Category: Resource Trials

Read all about it! Trial access to three Oxford Research Encyclopedias

Posted on by Celestina Savonius-Wroth

Have you been looking for something more scholarly than Wikipedia, and felt frustrated that many major reference works have become dated and have not been revised? That’s exactly how we’ve been feeling, and we are trying to do something about it.

The Library has trial access to three subject modules of the Oxford Research Encyclopedias. (We’ve also had access to the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History since 2022.)

The Oxford Research Encyclopedias are an ambitious project from Oxford University Press. The aim is to create “a dynamic digital encyclopedia continuously updated by the world’s leading scholars and researchers.” These articles really do function as introductory overviews. Unlike articles in many “Handbook”-type publications, all include substantive discussions of recent scholarship. All articles in history and allied fields have sections about primary sources. Continue reading “Read all about it! Trial access to three Oxford Research Encyclopedias” →

Trial Access to ProQuest’s Electronic Resources Concluding August 2022

Posted on by Geoffrey Ross

[Post by Heather Murphy]

In 2019, the University Library secured trial access to the ProQuest “Access and Build Program” giving faculty, staff, and students at Illinois the ability to search 115 electronic resources. Over the years, the Library supported this evidence-based acquisition program, ProQuest added new databases, and the Library used accumulated credits to purchase those that demonstrated the most use. These multidisciplinary resources spanned the humanities, music and the arts, the social sciences, and some scientific disciplines, and each resource available through the ProQuest Access and Build program was marked in the Library’s catalog as being available on a trial basis. Continue reading “Trial Access to ProQuest’s Electronic Resources Concluding August 2022” →

Access to 115 digitized primary source collections from ProQuest

Posted on by Celestina Savonius-Wroth

For the next three years, the Library will provide full access to all of ProQuest’s primary source collections and titles, including some really major collections such as Early European Books Online, newspapers to which we haven’t previously had access (eg, the Jerusalem Post), more installments of British Periodicals, several Civil War-related collections, and ALL of Proquest’s primary source materials digitized from microfilm in their “History Vault,” including labor history collections, Confidential State Department files, INS records, Margaret Sanger’s papers, and much, much more. Please see the complete list at https://www.library.illinois.edu/hpnl/history/proquest-trials/  –there are collections of interest to most fields of history, as well as the arts and humanities more broadly, the social sciences, and some scientific disciplines. In addition to manuscript and printed materials of all sorts, there are streaming videos and recorded sound collections.

Continue reading “Access to 115 digitized primary source collections from ProQuest” →

TRIAL: NAACP Papers: Branch Department, Branch Files, and Youth Department Files

Posted on by Geoffrey Ross

Online access to 24 previously-microfilmed archival collections. The Branch Files are selected from the archives of the NAACP’s regional branch offices, and cover the years 1913 to 1972. The Youth Files were selected from the NAACP’s Youth Department, and cover the years 1919 to 1965. More information.

TRIAL OVER.