Colm is Senior Lecturer in Sunderland University’s North East Centre for Lifelong Learning (NECLL) where he teaches the history and archaeology of Bede’s time plus an on-campus specialist third year study module entitled Northumbria in the Age of Bede.  Colm’s recommended reading list for this module can be found online for those interested in reading more or wishing to locate relevant titles on the subject.

He has excavated Anglo-Saxon settlement sites in Northumberland and has led research on the kings’ palace at Yeavering which has resulted in the book Yeavering: people, power, place (available in Murray Library).

With a colleague in NECLL, he leads a research group called the Bernician Studies Group, where they are studying the communication networks of Bede’s time and conducting research in the field on monasteries within County Donegal in Ireland.

Click the title link above for more details.  The lecture will be held in the Sir Tom Cowie Lecture Theatre, Tom Cowie Campus at 2.30pm, tickets can be booked by emailing events@sunderland.ac.uk

The British Newspaper Archive is an online digitisation project between brightsolid and the British Library. Search newspapers from 1800 onwards. As well as keyword searching you can choose to search by individual newspaper title (or browse a list of titles) as well as by geographical area.

Although this is a subscription database there is free access to some material which is updated on a regular basis.  When you sign up as an individual user you get 15 free credits which allows you access to some subscription material.  Once these are used only the free articles can be viewed but you can continue to use the database to search for information.

Sign up for a newsletter which notifies you of updates and spotlights significant or timely articles.  For example the latest newsletter covers articles relating to suffragette Emily Davison’s death on the 4th June 1913.

As well as the newsletter there is also a blog which highlights free materials and items of interest, a guide to getting started and a free sample area.

The University of Sunderland subscribes to an online full text newspaper database called Lexis Library.  This is accessible via Discover or the Support for Your Subject Library pages.  You will need to know your University user ID and password to access Lexis.

The North East Labour History Society and the Labour and Society Research Group (LRSG) will be holding a one day conference on June 15th at Northumbria University’s Ellison Building at which Stuart Howard will be giving a paper.

The Ray Challinor Conference comprises of six papers relating to the history of the North East industry and politics.  Stuart’s paper will be the first to be presented on the day and is entitled The Evolution of the Great Northern Coalfield 1582-1982: History and Industrial Relations.

Ray Challinor was a British Marxist historian, North East councillor and lecturer in History at the then Newcastle Polytechnic.  He wrote extensively on mining and politics in the North East, as well as books available here in the library there is also a freely accessible online archive of his works.

The focus of this new collection from the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London, is writing produced in England during the years 1000–1100, the time of Æthelred, Cnut and William the Conqueror. Around 300 manuscript pages and over 12,000 individual letters are currently available but this is an ongoing project.

As well as the digitised image collection other useful information can be found here, such as the blog with some very interesting further reading, links to additional resources and other relevant online projects.

E. P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class is the subject of a Radio 3 podcast aired Monday 8 April 2013.  Philip Dodd discusses this pivotal text with Historians Alison Light, Miles Taylor and Emma Griffin during the 45 minute broadcast.  History students currently using this text for their studies might like to know the library has several editions in our collection which are available for use now.

Thompson’s text will also be the focus of a one day workshop on 11 May to take place at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge.

Dr Delphine Doucet will be speaking at a conference, ‘Continental Connections: Anglo-European Intellectual Networks, c 1500-1800’ to be held at Northumbria University on 2 May.  For more information on this see the Culture department’s research blog. 

From 1 July to 30 September 2013 the Lindisfarne Gospels will be on display on Durham’s Palace Green Library.  Click on the image to go to the official Lindisfarne Gospels Durham web pages and sign up to a newsletter for all the latest information, book tickets online and find out what other events and activities are organised, for example a lecture series on the Codex Amiatinus.

New research from the Culture department:

Marjan Shokouhi reviews Foster on Yeats - PhD student Marjan Shokouhi has published a review of R. F. Foster’s Words Alone: Yeats and his Inheritances in the journal Irish Studies Review.

Naked Exhibitionism - A collection of essays by a diverse range of scholars about what it means to be naked in public has been edited by Drs Angela Smith (English) and Claire Nally (Northumbria University).

Bodin’s Colloquium of the Seven - Dr Delphine Doucet (History and Politics) has published an article in the journal of History of European Ideascalled ‘Questioning authorities: scepticism and anti-Christian arguments in the Colloquium Heptaplomeres’.

Useful info for all Culture students but especially LAC305 students accessing week 6 reading…

When accessing certain resources off-campus it may be necessary to go through some extra log-in steps to verify your University of Sunderland status and entitlement to use the resource.

One of the major online resources for Culture is JSTOR.  This blog post will show you how to log in to JSTOR off-campus step by step using screenshots to verify what you should be seeing.  If you encounter any difficulties when logging in to library resources please contact us for help and support.

Go to http://www.jstor.org and click the Login button next to the JSTOR icon.  You will see the screen below.  Type Sunderland into the ‘Search by name’ box (as shown below by the blue highlight).

You should have one match, click the Login link next to University of Sunderland entry.

Stop! Don’t try to login with your University user ID and password at this prompt, instead click the Alternative login option from under the blue Login box.

Enter Sunderland in the search box

From the two options listed click on the ‘University of Sunderland’ link

Now click on the bold link ‘Go to the University of Sunderland login page’

You should now see the familiar University of Sunderland SSO page where you should enter your University user ID and password

You will now see the JSTOR page and you can be sure you are logged in correctly by the message ‘Your access to JSTOR is provided by the University of Sunderland’ seen under the JSTOR icon.

You can now search - see the example below if you are a LAC305 student looking for the article Douglass, D. (1976) ‘Kiddar’s Luck and The Ampersand by Jack Common’. History Workhop, No. 2: 206-210.

To view the full text of the required LAC305 reading click on the Article PDF link and you will be able to download, print or save the full text.

Please get in touch with me if you’d like any more information or have queries about any other library resource. 

Two more new items added to the library resources to help you with HIS103 studies…

A couple of weeks ago we let you know that new resources had been ordered for students studying on HIS370.  Some of these are now available and include three new digitised extracts from books and journal articles available in the Semester 2 Folder of the HIS370 online reading list plus an extra copy of the Nossiter text - of which Chapter 9 is essential reading, look out for this digitised chapter coming very shortly.

Don’t forget you can use the Reservation service to request a book currently out on loan.  When it’s your turn to have the book we’ll e-mail you to let you know it’s here and you can come and pick it up whenever suits you - Murray Library is open 24 hours a day, all you need to collect and issue an item reserved for you is your Campus Card.  Ask a member of library staff for help if you would like more information about how to use the Reservation service.

If you’re studying on HIS103 you’ll know we’ve been adding new resources to our collection for this module over the last few weeks. The 4th edition of Pugh, M. State and Society has been available only as an e-book up until now but the print copies have arrived in the library today.  So however you choose to do your reading, online or on paper, we have a book for you!

Professor Alan Munslow, noted historian and editor of Rethinking History journal has published widely and the library has many of his texts in stock - including some new to our collection and added this week (some items are available as e-books):

HIS103 students - your essential weekly reading from May, T. An economic and social history of Britain begins this week!

There are copies of this text in the library if you prefer to read in a more traditional format or access the digitised extracts via the HIS103 reading list and sign in with your university user ID and password.

#HIS103 - selection of books available right now! (lower ground floor Murray Library) Tweet @uniofsunlib #HIS103 if you have any questions or feedback on your resources for this module.