Van Wylen Library

Van Wylen Library is pleased to announce a trial subscription to a new primary source database, Nineteenth-Century Collections Online. This resource will be available to all Hope students and staff through the end of March. You’ll find a link to NCCO on our Trials page.

I have been sitting here for the past 30 minutes, trying to find a way to begin this post without resorting to something aphoristic. This probably because even a non-expert like me has a quiet awareness of just how important the 19th century was in shaping the world we inhabit today.

Yes, one might reasonably make similar arguments about other periods. I suppose what truly sets the 19th century apart as a time of deep and widespread change is the sheer number and diversity of the primary source materials available for us to interrogate. The richness and complexity of the extant record of the long 19th century invites us, compellingly, to a direct study of its history. With this in mind, NCCO was created to provide both a unique repository of primary resources and a friendly platform for exploration.

There are four distinct collections within our NCCO package, each focusing on a different aspect of 19th-century history:

• Asia and the West: Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange – After centuries of relative isolation, Asian cultures were increasingly (often forcibly) drawn into sustained contact with the West. Materials in this collection will allow you to examine the motivations, dynamics, conflicts, and consequences of these cross-cultural encounters.
• British Politics and Society – In Britain, the “Industrial Revolution” brought changes which extended well beyond the realm of the technological. Sources within this collection offer a window into British society as it grappled with these developments.
• British Theatre, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture – With an especially robust emphasis on  British theatre, here is an opportunity to study the reflection of current events, prevailing trends, and common memes in the entertainment sphere of the Victorian and pre-Victorian eras.
• European Literature, 1790 – 1840: The Corvey Collection – Though spanning just a half century, this archive contains singular materials not indexed elsewhere. Largely drawn (originally) from markets in France, Britain, and (what is now called) Germany, this collection offers a unique sample of early Victorian and Romantic writing.

We hope that you will be able to find some time to explore this unusual resource over the next few weeks. We also solicit any reactions you might have, especially concerning its potential value (or lack thereof) to studies at Hope. Please feel free to email askalibrarian@hope.edu with your comments.

As spring break approaches, please keep in mind the library’s hours:

• Thursday, March 14:  8 a.m. to 5 p.m.;
• Friday, March 15: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Saturday, March 16: Closed
• Sunday, March 17: Closed
• Monday, March 18 to Friday, March 22: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
• Saturday, March 23: Closed
• Sunday, March 24: 12 p.m. to midnight
• Monday, March 25: 8 a.m. to midnight

For Music Library hours, see here.  The staff at Van Wylen wish you a safe and restful break!

–Madalyn Muncy, Library Student Blogger

The open access movement saw major developments in the past two weeks.  Last Friday, the Obama Administration mandated that federal agencies develop open-access policies in the next six months. Just a week earlier, the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR), a bi-partisan effort to increase access to federally funded research information, was introduced into Congress.

Under FASTR, federal agencies that spend at least $100 million per year on research must provide open access to the research results. The Obama mandate covers all federal agencies that spend at least $100 million per year on research or development. That means the president’s plan will cover 19 agencies, while FASTR would cover 11. Both acts complement each other and are a huge step forward for open access.

For more information about the mandate or FASTR, see this blog post by Peter Suber, director of the Harvard Open Access Project, or this post by Kevin Smith, Duke University’s Scholarly Communications Officer.

Hope College instituted an Open Access Policy in October 2011. The policy requires that Hope faculty deposit their final manuscripts of peer-reviewed articles into Digital Commons.  It will continue to be important for the foreseeable future that Hope College faculty deposit their peer reviewed articles into the institutional repository. For more information on Open Access see the Hope College Open Access website.

Image courtesy loc.gov

On February 19, 1878, Thomas Edison officially patented the phonograph, thereby changing the music listening habits of people everywhere. The first notes that rang out from the bell? Mary Had a Little Lamb!

Edison came upon the phonograph while working on improvements to the telegraph and telephone. The machine was marketed first as a talking machine, but by the late 1880s, pre-recorded music became the phonograph’s main use. The machine had two needles: one for recording and one for playback. Originally, the phonograph recorded sounds on tin foil, but later wax cylinders replaced the foil as the recording medium.  The cylinder went out of style soon after the turn of the century when the industry switched to discs, and the phonograph morphed into what we know as a record player.

You can find images of Edison phonographs as well as digital recordings from wax cylinders in the digital library Europeana.  The Library of Congress American Memory collection on the Edison Company also has a great collection of early 20th century disc phonograph recordings.  A fun highlight is this silent film advertisement for the business dictation phonograph.

The sound was not as clear as today’s stereo speakers, but the phonograph provided a home listening experience. When the first tape cassettes were introduced in the 1960s, the phonograph’s dominance in home audio listening and recording began its decline.

For more information in the library collection, check out Music, Sound, and Technology in America: A Documentary History of Early Phonograph, Cinema, and Radio or Recorded Music in American Life: The Phonograph and Popular Member, 1890-1945.

—Madalyn Muncy, Library Student Blogger

Van Wylen Library will be observing the following hours during Winter Break:

• Friday, February 8: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Saturday, February 9: Closed
• Sunday, February 10: Closed
• Monday, February 11: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Tuesday, February 12: 8 a.m. to midnight

We wish you a safe and relaxing break from classes!

–Madalyn Muncy, Library Student Blogger