Collection News: February 2007

• Find it!
• Celebrate Black History Month

The University Libraries have just launched a new linking service called Find it!

Find it! will allow you to quickly locate full-text articles and related resources from within dozens of library databases -- without the extra step of checking holdings in our online catalog.

While there are already records for more than 25,000 electronic journals and conferences in the system, Find it! is still being developed with records for additional journals, books, dissertations, and conference proceedings.

If Find it! can't find a match in its database of full text articles, search InfoLinks, the online catalog, for complete holdings information. There is a chance the Libraries will have the material you need in print or even in online format.

If, after checking InfoLinks you still cannot locate the publication you seek, you may request the item on Interlibrary Loan (ILL). There are links to ILL forms from the Find it! page.

Look for the Find it! button in these databases:

• ISI Web of Science and Current Contents
• Compendex and INSPEC on Engineering Village
• SciFinder Scholar's ChemPort
• Biological Abstracts, Zoological Record, FSTA, AGRICOLA, CAB Abstracts, and other WebSPIRS databases.
• Most Ebsco databases, including PsycINFO, CINAHL, ERIC, and the MLA International Bibliography
• All CSA databases, including GeoRef, ASFA, and Sociological Abstracts
• Gale databases, including Health Reference Center Academic and Book Review Index
• History databases America: History and Life and Historical Abstracts
• EconLit and other FirstSearch databases
• Music databases IIMP and RILM
• Art and architecture databases Avery Index and BHA
• RefWorks
• PubMed
• Google Scholar
• MathSciNet

Read more about the Find it! service.

 

This month, explore some of our many resources for research in black history and culture.

Black Thought and Culture currently contains contains 795 sources with 434 authors which includes the non-fiction published works of leading African Americans. When complete, Black Thought and Culture will provide approximately 100,000 pages of monographs, essays, articles, speeches, and interviews written by leaders within the black community from the earliest times to 1975. The collection includes the works of W.E.B. Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson, Alain Locke, Mary McLeod Bethune, Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Ralph Bunche, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Angela Davis, Houston Baker, Jesse Jackson, Ida B. Wells, Bobby Seale, and many others. Search or browse by author, title, subject, year, topic, historical event, or by keyword in full text.

 

Black Short Fiction from Alexander Street Press includes 4370 stories and folktales by 272 African, African American, and Caribbean authors. When complete, it will feature the English-language literature of more than 15 countries, as well as Francophone and Lusophone writings from Africa. Search by author, title, time period, place or topic.

 

 

Black Drama currently offers approximately 1200 plays by 201 playwrights, together with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more. The database also includes selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays. Plays date from the mid-1800s to the present and were written by authors from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries. Many of the works are rare, hard-to-find, or out of print. Nearly a quarter of the collection will consist of previously unpublished plays by writers such as Langston Hughes, Ed Bullins, Willis Richardson, Femi Euba, Amiri Baraka, Randolph Edmonds, Zora Neale Hurston, and many others.

 

The African American Biographical Database contains biographical materials on African Americans from the 18th to the mid-20th centuries, drawn from several hundred biographical dictionaries and yearbooks. Here you will find obscure and even rare vertical file materials, church directories, slave narrative collections, and more.

 

 

In addition to these and databases for African American Studies, the Libraries have notable print collections for research in Black History. The SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) papers are available on microfilm. One of the most important civil rights groups in the late '50s and early '60s, SNCC was formed by student activists nationwide in response to the burgeoning student sit-in movement in 1960.The collection includes correspondence, project files, internal reports, and printed materials generated by the SNCC organization as it challenged racial barriers, faced internal crises, and sought a leadership role in the fight for desegregation, voter's rights, and black power. The Freedmen's Bureau papers for Arkansas provide insight into the struggles of African Americans during the tumult of Reconstruction. The Libraries also own a complete set of indexes for the enormous NAACP (National Association of Colored Persons) papers set on microfilm. By using these indexes, researchers can identify pertinent microfilm reels from the thousands published thus far. NAACP papers can be obtained on Interlibrary Loan.

At the Center for Research Libraries you will find a large number of resources for Black Studies, including collections of the United Negro College Fund and various African missionary and resettlement organizations. And don't forget the important resources for African American history in the Libraries' Special Collections, such as collections from civil rights leader Daisy Bates, musician William Grant Still, and Oral History interviews from participants in the Little Rock Central High crisis. You can also connect to dozens of free Web sites on African American Studies that our librarians have selected.