Word on the Street

Expanded partnership with NINES

In an ongoing effort to improve scholarly access to digital humanities resources, Alexander Street Press has partnered with The Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship (NINES) and its sister organization, 18thConnect: Eighteenth-Century Scholarship Online, to enable cross-search access to all relevant eighteenth- and nineteenth-century content from Alexander Street online collections, including, most recently, The Romantic Era Redefined.

In addition to The Romantic Era Redefined, other Alexander Street Press collections indexed in the NINES and 18thConnect networks include The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries, Irish Women Poets of the Romantic Period, and Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period.

For more information, please read the press release.

If you'd like to request free trial access to The Romantic Era Redefined, or a price quote for your library, please email [email protected].

Black Drama: Second Edition is complete

Over 80 new plays have been added to Black Drama: Second Edition, bringing this online collection to completion. A 2004 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, the collection now contains more than 1,460 plays written by authors from North America, the Caribbean, English-speaking Africa, and other African diaspora countries. Many of the plays in Black Drama: Second Edition are rare, and over 40% are previously unpublished.

Highlights of the latest content update include the unpublished works of:

• George Houston Bass (founder of the Rites and Reason Theatre at Brown University)
• Mustapha Matura
• Paul Boakye
• Kia Corthron
• Gus Edwards
• J.E. Franklin
• Edgar White
• Charlayne Woodard
• Marion McClinton (renowned director of August Wilson's work)

Also included in this final release are plays by:

• Aime Cesaire
• Trevor Rhone
• Roderick Walcott (twin brother of Derek Walcott)
• Austin Bukenya
• Caryl Phillips
• Sterling Houston
• Wole Soyinka

Black Drama: Second Edition is available to libraries and academic institutions worldwide. For more information, including pricing and free trial requests, please email [email protected].

New content added to Manuscript Women's Letters and Diaries

Manuscript Women's Letters and Diaries, the online collection created in partnership with the American Antiquarian Society, has just been updated with 197 pages of original manuscripts.

The Allen-Johnson collection has been updated considerably, and two new collections of manuscripts are now available. Subscribing libraries will now see the Ellen Tucker Emerson Letters (1863-1865) and Sara Osborn Letters (1743-1799).

Manuscript Women's Letters and Diaries is available to libraries and educational institutions worldwide. For more information, including free trial and pricing requests, please email [email protected].

Streaming music collections go mobile

We've just enabled mobile access to ALL of our streaming music collections, making it possible for patrons at subscribing libraries to listen using internet-enabled smart phones and other mobile devices. Mobile access options include QR codes (like the one below), automatic email or SMS text delivery, and navigating to a mobile-friendly URL. Every recording, album, and playlist can now be accessed on-the-go.

The QR code above can be scanned with with your smart phone, and will connect you directly to an e-album of music from the movie Pride & Prejudice. The e-album can then be streamed on your mobile device through August 31, 2010. QR readers are readily available as free or inexpensive add-on applications, and many mobile phones come with QR readers pre-installed. If your 3G mobile device is connected to the web but does not have a camera, you can simply go to http://goasp.it/austen to stream the e-album. To see other working examples of QR codes, check out the Resource Shelf.

Later in 2010, Alexander Street video collections will be streamed to mobile devices. For more information on mobile access, read the press release.

New performances in Theatre in Video

US and Canadian subscribers to Theatre in Video will notice that the online collection was recently updated with 23 new titles. The newly added films come from the Broadway Theatre Archive and include works by Edward Albee, Jean Anouilh, Eugene O’Neill, Lanford Wilson, Arthur Miller, William Saroyan, Neil Simon, Anton Chekhov, Thornton Wilder, and Wendy Wasserstein, among others.

Featured actors include Geraldine Fitzgerald, Linda Hunt, Meryl Streep, Alfre Woodard, John Lithgow, Jeff Daniels, Faye Dunaway, Kevin Kline, Frank Langella, Blythe Danner, Olympia Dukakis, Susan Sarandon, Harvey Keitel, Sir John Gielgud, and Sir Ralph Richardson.

Titles include Death of a Salesman, The Skin of Our Teeth, The Time of Your Life, Uncommon Women and Others, The Seagull, An Enemy of the People, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide, Fifth of July, The Good Doctor, and The Pirates of Penzance.

Customers outside of the US and Canada will see these films added to the collection shortly. For more information on Theatre in Video, and to request a free trial or price quote for your library, please email [email protected].

Ethnographic Video Online continues to grow

Since launching in February of 2010, Ethnographic Video Online has grown by more than 100 titles by important filmmakers like David MacDougal, David Plath, John Bishop, and Timothy Asch. This popular online collection now features over 400 titles equaling 270 hours of video, and is continuing to grow.

The recently added films include span from 1968 up to the present day, and cover every corner of the world, from Switzerland to Niger, Argentina to Newfoundland, Japan to Kenya, Belize to Zanzibar, Papua New Guinea to Portugal. Titles include Harambee (1974), Ajishama, The White Ibis (2003), Being Innu (2007), The Last Window (1987), Tarahumara: Festival of the Easter Moon (1976), Taking Pictures (2001), and Friends, Fools, Family: Rouch’s Collaborators in Niger (1992).  Also included now are the early films of Robert Flaherty, Nanook of the North (1922) and Louisiana Story (1948), and our first previously unreleased film, Urban Garden (2006), by Jay Sokolovsky.

For a detailed list on newly added films, visit Ethnographic Video Online's What's New page. You can also follow our anthropology editor on Twitter @EthnoVideo.

Ethnographic Video Online is available to libraries and academic institutions worldwide. To request a free trial or price quote, email [email protected].

134 hours of video added to American History in Video

American History in Video was recently updated with 134 hours of additional footage. The collection currently features over 4,800 videos totaling 1,215 hours.

The newly added videos include newsreel and archival films from The Big Picture, Universal Newsreels, and the Longines Chronoscope series. Additional documentaries from The History Channel® and PBS's "American Experience" series have also been added. A more detailed list of the newly added content can be seen here.

For more information on American History in Video, including free trials and price quotes for your library, please email [email protected].

And if you'd like Sneak Peek access to the forthcoming World History in Video, you can sign up here.

Underground and Independent Comics has new content and features

Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels has been updated with thousands of pages of new comics and enhanced features that make the collection even more powerful. Underground and Independent Comics currently features about 32,000 pages of content, and is growing to include more than 75,000 pages upon completion.

Recently added content includes 45 new issues of The Comics Journal, which has never before appeared in a searchable, digital format. Also available now is Seduction of the Innocent by Dr. Frederick Wertham, which led to the Senate hearings that led to the formation of the Comics Code Authority.

Newly added features make the collection make it even easier to search and browse. The text of all secondary materials, including The Comics Journal, us now fully searchable. There are also new browse categories, including "Character", "Subject", and "Genre".

You can now follow our comics editor on Twitter @Urqness.

Underground and Independent Comics is available to libraries and academic institutions worldwide. Email [email protected] to request a free trial and a price quote for your library.

The Sixties grows by over 10K pages

An exciting new update of The Sixties has just occurred, with new content available from Ramparts Magazine and partnering archives and institutions, as well as improved functionality.

In partnership with The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, The Sixties now features the first set of materials from the Sexual Freedom League. These documents highlight the League's unique perspective on the sexual revolution, and more material will be added soon.

Also available are materials from the Nettie Feinberg Button Collection and the Radical Education Project Collection, courtesy of Stony Brook University.

And over 100 issues of the groundbreaking Ramparts Magazine are now included in The Sixties, with more to follow.

In an effort to make all of the images, text, and ephemera in The Sixties easily readable, we've added new functionality that allows all content to be viewed as clear, navigable images in addition to text.

 

The newly added icons let you toggle between 4 viewing options, select how many images you see at a time, and zoom and rotate.

With this update, The Sixties now includes over 67,000 pages from 1,345 sources. For more information, or to request free trial access, please contact [email protected].

Free access to Images of America

Images of America, the online collection from Alexander Street Press and Arcadia Publishing, is growing in size and now includes over 225,000 pages and 350,000 images. Over 1,800 Arcadia titles are now in the collection, and we've also added new functionality.

If you took a trial in the past, or if you've never had the opportunity to explore Images of America, now is your chance to see all of the new content. We're offering free access to the entire collection through July 15th. Register now at http://alexanderstreet.com/LRHOfree.htm.

We've also recently added playlist functionality to Images of America. You can now organize, save, and share images. Playlists can also be annotated, and you can include links to content anywhere on the Web. After you register for free access, look for the "Playlists" tab in the top toolbar. 

You'll need to create and account or sign in to permanently save your playlists. Once you do so, just look for the "Add to Playlist" icon on any page in Images of America. You can add entire books or just the relevant pages.

Images of America is available to libraries via annual subscription or one-time purchase, with pricing scaled to your institution. If you'd like to request more information or a price quote for your library, please email [email protected].