Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Post-Reformation Digital Library (PRDL) - New Updated Web Site

















The Post-Reformation Digital Library
(PRDL) is a select database of digital books relating to the development of theology and philosophy during the Reformation and Post-Reformation/Early Modern Era (late 15th-18th c.). Late medieval and patristic works printed and referenced in the early modern era are also included. Hosted by the H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies of Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary.

On the second anniversary of its public launch, the Post-Reformation Digital Library (PRDL) has become available in an upgraded form with its own domain (www.prdl.org). This new version of the library is powered by a database format, which allows detailed search queries and integrates findings of source material from a wide variety of digital libraries and digitization projects. After more than a year in development, the new website now covers more than double the number of authors and works as its previous iteration.
Check out our link: www.prdl.org
This new site represents a major upgrade from the previous digital bibliography, and we could not have expanded the coverage to various traditions without your help. Thank you. You can continue to help by circulating this link to your friends, colleagues, and students, as well as by providing us feedback on improving PRDL.

For more details on the launch, you can see the press release announcing the new database-driven site.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Online

Hekman Library has a print copy of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1998, 10 vols.) , but we're thinking of purchasing the online edition.

To try it out, use this link: http://www.rep.routledge.com from anywhere on Calvin's campus. If you want to try it out from home, send me a note and I'll send you the username and password for our trial ( lschempe@calvin.edu ). We have the trial through February 25, 2011

Here's a review of the encyclopedia by Robert Kirk from Mind: A Quarterly Review of Philosophy, vol. 111, no. 442, pp. 386-388, April 2002.

And, of course, let us know what you think - is this something you would use, or recommend for student use? How does it compare with the free online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy?

Friday, January 14, 2011

Electronic Enlightenment Online

Hekman Library currently has a trial subscription to Electronic Enlightenment, an online archive of correspondence from the early modern period. This can be accessed from Calvin's campus only.

Here's a description:
With 58,555 letters and documents and 7,113 correspondents as of October 2010, EE is the most wide-ranging online collection of edited correspondence of the early modern period, linking people across Europe, the Americas and Asia from the early 17th to the mid-19th century.

Drawn from the best available critical editions, EE is not simply an “electronic bookshelf” of isolated texts but a network of interconnected documents, allowing you to see the complex web of personal relationships in the early modern period and the making of the modern world. The EE team has created an ongoing programme of expanding, linking and original scholarly research to give you thousands of newly composed biographical notes; tens of thousands of corrections of minor errors;scores of thousands of expansions of abbreviations and sigles; hundreds of thousands of internal links and cross-references.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Oxford Islamic Studies Online

We currently have a trial to Oxford Islamic Studies Online, which contains over 6000 entries from a variety of Oxford publications, including the online edition of the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World, ed. John Esposito (Oxford University Press, 2009). Let me know what you think.
If you're on Calvin's campus, you can access it here .

One online work (contained in the Oxford Islamic Studies Online database) which we have already purchased is the Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art and Architecture, ed. Jonathan M. Bloom and Sheila S. Blair (Oxford University Press, 2009). [Here's a link to this encyclopedia in the Hekman Library catalog, which will proxy you in from off-campus.]