Are you pining for Downton Abbey?  Try reading about the lives of servants and their employers in that historical period. Check out Duke Libraries’ excellent selection below.

If you missed the program or individual episodes, Lilly Library has the DVDs of Season [...]]]>

Guest post by Margaret Brill

Are you pining for Downton Abbey?  Try reading about the lives of servants and their employers in that historical period. Check out Duke Libraries’ excellent selection below.

If you missed the program or individual episodes, Lilly Library has the DVDs of Season 1 and Season 2. You can borrow them for three days with a one-time online renewal.

Servants
Delap, Lucy. Knowing their Place : Domestic Service in Twentieth-Century Britain. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Perkins/Bostock New & Noteworthy HD8039.D52 G7185 2011

Pamela Horn, Life below stairs in the 20th century. Stroud: Sutton, 2001. Perkins/Bostock
Library HD6072.2.G7 H67 2001

Alison Maloney, Life below stairs : true lives of Edwardian servants. London: Michael O’Mara, 2011.

Margaret Powell, Below stairs : The classic kitchen maid’s memoir that inspired “Upstairs, Downstairs” and “Downton Abbey”. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2012. Lilly Library Current Lit/Perkins/Bostock Library New & Noteworthy TX649.P68 A3 2012

Aristocracy and Country Houses
David Cannadine,  Aspects of aristocracy : grandeur and decline in modern Britain. New Haven: Yale University Press. Library Service Center  HT653.G7 C357 1994

Fiona, Countess of Carnarvon, Lady Almina and the real Downton abbey : The lost legacy of Highclere Castle. New York: Broadway Paperbacks. 2011.  Lilly Library Current Literature and Perkins/Bostock DA566.9.C376 C376 2011

Jessica Fellowes, The world of Downton Abbey. Ed. Nick Briggs. New York, N.Y.: St. Martin’s Press. 2011. Lilly Library Current Lit. and Perkins/Bostock New & Noteworthy PN1992.77.D695 F45 2011

Jessica Gerard, Country house life: family and servants, 1815-1914. Oxford England ; Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1994 Library Service Center HQ613 .G47 1994

Girouard, Mark, 1931-. Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978. Perkins/Bostock HT653.G7 G57 1978 (and LSC)

M. Montgomery, Gilded Prostitution”: status, money, and transatlantic marriages, 1870-1914. London ; New York: Routledge, 1989. Perkins/Bostock HQ1032 .M65 1989

Web Sites
PBS Masterpiece

Wikipedia

P.S. If Lilly’s copies of DA are checked out, don’t forget the series that started it all: Upstairs Downstairs. Gosford Park, The Forsyte Saga, Cranford and The Buccaneers are terrific as well.

Recently I was helping a student looking for articles on spolia, recycled pillars, sculpture, etc. incorporated into the art of another era.  It was a particularly common [...]]]> [This is a guest post by Lee Sorensen, the Visual Studies and Dance librarian for Duke.  He selects for the arts and manages the public-interfaces for image collections.]

Recently I was helping a student looking for articles on spolia, recycled pillars, sculpture, etc. incorporated into the art of another era.  It was a particularly common practice in the middle ages.  Though there’s much written on this topic, it’s hard to get at those results.  The reason is because there’s no agreed term for this historic phenomenon.  Searchers using our catalog don’t find those titles, not because modern catalogs are computerized or the holdings aren’t well indexed, but because of a fundamental difference in humanities thinking from science thinking.  Designers of library catalogs conceive of information in scientific-language paradigms.  In the sciences—the social but particularly the natural sciences—things have very specific names.  If you’re looking for microbial genomes, you can type in ‘eukaryotic genome’ or a specific one, such as the microsporidian Encephalitozoan cuniculi and get pretty much all the literature on that topic. But humanists neither name things schematically or coin specialized terms in their research.  Humanities scholars describe their work in a string of common language words. Take for example, the most recent scholarly article in a film journal by a well-known scholar:

Nicola Mann. “Criminalizing ‘The Hood’: The Death of the Projects in the American Visual Imagination.” Afterimage 38 no. 6 (2011).

Every one of those terms is a simple word.  Searchers for blacks represented in urban film culture would never find this important article using adjacency searching (“Google searching”).  Key-word searching was developed post-World War II by the military and government-funded science contracts.  Those people were in no way thinking about looking for eighteenth-century garden theory or early Christian concepts of soteriology.  Though we assign extensive subject headings in our cataloging, the result is always artificial.  Humanities information— humanities knowledge—is idea based, not factoid based.  Perhaps the next time some report concludes that humanities scholars don’t employ technology as much as scientists (an assertion not validated by most statistics), a better question would be to ask why technology isn’t conceived to recognize humanities information as fundamentally different.

The conference was live-streamed (available through June 2011) and brought together industry professionals from Google, Deloitte Center for Edge, TED, [...]]]> On May 11th, Stanford University created a buzz by hosting the Bibliotech Conference that brought together both industry and academic professionals to discuss, among many things, the value of a Humanities PhD.

The conference was live-streamed (available through June 2011) and brought together industry professionals from Google, Deloitte Center for Edge, TED, Overstock.com to name but a few, with academic professionals who have Humanities PhD’s.

Ruth Starkman’s title for the Huffington Post article announcing this conference read in part, “Humanities PhD s Hope to Storm Silicon Valley.”  As an educator who has spent most of her career on the administrative side of education, I tried to imagine what it would look like if traditional academics physically stormed into the Silicon Valley with rumpled tweed blazers and bow ties askew.  Would they have what it takes to help re-imagine and humanize the fast paced technology sectors?

Imagination aside, the streamed session that I saw showed me none of that.  Instead, there were statements about passion not being a solitary pursuit; that long term trust is needed to expose vulnerability; that given their education, Humanities scholars have a deeper understanding of human relationships.

From the corporate side, there was talk of the way one might bridge the divide between technology and humanities.  Folks with Humanities PhD s who now work on the corporate side said that the humanists bring an intellectual curiosity to the table as well as the ability to write with finesse using metaphor and storytelling skills.  This combined with the ability to research creates candidates for the corporate sector who are nimble enough to explain that technology is meant to facilitate our human experience.

One of the most interesting questions came late but drove home an important issue:  “How can the humanities methodology improve  so that we can innovate?”  This issue of innovation in education is a question that the Digital Humanities initiatives are addressing by creating labs where innovation can happen quickly, be brought in and tested.  And even in this new way of educational research, the difference between the academy and the corporate world lies between scale and speed.  What would it be like if, rather than having the Humanities storm Silicon Valley, if Silicon Valley came knocking?  What kinds of innovation would break out?  Perhaps there’s more to come at the upcoming Digital Humanities 2011 hosted by Stanford University Library.

[Photo of painter and etcher, Henry Ernest Schnakenberg by Paul Outerbridge, Archives of American Art]

The Research Information Network, Britain’s educational think-tank, took a look at how humanities scholars “do things” these days.  They looked [...]]]> [This is a guest post by Lee Sorensen, the Visual Studies and Dance librarian for Duke.  He edits the Image Portal for Duke, as well as the Dictionary of Art Historians.]

The Research Information Network, Britain’s educational think-tank, took a look at how humanities scholars “do things” these days.  They looked at six humanities entities: two resources (the Old Bailey Online and the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music, DIAMM—which is, I believe, what Chris Rock says when something confounds him); two academic departments (University of Birmingham’s English Department and University College London’s philosophy department); one field, corpus linguistics, and one collaborative project (The Digital Republic of Letters), to figure out how digital digital research in the humanities is.  Undaunted—or almost undaunted—by the eighty-six page document, several observations stood out at me.

A)    For Humanists, digitization creates a surrogate of the object of study, not a replication.  While the social scientists’ primary sources—the data set, the interview—is not altered by making it electronic, digitization to the musicologist, the art historian, or the choreographer, however,  creates a useful copy, but a source that doesn’t function the same way.  Digital humanities scholars find themselves in the same position as the first-year medical student:  the digital anatomy program is fine, but sooner or later you need a real patient.

B)    A second difference is that digital sources in the humanities haven’t replaced traditional scholarship, they’ve only added a new area.  Printed information in the humanities still rages even though many scientists claim they never read anything professional that isn’t on their computer screen.  Copyright restrictions to digital images or international property agreements mean that nearly as much is reported in hard copy, but the emergence of electronic sources is but one more place to go.

C)    Models in the humanities hide what is interpolation and what is research based.  A social scientist sees a graph and knows what’s a point plot and what’s a connecting line between them.  But in a reconstruction of a twelfth-century monastery, it isn’t clear how many adorsed capitals were taken from extent ruins and how many are speculations.

Humanists are often painted as electronically inept, which isn’t true.  While the report Reinventing Research delightfully assesses the even-pace of digital humanities scholarship, it reminds us that “research” as a concept is different across the university disciplines.

The wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton on April 29th has provoked widespread interest in the British Monarchy here in the USA, and even in the Duke community.    A frequent question is “Why doesn’t The [...]]]> [This is a guest post by Margaret Brill, Librarian for Britain/Ireland, Canada, Australasia, World History and Medieval/Renaissance Studies]

The wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton on April 29^th has provoked widespread interest in the British Monarchy here in the USA, and even in the Duke community.    A frequent question is “Why doesn’t The Queen step down so Prince Charles can be King?” Some people even wonder why they don’t pass over Prince Charles altogether in favor of Prince William, presumably because Prince William is younger and hunkier.  Then there is the question of Prince Charles’ wife Camilla.  Can she be Queen?  Will he be King if she can’t?   In this blog entry I will attempt to answer these questions and suggest some resources for people who would like to learn more about the monarchy.

The British monarchy is known as a constitutional monarchy. This means that, while The Sovereign is Head of State, the ability to make and pass legislation resides with an elected Parliament.  So Britain (or The United Kingdom as it is officially called) is also a democracy.   The constitutional foundation for the monarchy today is based on the Act of Settlement of 1701, which was designed to secure the Protestant succession to the throne, and to strengthen the guarantees for ensuring a parliamentary system of government.  The Act addressed the dynastic and religious aspects of succession, and it also further restricted the powers and prerogatives of the Crown.  It reinforced the Bill of Rights of 1689 which made monarchy clearly conditional on the will of Parliament and provided a freedom from arbitrary government.   The Act also provided that judges were to hold office on good conduct and not at Royal pleasure – thus establishing judicial independence.

Therefore the succession is not a question of choice on the part of the Monarch but is laid down in the British Constitution and as the oldest son of the reigning Monarch Prince Charles will succeed his mother and become King on her death.  There is no precedent or reason why she would abdicate unless she was unable to perform the duties of Head of State.    One of these duties is to be the titular Head of the Church of England, which is an established church.   Since the Church of England still doesn’t recognize the remarriage of divorced persons Camilla cannot be Queen unless Parliament changes the canon law of the Church of England but she could still be the King’s wife with a suitable title.  After all, Prince Philip, the Queen’s husband, is not King.  I  do not believe Prince Charles would step down if Camilla were not given the title of Queen.  Whether he is popular or not does not affect the succession. Unless he does something unconstitutional (such as interfere in politics) there would be no reason for Parliament to remove him.  Anyone in line of succession to the throne has to get permission to marry or lose their place in line.   Prince Charles was given permission by the government to marry Camilla Parker-Bowles, whereas King Edward VIII was not allowed to marry Wallis Simpson in 1936, which led to his abdication.  In some ways the Royals have less personal freedom than their subjects.

How relevant is the monarchy today?   As you can see from the above the British constitution depends on the Monarch to be Head of State, as do the countries in the Commonwealth Realm, including Canada and Australia, so it would be very complicated to abolish the monarchy.  Moreover, much of the tradition and ceremonial tourists enjoy so much in Britain is associated with the Monarchy so many feel that the cost is justified.

For more information about the British Monarchy see the official website.
For Duke University Library resources on Britain see the British and Irish Studies Library Guide.

Or take a look at this Reference book: The Kings and Queens of England, by John Ashton Cannon, Oxford University Press, 2009.

The Open Access (OA) Online Publishing movement advocates placing scholarly articles on the Internet and granting [...]]]> The Duke and Uni Duisburg-Essen German Department journal andererseits: Yearbook of Transatlantic German Studies is one of two publications chosen as pilot projects for the Open Access journal publishing system (OJS) supported by Duke Libraries.

The Open Access (OA) Online Publishing movement advocates placing scholarly articles on the Internet and granting free access to scholarly materials to a worldwide audience. The OA movement started around 2001 mostly in the sciences and Charles W. Bailey gives an exhaustive overview in Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography. Over the past ten years OA publishing has gone from being an alternative to becoming the desired venue for publishing research, and Duke University joined the Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity (COPE) in October of 2010.  Increasing access to knowledge in service of society is one of Duke University’s strategic plan goals; and while the use of materials published OA online is free of charge for the reader, OA publishing does generate costs for the author and their institution. For this reason the Office of the Provost with Duke University Libraries created the COPE fund to support the OA initiative.

Why was andererseits a great candidate for Open Access? The German Department at Duke and the Department of Germanic Literatures at the University Duisburg –Essen have been collaborating on research since 2006. The collaboration has included an exchange of graduate students and faculty, collaborative advising on research projects and dissertations, as well as the establishment of a yearly international research symposium in 2009. The papers from the 2009 conference were published in the first edition of the print journal andererseits: Yearbook of Transatlantic German Studies. The title “andererseits” is a play of words meaning “on the other hand” but also “from the other side” (of the ocean) thus highlighting the international and interdisciplinary nature of the research presented in the journal. The inaugural 2010 print edition is available in several libraries in Germany, but is not available in the United States. Since this is a new journal in pursuit of an audience – rather than an established print journal with a large subscriber base, it is a perfect candidate for exploring an Open Access publishing model to increase the number of readers, to increase use in teaching and research, and to increase the impact of the scholarship on the discipline of German Studies.

The content submitted for the forthcoming 2011 edition of andererseits is housed centrally by the Open Journal System Database at Duke Libraries. The fact that authors, contributors, reviewers, and editors are located across the ocean from each other makes the online submission of content, the peer review process and the subsequent editing by the authors in one (virtual) place a particularly efficient workflow. Every participant in this process has a unique login and the OJS database at Duke allows for layers of permissions to safeguard both the content and the anonymity and rigor of the review process. The journal is edited jointly by Professors William Collins Donahue at Duke University and Jochen Vogt at the Universität Duisburg-Essen.

The online Open Access format will not only make international collaboration among researchers more seamless, it also offers to be a venue to publish content usually excluded from scholarly print journals, like creatively literary endeavors, translations, conference papers, papers in a pre-publication format, and exceptional undergraduate research selected by a board of editors. OJS also allows for embedding of multimedia content such as video, audio and images.

The scholarly communications officer at Duke Libraries, Kevin Smith, has provided extensive advice on copyright questions to the authors and editors of this new online journal. Kevin Smith’s copyright expertise (and blog), the Duke Library informational site on Open Access Publishing and the library’s Information Technology experts are available to any department at Duke that wishes to investigate Open Access journal publishing.

When the review process for the 2011 edition of andererseits: Yearbook of Transatlantic German Studies is finished, the published journal can be found in the OJS database. A preview is available at the following URL: http://openpublishing.library.duke.edu/index.php/andererseits/index

Please contact Winston Atkins (winston.atkins@duke.edu) for further information about OJS at Duke Libraries.

The Center for Instructional Technology invites you to our annual [...]]]> [This is a guest post by Randy Riddle, an Academic Technology Consultant at Duke University.  Randy's current work includes management of the CIT's Faculty Fellows program and exploring areas such as instructional uses for the iPad and e-books, timeline visualizations and 3d display technology]

The Center for Instructional Technology invites you to our annual Instructional Technology Showcase highlighting outstanding work by Duke faculty over the past year.  This year’s event will be held Friday, April 29th, with sessions running from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm in Perkins Library.

A full schedule of the day’s events, along with a link for registration, is available at our 2011 Showcase website.  Lunch will be provided to those that register by Wednesday, April 27th at 5 pm.

Sessions will include presentations from faculty representing a wide range of departments and programs at the University.  The work of Humanities faculty will be highlighted in several of the sessions.

Joseph Harris, from the English Department and Raquel Salvatella de Prada from Art, Art History and Visual Studies and other faculty will discuss their experiences using WordPress in courses in a morning panel discussion.  Denise K. Comer of the Thompson Writing Fellows Program and Deborah S. Reisinger from Romance Studies will discuss how they have used iPads with students.

Other sessions include a look at the Sakai pilot and a discussion of how Duke will be transitioning from Blackboard to Sakai over the next year along with a faculty perspective on the redesign of the Biology curriculum during the past few months.

The Library will also be contributing to the event with a session on our growing collection of eBooks and eReaders and how electronic books and devices are changing scholarship and teaching at Duke.

Mark Anthony Neal, Professor in African and African American Studies, will join with four other outstanding Duke faculty for an informal roundtable discussion on “Inspired teaching at Duke” and, earlier in the day, a group of Duke students will give their perspectives on how they use technology in their courses and everyday lives.  If you have a question you would like to ask one of the panelists, you can send it to us via email.

We hope you can join us!

(Image of a Kinetoscope by T.A. Edison)