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.

http://www.prdl.org/news.php?id=5

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?

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.

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.]

Oxford Bibliographies Online

Hekman Library has a trial to Oxford Bibliographies Online, a well-designed database of annotated bibliographies on a variety of different subjects. Its allows students and other researchers who are beginning research to survey the state of scholarship on a given topic, with brief assessments of important books, articles, and other information resources. There are links to resources through WorldCat and the library's link resolver, allowing researchers to quickly and easily find materials.

The trial bibliographies we have are on Atlantic History, Classics,Criminology, Islamic Studies, Philosophy, Renaissance and Reformation History, and Social Work. Each bibliography has sections on various topics within the discipline; e.g., There's a bibliography on Erasmus within the "Renaissance and Reformation" bibliography. (Note that the "Hekman Library" link resolver is not set up correctly for the trial; this can be corrected if we purchase these; Use the WorldCat link for each work to see if Hekman Library has it .)

The following link will work from anywhere on Calvin's Campus:
http://www.oxfordbibliographiesonline.com

We'll have this trial until mid-September, so please send me a note if you think these would be a good addition to the library's electronic holdings.

ATLA Historical Monographs Collection Trial

We (Hekman Library) have a trial (until June 30, 2010) for a digitized version of ATLA Historical Monographs Collection, which contains thousands of monographs, mostly from 1850 until 1923. WE have many of these books in the library already. About 10-15 years ago we purchased a substantial part of this collection in microfiche. I invite you to take a look - the trial is available for those connected through the Calvin College and Seminary IP range. Among the advantages of this database is that the text of each work is fully searchable.

American Theological Library Association (ATLA) Historical Monographs Collection: Series 1:
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&profile=ehost&defaultdb=h7h

American Theological Library Association (ATLA) Historical Monographs Collection: Series 2:
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&profile=ehost&defaultdb=h8

ATLA Historical Monographs Collection:

The American Theological Library Association (ATLA) Historical Monograph Collection consists of two Series that contain more than 29,000 titles focused on religion and theology. In its entirety, the collection is estimated to contain over 7.5 million pages, representing a core collection for colleges and universities with programs in history, theology, religion, sociology, political science and other disciplines. This collection features over two dozen foreign languages from books published all over the world.

Two series will be released. The segmentation is outlined below.

Series 1 consists of titles from the 13th Century through the 1893 World Parliament of Religions with the majority of titles from the 19th century.

Series 2 consists of titles published from 1894 through 1923.

The bulk of the titles date from 1850 through 1923, a time of great doctrinal, social and organization turmoil and upheaval in American culture. This important collection is a vital resource for scholars seeking to understand religious thought and practice in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Link to Historical Archives Flyer, Title List, and Additional Information: http://www.ebscohost.com/thisTopic.php?marketID=1&topicID=1152

R. Crumb on Genesis

The dust jacket of R. Crumb's newest work, an illustrated version of 'The Book of Genesis,' contains this warning: 'ADULT SUPERVISION RECOMMENDED FOR MINORS.' Crumb says that he wanted to prevent people from thinking, Oh, a Bible comic book; I'll give it to my kid!"

People my age remember R. Crumb from the late 60s and early 70s as part of the underground comix movement, with one of his most memorable drawings the "Keep on Truckin'" comic, sometimes criticized for images that were sexist and racist.

Is Crumb's illustrated Genesis simply a perverse anti-religious comic, exploiting the admittedly numerous R-rated scenes in the book of Genesis (think about it - Sarai and Pharaoh, Noah, Lot's daughters, Joseph and Potiphar's wife, Dinah and Shechem, Tamar as a roadside prostitute, etc.)? It looks like much more than that - a serious attempt by a talented graphic artist to make sense of the Genesis narrative. In doing so, Crumb inevitably adds an interpretive layer in his drawings and his heavy reliance on Robert Alter's translation of Genesis. Gary A. Anderson writes about this in in a fine recent review ( "The Bible, Rated R.," First Things, Feb. 2010, 13-15).

In a famous essay from his book Mimesis, Erich Auerbach described the Genesis narrative as "fraught with background" and filled with omissions and mystery in its representation of the reality behind the story. When you retell the story in a graphic novel format, you're forced to fill in a lot of that background - and Crumb does. Take a look at how Crumb portrays the famous "Sacrifice of Isaac" story of Genesis 22, or the story of Dinah in Genesis 34. Crumb's brief commentary at the end of the book reveals that he has adopted a rather quirky interpretation of the Genesis narratives. Behind the portrayal of the strong women of Genesis we can see remnants of the replacement of a matriarchal society by patriarchal dominance. (He gets this from the work of Savina J. Teubal, Sarah the Priestess [Swallow Press, 1984]).

But take a look for yourself. You'll find the book in Hekman Library in the Graphic Novel section, at BS1233 .A785 2009.