Archive for the ‘Interface Usability’ Category

Attend a 2012 Readex ETC training session

Friday, February 3rd, 2012

ETC (Enhancements, Training and Content) is an ongoing, multifaceted program that provides Readex customers with web-based historical content unavailable elsewhere, the latest and most useful product features and functionality, and online access and storage support.

In addition, as part of the ETC program we feature regularly scheduled training sessions that are highly valued by many of our customers. These online sessions provide guidance and suggestions for making the most of your Readex collections. Faculty and students are welcome to attend, and ample time is provided for questions.

Our spring 2012 training schedule is now available. Register for one or more of the sessions today!

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Top-Ten Articles Published in The Readex Report

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011

The Readex Report is a quarterly e-newsletter that explores diverse aspects of both modern librarianship and digital historical collections. Through original articles by academic faculty and librarians, The Readex Report provides insights on topics as wide-ranging as those found in the following list of the most clicked-upon articles published since 2006.

Preserving the Library in the Digital Age

By Benjamin L. Carp, Assistant Professor of History, Tufts University [Volume 4, Issue 4]

Heart or Muscle? The Library in the Digital Age

By Edward Shephard, State University of New York, Binghamton [Volume 4, Issue 3]

“Meet the Students”: Bringing Your Library’s Online Resources Into Your Students’ “Circle of Trust”

By Lynn D. Lampert, Chair, Reference & Instructional Services, California State University, Northridge [Volume 2, Issue 2]

How Libraries Can Win in Today’s Web 2.0 Environment 

By Terry Reese, The Gray Family Chair for Innovative Library Services, Oregon State University [Volume 4, Issue 2]

This Headache Is Killing Me: The Bromo-Seltzer Poisonings of 1898

By John Odell, Publisher, Digger Odell Publications [Volume 4, Issue 4]

User-Centered Design for Digital Collections

By Michael Edmonds, Digital Librarian, Wisconsin Historical Society [Volume 4, Issue 1]

Religion and the Rise of the Second Ku Klux Klan, 1915-1922

By Kelly J. Baker, Ph.D., University of New Mexico [Volume 4, Issue 3]

An Undergraduate’s Reflections on Original American History Research: How Online Access to Historical Newspapers Helped Prepare an Award-Winning Tea Party Study

By David Brooks, Graduate, Taylor University [Volume 5, Issue 4]

“Worlds Apart? The Relationship Between Teaching and Marketing and What It Means to Academic Librarians

By Jill S. Stover, Undergraduate Services Coordinator, Virginia Commonwealth University [Volume 2, Issue 3]

Commodore Vanderbilt: Patriot or War Profiteer?

By T.J. Stiles, author of The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, 2009 National Book Award Winner [Volume 5, Issue 1]

To subscribe to forthcoming issues of this quarterly e-newsletter, please use this form. If you have any questions or comments, or if you would like to contribute an original article, please contact The Readex Report editor by emailing readexreport@readex.com. We hope to hear from you!

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Posted in American History, Announcements, Digital Humanities, Interface Usability, Journalism History, Trends in Database Use | No Comments »

Sign Up for Readex Product Training: Spring 2011

Monday, January 24th, 2011

Beginning February 8 and running through May 17, Readex will be conducting live training webinars on various digital collections. These webinars are open to all librarians, faculty and students at institutions participating in the Readex Enhancements, Training and Content (ETC) program.

While each training session will focus on interface functions and features, it will also provide important background on Readex collections from expert product specialists. Sessions scheduled include:

America’s Historical Imprints (including Early American Imprints, Series I and II: Evans and Shaw-Shoemaker, 1639-1819; Supplements from the Library Company of Philadelphia; and American Broadsides and Ephemera, 1760-1900)

America’s Historical Newspapers and World Newspaper Archive (including Early American Newspapers, American Ethnic Newspapers, 20th-Century American Newspapers, American Newspaper Archives and all World Newspaper Archive collections)

America‘s Historical Government Publications (including U.S. Congressional Serial Set, American State Papers, House and Senate Journals and Senate Executive Journals)

Foreign Broadcast Information Service (including FBIS Daily Reports and Annexes, 1941-1996)

The Civil War: Antebellum Period to Reconstruction (An Archive of Americana Thematic Collection)

Please see our spring 2011 Training Schedule, and register for a convenient session today. We hope you can join us!

If you have questions of any kind, please contact Brett Kolcun, Readex Product Director, at bkolcun@readex.com.

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Explore Our Newest Resources at the American Library Association Midwinter Conference

Wednesday, December 8th, 2010

Learn more about new Readex collections for 2011, including African American Periodicals from the Wisconsin Historical Society, 1825-1970, by visiting us next month in San Diego at NewsBank booth 2432.

To explore the recently released resources below, please either stop by our booth or email us today at sales@readex.com. (more…)

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Posted in American History, American Literature, Announcements, Collection Development, Interface Usability, New Collections, Product Updates | No Comments »

America’s Historical Newspapers reviewed in new issue of Journal of American History

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010

The September 2010 issue of the Journal of American History—the quarterly journal of the Organization of American Historians—features this review of America’s Historical Newspapers. 

It has long been possible to buy the front page of a particular issue of the New York Times so that you can read about what happened on the day you were born. Now, thanks to the wonders of technology, you can also easily find out what happened on just about any other day in the history of the country too. Readex has launched a new subscription-based Web site, America’s Historical Newspapers, that enables users to travel through time and call up issues of various newspapers to conduct, for example, a thorough study of the Civil War in the 1860s, analyze the stock market as it soared in the 1920s, or track the slugger Mickey Mantle’s baseball career throughout the 1950s. Using a simple search function, users can bring to life on their monitors the pages of an old newspaper from any major American city—and some small towns—and read about whatever person or event they choose. (more…)

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Posted in American History, American Literature, Announcements, Collection Development, Digital Humanities, Interface Usability, Journalism History, New Collections, Primary Sources in the Classroom, Print Culture, Product Updates, Trends in Database Use | No Comments »

Sign Up for Readex Webinar Training

Monday, September 13th, 2010

Beginning September 14 and running through November 2, Readex will be conducting live training webinars on various digital collections. These webinars are open to all librarians, faculty and students at institutions participating in the Readex Enhancement, Training and Content (ETC) program.

While each training session will focus on interface functions and features, it will also provide important background on Readex collections from expert product specialists.

To register, please select the training session(s) you would like to attend using this ETC Training form. If you have questions of any kind, please contact Brett Kolcun, Readex Product Director at bkolcun@readex.com.

There is still time to sign up for the upcoming webinars. We hope you can join us!

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Posted in American History, American Literature, Announcements, Digital Humanities, Interface Usability, New Collections, Product Updates, Trends in Database Use, World History | No Comments »

ETC (Enhancements, Training and Content): Overview and 2010 Update 4

Tuesday, September 7th, 2010

ETC (Enhancements, Training and Content) is an ongoing, multifaceted program that provides Readex customers with one-of-a-kind historical content unavailable online elsewhere. In addition, the ETC program ensures the latest and most useful features and functionality, and provides guidance and suggestions for making the most of your Readex collections. ETC also covers online access and storage support.

Just as Readex is committed to providing its customers with the highest level of ongoing support and maintenance, it is also committed to ensuring that its definitive and comprehensive digital collections continue to grow through the addition of highly relevant new content and features. The ETC program enables you to be certain that you are providing your users and patrons with the most complete and robust digital edition of every Readex collection available at your institution. Through ETC, new content that brings significant enrichment and up-to-date interface functionalities and features will be added periodically. In this manner, ETC will continuously enrich your Readex collections by providing added value and content for your users and patrons for years to come.

The fourth ETC release for 2010 was completed in August and included:

Early American Newspapers: up to 300 additional issues in seven series;

U.S. Congressional Serial Set: House and Senate Journals from 1964, 88th Congress, 2nd Session;

Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports, 1974-1996: 25 issues of the Central Eurasia and Soviet Union Report.

Releases will continue throughout 2010 on a bi-monthly basis, including additional content for Early American Newspapers, 1690-1922, U.S. Congressional Serial Set, 1817-1994 and Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports, 1974-1996.

America's Historical Imprints

In addition, as of June 30, 2010, Readex’s Early American Imprints, Series I and II and American Broadsides and Ephemera have transitioned to a new America’s Historical Imprints platform that makes searching more productive for novice and experienced users alike. Its intuitive new interface provides more powerful search capabilities, including the ability to simultaneously search the full text or metadata of any combination of two or more of these previously separate collections.

Also as part of this update the image viewer page has also been updated for Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800 and Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819. This update allows users to drag and position images as well as reset the image view.

Questions or comments? Please feel free to post them here or email me directly at bkolcun@readex.com.

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The National Digital Archive of American Print: New Additions from the Library Company of Philadelphia

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

In the spring 2010 issue of Occasional Miscellany, a newsletter for members and friends of the Library Company of Philadelphia, James Green discusses his organization’s recent completion of an initiative “to catalog some 3,250 pre-1820 American imprints of which the Library Company holds the only available copy.”

Writing about Early American Imprints, Green comments:

“By adding full-dress descriptive and subject catalog records to the national bibliographic database, we have made these unique items accessible for the first time. Readex…has long been in the business of publishing digital libraries of early American imprints, and they have just begun scanning the imprints we cataloged under the NEH grant to create supplements to their two digital collections of early American imprints, the Evans series (1639-1800) and the Shaw-Shoemaker series (1801-1819), named after the venerable printed bibliographies on which they are based. These are in effect the national digital archive of American print, and our additions will increase it by more than 3%.”

(more…)

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The Charleston Advisor awards Early American Newspapers 4.75 stars

Friday, May 28th, 2010

The April 2010 issue of The Charleston Advisor includes a two-page review of America’s Historical Newspapers by Providence College librarian Janice Schuster.

Focusing on Early American Newspapers, Series 1 to 7, 1690-1922, The Charleston Advisor awarded this collection its highest ranking in the categories of Content, Searchability and Contract Options.

Here’s an excerpt:

“The initial search screen makes it very clear which searching options are available. One can immediately start searching using the Google-like search box and the drop-down menu of searching options, including Headline, Standard Title (i.e., publication title), and Title as published….The results list includes a wealth of (more…)

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