Two new history websites

For those interested in the history of Asia Minor, the Black Sea area and Constantinople / Byzantium 

Encyclopedia of the Hellenic World

This resource is maintained by the Foundation of the Hellenic World and co-funded by the EU. The Encyclopedia covers Asia Minor, the Black Sea area and Constantinople / Byzantium from ancient times and includes articles, bibliographies, a directory of related weblinks and an historical interactive atlas with audio-visual material. Some parts of the site are still under construction. Texts are multilingual, but there is a "translate" facility. The site has both simple and advanced search options.

For those interested in modern Japanese history and / or  the history of the Second World War

Japan air raids: a bilingual historical archive

This website has been created by Professor Cary Karacas of City University of New York (College of Staten Island) and includes an online archive of documents, film reels and photographs relating to the bombing of Japan during World War 2, from both Japanese and American perspectives

Book review: Witnesses to a world crisis

Anthony Kaldelis of Ohio State University reviews James Howard-Johnston's "Witnesses to a world crisis: historians and histories of the Middle East in the 7th century" in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review
The book was published by Oxford University Press in 2010.

Read the book in SOAS Library at N907.2 / 736514

"Histories of Partition": guide to online resources posted on BLE

A guide to online resources in SOAS Library to support the course "Histories of Partition: India and Palestine, 1947-1948" has just been posted on the BLE
The guide also includes links to selected websites, including the newly released film and oral history archive from Cambridge University Institute of South Asian Studies, which has amateur film of Partition refugees, and interviews discussing Partition


The Guide can be found on the Library Information Skills section of the BLE. Go to the History pages and look under Research Guides

History Seminar programme 10th-14th December

The last History department seminars of 2010!
TODAY
Commemorating Constantinople's conquest: appropriating the imperial past for the national present - Gavin Brockett (Wilfred Laurier University)
12 Noon to 2 p.m.
Russell Square Campus, College Buildings, Room 116
Contact Dr. Benjamin Fortna (bp@soas.ac.uk)

MONDAY 13th DECEMBER
The ethnic cleansing of Palestine: past and present  - Ilan Pappe (University of Exeter)
5.15 p.m - 7.15 p.m.
Russell Square Campus, College Buildings, Room G3
Contact Teresa Bernheimer (tb31@soas.ac.uk)


TUESDAY 14th DECEMBER
Making Ayurveda modern: framing indigeneity and the biopolitical in inter-war North India - Rachel Berger (Concordia University)
5.00 p.m. - 6.30 p.m
Russell Square Campus, College Buildings, Room G2
Contact Dr Eleanor Newbigin (en2@soas.ac.uk)

Museums and national identity

The New York Times reports on the construction of 3 new museums in Abu Dhabi  (branches of the Guggenheim and the Louvre as well as a museum of national history) and the museums of Islamic art, modern Arabic art and Qatari history currently under construction or recently opened in Qatar.
The article looks at the cultural and political context of this spate of museum-building in both countries.

"Beyond the syllabus" presentation handout now added to BLE

A PDF copy of the presentation "Beyond the syllabus" on finding your own historical resources, from the Week 7 Approaches to History lecture (Empire) on 22nd November, has just been added to the History pages of Library Information Skills section of the BLE, under the heading "Research guides"
If anyone has any queries about the session, or would like additional information, please contact me.


Mary Seeley (Library, Room C3)
ms28@soas.ac.uk
020-7898-4195

Resources for history: handout added to BLE

The handout for the Library demonstration on electronic resources for the study of history (16th November) has just been added to the Information Skills pages on the BLE. Go to the History section and look under Research Guides. The document is in PDF format.
If you have any further queries, or would like to arrange a 1-2-1 session to discuss a particular research topic, please contact me on ms28@soas.ac.uk

Information resources for history: reminder

Just a reminder that there will be a demonstration looking at information resources for history (print and electronic) in SOAS Library and beyond, to be held in Room 379 on Tuesday 16th November, between 2 and 3 p.m.
I will be looking in depth at various databases (full-text and bibliographic) and pointing the way to some less familiar resources available in the Library.
This session will be suitable for all students
The room only holds about 12 people comfortably, so please let me know if you plan to attend

Contact me on ms28@soas.ac.uk

African history seminar

On 17th November, Dr. Kate Skinner from the University of Birmingham will give the African History Seminar on "Local historians and strangers with big eyes: the politics of Ewe history in Ghana and its global diaspora"
This will take place in Room 563 (College Buildings, Russell Square Campus) between 5 and 7 p.m.

Contact Prof. Tom McCaskie (tm2@soas.ac.uk) for further details

Resources for the study of history : demonstration

On Tuesday 16th November there will be a demonstration highlighting both electronic and print resources in SOAS Library for the study of history. It will look at making the most of the SOAS Library catalogue, full-text and bibliographic databases, internet resources, taking your research beyond SOAS and keeping up-to-date with  the latest research in your topic.
It will take place in Room 379, between 2 and 3 p.m. (maximum 12 places)
Please contact me (ms28@soas.ac.uk) for further details

Suez ceasefire: 6th November 1956

6th November 1956 saw British and French forces seize control of major ports in Egypt's Canal Zone and declare a ceasefire to bring the Suez Crisis to a close.  Israel also announced a ceasefire in Sinai . The conflict had broken out after President Abdel Nasser angered British and French companies by nationalising the Suez Canal. He also blockaded the Straits of Tiran - Israel's main outlet into the Red Sea.
Read more on the BBC History's "On this day" website

Egypt: ancient and modern (digital archive)

The Virtual Library on Ancient and Modern Egypt is a collection of digitized documents and rare books from museums, archives and other collections in Southern France (Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur) collated by the E-corpus Virtual Collections project
Enter a simple keyword search, or use "advanced search" to construct a more detailed query to search across the content of documents in the collection. The documents also contain material on other countries of the Middle East and Africa.
The documents are primarily in French.
E-Corpus is worth a browse for other documents relating to French interests in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

History tourism

Article from Time Magazine on how plans to develop the ancient Egyptian sites at Luxor and expand its tourist infrastructure are uprooting local residents and are possibly damaging to the archaeological remains themselves. Will the reconstructed "Avenue of the Sphinxes" be anything more than "Vegas on the Nile"?

Poetry in Ancient China and Archaic Greece

Alexander Beecroft's "Authorship and cultural identity in early Greece and China: patterns of literary circulation" reviewed by Hyun Jin Kim of Sydney University in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 

Published this year by Cambridge University Press, this is a "sophisticated comparative study of Archaic Greek and early Chinese poetry"

Read the book in SOAS Library - shelved at CC808.0209 / 734034 (Level C, stacks 152-155)

Updated research guide launched on the BLE

A fully updated version of the History research guide (containing information on how to search full-text and bibliographic databases, internet resources in SOAS and beyond, and tips on how to keep up to date with your research and manage references and citations) has just been launched on the Information Skills: History site on the BLE - go to the Research Guides tab

Open Access journals in Ancient Studies

700 open access journals on all aspects of the ancient world (including Africa, South Asia and the Middle East, and Hebraic studies as well as the "Ancient Near East") are currently available through this alphabetical list on the AWOL (Ancient World Online blog) from the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University

Click here to link to the AWOL blog and keep up to date with new open access journals online and newly released networked content on the Ancient World

A potted history of Alexandria

"Alexandria at the crossroads" - an illustrated article from the online edition of Saudi Aramco World magazine (September / October 2010), taking the reader on a quick trip through the history of the city from the Pharaohs to the present day.
Click on the smaller images to enlarge them

Welcome to SOAS

Welcome to all new and returning students

The History Library blog will give

• details of information skills training offered by Library staff
• Library updates
• details of new web resources and recommended websites
• and lots more !!

If you have not been on a Library tour yet, there are more tours running next week on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at 1 p.m., 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. 

The tours start from open area at the top of the stairs on the 3rd Floor of the School Building (near "Library Tours Start Here" sign !!)

Library training sessions run throughout the year. There will be general introductory sessions on a variety of topics during the first few weeks of term. 

Pick up a handout at the Enquiry Desk for further details of our introductory sessions - Getting started, Electronic journals and bibliographic databases, and Beyond Google: using the Internet for research

For further information on the Library and Library resources, go to the main Library website or go to the Information Skills section on the BLE

As your Librarian, I will be here to help. You can contact me on ms28@soas.ac.uk  or drop in to Room C3 in the Library

Brill database trials (history of religions)

SOAS Library has a 30 day trial subscription (until 26th October) to the following Brill databases which will be of interest to those studying the history of religions

•  Religion Past and Present Online  RPP is the English language edition of the 4th edition of the German Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. [note not all volumes have been published yet] SOAS Library has the German version in print
• Index to the Study of Religions - a cross searchable database of abstracts of articles contributing to the academic study of religions. The database currently contains 20,000 entries, and will have new content added as suitable articles are indexed
• Christian-Muslim Relations Online -the database covers relations between the two faiths between 600-1500 throughout the extended Mediterranean basin area, and comprises (along with introductory essays) over 200 detailed entries on all works recorded where Christian-Muslim encounters are described

These can be accessed from http://www.soas.ac.uk/library/resources/a-z/database-trials.html

Please let me know what you think!

(ms28@soas.ac.uk)

Indonesian Newspapers 1930-1950

If you are researching modern Indonesian history, between 1930 and 1950, this website may be of interest to you


Indonesian Newspaper Project (historic newspapers) [n.b. Text of newspapers not available in English]

 This is a special initiative of the Netherlands Institute for war Documentation which is digitising its major collection (and those of a number of other partner institutes including the Royal Institute for Linguistics and Anthropology (KITLV) in Leiden, the Royal Institute for the Tropics (KIT) in Amsterdam, the Royal Library (KB) in The Hague and the International Institute for Social History (IISG) in Amsterdam) of Indonesian newspapers covering the period 1930-1950. This is an important resource for social and political historians as it covers the period of the Second World War and Dutch and Japanese administration in Indonesia. Currently in the region of 100 titles are available in full text.  

New web resource

Afghanistan Digital Library
A project of NYU the Afghanistan Digital Library is aiming to digitise as many Afghan publications (serials, documents, pamphlets, and manuals) as possible from the period 1871–1930. Currently there are 300+ books available to view, print or download. 
http://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/

Click on the web link to search the site and view these historic texts from Afghanistan

Welcome to the SOAS Library History blog

This blog will contain information about and resources for the history collection at SOAS Library.

It will include

• details of information skills training offered by Library staff
• Library updates
• details of new web resources and recommended websites
• and lots more!