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I received an e-mail this week from the  folks at ABC-CLIO telling me that for Black History Month they’ve just added more than 1,000 slave narratives from the famous Works Progress Administration Federal Writers’ Project to the African American Experience database. You can read the 2006 RBB review of African American Experience (but keep in mind that [...]

Here’s another post for Black History Month. It was a dream of W. E. B. Du Bois  to produce an African encyclopedia, and he conceived of an “Encyclopedia of the Negro” as early as 1909. His plan was for a five-voume work that would be published between 1909 and 1913, but he was unable to [...]

If you have a genealogy collection, you’re probably familiar with Genealogical Publishing Company. The company has come out with some new two-sided, laminated research aids designed for heavy use. One, QuickSheet: Genealogical Problem Analysis, offers a 10-step approach to solving problems unique to genealogical research, It joins Citing Online African-American Historical Sources Evidence! Style and [...]

Known as “The Father of Black History,” Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950) founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (now called Association for the Study of African American Life and History) in 1915. In 1926, he established the first celebration of black history, Negro History Week.  Fifty years later, Negro History Week became Black [...]

Infobase Publishing announced new enhanced features for their eBook platform.  They include: Fulltext search option New eBook viewer design HTML default format for eBooks Improved relevancy and highlighting of search terms in context New eBook navigation tools New user tools like search history, bookmarks, notes and highlighting Additional information on Infobase eBook content (from their [...]

In addition to awarding the 2011 Dartmouth Medal to Oxford’s Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion and Berg Fashion Library this month, the Dartmouth Medal committee gave an Honorable Mention to Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, published by Yale University Press. This atlas is based on Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, a free [...]

H. W. Wilson’s WilsonWeb Service has a variety of new enhancements. Highlights include: • Record previews. Users can preview individual records without navigating away from the “brief display” search results screen, by mousing over the new “quick view” icon.  The pop-up “quick view” includes important fields such as Abstracts, Title, Author, Source, Publication Year, and Subject.  [...]

Oxford’s Encyclopedia of  World Dress and Fashion and Berg Fashion Library combo, winner of the 2011 Dartmouth Medal, is certainly the largest reference source on the subject of clothing, but it’s not the only one. Students and researchers are also well served by the 3-volume Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion, which was edited by Valerie Steele, Director [...]

The 2011 Dartmouth Medal winner was announced at the RUSA awards ceremony at the just-ended ALA Midwinter Meeting in not-so-sunny San Diego. Oxford’s Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, along with its online counterpart, Berg Fashion Library, was this year’s pick. Yale’s Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade was awarded an Honorable Mention. For more on [...]

DUBLIN, Ohio, January 6, 2011—The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has awarded $350,000 to fund researchers and developers from OCLC, the information schools of Syracuse University and the University of Washington and Zepheira LLC to continue work creating a more credible Web search experience based on the unique expertise, services and input from [...]

CQ Press will launch a new, revolutionary database in April of 2011 – First Street.  First Street consolidates congressional, government and lobbying data back to 1993, including CQs plethora of staff directories.  The First Street Coalition Builder (TM), the coolest part of the product, is a visual mapping tool which displays connections between staffers, lobbyists, [...]

Just finished reading an interesting article, “‘The Rolls Royce of the Library Reference Collection’: The Subject Encyclopedia in the Age of Wikipedia” in the latest issue of Reference and User Services Quarterly. The author, John W. East (University of Queensland in Australia) questions whether subject encyclopedias still have any value even online, never mind in print. He [...]

Quotation books occupy a special niche in the reference collection. Web sites like Quoteland and  Quoteworld notwithstanding, every library needs at least one quotation book on its ready-reference shelf. In the just-published January 1 and 15, 2011 issue of Booklist, we review two. One is the revised edition of Elaine Partnow’s The Quotable Woman: The First 5,000 Years. The other is [...]

The 2011 winner of the Dartmouth Medal, awarded by the RUSA division of ALA to a reference work “of outstanding quality and significance,” will be announced at the upcoming  ALA Midwinter meeting. Though not as glamorous as other awards, such as the Newbery and the Caldecott, it’s a big deal in the reference world. In [...]

Food tends to be a big part of holiday celebrations, so this week I’m taking a look back at some of the big food-related reference titles that have been reviewed in RBB in the past few years. One notable example is Encyclopedia of Food and Culture, published by Scribner back in 2002. This set covers [...]

Onomastics–the study of names–is a fascinating category of reference. One of the titles reviewed in the December 15 issue of RBB is the fifth edition of Dictionary of Pseudonyms: 13,000 Assumed Names and Their Origins by Adrian Room. Room, who is described as a “world-famous expert on onomastics,” is also the man behind Placenames of the [...]

If you’ve ever said to yourself “what I really need is a reference work on…”,  here’s an opportunity for you. Salem Press has announced a “Great Reference Ideas Contest.”  Librarians are invited to suggest titles or subject areas for new reference, and the first three librarians whose suggestions are turned into Salem reference publications will receive [...]

Booklist‘s December 1 issue, with our annual Spotlight on Sci-Tech, landed on my desk earlier this week. Although I was able to round up a few reviews for the Spotlight,  they’re all for books you might find on the shelves of your local Borders (no, wait, make that Barnes and Noble, since  the Borders down the [...]

Back when I worked in a public library, this was the time of year when we hauled the boxes of holiday books out of their corner in the store room and set them out by the circulation desk. While there are scores of Christmas books, I’ve only come across one reference title devoted to Thanksgiving: [...]

If you missed this week’s webinar, Encyclopedia Evolution, the archive is now available.  I’m always a little nervous about moderating a webinar. You’d think it would be easier to sit alone in an office in front of a computer than to speak in front of a live audience, but I’ve found I have to be just as [...]