Databases

Most of us know about persecution of Jews during World War II. You might know that Jews have been persecuted in Europe for centuries. But, how much do you know about anti-Semitism during the American Civil War? On December 17, 1862, Major General Ulysses S. Grant, before he became Lieutenant General and commander of all Union armies, issued General Order No. 11. This order expelled all Jews from the military district under Grant's command: parts of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mississippi. Was it Grant's intention to expel all Jews or just Jewish speculators in black market cotton? The order said one thing and Grant seems to have always claimed the other. Check the newspaper, magazine, and journal articles in ProQuest and decide for yourself.

Confidential Print: Africa, 1834-1966
This collection of materials from the National Archives, Kew, covers the whole of the modern period of European colonization of the continent from coastal trading in the early nineteenth century, through the Conference of Berlin of 1884 and the subsequent Scramble for Africa, to the abuses of the Congo Free State, fights against tropical disease, Italy's defeat by the Abyssinians, World War II, apartheid in South Africa and colonial moves towards independence.

Confidential Print: Latin America, 1833-1969
This collection of materials from the National Archives, Kew, covers revolutions, territorial changes and political movements, foreign financial interests, industrial and infrastructural development (including the building of the Panama Canal), wars, slavery, immigration from Europe and relations with indigenous peoples, amongst other topics relevant to Latin America.

Public Affairs Index
Public Affairs Index is a bibliographic database covering all aspects of national and global contemporary public policy issues ranging from public health, the environment, housing, human and civil rights, to international commerce and conflict. This database draws from a diverse array of scholarly journals, conference papers, trade publications and government documents to provide up-to-date information on a broad range of topics of concern to the world today. Coverage starts in 1934, with more complete coverage beginning in 1970.

Victorian Popular Culture: Moving Pictures, Optical Entertainments and the Advent of Cinema
Moving Pictures, Optical Entertainments and the Advent of Cinema explores the pivotal era in entertainment history when previously static images came to life and moved for the first time. The database features printed ephemera, programmes, sheet music, cigarette cards, postcards, games, toys and other merchandise from the pre- and early-cinematic years. The printed books in this collection range from technical magic lantern manuals to children's shadow play while the periodicals range from the scientific to early celebrity gossip.

We added several Japanese databases:

Asahi Shinbun
Online full-text database of the Japanese language Asahi Shinbun, one of Japan's mainstream newspapers. Contains 7 million articles published since 1945. Also includes articles from the weekly magazines Aera and Shukan Asahi, and from the annual new-word dictionary Chiezo.

Japan Knowledge
Includes Japanese language dictionaries (Japanese, English-Japanese, Japanese-English, and English-English), a 30-volume encyclopedia, two dictionaries of current words, a dictionary of scientific terms, a biographical dictionary, the JK Who's Who, the Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan, a news database (NNA) that covers Asia and the European Union, full-text books, a database of video recordings from 1908 to 2005, a database of dissertations from the humanities departments of six universities in Japan, a books in print database, a sound library, and a music library.

Maisaku: Mainichi shinbun detabesu
Access to the online full-text, Japanese language database of Mainichi shinbun (1872 (Meiji 5)- ). The database also includes Mainichi Daily News (June 2008- ), Shukan Ekonomisuto (October 1989- ), the public opinion poll conducted by Mainichi Shinbunsha (1945- ), Mainichi yoron chosa, and the company history "'Mainichi' no 3-seiki".

Yomidasu rekishikan
Includes the Japanese language: Yomiuri shinbun of Meiji, Taisho, Showa and current issues; The Daily Yomiuri; and a biographical database. Includes English language search and some English language articles.

Zasshi kiji sakuin shusei
Japanese language index to periodical articles published in Japanese, including those in former Japanese colonies, and including local periodicals not present in many other indexes. Coverage is from 1868 onwards. Merges data from various composite periodical indexes by Kokuritsu Kokkai Toshokan.

NewspaperARCHIVE is a database of historical newspapers covering 1607 the present. The database consists of digital images of original newspaper pages, the largest number are from 1880-2010, and are mainly English-language from the United States, Canada, England, and Ireland, although there are some newspapers from other countries in other languages. Several small Michigan newspapers are included, which cold be helpful for genealogical research, but none are from southeastern Michigan.
Note: The holdings will list broad ranges of dates but NewspaperARCHIVE does not necessarily contain all the issues in that time period.

Good news for users of Simmons OneView: you don't have to come into the library to use this database anymore! That's right, off-campus access is now available. We still have a 2 concurrent user restriction, but you can now access this from anywhere on campus, at home, at work, etc.

Simmons OneView
Format: Full Text
Available: On & Off Campus
Simmons OneView provides access to U.S. adult consumer data on product and brand usage, spending behavior, media habits, and more. It can be used to create customized reports helpful for developing marketing strategies, making advertising decisions, and finding statistical information that comes from the Simmons National Consumer Study.
Note: Limited to 2 concurrent users.

The National Criminal Justice Reference Service contains summaries of more than 185,000 publications including: federal, state, and local government reports; books; research reports; journal articles; and unpublished research. Twelve core periodicals are comprehensively abstracted, and many more periodicals are routinely examined. Subject areas include corrections, courts, drugs, law enforcement, juvenile justice, crime statistics, domestic preparedness, and victims.

Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus is an online database consisting of at least one copy of every surviving Old English text. In some cases, more than one copy is included, if it is significant because of dialect or date. As such, the DOE Web Corpus represents over three million words of Old English and fewer than a million words of Latin, or almost five times the collected works of Shakespeare.

This past weekend, I watched a repeat of the PBS documentary The War of 1812. It reminded me that the 200th anniversary of the Battle of the River Raisin will take place in Monroe in January. Check the National Park Service website for more information.

The database Early American Imprints has A JOURNAL, Containing an accurate & interesting account of the hardships, sufferings, battles, Defeat, & captivity of those heroic Kentucky Volunteers & Regulars, commanded by General Winchester, in the year 1812...1813. Also, two narratives, by men, that were wounded in the battles on the River Raisin, and taken captive by the Indians. This account of the events that took place in what would become Monroe was written by Elias Darnall, a private from Kentucky and one member of the force that was on its way to retake Detroit from the British.

With the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812 upon us, it is not surprising that many new books have been written about it. The library has many, both in print and online. Check them out!

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