Cambridge University Library’s trial of RetroNews (French historical newspapers database)

Cambridge University Libraries just started a one-month trial of RetroNews, a database from the Bibliothèque nationale de France, which provides access to about 2000 (primarily French) newspaper titles published between 1631 and 1950. Part of its content is available only by subscription, in contrast to the BnF’s freely accessible material on its digital library Gallica (only 150 of the 2000 RetroNews titles are also available on Gallica).

The subscription to RetroNews offers advanced access to the digitised periodicals and advanced search functions, in particular the option to download results in pdf or text format. It should also be possible to extract search results in csv or xls format; and to request the extraction of text and metadata of a specific search. RetroNews provides access to 4000 items of new editorial content produced by academics and journalists, including articles, interviews, videos, and podcasts / readings of the newspaper pieces by professional actors.

French historical and literary sources in large online databases

Cambridge University Library subscribes to many large literary and historical databases: their sources are mainly in English, but they also contain foreign language material. Gale Primary Sources, which encompasses 26 thematic databases, contains lots of resources in French, as well as other languages. They can be accessed on your device anywhere within the University, and from home with the University of Cambridge VPN.

The database “Archives unbound” is particularly interesting for its primary historical material. It covers “topics” such as African Studies; British and European History; Business and Economic History; Cultural Studies; Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies; Latin American and Caribbean Studies; Law, Politics, and Radical Studies; Middle Eastern Studies; Religious Studies, as well as many others.

A splendid buffet : the June 2020 Slavonic item of the month

This month, I wanted to draw attention to a growing open access resource called Prozhito which provides diaries written by the great and the good and the ordinary.  At the time of writing, Prozhito (“Lived”, the passive past participle) contains diaries in Russian by 5755 authors, in Ukrainian by 104, and in Belarusian by 58.

A volunteer-led initiative which started in 2014, Prozhito has since 2019 been a joint project with the European University in St Petersburg.  The latter’s English-language summary of the project is here.  The Russian-language Prozhito “About” page is here.

A tool to find useful internet resources in and about European languages

­­­­­As a way to help readers navigate the sea of internet resources available for the study of subjects related to European languages, our department manages a Delicious account. Delicious is an online bookmarking service that allows everyone to browse what at first view is a list of links (277 at the moment) to useful resources.

Click on the image to enlarge.

When visiting it (click here) you will notice though, that you can select a series of options that can help narrow the list to your area of interest (Tags, tags bundles, date, extra filters; see screenshot on the right). A good way to begin is by clicking on “tags”, so you can see all the categories we have used to classify each resource, from the language they deal with (Russian, Portuguese, Dutch, etc.) to the sort of content they have or type of resources they are (bibliographies, ejournals, archives, manuscripts, digital libraries, etc.) and to the subject they deal with (literature, social sciences, history, etc.).