Religion: April 2007 Archives

The Library is pleased to announce online access to The African American Experience.

The resource is described as:

The widest-ranging and easiest-to-use online collection on African American life ever assembled, The African American Experience is the definitive electronic research tool for African American history and culture from one of the most respected publishers in the field. The two primary goals: to provide rock-solid information from authorities in the field, and to allow African Americans to speak for themselves through a wealth of primary sources. Drawing on over 300 titles, and designed under the guidance of leading librarians, this database gives voice to the black experience from its African origins to the present day.

It includes:

*Brand new material from major multivolume print reference sets, such as The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Literature, The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Folklore, Encyclopedia of Racism in the United States, Encyclopedia of Multiethnic American Literature, The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Civil Rights, African American Religious Experience in America, and Encyclopedia of Rap and Hip Hop Culture
*A deep backlist of reference books and monographs, many now available in electronic format for the first time
*A vast collection of hundreds and hundreds of primary documents: manuscripts, speeches, court cases, quotations, advertisements, statistics, and other papers
*Over 4,000 interviews with former slaves—the WPA slave narratives—from the acclaimed The American Slave: A Composite
*Autobiography, now re-indexed and for the first time fully searchable
*Sixty-seven Negro University Press texts from the late 1700s to the early 1970s—classics in black scholarship.

Enjoy!

--Al Vara

Much of the scholarly communication in philosophy takes place in small journals run on a shoestring out of academic departments, scholarly societies, and associations. Although there's a lot to be learned from philosophy, there's not much money in it unless you leave it to, say, get a law degree. Online resources are rather slim compared to many other disciplines. But there are some good ones turning up and the Temple University Libraries is working to make them available to faculty, staff, and students.

Our most recent new resource is Poiesis, a full-text database that makes many of those small underfunded philosophy journals available online. To my knowledge, it's the only full-text database that narrowly focuses on philosophy. In order to have access to the online editions in Poiesis, a library has to also hold a print subscription to the journals as well. Temple subscribed to around forty new philosophy journals this year in order to bring Poiesis to the campus.

Here's a list of the journals available through Poiesis. From the Temple web site, Poiesis can be accessed from the All Databases or the Arts and Humanities list. Individual titles are available through Journal Finder. Poiesis currently contains 50 journal titles for a total of 2200 issues and 330,000 pages. Eventually it should contain 100 journal titles. The primary users of this database will be philosophy faculty and students, but there is also relevant content for students of related disciplines like religion and literature. The interface of this database is a bit quirky and takes a bit of time to get used to, so better start using it today! Please contact me with any questions.

Our other new electronic resources for philosophy are the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Cambridge Companions Online. All together these three new resources make philosophy research at Temple quicker and easier.

---Fred Rowland

If any of you are dealing with issues concerning US foreign policy since WW II you need to know about this database, it's really a wonderful tool. Run out of George Washington University in DC, the Digital National Security Archive (DNSA) uses the Freedom of Information Act to collect government documents on US national security policy and then provides those documents in full-text online. It also provides bibliographies, chronologies, and glossaries related to the documents. Of course, many parts of the documents have been blacked-out by the government before they reach DNSA.

They have also put together Collections for easy access. If you are interested in US involvement in Iraq you can search the Iraq-Gate file for national security documents and also retrieve a bibliography, chronology, and glossary on it. If you wanted to limit your search to just those instances of the file that mention Saddam Hussein, you could search the Iraq-Gate file for all instances of "saddam hussein". 108 documents are retrieved, one of which is a 1980 intelligence report stating that Iranian air attacks make the stability of Saddam Hussein's government uncertain. You'll also find six documents related to Donald Rumsfeld's visit to Iraq in 1983.

Take a look. Let me know if you have questions.

---Fred Rowland

For your listening pleasure (and maybe some more scholarly pursuits), I just wanted to let you know that we now have access to Naxos Music Library and Naxos Music Library Jazz, which include classical, jazz, world, folk, and pop music selections. See the blog post by Temple music librarian Anne Harlow for more information.

And don't forget that you can also listen to the Classical Music Library which I wrote to you about in the fall.

---Fred Rowland

HRAF is an acronym for Human Relations Area Files, a non-profit institution founded in 1949 at Yale University. HRAF is a consortium of educational, research, and cultural organizations, and government agencies; its mission is to encourage and facilitate the study of human culture, society, and behavior. This mission is accomplished mainly through the compilation, indexing, and distribution of a collection of ethnographic and other texts that are indexed by culture and subject. eHRAF brings these files to the online environment.

Look here for information on the cultural practices (marriage, fertility, death, birth, work, family, etc.) of different religious and ethnic groups. For instance, a search for "reproduction and judaism" leads to an article titled "Reproducing Jews: a cultural account of assisted conception in Israel". A search for "marriage and iraq" leads to an article titled "The Kurdish woman's life: field research in a Muslim society, Iraq". A search for "masculinity and puerto rico" leads to an article titled "In search of masculinity: violence, respect and sexuality among Puerto Rican crack dealers in East Harlem". Browsing the cultures lists, choosing "Maasai FL12" leads to 20 articles on the Maasai, one of which is "The Masai penal code".

You get the idea. Do a little exploring if this sounds like something that would add to your research.

---Fred Rowland