Library Hacks » Foreign languages

A ramble to foreign libraries

Heidi Madden — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 13:16:09 +0000

…Or, how to browse full-text collections of books and more in foreign libraries without leaving your chair. Contrary to popular belief, there is no single starting point for browsing open access Digital Collections for Western European Studies –the Europeana is as yet more of a vision than a reality.

Today’s spotlight is on finding digital libraries of full-text materials in German Studies as one example of browsing what is available from libraries abroad. Your best first stop is this excellent list of digital production centers dealing with German language materials: Digitale Sammlungen [Dr. Klaus Graf]. Add to this a website on Digitalisierung und Digitalisierte Bestände that lets you browse digital libraries by subject or by geographic area: you will find materials for the study of witchcraft , travel literature , this includes travel in the Americas , and cook books for immigrants, to highlight just a few themes.

Digital Collections add international materials previously unavailable in US libraries. Take the debates of the Reichstag as an example: I remember well standing in the stacks at the Historisches Seminar Tübingen combing through the heavy volumes of the Reichstagsprotokolle to write a paper on the German politician Eugen Richter. These volumes are not held in US libraries, but today, I could search all of these volumes from my desktop through the free digital library of Reichstagsprotokolle.

A combination of free online content hosted abroad and Duke Holdings can add dimension to your syllabus. Contact me for help with Western European Studies: Heidi Madden

Library Guides in Non-English Languages

Nathaniel — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:03:07 +0000

Attention: Faculty and Teaching Assistants

Do you teach classes in non-English languages?

Does your class need library resources?

Subject specialists, with language skills across the curriculum, are available to create online guides that showcase the wonderful range of non-English resources the library has on offer. These guides can be easily integrated into Blackboard for use by students.

Would you like a library guide for your class? Ask a Librarian!

Podcasts: Audio Primary Sources

Phoebe — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 14:16:14 +0000

As we at iPod – I mean, Duke – University know, podcasts have proliferated in the past 5 years. They aren’t just for fun, however – major radio news sources and government agencies are making podcasts available that can be used in research or academic presentations. Radio podcasts can provide in-depth interviews with politicians, medical researchers, legal scholars, and much more. Here’s an NPR podcast in Spanish on youth culture:

Have a look at our podcasts page to see links to sources for academic and primary source content via podcast.

Got another favorite podcast? Leave us a link in comments!

The Sober Librarian: Buffy la cazavampiros

Phoebe — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 15:44:20 +0000

We had a flurry of questions at the Reference Desk this spring when members of a Spanish class were asked to write a paper on a pop culture topic of their choosing, using sources in Spanish. How do you find books, scholarly articles, newspaper and magazine articles, or web pages in languages other than English?

As a sample topic, let’s take the (late, lamented) TV show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” (Note: as far as we know, nobody in the class was actually researching this topic.)

Google has an Advanced Search feature that allows you to search for pages in any one of a vast number of languages.

This is how we learned that in Spanish, Buffy is ‘la cazavampiros.’ The (351,000!!) search hits include a lot of fan sites, so would be a great place to look if we were interested in, for example, Spanish-language fans’ reactions to this show, or how the vampire mythology played in Spanish-speaking cultures.

What about the opinions of television reviewers in Mexican newspapers? How about the database Latin American Newsstand – 326 articles mentioning ‘Buffy la cazavampiros’, from papers from Rio to Monterrey to San Juan!

How about scholarly articles? A database called HAPI (Hispanic American Periodicals Index) is a great resource for current events, politics and social issues. It covers over 400 journals from the entire Spanish-speaking Americas. Many broader databases of scholarly articles allow you to limit by language as well, for example, MLA, which covers a broad variety of topics in the humanities. (Both have lots on women and television, but nothing on Buffy!)

A search of Duke’s library catalog can be limited to just one language, using a drop-down menu in the Advanced Search.

While we discovered that the Buffy DVDs in Lilly Library have optional tracks dubbed in Spanish, sadly there are no books in Spanish that address Buffy (there are a bunch of English language books!). A broader look at books in Spanish on television or popular culture might have better results: we own 173 books in Spanish that cover aspects of popular culture. Surely one of them must mention Buffy!