Library of the Week: 7th February 2022 – This week is a very special one as we feature TWO of our very own Jisc services! We present Historical Texts and Journal Archives and chat to Alison Urquhart, Support Officer for both of these services to find out more….
Thank you very much for taking part in our Library of the Week! Please could you tell us a bit more about where you work and what your role is?
I work for Jisc as part of a small team that manages both the Historical and Journal Archives platforms as a Support officer. Before the pandemic, most of the team were based in Manchester but we have been working from home since the first lockdown. My role is very varied (which I love) and includes answering helpdesk queries, managing onboarding for new subscribers, writing support materials and web content for our sites, bug fix testing and managing our social media presence. I also have a keen interest in all things accessibility related and could bore you to tears talking about it!
I am currently working on creating a Journal Archives “feature” page about the dawn of the steam age. We have feature pages for both our services and these help users to dig into the content thematically. I personally find the topic of steam fascinating and am enjoying researching the different inventors and developments, both generally and through the content we hold in the services. Previous Historical Texts features include Black history month, William Armstrong and Cragside (inspired by a family holiday in Northumberland), Animals, Witchcraft and Shakespeare amongst many others.
As well as trying to show case our content using the features page, I try to use our twitter feeds to share interesting items with our followers. Not all our Twitter followers are subscribers, so I share a mixture of subscription and open access content. We tend to highlight topical items, for example #OnThisDay type tweets with content that links to an historical event. We also have seasonal special twitter content including our #HTNewbies (how to videos for students and researchers at the start of the academic year) and Christmas #AdventCalendar series.
I love interacting with our users, both subscribers and non-subscribers. One of the most satisfying parts of my job is helping users with questions or issues they have so please never be afraid to contact our helpdesk.
What collections do you have?
Historical Texts contains four collections which can be cross searched. Early English Books Online and Eighteenth-Century Collection Online are subscription only and the British Library 19th Century and the UK Medical Heritage Library Collections are both open access. We have digitised content over a wide range of dates, from the earliest printed works in the 1400s to items published in the 1930s.
Journal Archives contains an archive of Journal backfiles but also the British Periodicals part I and II collection which is a collection of digitised newspapers and periodicals from the late 1600s to the early 1900s.
We also manage an open access UK Medical Heritage Library Labs site. This has some extra features to allow users to dig into the collection in different ways – through the image wall, data visualisations and a hospital map.
What’s your favourite item from the collections and why?
It would be incredibly difficult for me to name one item from the collection that is my favourite since there are so many – over 460,000 texts in Historical Texts! There are so many wonderful items with maps, diagrams, and early woodcuts. For subscriber only content I would have to go with some of the items with titles like True and wonderful describing amazing and sometimes farfetched events or animals.
From Journal Archives, I love some of the political satirical cartoons poking fun at particular types of people or politicians of the day like Judy or The Scourge.
For non-subscribers I would definitely say that Mrs Beeton’s book of Household management and The Wonders of the Universe are both treasure troves of fascinating content and illustrations.
What’s new and exciting in your service? What have you got coming up?
We are currently undertaking some user research in order to make improvements to our services. It has been great to get honest and useful feedback from people who regularly use Historical Texts and Journal Archives so that we can target our development work more effectively.
We are also in the very early stages of a pilot to work with teachers and students in HE (Higher Education) to support their use of Historical Texts in teaching and learning. When this work has progressed further, we will share more about it on the news page of the Historical Texts website.
Alison Urquhart
Support officer – Historical Texts and Journal Archives
Jisc
Follow us on Twitter: @HistoricalTexts or @JournalArchives
Explore the Historical Texts and Journal Archives collections on Library Hub Discover:
Historical Texts items on Library Hub Discover
Journal Archive items on Library Hub Discover
Copyright: All publication images have been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law and are made available under the Creative Commons, Public Domain Mark. Images of the interface copyright Historical Texts/Jisc, reproduced with kind permission of the copyright holder.
