2007 ERF Sessions Handouts
ERF Homepage

Last updated: 10/09/07
(15 sessions)


Bodies, Genders, and Beyond: Electronic Resources for Gender Studies

This workshop session will focus on the broad spectrum of resources including full texts, abstracts, directories, and other electronic material available to students whose investigations lead them to study women and men, gender and sexuality, and issues of cultural identity and sexual politics. In addition to suggesting effective search strategies and optimal electronic resources for initiating an investigation or research project, the workshop will also treat specialized resources in the social sciences and the humanities depending upon participants' interests.

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Electronic Access to Scholarly Journals and Periodical Publications

  • Harriet Lightman, Bibliographer for History, Economics, French & Italian Literatures, and Philosophy
  • Carl Smith, Professor of English, American Studies, and History
  • HANDOUT (Word)

Scholarly journals are among the most important sources for researchers, and popular periodicals and other serial publications offer some of the richest materials for study in several fields.  In recent years, electronic resources have been developed that have revolutionized access to these sources, not only by providing remarkably efficient finding aids but also in many instances by enabling researchers to examine, search, and print complete texts of articles.  In this session, we will survey the array of electronic resources that put a very wide range of sources, from 19th century magazines to 21st century scholarly journals, literally at the researcher's fingertips.  Included will be an introduction to the use of such resources as the American Periodical Series (APS) Online, Periodical Contents Archive, and JSTOR for both primary and secondary research.

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Electronic Resources for the Study of the Medieval and Early Modern World

The instructors will introduce students to electronic resources central to the study of medieval and early modern European religion, history, culture, and literature. Among the resources to be discussed will be the International Medieval Bibliography, Iter, Early English Books Online (EEBO), and the Middle English Compendium.

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Finding Primary Sources Online: The Marriage of Technology and Archives  

Personal papers, correspondence, diaries, and other primary sources are crucial to research in the humanities. Due to the unique nature of these materials, they are organized and indexed differently from books and periodicals. As a result, they can be more difficult to track down and use than published sources. But researchers can now benefit from technologies that make archival and manuscript collections much easier to locate. This session will discuss what to expect when searching online for primary sources; what finding aids are (and why you should care); all about EAD; and tips on using databases of archival collections.

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Historic Newspapers

Because newspapers are difficult to preserve and store in their original print format, libraries have long relied on facsimiles in lieu of paper originals. As a welcome alternative to film and fiche, an increasing number of historical news sources are now available in digital format. In this session, we will survey some of the materials available to members of the Northwestern community. Sources will include examples of U.S. papers, ranging from late 18th century newspapers to major urban dailies (The New York Times, Los Angeles Times) as well as foreign news sources, such as Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), and the Times of London. We will also discuss some sources for surveying more recent events in the foreign press, including World News Connection, Factiva, and China Core Newspapers.

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International Statistical and Data Resources

Participants in this session will be introduced to key electronic and print sources for International statistics and data related to demography, socio-economics, political and social public opinion, infrastructure, agriculture and business. These statistical and data resources can be used for research and teaching in the social sciences and related fields such as journalism, education, health, transportation studies and management. Participants will have the opportunity to review a number of sources by topic and to learn how to access the resources for their own research.

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Rare Music Materials Online

Long before the advent of sound recordings, notated music served as the primary fixed record of musical culture, and today the scores, treatises, and other documents created by composers and master musicians of the past can convey how music was created and taught.  In this session, the Music Library's manuscript collection will be discussed, including how this collection is being cataloged and digitized.  Following this, the web-based series Monuments of Partimenti will be demonstrated.  Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and hosted by Northwestern, this site draws together partimenti (instructional bass lines used in the training of European court musicians) from the late 1600s through the early 1800s, providing understanding on how seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and and nineteenth-century musicians thought of music.

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Resources for the Study of Drama and Theatre

  • Charlotte Cubbage, Bibliographer for American, English, and Comparative Literatures, Dance, Drama, Performance Studies, Radio/TV/Film, & Theatre
  • Tracy C. Davis, Professor of Theatre, English, and Performance Studies, and Director, Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Theatre and Drama
  • HANDOUT (Word)

This session combines text and performance aspects of drama and theatre, providing a snapshot of research resources available to you. We will highlight electronic texts for American, Asian-American, Black, and English plays.  We will also examine a variety of secondary sources appropriate to the interdisciplinary nature of theatre, including historical newspapers, electronic journal sets and multi-media materials.

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Resources in Comparative Literature, Philosophy, and Critical Theory

  • Jeffrey Garrett, Assistant University Librarian for Special Libraries & Subject Specialist for Linguistics
  • HANDOUT (Web)

Availability of electronic resources for students of literature and philosophy continues to improve by leaps and bounds. Over the last five years, the most authoritative dictionaries and multi-volume encyclopedias have gone online, along with works editions in English, French, and German and hundreds of titles of first-rate journal literature. Here is your opportunity to create and customize your own online library for direct access to the works of writers, theorists, and philosophers, from Voltaire (in the original French) and Herder and Kant (in the original German) to Max Weber, Jacques Derrida, and other giants of the 20th Century.

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Social Sciences Computing Cluster

The Social Sciences Computing Cluster (SSCC) provides a rich suite of statistical software applications, an advanced computational capability, and a centrally-managed data storage service to support the research activities of Northwestern social scientists. Accounts on the SSCC are available free of charge to Northwestern social sciences faculty researchers and to their graduate students.

The cluster of 18 Linux systems provides two interactive systems, a batch cluster of 16 systems that will run 32 simultaneous jobs, a network file service, a wide variety of statistical software applications, online access to NU Library's datalib files, and consulting and education services.

In this session, instructors will introduce participants to these resources and discuss their role in your doctoral research. A brief demonstration of the SSCC will complete this presentation.

Students interested in the Social Sciences Computing Cluster can learn more by visiting <http://sscc.northwestern.edu/>.


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Technology, Interdisciplinarity and Black Studies

The interdisciplinary nature of Black Studies is an exciting challenge to electronic research efforts. Approaches to electronic resources for the study of the Black experience will be discussed. A survey of proprietary databases and freely available web resources will introduce the possibilities and limitations of electronic resources. An assortment of general resources for exploration of Diasporic topics will also be presented.

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Using Digital Media in Research and Teaching: Standards, Techniques and Strategies

Understanding how to properly gather and store audio, video and images in digital form is critical to successfully integrating them into publications and presentations. This session offers an introduction to digital media file formats and capture techniques. Learn how to manipulate and organize media once captured, and discuss some options for presentation and publication. The session will also include an overview of digitization hardware and accessories.

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Using Simulations to Explore Social Networks

Everyone knows about the "six degrees of separation" that link you to anyone else on the planet (including, for example, Kevin Bacon--see http://oracleofbacon.org). In fact, the networks of interactions that define our social groupings--and their consequences for human behavior--have been studied scientifically for many years in a number of fields (sociology, political science, linguistics, psychology, communications, etc.).

Recently, there has been a great deal of research using mathematical and computational methods to approach these problems. This session will introduce you to one such tool developed here at Northwestern--NetLogo. During the session you will use this tool explore some of the properties of simple network theories. The application of these tools to problems in language change will be discussed.


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What You Need to Know about Social Science Research and Data Services

Participants in this session will be introduced to the research process and the reference and technical consulting services which are available regarding the data files available through the Social Science Data Services (SSDS).  Data Services maintains access to thousands of data files acquired from the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research and identifies other data resources which are available for the Northwestern students and faculty. These data can be used for research and teaching in the social sciences and related fields such as education, health, transportation studies and management. Participants will have the opportunity to review a number of sources by topic and to learn how to access the resources for their own research.

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Where Disciplines Intersect: The Research Question and Digital Resources in Psychology and Related Fields

Using his recent research on reciprocity and selective vs. unselective romantic desire as a case study, Professor Finkel will illustrate how he used the information resources available at Northwestern to identify and obtain relevant literature on his topic. He will comment on his use of psychology-specific and multidisciplinary databases, on the role of the literature search in his research process, and on the satisfactions and challenges of navigating in today's complex scholarly information environment.

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