In Defence of the Trashy: The Significance of Popular Romance Novels for Women’s History

Hope Williard / March 18, 2020March 18, 2020 / Library, Research, Women's History Month

March is women’s history month and the library blog is celebrating by featuring posts from authors around the university about the lives and writings of women. Our second post in our series is by Rebecca Norman, a third year student on the BA History course. She explains the topic of her dissertation and how it helps us understand the lives of lower and middle class British women. Thank you for writing for us, Rebecca! This post has been guest edited by School of History and Heritage administrator, Emily Hanson. We would love to hear your comments and questions about the posts: please tweet us @GCWLibrary, email us at library@lincoln.ac.uk, or tell us your thoughts in the comments section at the end of the post.

When my grandpa found out I was writing my undergraduate dissertation on Denise Robins’ popular romance fiction, he commented that:

‘You don’t need to be paying to read that rubbish at University, your grandma has plenty on her kindle!’

Somehow, in his initial pride that his granddaughter was studying a ‘proper’ subject like History at university, he had not envisioned me carrying out a research project on what is widely regarded as ‘trashy’ fiction; but I’m about to finish off 10,000 words on the gender identities constructed and communicated in popular romance novels of the 1930s.

Continue reading “In Defence of the Trashy: The Significance of Popular Romance Novels for Women’s History”

1900: The Woman’s Exhibition

Hope Williard / March 9, 2020March 10, 2020 / Women's History Month

March is women’s history month and the library blog is celebrating by featuring guest posts from authors around the university about the lives and writings of women. Our first post in our series is by Emma Fox, a third year student on the BA History course. She explains the topic of her dissertation and offers advice to students beginning to think about theirs. Thank you for writing for us, Emma! We would love to hear your comments and questions about the posts: please tweet us @GCWLibrary, email us at library@lincoln.ac.uk, or tell us your thoughts in the comments section at the end of the post.

For my dissertation, I have been writing about the Woman’s Exhibition held in 1900 at Earl’s Court. This was one of many commercial exhibitions held by London Exhibitions Ltd under Imre Kiralfy who was known in both Britain and the USA for his spectacles and shows. My dissertation explores the exhibition’s representations of women and if and how these appealed to the public.

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Google VS Library

Oonagh Monaghan / January 23, 2020January 23, 2020 / Internet, Library, Uncategorized

A student told me yesterday that it is quicker to use Google rather than the Library. It felt like I had to do a full-on sales pitch for the next hour extolling the virtues of the Library resources. I felt I partially succeeded. The student listened and decided they would like to investigate further.

So why use the Library resources when Google is such a handy option?

What’s the big deal about the Library?

To do academic research, your tutors will expect you to go beyond Google to find good quality, scholarly material. Your search on Google does not go through a review process. Anyone can publish on the web. The Library resources are carefully reviewed and selected by Librarians based on their reliability, relevance to your studies and add value to your academic research.

Your Subject Librarian has organised Library sources into a Subject Guide to help you easily decide which databases and journals you need for your research. Internet sources are not organised and there are too many pages for any search engine, like Google, to organise by subject matter.

Use the Library to find print and e-resources specific to your subject area and find a wealth of material including academic articles, news items, technical information, magazines, images, statistical data and more. Many of the databases that the Library subscribes to are indexes to millions of articles from an array of different disciplines.

No one is saying don’t use Google. Use it for information on corporations and other organisations, for news and current awareness, for researching a well-known event or individual or to find opinions on a topic. Use Google ALONGSIDE the Library resources. They can complement each other.

What about Google Scholar?

Again, it can be a great source when used in conjunction with the Libraries’ article and other databases but not on its own. Yes, it has scholarly articles but it also includes other material that is untrustworthy and you may miss out on articles in full-text.

So….check out the Library Subject Guides and find out who your Subject Librarian is so that they can get you started on where and how to search effectively for your individual topic. It might well save you the time you thought you were saving on Google.

Look at your subject guide here: https://guides.library.lincoln.ac.uk/?b=s

Find out who your Subject Librarian is here: https://guides.library.lincoln.ac.uk/asl

365 Books to Celebrate Black History Month Year-Round

Hope Williard / October 31, 2019October 31, 2019 / arts, Library, Research

October is Black History Month and Black history happens every day. To celebrate this, the library has put together a list of 365 books by authors of colour from our catalogue and e-book collections. The list was inspired by the website Black History 365 and the list of 365 Books By Women put together for International Women’s Day by the New York Public Library. It has been assembled through searches inspired by the Black British Writers wikipedia category page, as well as the African-American writers catalogue page. It also draws lists of books by Black and BAME writers published online, such as this one from Stylist. We hope you find it interesting!

Our More Books service is open for students and staff to request the purchase of items we do not have in our collections, so please do get in touch if you notice any errors or omissions.

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Libraries on the Move: Innovating Services for Research, Learning, and Publishing

Hope Williard / August 14, 2019August 15, 2019 / Research

This year has been the first year the University of Lincoln Library has participated in Erasmus+ International Staff Training Week programmes for librarians. It’s been absolutely wonderful to read and hear about the fantastic experiences my colleagues Oonagh and Ella had on their staff exchange trips! This is the third and final post in our series about GCW librarians’ experiences of Erasmus programmes around Europe.

Introduction

My Erasmus programme, ‘Libraries on the Move: Innovating Services for Research, Learning, and Publishing’, took place at the Freie Universität Berlin, a large and prestigious research university, with 11 departments, around 38,000 students and 336 professors. The Freie Universität (Free University) was founded in 1948 by students and staff who felt they could not learn and teach as they wished in the Soviet sector of the city. The programme consisted of a general day of introduction, three days of sessions and activities specific to the four international programmes running concurrently (libraries, career services, personnel development, and internationalisation), and a final morning of wrap-up and goodbye. It was an extraordinary week and I am delighted to share it with you.

Welcome: 17 June 2019

Tucked away in one of the university buildings on Otto-von-Stimson Straβe is the Ristorante Galileo, where all participants in the international programme were treated to a welcome and an excellent lunch. Dr Herbet Grieshop, head of the Office of International Affairs, introduced us to the international scope of the Freie Universität. I was impressed by the way the university prioritises the internationalisation of non-academic staff, providing them with a package of training and external activities including intercultural training, language instruction, and staff exchanges which leads to a certificate and formal recognition by the university. Continue reading “Libraries on the Move: Innovating Services for Research, Learning, and Publishing”

Visiting the libraries of the future

ewharton / July 19, 2019July 19, 2019 / Uncategorised

Recently, I was given the opportunity to visit the University of Helsinki as part of the International Staff Exchange Week (ISEW).

This was part of the erasmus+ opportunity in which individuals from different areas of academia and academic support meet to share ideas and best practice. After encouragement from our Erasmus officers within the University, I applied to the staff exchange week in Helsinki. After putting in my application, I was quite surprised to have been offered a place as I am a newly qualified librarian working in my first post-degree role.

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Online Resources for Women’s History

Hope Williard / March 26, 2019 / Research, Women's History Month

March is Women’s History Month and the library will be celebrating with a series of posts on resources for the study women’s history. We would love to hear your comments and questions about the posts: please tweet us @GCWLibrary, email us at library@lincoln.ac.uk, or tell us your thoughts in the comments section at the end of the post.

Why use online resources to study women’s history?

In my previous post, I introduced two of the library’s databases for studying women’s history. These databases are available by subscription–the University Library pays for them, and all staff and students at the university are able to access them. In this post, however, I will introduce some databases that are freely accessible to all. There is no one reason for using an online database as opposed to one built by subscription. Historians who study women’s lives have (and still do) push back against the stereotype that there’s no evidence for women of the past, which has led to a concern with gathering and sharing sources to enable research. Sometimes research touches on the concerns of past or contemporary communities and so researchers want it to be freely available to all who are interested, or sometimes research involves participants and investigators outside of the university and so for practical reasons an online resource is best. Online resources can be built with or by primary and secondary school students and teachers in mind. And sometimes an open access online database is simply the best resource available for a particular subject you are interested in!

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Library Databases for Women’s History

Hope Williard / March 18, 2019 / Women's History Month

March is Women’s History Month and the library will be celebrating with a series of posts on using our resources to study women’s history. We would love to hear your comments and questions about the posts: please tweet us @GCWLibrary, email us at library@lincoln.ac.uk, or tell us your thoughts in the comments section at the end of the post.

Introduction

In the first post in this series, I introduced various kinds of e-book databases and how to search them. Books provide both primary and secondary sources for women’s history (think of the autobiography of writer, such as Zora Neale Hurston’s Dust Tracks on a Road or a study of Hurston’s life and writing, Wrapped in Rainbows by Valerie Boyd) but for additional primary research, you may want to consider looking at a database relevant to the time period, geographic region, or themes of women’s history which you are interested in studying. This post will spotlight two of the library’s databases which focus specifically on women’s history: British and Irish Women’s Letters and Diaries; and Women War and Society 1914-1918. Continue reading “Library Databases for Women’s History”

Using E-book Databases to Research Women’s History

Hope Williard / March 8, 2019 / Women's History Month

Happy International Women’s Day, everyone!

You can find a programme of events sponsored by the Student Union, engage with inspiring stories from the Lincoln International Business School, or read a book about women’s lives, past and present from the library.

This first post will cover the books and chapters you can find using our e-book databases. You can access some of our ebooks via our the ‘find books’ search on our main page: just select ‘electronic resource’ to focus on e-books.

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Black History in Lincolnshire

Hope Williard / November 2, 2018 / Library

This is the fourth and final in series of four posts about using library collections for the study of black history, literature and culture, in Britain and abroad. We would love to hear your comments and questions about the posts: please tweet us @GCWLibrary, email us at library@lincoln.ac.uk, or tell us your thoughts in the comments section at the end of the post.

We hope you have had a wonderful, inspiring, and educational Black History Month! Our final post in this series will offer some suggestions for online databases and library resources for researching Black history in the county of Lincolnshire. This post will come in two parts: in the first part, I will discuss researching Black history in Lincolnshire. In the second part of the post, I will point you towards local collections, archives, and online projects which may help in your investigation of local Black history.

Continue reading “Black History in Lincolnshire”