Category Archives: Library Resources

How the Government shutdown will affect your research

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We are currently working to pull together a comprehensive list of UT Libraries resources that will be affected by the government shutdown.

If the information below does not cover an issue of particular concern to you, feel free to contact us for more personalized assistance. You can find us through any of the avenues outlined at this link.

So far, we can tell you that ERIC reports are not available online.  As a workaround, you can still request ERIC microfiche from Library Express. You will need to specify the title and the DE number of the report.

The U.S. Census site also is down.  You can still use ProQuest Statistical Abstract of the United States from our databases page to access much of that data.  We also have old census data in print on the third floor (Call number: HD7293 .A6113).

Another good database of statistical data from the government is Statistical Insight.

If you need information normally housed on an affected web site, don’t forget about The Wayback Machine.

For example, their archive of the USDA site works fairly well.

Here is a more comprehensive list of affected web sites.

 

 

 

Grant proposal needs a data management plan? DMPTool can help.

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Many grant funding agencies now require researchers to plan ahead for data preservation and sharing as part of their research projects. To aid with these requirements, researchers at UT now have a tool that makes the process a little easier. The University Libraries offers the DMPTool created by the California Digital Library, which allows researchers to walk through the process of writing a data management plan for twenty different grant agencies, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Institutes of Health, and all directorates of the National Science Foundation. Also provided are links to institution-specific guidelines.

For more information on or a demonstration of the DMPTool, visit the Libraries’ Data Management Guide (libguides.utk.edu/datamanagement), or contact Chris Eaker, Data Curation Librarian (ceaker@utk.edu, 974-4404).

Browse Journals on your iPad or Android Tablet

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browzineThe UT community has a new way to read scholarly journals: on a tablet. The UT Libraries now subscribes to BrowZine, an application that lets users browse and read journals in a format that is optimized for their tablet devices. The BrowZine app is available for the iPad and tablets running Android.

To get started, just search for “BrowZine” in the app store on your tablet. Simply register your NetID and password, and you’ll have access to all the UT Libraries’ electronic journals (issues back to 2005) and lots of useful features. BrowZine users can create a personal bookshelf of favorite journals, be alerted when new editions of journals are published, and easily save to Zotero, Dropbox, and other services. Remember to update your password with BrowZine whenever you change your NetID password.

If you have further questions, contact Gayle Baker at the UT Libraries (865-974-3519, gsbaker@utk.edu)).

Introducing the Database of the Smokies

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Dr. Aaron J. Sharp and Dr. Stanley Cain
taking field notes in the Smokies, circa 1935

Have you ever wished that there was a place to go when you wanted information on the Smokies — one site where you could research history, plants, animals and culture, and find links to online articles and digitized photographs? The Great Smoky Mountains Regional Project at the University of Tennessee Libraries proudly announces the official release of the new Database of the Smokies (DOTS), a free online bibliography of Smoky Mountains material published since 1934, the date of the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

DOTS contains searchable records of books, scholarly and popular journal articles, government and scientific reports, theses and dissertations, maps, and digitized photographs, as well as travel and recreational guides. Wherever copyright restrictions permit, citations are linked to scanned copies of the published item. DOTS can be visited on the UT Libraries’ website at: dots.lib.utk.edu.

DOTS is intended to compliment Terra Incognita: An Annotated Bibliography of the Great Smoky Mountains, 1544–1934, scheduled for publication by the University of Tennessee Press in the summer of 2013. With DOTS and Terra Incognita, researchers will have access to a wealth of published material documenting over 400 years of human activity in the Smokies and surrounding region.


Dr. L. R. Hesler at work in his laboratory,
circa 1950

DOTS currently contains about 2,000 citations, focused within the fields of biology and ecology, and includes the research publications of distinguished former University of Tennessee botanists Aaron Sharp, Stanley Cain, and L. R. Hesler. In addition to important early studies of Smokies biology, DOTS contains citations to published material from the areas of history, psychology, genealogy, archaeology, economics, tourism, environmental studies, geology, literature, cultural studies, and park management. In the future, the curators of DOTS will add links to digitized photographs from the UT Libraries’ online collections and to other content freely available on the internet. As the content expands, DOTS should become a comprehensive resource for “all things Smokies.”

The project team has been hard at work on DOTS since May 2011, building the database around Drupal, an open-source platform particularly suited for managing content. Drupal is both versatile and flexible. It affords not only easy-to-use search functions but also allows expansion of the bibliography through crowd-sourcing, an innovative collaborative web technique. Calling on the collective knowledge of a community of users, crowd-sourcing will allow users of DOTS to become contributors, as well, by identifying new publications and uploading citations.

The Great Smoky Mountains Regional Project will continue to update the online database with new content. Together, Terra Incognita and the Database of the Smokies will be the most comprehensive bibliography of the Great Smoky Mountains ever compiled.


Research expedition on Mount LeConte with Dr. L. R. Hesler (far left) and Stanley A. Cain (far right) in front row and Aaron J. Sharp in back row (far right), circa 1935

CONTACT:
Anne Bridges, Co-Director, Great Smoky Mountains Regional Project, 865-974-0017, smokies@utk.edu
Ken Wise, Co-Director, Great Smoky Mountains Regional Project, 865-974-2359, smokies@utk.edu

Explore Tennessee’s Past through its Newspapers

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The Tennessee Newspaper Digitization Project (TNDP), a partnership between the UT Libraries and the Tennessee State Library and Archives, has received a second grant to digitize another 100,000 pages of microfilmed historic Tennessee newspapers.

The TNDP is like a time machine to Tennessee’s past, allowing students, teachers, genealogists, and history buffs to consult the primary sources — the newspapers that reported the news as it happened.

A statewide panel of historians, genealogists, educators, librarians, and journalism scholars selected the newspapers that are being digitized and made freely available on the web. The selection covers the broadest scope possible, encompassing the state’s three Grand Divisions, featuring Confederate and Union papers, and representing diverse political perspectives. Selected newspapers were published between 1836 and 1922.

The Tennessee Newspaper Digitization Project is part of the National Digital Newspaper Program, a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of all US newspapers with descriptive information, and select digitization of historic pages. The project was made possible by support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.

This rich digital resource is developed and permanently maintained at the Library of Congress, and is made freely available to the public through the Chronicling America website, chroniclingamerica.loc.gov. The Tennessee Newspaper Digitization Project has already contributed more than 84,000 pages to Chronicling America.

YOU CAN HELP!

Delve into your history and help us make the historical record more accurate! View the collection of Tennessee newspapers at tndp.lib.utk.edu, and register to correct text that the optical character recognition (OCR) process is unable to accurately identify. This will help improve the accuracy of search results.

Follow the latest news from the Tennessee Digital Newspaper Project at info.lib.utk.edu/tdnp/news/.

New Digital Collections: UT Theatre Playbills and a Student Magazine

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The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Libraries announces two new digital collections. Theatre playbills and an early student publication drawn from the University Archives are the newest digital collections available on the UT Libraries’ website at www.lib.utk.edu/digitalcollections.

UT THEATRE PLAYBILLS. The University of Tennessee Theatre Playbills Collection showcases the history of theatre at the University of Tennessee from 1935 productions by the Faculty Players to the current season of the Clarence Brown Theatre Company, an affiliate of the exclusive League of Resident Theatres.

Ephemeral theatre groups were active on UT’s campus as early as the 1830s, but the earliest extant playbills date to productions by the Faculty Players, a club composed of faculty and spouses that brought a new level of seriousness to campus theatre in the 1930s.

UT’s theatre program began as a one-year course within the English department in 1940 and became a full-fledged department of speech and theatre in 1968. A Master of Fine Arts program was added in 1980.

The campus’ first permanent theatre space was the Carousel arena theatre, completed in 1953. The Clarence Brown Theatre opened in 1970 and was dedicated to the legendary filmmaker and UT alum whose generous gifts funded both the proscenium theatre and the professional company.

UT’s theatre program has had an illustrious history, hosting world premier productions and an international exchange of artists. Theatre enthusiasts who browse the online playbill collection will encounter productions starring renowned actors such as Mary Martin, Zoe Caldwell, John Cullum, Dame Judith Anderson, and Sir Anthony Quayle.

MUGWUMP. Mugwump was a University of Tennessee student publication that ran from November 1920 until 1932. A combination of college humor and literary material, Mugwump chronicles student life and highlights student creativity through stories, essays, poetry, as well as student-drawn cartoons and artwork.

The artwork is a jaunt through 1920s fashions, from the short skirts and bobbed hair of the flapper to fellas in knickerbockers or “Oxford Bags.” Stories, cartoons and even the advertisements are a window on students’ concerns, from dating to dance crazes to doing laundry. Some cartoons also reflect the entrenched racist attitudes of the times.

Mugwump rewards even casual browsing, if only to enjoy the often humorous — and sometimes beautifully drawn — cover art.

Library Digitizes Union Soldier’s Civil War Diary

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22feb1865The latest addition to the University of Tennessee Libraries’ digital collections provides an intimate look into the daily life of a Civil War soldier. Three journals kept by Union soldier Henry Pippitt describe life in Company G of the 104th Ohio Volunteer Infantry during the American Civil War.

The diaries are the property of the Cleo Redd Fisher Museum in Loudonville, Ohio, which graciously allowed the UT Libraries to digitize the journals and make them available online.

The Henry Pippitt collection is extremely unusual in that it covers a Civil War regiment’s entire term of service. Thus, it constitutes a history of the 104th Ohio as well as a glimpse into Henry Pippitt’s life as a soldier. Pippitt enlisted into the 104th in August of 1862 as a private and mustered out in June of 1865. During the intervening years he participated in military campaigns throughout the South. His journals describe battles, troop movements, and camp conditions. He also writes of foraging for food, his unit’s reception in towns that they pass, men wounded, and men taken prisoner.

Pippitt’s journals are no less poignant for their brief, straightforward reporting of daily events. They attest to both the horrific and the mundane aspects of war. For instance, the entry pictured here records Pippitt’s experiences on February 22, 1865 (spelling normalized for ease of reading):

“To day Colonel Jordan was appointed Provost-marshall of the City of Wilmington and the 104th to do Provost duty. We crossed Cape fear river and passed into the City. The Band struck up Yankee doodle. The Streets were crowded with citizens and drays. We went to the outskirts of town and went into barracks. There eight of our men prisoners here who starved to death & two who are just alive.”

Visit dlc.lib.utk.edu/pippitt to view facsimiles of Pippitt’s journals.

There is an interesting backstory to the inclusion of the Pippitt diaries among the UT Libraries’ digital collections. Civil War materials are one of the strengths of our Special Collections; so, when the Pippitt materials appeared for sale on eBay a few years ago, the UT Libraries eagerly purchased the journals. However, unbeknownst to our library or to the bookseller who handled the sale, the journals had been stolen from the Cleo Redd Fisher Museum in Loudonville, Ohio, the city where Henry Pippitt settled after his discharge from the Ohio Volunteer Infantry. The UT Libraries returned the purloined journals, the mortified bookseller refunded the purchase price to the UT Libraries, and the Cleo Redd Fisher Museum is once again in rightful possession of the diaries of a native son.

Library Resources on Hurricane Katrina and the New Orleans Flood

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fleurdelis.jpgHurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and the surrounding area on August 29, 2005. The storm surge broke the city’s levees in many places, leaving 80 percent of the city under water. Much of the area was flooded again by Hurricane Rita, which struck three weeks later. The devastation to the Gulf Coast by these two hurricanes has been called the greatest natural disaster in our nation’s history.

The University Libraries has compiled a list of resources regarding Hurricane Katrina and the New Orleans Flood, which include a selection of Must Reads, Web Resources, books, videos and articles. For more information, please contact Donna Braquet, Life Sciences Librarian.