The Pop-Up Library is coming to Mappin Street!

Our Pop-Up Library will be at 9 Mappin Street next Tuesday 1st March 11am-1pm

 

We'll be giving out chocs & other freebies and answering your questions about library resources and support for learning and research.

Look out for the Pop-Up Library coming to your department soon!

Announcements about future Pop-Up Library sessions will be made on this blog and the @SocSciLibrarian Twitter account. We'd love to hear your thoughts on when and where you would like to see the next one #popuplib

The Pop-Up Library is coming to Mappin Street!

Our Pop-Up Library will be in the Common Room at 9 Mappin Street (Economics & Journalism), on Thursday 3^rd December, 12–2pm.

We’ll be giving out festive chocolates and other freebies, and answering your questions about library resources and support for learning and research.

Look out for the Pop-Up Library coming to your department soon!

Announcements about future Pop-Up Library sessions will be made on this blog and the @SocSciLibrarian Twitter account. We’d love to hear your thoughts on when and where you would like to see the next one #popuplib

The Pop Up Library is coming to Mappin Street and the Information School!

We’ll be in the Common Room, 9 Mappin Street (Department of Journalism Studies & Department of Economics), on Thursday 16^th April, 11am-1pm

We’ll also be in the Information School on Monday 20^th April, 12pm-2pm (in the iSpace in the Regent Court building).

Drop by and say hello, and we'll do our best to answer your questions about digital library resources and support for learning and research in journalism, economics and information studies. We'll also be able to help with finding resources for dissertations. Look out for our banner, and we look forward to meeting you.

Lies, damn lies and statistics?

If you've ever doubted the truth of what you read in the papers (and who hasn't?) the Straight Statistics blog is for you.  Set up by journalists and statisticians from pressure group Straight Statistics,  its aim is to expose and correct some of the worst examples of  sloppy or garbled use of statistics.  Some of the examples are hilarious and make for a very entertaining and illuminating read.  You'll find here the stats behind Gordon Brown's infamous encounter with Gillian Duffy, the true cost of public sector pensions, and whether you'll really catch Legionnaire's Disease if you don't put screenwash in your car windscreen washer.

For anyone interested in this topic and in the kind of scare stories which the media relish so much, may I also recommend Ben Goldacre's book Bad Science.

Documents on British Policy Overseas

The University Library has arranged a trial to the Documents on British Policy Overseas database.  This historical collection gathers together tens of thousands of UK Government documents relating to Britain’s international relations, including foreign policy instructions, letters and memos, business reports and more.

The database is produced in collaboration between ProQuest and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. They say "Documents on British Policy Overseas offers researchers the opportunity to see beneath the surface of the major events of the twentieth century. Users can access contemporary accounts and follow the detailed exchanges that shaped British foreign policy from the origins of the First World War and beyond".

The trial  is available to all registered staff and students at the University until 31 July 2010.  Please let us have your feedback.

Commercial Radio Archive online for the first time

Just received:  a press release about the launch of the UK’s first online commercial radio sound archive.  Thanks to funding from JISC of just over £760,000, the Centre for Broadcasting History based at Bournemouth University has spent the last three years digitising the noteworthy radio dating from 1973 up to the mid-1990's - preserving over 5,000 searchable recordings including the first hour of UK commercial radio in 1973, coverage of five UK general elections and the end of apartheid.

The collection is available online for researchers, lecturers and students
at the LBC / Independent Radio News (IRN) radio news audio archive which
gives access to the catalogue and audio of reports filed by some of the UK’s
leading journalists including Jon Snow, the late Carol Barnes and Dickie
Arbiter.

Among the 4,000 hours of radio are a number of historic events covered by LBC/IRN including:

• The first hour of UK commercial radio including the first commercial radio
news bulletin
• Broadcasts of the Falklands War, the miners’ strike and Northern Ireland
• The live reporting of UK election results from five general elections,
giving a unique sense of the political shaping of the country
• News related to the whole of the Thatcher government
• The whole of the 'Decision Makers' series 1974-86: weekly 30-minute
programmes of political and current affairs analysis which provide a unique
insight into politics and its reportage within the UK at the time
• State President PW Botha’s speech at the opening of the South African
parliament in which he announced that the era of apartheid was over, with
political and journalistic analysis of this event.

The archive was unveiled by internationally-acclaimed broadcaster, radio
historian and academic, Professor Seàn Street, at the Radio Centre in London.

He said: “This was at a time before the Broadcasting Act of 1990 which
brought significant change to the structure of British broadcasting.  The
change in commercial radio since this period is extraordinary. It is
impossible for the young student of radio, born since this time, to imagine
that such independently funded radio could have existed. As a result, it is
vitally important that these programmes be preserved, as part of the
evolving history of post-war British broadcasting.

“This archive forms an important part of the history of radio broadcasting
since it provides an alternative source of radio journalism and news and
current affairs broadcasts to the BBC’s own collection,” he concluded.

Foreign Broadcast Information Service Daily Reports - free!

The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Report has been purchased by JISC Collections and is available free of charge to UK Higher and Further Education institutions and Research Councils as part of the UK National Academic Archive.

Covering the period 1974–1996 in the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Eastern Europe, the JISC selection of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports includes a wealth of transcripts of broadcasts and news from around the world all translated into the English language.

The FBIS Daily Report series:

• contains significant, critical material unavailable from any other source. The newspaper, short-wave, radio, and television broadcast texts in many cases exist nowhere else but in the English transcription or translation of those broadcasts which have vanished into the airways.


• shows what the US government knew from the open source intelligence and when they knew it.


• shows what the world thought of the U.S. and its democratic allies, “the West,” in often harsh and critical assessments.

The FBIS Daily Report has been the United States' principal record of
political and historical open source intelligence for nearly 70 years.
it provides an archive of translated broadcasts, news agency
transmissions, newspapers, periodicals, and government statements from
around the world. It also includes many firsthand reports of events as
they occurred.

The archive collection covers the following regions and dates:

* Middle East and North Africa, 1974-1987
* Near East and South Asia, 1987-1996
* South Asia, 1980-1987
* Sub-Saharan Africa, 1974-1980
* Africa, 1987-1996
* Eastern Europe, 1974-1996