Now you can study Gale’s American 19th century newspapers and the history of indigenous peoples in North America even at Christmas time.
19th Century U.S. Newspapers – a full-text searchable, facsimile-image database – provides an as-it-happened window on events, culture, and daily life in nineteenth-century America that is of interest to both professional and general researchers. The collection features publications of all kinds, from the political party newspapers at the beginning of the nineteenth century to the mammoth dailies that shaped the nation at the century’s end. Every aspect of society and every region of the nation is found in the archive – rural and urban, large cities and small towns, coast to coast, etc. Includes major newspapers as well as those published by African Americans, Native Americans, women’s rights groups, labor groups, the Confederacy, and other groups and interests. Also included are illustrated papers that bring the nineteenth century to life through the drawings of many artists.
Newspapers included are:
New York Herald (NY)
Lynchburg Virginian (VA)
Pacific Commercial Advertiser (HI)
Rocky Mountain News (CO)
Southern Illustrated News (VA)
Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago), Milwaukee Sentinel (WI)
The Bee (OH), The Mountaineer (SC)
Indigenous Peoples: North America is a comprehensive collection on the experience of the indigenous peoples of North America. Enabling exploration of the political, social, and cultural history of native peoples from the sixteenth century well into the twentieth century, Indigenous Peoples: North America illustrates the fabric of the North American story with unprecedented depth and breadth. Comprehensive yet personal, the collection covers the history of American Indian tribes and supporting organizations, meeting a need for historical researchers. Indigenous Peoples: North America provides a robust, diverse, and appealing search experience and enable intelligent inquiry into the culture and heritage of indigenous people.
Indigenous Peoples: North America is sourced from both American and Canadian institutions, as well as direct-from-source from newspapers from various tribes and Indian-related organizations. The collection also features indigenous-language materials, including dictionaries, bibles, and primers.
Due to a staff event on 30.11.2017, the campus libraries of Kumpula and Viikki close at 16:00. The customer service at campus library Terkko in Meilahti closes also at 16:00, but the facilities are open until 20:00 as usual.
Kaisa house is open normally 8-20 (customer service 10-19).
The Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics Online features advanced search options, as well as extensive cross-references and full-text search functionality using the Hebrew character set. With over 850 entries and approximately 400 contributing scholars, this encyclopedia is the authoritative reference work for students and researchers in the fields of Hebrew linguistics, general linguistics, Biblical studies, Hebrew and Jewish literature, and related fields.
With an established reputation as the most important modern dictionary for Ancient Greek, it brings together 140 000 headwords taken from the literature, papyri, inscriptions and other sources of the archaic period up to the 6th Century CE, and occasionally beyond. The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek is an invaluable companion for the study of Classics and Ancient Greek, for beginning students and advanced scholars alike.
Chinese-English Dictionary Online is the first Chinese-English dictionary devoted solely to the premodern language. Being a practical lexicon of more than 8 000 characters, arranged alphabetically by Pinyin romanization, it is meant to facilitate the reading and translating of historical, literary, and religious texts dating from approximately 500 BCE to 1000 CE.
Hankehaavi http://www.hankehaavi.fi/ is an online research project database – the Finnish name literally ‘projects net’.
Hankehaavi is an innovative service that combines data from several sources into one database with a focus on ease of use. There is no need to sign in or create an account. The service contains information on past and ongoing research projects concerning natural resources from several Finnish organizations. Continue reading “Increasing Visibility on Natural Resources Oriented Projects – A Questionnaire”
Three days, 37 lecture presentations, 16 poster presentations and 141 participants from 16 countries. The annual Nordic Workshop on Bibliometrics and Research Policy (NWB) brought the most recent currents of bibliometrics from the Nordic countries and from across Europe to the House of Science and Letters in Helsinki.
The House of Science and Letters in Helsinki was the venue for the 22nd NWB. Photo by Jussi S. Männistö (JSM)
The presentations during the three days from 8–10 November offered a wide range of perspectives on bibliometrics, from mathematical formulae to research policies and the societal impact of science [see the NWB program, incl. abstracts). Many presentations took the perspective of open science, and citation curves favoring OA articles were a common sight. All presentation material has been published in Figshare.
According to Kim Holmberg, altmetrics provides a good insight into the activity of researchers, but not directly to the quality of research. (JSM)
The actual workshop sessions on Thursday and Friday were preceded by Wednesday’s pre-workshop event, which attracted the full hall to the upper floor of the House of Science and Letters. In the pre-workshop’s keynote speech, Kim Holmberg from the RUSE research unit discussed measuring researchers’ online visibility, especially altmetrics.
During the event, NWB tweeters were active on Twitter, and on Thursday #NWB2017 rose momentarily to the top 20 hashtags in Finland along with #Catalonia and #peräkonttigate.
In his speech Piro discussed measurement issues and the differences the report reveales between the Nordic countries. He emphasized that the purpose of the report is to provide higher education institutions with information for developing their research activities. However, the actual use of the report is university-specific.
NordForsk report is not about ranking, but about providing information for comparison, says Fredrik Niclas Piro. (JSM)
“Many universities say that yes, we have read the report and we use it some way. In some cases the use of the report is very specific. For example, one university uses it in their development contract with the Ministry. These reports are useful for many purposes, but the benchmarking of other institutions is the main thing. The report is not about ranking, but about providing information for comparison,” claims Piro.
The comparison shows that although the number of publications in Nordic countries is rising sharply, its global share in production is falling. From the Nordic countries’ point of view, the strong fields in international comparison are the social sciences, business studies, economics, and the health sciences. In Finland, certain areas of medicine are declining in comparison with other Nordic countries.
“Research in the Nordic countries is growing in the social sciences and health-related fields. But in the natural sciences, we are declining. Finland is a bit different. Its growth in material science, geosciences and also mathematics and statistics is higher than in other Nordic countries. But on the other hand, the growth of biomedicine and clinical medicine in Finland was negative from 1999 to 2014. That’s very unique,” says Piro.
Research culture eroding scientific credibility
In Friday’s keynote speech, Jesper Schneider from Aarhus University discussed the phenomenon of science crisis. Schneider pointed out that it is easy to find strong opinions on the subject, but verifying these views is another case. Instead of scientific scams, Schneider focused on questionable research practices (QRP).
The grey area of questionable research practices requires a lot more research, claims Jesper Schneider. (JSM)
“Fraud cases are rare. Questionable research practices are the grey area, and are frequently overlooked because they don’t seem as serious as misconduct. But the total effect of biases and misuses could really have a huge influence on scientific results. This grey area ranges from sloppy research to errors and biases, and at some point, it becomes a legal issue,” claims Schneider.
According to Schneider, questionable research practices vary by discipline, organization and country. Schneider specifically discussed the problem of reproducibility of research in the soft sciences, i.e. in social and human sciences.
The pressure to publish more and more, and fierce competition – or “perverse incentives in academic capitalism” – are potential causes of the science crisis. However, Schneider emphasizes that the phenomenon requires a lot more research, because the current knowledge basis is hugely incomplete. He argues that further research is worthwhile, as the credibility of science is at stake.
Best moment at NWB?
Hans Jessen Hansen. Kuva: Juuso Ala-Kyyny (JAK)
So, three days of bibliometrics – what was the best moment? According to Hans Jessen Hansen from the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science, the two keynote speeches by Fredrik Niclas Piro and Jesper Schneider summarized shortly above.
“They had a little bit more time, so they got into their subjects more deeply. As for those two presentations, I wrote notes about all the presentations I saw,” says Hansen.
Julie Riisom Wisborg from the University Library of Southern Denmark emphasized the social dimension of the event; the importance of encounters.
Julie Riisom Wisborg. (JAK)
“I’m impressed by the very friendly atmosphere here. I did my poster presentation on Thursday, and the comments and questions were great. I think this sort of event gives you totally new possibilities to interact with people you wouldn’t interact with on the internet. And you learn things you wouldn’t even think to look for,” says Riisom Wisborg.
Gunnar Sivertsen from the Norwegian NIFU research institute was the chairman in two NWB sessions and also participated in two presentations.
Gunnar Sivertsen. (JAK)
“It’s difficult to pick out what one best thing, because it’s a combination of presentations and discussions, also discussions outside the formal sessions. So, what I appreciate most is the networking, new contacts and new ideas. This has been one of the most well-organized workshops, so I’d like to congratulate the organizers,” says Sivertsen.
Even though Wi-Fi didn’t work?
“It was even better without Wi-Fi, because we could concentrate more on the here and now,” says Sivertsen.
HULib was also present on stage: Eva Isaksson discussed the evaluation of research publications in astronomy and astrophysics, Susanna Nykyri introduced research data metrics from the University of Helsinki’s perspective and Terhi Sandgren asked in her presentation, “Are publication databases suitable for studying the publishing practices of a multidisciplinary research field at subdisciplinary level?”
Next year the event will take place in Borås, Sweden. Lycka till!
Do you need a place to work on your group project or presentation? Did you know that you can reserve a group study room with your mobile device?
Just follow these simple steps (recommended for Apple or Android users).
You´ll need to use the University of Helsinki Office 365 email system (for UH students and staff) . Read more about Office 365 (switch to English via top right corner).
Download the mobile version of Microsoft Outlook Instructions how to download Outlook from the AppStore/Google Play Store (switch to English via top right corner).
Follow these instructions to make a reservation through the Outlook app (example from Android version).
Remember to check your university email to confirm your reservation was accepted.
Many of the researchers at the University of Helsinki that applied for funding from the Academy of Finland in the fall of 2016 used a web-based tool, DMPTuuli, when writing their data management plans. 137 researchers received funding in the spring of 2017. Of these 64 percent had registered in DMPTuuli, which is administered by the Helsinki University Library.
Applying for funding is an everyday task for researchers. From 2016 the Academy of Finland has demanded that funding applications contain a data management plan as a separate appendix. The DMPTuuli, a tool for facilitating the writing of data management plans, was created by the Finnish Tuuli project on the iniative of the Helsinki university library.
DMPTuuli is based on the idea that the web form with templates and guidelines for different funders and organisations help researchers plan and document data management through the different stages of their research project. This way questions about copyright, data security, and reuse of data are considered.
Get guidance on DMPworkshops
Information Specialist Mikko Ojanen and DMPWorkshop, Spring 2017. Picture: Jussi Männistö
Researchers get guidance in the use of DMPTuuli and information about services and the benefits of data management in the data management workshops of the University of Helsinki DataSupport. These workshops have been very popular. Several hundred researchers have participated in them. The library is the coordinator of the DataSupport and also one of the providers of expertise. The university’s DataSupport answers questions about data management both during funding application rounds and outside them.
The Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics Online comprehensively covers all aspects of Arabic languages and linguistics. It is interdisciplinary in scope and represents different schools and approaches. The Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics Online is cross-searchable and cross-referenced, and is equipped with a browsable index. All relevant fields in Arabic linguistics, both general and language specific are covered and the Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics Online includes topics from interdisciplinary fields, such as anthropology, psychology, sociology, philosophy, and computer science.
Have you spotted something wrong in premises or devices at Kaisa House? The printer jammed, guest computer not working? You are not able to solve the situation? You can send a message also via WhatsApp!
The Kaisa customer service reads WhatsApp messages during the customer service hours, Mon-Fri 10 AM -7 PM, Sat 11 AM – 5 PM. The number you’ll find on posters and info-TV when you visit the library.
The WhatsApp number is only for matters concerning premises and devices. We do not renew loans or answer questions about the collections via the app. Please do not send your personal details (e.g. social security number) via WhatsApp. Also note that we are not always able to answer immediately.
University of Helsinki
