just the very first box of Roy’s personal papers is so dense that I sometimes doubt I’ll ever get through all eighty of them! It is therefore incredibly useful to have a defined purpose or research question in mind when accessing the collections. Without this there is the real possibility of spending hours and hours looking through beautiful objects or reading hundreds of diary entries without any clear idea of what it is you hope to discover. Although this makes for a pleasant afternoon, you may come away with little idea of how this has impacted upon or benefited your research. It is also really important to access the online catalogue for the collections before you start work in the archives. The catalogues contain hugely detailed descriptions of the boxes within the collection and the contents found within them. This is a fantastic way to hone in on the specific objects that may be valuable to your work as well as providing a more general overview of the contents of a particular collection.

The romantic image of the dusty, silent archive may not be entirely accurate but there is something rather special about opening up a box and untying the cream ribbon from the individual folders to explore what is housed inside. I think that this is where the appeal of the archive really lies: the possibility of discovering something that has the potential to hugely inform, enrich, and even subvert your research. Whatever your subject area or research topic, the archive is an invaluable resource. Start by exploring the catalogues online to see what the collections at RHUL contain: you never know what treasures you may stumble upon.

 

You can find out more about our Roy Waters Theatre Collection in this online exhibition.

 

Finding Archives in the UK

The UKs archival collections are an incredibly rich resource and there are a significant number of tools online to help you discover and access them.  However, navigating these resources can sometimes be a bit tricky, because there is no national discovery service for archives, instead there are a number of regional and thematic archival networks which contain the descriptions of different types of collection.  The purpose of this blog post is to highlight all the main tools that are available to help users find archives.

The best place to start is the National Register of Archives (NRA).  The NRA contains information on the nature and location of manuscripts and historical records that relate to British history. It is structured around the creators of the records and contains information about records that have been created by some 53,000 individuals, 9,000 families, 32,000 businesses and 116,000 organisations.  The entries in the NRA range from major historical figures such as Winston Churchill (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/nra/searches/subjectView.asp?ID=P5659) to individuals who left behind records which give an interesting insight in day-to-day life in the past, such as the diaries of Daniel Duck, a Clergyman from North Yorkshire whose 10 volumes of diaries cover the period 1785 to 1824 (with some gaps) – http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/nra/searches/subjectView.asp?ID=P50679.

The descriptions in the NRA tend to be fairly brief; however they also contain links to fuller descriptions, either in other archival networks, or in an archive’s own catalogue.  They also contain links, where relevant, to an individual’s biography on the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.  As an archival finding aid the NRA is unrivalled in its comprehensiveness and variety, containing entries from archives across the world.

The sister database to the NRA is ARCHON – http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/archon/.  If you are interested in visiting an archive in a region then ARCHON is probably the best place to start.  It allows you to view all the archives in a particular area, and see further information on their collections – with both links to the NRA and other archival networks.

A2Ahttp://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/ – is another archival database that is also maintained by The National Archives.  The A2A database contains a significant number of catalogues of local record offices in England and Wales.  While the NRA contains summary descriptions of records held at a large number of archives, A2A has far more detailed catalogues from a more limited number of institutions – it is therefore worthwhile searching both, if you are looking for something specific.

A number of other important archival networks also exist, providing the means of searching archives in a particular region, or a particular sector.

The Archives Hub (http://archiveshub.ac.uk/) and AIM25 (http://www.aim25.ac.uk/) are the two archival networks for University archives.  Royal Holloway’s archival collections are available through both services.

AIM25 contains summary descriptions of collections held by a rich variety of archives in the London area.  As well as University archives it also contains information on the holdings of a number of other London institutions which have archival collections, such as the National Maritime Museum and the Royal Geographical Society.

Archives Hub contains collection level descriptions of the records held by 222 Universities and Colleges across the UK.

Archives Network Wales (http://www.archivesnetworkwales.info/) is the archival network for Wales, containing information about more than 7,000 collections of historical records in the holdings of 21 archives in Wales.

SCAN (http://www.scan.org.uk/) is the Scottish archival network, which contains catalogues of collections from 52 repositories in Scotland, ranging from the National Archives of Scotland and Edinburgh University Special Collections to the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.

In addition to the archival networks the national institutions also hold incredibly extensive collections of archives and are mainly based in London, which makes visiting fairly straightforward.  The most significant are:

The National Archives – Their Discovery Service (http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI) is the best place to start if you are interested in the records of central government .

The British Library – Has an incredibly rich collection of archives and manuscripts, searchable through their catalogue of archives and manuscripts (http://searcharchives.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=IAMS_VU2)

Amy Warner, Associate Director (E-Strategy and Technical Services)

Library Loves … Archives

Wordlet

Throughout November

the Library will be celebrating Archives

Have you ever wondered what collections we have, how to find other collections, how to use archives in your research or what actual is an archive? Then we have the answers! Follow the library twitter feed to keep up to date on what’s happening in this month @RHUL_Library

 

Explore Your Archive

We’re holding two sessions for you to come up to the 3rd floor of Founder’s to explore the RHUL archives and find out how we look after our historical documents. They will be at 2pm on Tuesday 12th November and 11am on Wednesday 20th November. Follow the links to book now.

 

If you have any questions or want to find out more email archives@rhul.ac.uk or visit our website.

Library Loves … Postgraduates!

Calling all RHUL postgraduates: the Library Loves … YOU!

Let us explain: each month Library Services will be offering focussed support on a range of different themes under the banner  “Library Loves … “. The theme for July is research support for the RHUL postgraduate community. All taught and research post graduates are welcome to come along to the weekly drop in sessions in:

Room 2.03, Bedford Library, every Thursday in July from 14.00 to 16.00, starting this Thursday, 11th July.

Information Consultants will be on hand to offer help and advice on a range of issues:

  • searching for material for your research topics
  • reference management & creating bibliographies – using RefWorks or EndNote
  • using subject specific resources
  • obtaining material not held at RHUL (inter library loans and using other libraries)
  • help with using social media services in your research

or any other questions you might have regarding library services, no matter how basic or complex!

So, please do come along and feel free to contact the Information Consultant for your subject area / Department (this will link to the list of subject specialists) beforehand and we will be able to have some material ready for you, or just drop in if you happen to be in the area!

If you cannot make any of the drop in session, you can always arrange a one to one appointment with the Information Consultant for your subject area / Department

We hope to see you on Thursdays in July!