News & Blog

Welcome to Diamond’s Hidden Gems, a blog series in which I introduce you to the University of Central Florida’s library services that you may not know about!

Research is an important aspect of any college career; it is a process in which you are exposed to the questions and information that have captured the attention of your field of interest. For students, this often means searching for and identifying free, online, and relevant research articles. UCF helps to mitigate most of this stress by providing students with databases that help narrow down the field of search.

The University of Central Florida Libraries allows students to search databases owned by a number of different vendors for items like scholarly peer-reviewed articles, book reviews, and magazine articles. Each of these databases contains specific publications with similar topics or subjects. By navigating to the UCF Libraries website, you can search for a database by name or topic, or you can browse the list of databases organized by subject or alphabetically.

If you’d like to learn more about databases and how you can access them, please visit Diamond’s Hidden Gems – Databases in STARS!

UCF has invested in a one-year subscription to JoVE Education. Demos will be held August 3^rd, 5^th, and 7^th with an overview of the JoVE STEM video resources available through this subscription. A detailed access list is available here: https://www.jove.com/access.

Interested?  Register here through Eventbrite Recordings of the demos will be made available for those unable to attend.

Access JoVE through the following steps:

1. Go to JoVE through the Libraries’ links
   1. Link to JoVE via this URL: https://guides.ucf.edu/database/JoveScienceEducation 
      OR
   2. Navigate via the Libraries Database list
      1. Start from the Libraries home page https://library.ucf.edu
      2. Click the Databases button
      3. Search for “Jove” or click J to browse to Jove in the list of databases
      4. Click on JoVE Science Education. 
2. You may be asked to log in via UCF’s Federated ID login.
3. After you make it into the JoVE Science Education database, click on the red link at the top left hand side of the page titled, “Remote Learning.” You are now on the Faculty Resource Center page.
4. Select the link labeled, “Set Up Remote Access.”
5. Scroll down and look for the link labeled, “Setting Up JoVE Content in Canvas.” You will be taken to a pdf that has step by step instructions on how to access videos and to embed them into Canvas. A “Using JoVE with Canvas” video is also available.

CAVEAT: UCF subscribes to JoVE Science Education only.  The JoVE site includes content that we cannot access through the subscription. UCF cannot access the content in the Research tab on JoVE’s site.

This summer the UCF Libraries purchased a large bundle of primary source databases as a result of deeply discounted pricing and negotiations with the vendor. The databases cover an extensive variety of fields, from advertising to American Indian newspapers to World War I. This was a one-time purchase to which the Libraries have perpetual access.

The vendor, Adam Matthew Digital, is an academic publisher based in the United Kingdom The company publishes collections of digitized primary source materials from different historical eras and has collaborated with various source archives and institutions including the Amistad Research Center, British National Archives, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Hoover Institution, Newberry Library, and the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill, among others.

Here are the 28 databases that have been purchased:

• African American Communities- www.aac.amdigital.co.uk
• Age of Exploration – www.exploration.amdigital.co.uk
• American History – www.americanhistory.amdigital.co.uk
• American Indian Newspapers – www.americanindiannewspapers.amdigital.co.uk
• Apartheid South Africa – www.archivesdirect.amdigital.co.uk/Apartheid
• Confidential Print: Africa – www.archivesdirect.amdigital.co.uk/CP_Africa
• Foreign Office Files for Japan – www.archivesdirect.amdigital.co.uk/FO_Japan
• China, America and the Pacific – www.cap.amdigital.co.uk       
• China: Culture and Society – www.chinacultureandsociety.amdigital.co.uk  
• Church Missionary Society Periodicals -www.churchmissionarysociety.amdigital.co.uk
• Colonial America: www.colonialamerica.amdigital.co.uk  
• East India Company – www.eastindiacompany.amdigital.co.uk
• Eighteenth Century Drama – www.eighteenthcenturydrama.amdigital.co.uk
• The First World War: A Global Conflict – www.firstworldwar.amdigital.co.uk
• Gender: Identity and Social Change – www.genderidentityandsocialchange.amdigital.co.uk
• Global Commodities – www.globalcommodities.amdigital.co.uk
• J. Walter Thompson: Advertising America – www.jwtadvertisingamerica.amdigital.co.uk
• Leisure, Travel and Mass Culture: The History of Tourism – www.masstourism.amdigital.co.uk
• Literary Print Culture – www.literaryprintculture.amdigital.co.uk
• Market Research – www.marketresearch.amdigital.co.uk
• Medical Services and Warfare – www.medicalservicesandwarfare.amdigital.co.uk
• Migration to New Worlds – www.migration.amdigital.co.uk
• Popular Medicine – www.popularmedicine.amdigital.co.uk
• Race Relations in America – www.racerelations.amdigital.co.uk
• Shakespeare in Performance – www.shakespeareinperformance.amdigital.co.uk
• Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice – www.slavery.amdigital.co.uk
• Socialism on Film – www.socialismonfilm.amdigital.co.uk
• Trade Catalogues and the American Home – www.tradecatalogues.amdigital.co.uk

Each database is available on the Libraries’ A-Z listing at https://guides.ucf.edu/databases.

In honor of Black History Month, the UCF Libraries and the Department of Africana Studies would like to announce the acquisition of five new African American primary source databases. These collections, which were acquired as part of a technology fee proposal, fill a crucial need for primary source material related to the far-ranging field of African Americana studies. They contain a treasure trove of unique material that will be invaluable to subjects such as Africana studies, history, political science, legal studies, literature, art, and more. Here’s what’s included in the package:

Black Abolitionist Papers: Brings together a disparate collection of primary sources that tell the story of the abolitionist movement in the voices of the activists themselves. The collection ranges from 1830-1865 and contains reform newspaper articles, essays, editorials, speeches, sermons, lectures and more.

Black Thought & Culture: A foundational collection that consists of 100,000 of documents spanning 250 years of African American history. Highlights include the transcript of the Muhammad Ali trial, a full run of The Black Panther newspaper, and 2,500 pages of exclusive Black Panther oral histories.

Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive: 1.5 million pages of historical documents including 7,000 books and pamphlets as well as 80 newspapers and a dozen manuscript collections.

Slavery and the Law & Slavery in America: The most comprehensive collection of legal documents pertaining to slavery and emancipation. Highlights of this unparalleled collection include Petitions to State Legislatures, Petitions to Southern County Courts, and State Slavery Statutes, a master record of the laws governing American slavery from 1789–1865.

All five collections can be accessed via the Africana Studies database page. If you have any questions, please contact John Venecek, the Africana Studies subject librarian.

One of UCF’s most interesting electronic resources is CQ Researcher. Its readable reports on political, economic, health, human rights, and many other topics always include a pro-con section, and key statistics, along with a timeline. CQ‘s most recent report on virtual reality is no different: did you know that reality-based game sales will hit $12 billion in 2018, or that the chronology for virtual reality begins in 1838? Click on databases on the Libraries’ front page to search for CQ Researcher and select it from the list of databases beginning with “C”. If you can’t think of a topic for a paper or research project, this is a great place to start!