Unearthing Hidden Gems: The Lettres de Jersey

An ILL request that led to a digitization request that led to a discovery about the history of our own collections: the story of an O’Neill Library treasure hunt.

In January of this year, an intriguing ILL request came to O’Neill. The requesting librarian, located in the UK, noted that ordinarily she wouldn’t make a transatlantic request, but the title needed, a volume of the Jesuit publication Lettres de Jersey, was vanishingly rare. After fulfilling the request with a scanned volume, Anne Kenny contacted Betsy Post, Head of Digital Repository Services, to find out if we were interested in digitizing the entire run of the publication. We agreed to look into it, and ended up astonished by what we found.

The Lettres–published correspondence of Jesuits living on the island of Jersey in the English Channel–ran as a periodical from 1882 to 1939, with a hiatus during the years of World War I. Our holdings begin with 1893, making them one of the most complete sets in the world. But how did BC end up with this nearly complete set?

We kept digging, partly to resolve the mystery, but also for pragmatic reasons, including copyright. Because of copyright issues related to digitization of a post-1923 title, I contacted the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, where Seth Meehan graciously agreed to help us acquire a license from the relevant authorities in Rome. (Once digitization is complete, the journals will be available on the Internet Archive, HathiTrust, and also on the IAJS-hosted Jesuit Online Library.)

Aside from a license, the other pre-digitization requirement was a brush-up of the cataloging, particularly with more complete and accurate holdings records. This was carried out by Larry Busenbark, who decided to do a little more digging into why a French-language publication was being issued from Jersey, an historically English-speaking Crown dependency. The dates of publication, beginning in 1882, provided a striking clue.

Jesuit-run schools were outlawed in France in 1880 under the Jules Ferry laws, and most of the Order left the country. The French-speaking population of Jesuits on Jersey was largely composed of priests waiting for the law’s repeal and their chance to return. During their time on the island, they founded a monastery and tried to keep their identity as a learning-centered scholastic group. Intriguingly, on their eventual return to France, members of this group of Jesuits founded the Bibliothèque des Fontaines in Chantilly.

Those familiar with the history of the Boston College Libraries will remember that when the Bibliothèque des Fontaines eventually closed in the mid-1990s, we purchased many of their books, still marked today in the catalog as the “Chantilly” collection. Our copies of the Lettres were a part of this purchase, a hidden clue to the origins of the collection itself. We’re thrilled to bring this history finally to light, and share it with the world in digital reproduction.

Please look forward to the availability of the fully-digitized Lettres de Jersey, one of several Jesuit correspondence journals in various stages of the digitization process. The Boston College Libraries are proud to continue our work in making these rare resources and others like them available on a global scale.

ORCID Signups

Enid Karr, Liaison Librarian for Biology, signed up every incoming Biology graduate student for an ORCID – an outstanding achievement. ORCIDs help distinguish researchers and make Boston College scholarship more visible.

Since launching ORCID for the Boston College community in April 2017, BC Libraries has made a concerted effort to promote the service to current and incoming faculty, students, and researchers. We have relied heavily on the relationships that our departmental liaison librarians have with their colleagues to encourage ORCID adoption at Boston College.

Our liaison to the Biology department, Enid Karr, has had a strong relationship with her department since well before the launch of ORCID, which might have influenced the goal by the Chair of the Biology department to have 100% ORCID sign-up for both faculty and graduate students.

While meeting with the incoming Biology graduate students during orientation, Enid took time to exclusively highlight ORCID and its benefits, and as a result every one of them has signed up for an ORCID iD through the BC Create or Connect application. This is the first department to have 100% of their incoming graduate students sign up at the outset of their research careers.

ORCID benefits early career researchers substantially. In the near term, Boston College Libraries asks all graduating students to voluntarily create an ORCID if they did not provide one when submitting their thesis and dissertation (ETD). Having an ORCID already created at the time of submission will help streamline the process. Beyond BC, in addition to providing them with a unique, persistent identifier throughout their career, it allows them to share all of their work in a single place with publisher verified citations. When an ORCID profile is connected to a publisher database such and Web of Science or Scopus, articles they publish in journals included in those databases will automatically appear on their ORCID profiles. This enhances the student’s visibility in their field at the outset of their careers – when each work they complete is so important to building that foundation.

ORCID is not just useful for early career researchers. Researchers at all points in their career can benefit from having a public profile that showcases their work. Unlike other academic profiles, ORCIDs stay the same through name changes, position changes, changes in field of research, etc. ORCIDs are increasingly required by publishers and funding agencies in lieu of or as a supplement to biosketches. We encourage everyone at BC to sign up for one at bc.edu/orcid. For more information on ORCID and what Boston College is doing with them, please visit our ORCID guide.

Jamaican Folktales Get Their Moment to Shine

A BC Libraries collaborative project brings folk stories written by Jamaican school children in the 1930s to new audiences.

A few departments within the BC Libraries teamed up this year to highlight the Joseph J. Williams, SJ ethnological collection held by Burns Library: we gave it a descriptive dust-off, enhanced visibility, and digitized selected content. Not only does the collection include anthropological manuscripts, correspondence, maps, government reports, and financial, legal, and shipping documents collected by Williams while he was a missionary in Jamaica, but it also contains the submissions for a 1930s-era story competition for Jamaican school children. Over 4,000 hand-written tales with illustrations detailing the adventures of Anansi, the trickster spider character who forms a significant part of the folkloric tradition in West Africa and the Caribbean, were submitted to and retained by Williams. The paper these wonderful stories are written on has become extremely fragile over time and, despite their importance in introducing students to primary source materials in classes such as African Diaspora and the World II (HIST111401), they were nearly inaccessible.

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Image from Jamaican school children’s Anansi story competition in the Williams ethnological collection.

The enlarged and updated digitization lab in Burns Library is now able to provide higher quality images that meet digital preservation guidelines known as FADGI 3 standards. Using a copy stand setup, the images were taken of each item lying flat, post-processed, and batched with the collection’s new description for posting on BC Digitized Collections. Students as well as researchers and scholars all over the world now have access to digital copies of children’s versions of Anansi stories, which were previously only available in the Burns Library reading room or on microfilm. Not only is this a very exciting opportunity for further scholarship, but digital access to these materials helps to preserve the original fragile documents, which can no longer endure such a high-level of use.

Image from Jamaican school children’s Anansi story competition in the Williams ethnological collection.

Hand-in-hand with digitization for increased visibility and accessibility, redescription of the Anansi stories added additional context and details for scholarly analysis. While the stories were previously listed numerically, information from Williams’s indexes allowed us to group them by administrative parish and school, and to add information about each school’s religious affiliation.

Stephanie Hall, Annalisa Moretti, and Lynn Moulton presented on the Williams collection at the New England Archivists Spring Meeting 2018 in New Haven, Connecticut. The presentation, “Enhancing Underrepresented Collections and Reaching New Users,” also included archivists from two other Massachusetts institutions. The Burns Library portion of the presentation focused on the efforts of our staff to increase the discoverability and usability of the Anansi stories, while also recognizing the importance of bringing to light material created by less-traditionally-documented people. The presentation was well-received and awarded the New England Archivists Inclusion and Diversity Session and Travel Assistance Award.

Burns Library Returns to the Boston Antiquarian Book Fair

The 43rd annual Boston Antiquarian Book Fair, November 16-18 at the Hynes Convention Center, will once again include a Burns Library booth on “Cultural Row.” Burns Library is giving away complimentary tickets for the opening night reception.

Our John J. Burns Library for rare books, special collections, and archives will once again have a booth presence on “Cultural Row” at the annual Boston Antiquarian Book Fair. This year’s Fair will held at the Hynes Convention Center on Friday evening, November 16, through Sunday, November 18.

Complimentary tickets for the opening night reception are available at Burns Library. Entrance to the Fair is free on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Special events and speakers will soon be announced. Last year, sleight-of-hand artist Ricky Jay gave an illustrated talk about his extraordinary collection of books on magic.

The Book Fair is great opportunity for students and staff alike to browse a dizzying array of collectible books and manuscripts, maps and prints, and paper-based ephemera, as well as to meet and talk with experienced booksellers and collectors in a social environment charged with excitement: everything really is for sale, which makes one appreciate just how much valuable research material exists beyond the resources managed by libraries and archives.

“Attending the fair is an excellent way to spend a November afternoon or evening,” according to reference and archives specialist Shelley Barber, who coordinated the Burns Library presence for more than a decade. “I strongly encourage everyone to come and bring a friend.”

For more years than even Shelley can count, Burns Library has exhibited at the Fair in order to cultivate relationships and add to our holdings. Our booth has been situated next to the Massachusetts Historical Society and Boston Athenaeum, near tables for the Ephemera Society, Rare Book School, and other collecting and educational organizations on “Cultural Row,” a unique feature of the Boston Book Fair, which attracts more than 120 booksellers from around the world. Thus far, Burns Library has been the only special collections library affiliated with a university to exhibit at the Fair—a missed opportunity for others and a strategic advantage for us.

Members of our library staff take turns manning our booth with help from some of our student assistants. A large computer monitor showcases highlights from our collections and digital scholarship projects based on Burns Library materials. Exhibit catalogs and brochures entice passersby to stop and chat. So do buttons, BC-logoed pencils and erasers, and especially a basketful of chocolates!

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Burns Library administrative assistant Kate Edrington welcomes attendees to the Burns Library booth at the 2017 Boston Book Fair.

A steady stream of people do pause to talk, including a number with connections to Boston College. Three years ago, an alum who works with a Connecticut-based art appraisal firm gave us a tantalizing tip: a typescript of Senator John F. Kennedy’s 1956 Boston College Commencement speech annotated in his own hand was going up for sale the following day at Skinner’s auctions in Boston. Further investigation revealed that it was likely his reading copy, as it included a number changes with respect to the draft versions held at the JFK Library and our own University Archives. Needless to say, we made sure to place a bid with a high enough limit to win the lot, which also included the academic hood Kennedy was presented with his honorary doctorate of laws.

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This year’s Boston Antiquarian Book Fair will be held from November 16-18 at the Hynes Convention Center. For details, see: https://bostonbookfair.com/

The following year, we purchased from the Boston Book Company in Jamaica Plain a privately printed copy of W. B. Yeats’s 1902 play Where There is Nothing. A notable addition to our comprehensive Yeats collection in Burns Library, the acquisition was featured in the Spring 2017 Center for Irish Program Newsletter. When we learned that Boston Book Company proprietor Charles Vilnis specializes in Japanese prints, we engaged his expertise to help us acquire a scarce volume by a modern woodblock artist Yoshio Kanamori to complement our Japanese prints collection.

The Fair has yielded a number of other prizes, such as a copy of a rarely available monument of 17th-century Jesuit science published by Giovanni Battista Riccioli. Titled Astronomiae reformatae (Reformed Astronomy), it accepts the refutation of the ancient Ptolemaic system in which all celestial bodies were presumed to circle the earth, but presents arguments against the Copernican system, which placed the sun at the center of the universe. Riccioli favored a version of Tycho Brahe’s so-called “geo-heliocentric” system, in which the sun, moon, and stars were believed to circle an immobile Earth, while the planets circled the sun.

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A fold-out map of the lunar surface from Giovanni Battista Riccioli’s Astronomiae reformatae (Bologna, 1665). Photo by Gary Wayne Gilbert.

Although Riccioli’s cosmological theories proved incorrect, he made a lasting contribution to astronomy through his naming of the seas and craters of the moon. Ironically, yet presciently, he named the most prominent crater Copernicus. Having purchased the Astronomiae reformatae, we are now scouting the bibliographical universe for a copy of Riccioli’s earlier encyclopedic work on astronomy, the Almagestum novum. Perhaps this year’s Fair will land us one.

Fall Into Digital Scholarship at the O’Neill Library

Fall 2018 digital research and pedagogy workshops with the Digital Scholarship Group.

The BC Libraries’ Digital Scholarship Group is pleased to announce the Fall 2018 lineup of Coffee & Code workshops, designed to allow faculty, students, and staff to learn more about digital tools and methodologies. All workshops this semester, with the exception of Georectifying Historical Maps Using ArcMap, will be held in the O’Neill Library Digital Studio, room 205.

This semester, we’re also expanding our offerings to include opportunities to come together and work on a crowdsourced project. We’re co-hosting this initiative, known affectionately as Crowd Cafe, with colleagues at Boston University. Learn more below, and we hope to see you at one of our events!

Coffee & Code

How to Stay Safe & Secure Online

September 12, 2018, 11-12:30 pm.

Feeling freaked out by all the cyber breaches lately? Want to plan an activist movement but want to stay safe? Or do you simply want to use online dating services without getting stalked? Join us in this workshop to learn about digital privacy. We’ll go over how to use tools to protect yourself online, as well as what to do if you’ve been hacked, harassed, or otherwise victimized online.

Basics of Spatial Visualization

September 19, 2018, 11-12:30 pm.

Are you interested in making an interactive map, but don’t know where to start? In this workshop you will be introduced to basics terms and elements commonly used in GIS work. We will look at and discuss different map types, use cases, and visualization tools. Through hands-on exercises you will deconstruct a map project to see how it was made and think about how a visualization would help you answer research questions or be used pedagogically.

Intro to Tableau

September 25, 2018 and October 16, 2018, 3-4:30 pm.

In this workshop, participants will get an introductory, hands-on learning experience of Tableau. The workshop will be focused on Tableau key functions, including:

  • How to connect to data sources
  • How to create visuals and assemble them into a dashboard
  • How to publish the dashboard to the Tableau Public server

Introduction to Spatial Visualization & Analysis

September 27, 2018, 11-12:30 pm.

This workshop will introduce participants to visualizing spatial data, creating maps with points and polygons, and performing basic data analysis with Carto. Participants will get hands-on experience using the Carto platform, learn how to geocode point data in OpenRefine using GREL string functions, and review examples and resources for georeferencing maps and adding basemaps.

Developing Your Online Scholarly Identity

October 4, 2018, 11-12:30 pm.

Are you preparing to enter the job market? Do you have an online presence that accurately reflects your interests, experience, and professional persona? During this workshop, you will:

  • Explore other people’s professional websites to identify components you’d like and components you’d like to add
  • Learn how to host your own web presence
  • Identify platforms for creating your professional website

You’ll leave with a plan for how you’d like to represent yourself online and knowledge of what tools and platforms you can use to create your persona.

Creating and Distributing Promotional Materials Using Web-Based Tools

October 18, 2018, 11-12:30 pm.

In this workshop, participants will get an introductory experience of several free, web-based tools with the goal of creating promotional materials to effectively reach your target audience. In this workshop we will also discuss best practices, social media strategies, and branding.

Creating Digital Exhibits with Omeka

October 24, 2018, 1:30-3 pm

In this workshop, participants will learn how to use Omeka.net to create digital exhibits. Together we will look at examples of successful digital exhibits. Then facilitators will demonstrate the basics of describing, organizing, and displaying your content. Bring your own image files, or use the sample images provided in the workshop.

Georectifying Historical Maps Using ArcMap

November 14, 2018, 11-12:30 pm.
O’Neill Library, Room 307

Celebrate GIS Day by georectifying a historical map! Georectifying is the process of taking an image, like an aerial photograph or a print map, and aligning it with a spatial coordinate system. In this workshop, participants will georectify an 1844 street map of Boston using ArcMap and then add points that locate nineteenth-century churches.

Intro to Text Encoding

November 15, 2018, 11-12:30 pm.

This workshop will introduce participants to the basics of text encoding with focus on document analysis, metadata header creation, and encoding examples. We will also provide an introduction to the TAPAS Platform. Participants will learn how to encode according to the TEI guidelines, validate an XML file, and render their XML file. Text samples will be provided during the workshop, but participants are welcome to bring their own texts.

Text Analysis with Voyant

November 28, 2018, 1:30-3 pm

Voyant-tools.org is a free, web-based suite of tools that enables a range of textual analysis techniques. Used imaginatively, it can guide inquiries into writing style, semantic bias, and author attribution. In this session we’ll apply Voyant’s features to different kinds of texts, discussing the nature of textuality and how to combine digital textual analysis with traditional close reading, and end with an introduction to topic modeling. Along the way we’ll investigate how to use textual analysis and tools like Voyant in classroom assignments and your own research projects.

Crowd Cafe

A collaboration with our colleagues at Boston University, Crowd Cafe is a monthly informal gathering for people wishing to contribute to crowdsourced projects. We will provide in-person and online hosting, camaraderie, and light direction help as needed. You, we hope, will provide human power for projects of your choosing.

Which crowdsourced projects?

Any projects you like. Wikipedia editing, historical document transcription, annotation of satellite images to aid in disaster relief efforts. We’ve made a list of projects seeking help — there are many — and are adding to it.

Who can participate?

Anyone with a reasonably recent laptop or desktop computer (tablets and phones tend to be pretty painful to use for these projects), an internet connection, and some time. Barriers to entry vary, but are generally pretty low. We’ll help you get started if you like.

Often, no specialized expertise is required; there are projects to which middle and high schoolers could meaningfully contribute. Other projects benefit from more experience, whether it be the ability to read 19th century American handwriting and decipher common abbreviations, or expertise in a field of research relevant to a Wikipedia article.

Crowd Cafe will take place on the third Friday of every month, 1-3 pm US Eastern time:

You may join us:

  • in person — current hosts include BU and BC;
  • via a Zoom meeting;
  • on Twitter via the #crowdcafe hashtag

More information, including rationale, locations, and a list of crowdsourced projects, is at https://is.gd/crowdcafe.

ORCID Survey – Participate!

BC faculty, researchers, and graduate students are invited to participate in the survey study “ORCID iD adoption in academic communities.”

BC faculty, researchers, and graduate students are invited to participate in the survey study “ORCID iD adoption in academic communities.” The 10-minute online survey will ultimately contribute to research characterizing the uptake of ORCID iDs, the use cases and perceptions of the system among researchers in different research communities, barriers to uptake, and possible interventions.

The study, funded by OCLC and ALISE under their Library & Information Science Research Grants scheme, is conducted by researchers at the University of St Andrews (Scotland) as an extension of a 2017 pilot study there. Boston College was selected as one of 8-10 institutions to partner with St Andrews, and will enable BC Libraries staff to gauge the usage of ORCID at BC, compare it with other institutions, and raise awareness of ORCID functionality and benefits.

Please participate in the survey!

HathiTrust, Full-Text Riches, Whatever Your Discipline

Just like the Hindi word for the elephant its name implies, HathiTrust is enormous and it never forgets.

HathiTrust logo

Just like the Hindi word for the elephant its name implies, HathiTrust is enormous and it never forgets.  With over 16 million digitized texts, HathiTrust is a vast archive of digitized materials for research and scholarship of all types.  It was created in 2008 as a partnership of major research libraries working together to preserve and make available the published record of human knowledge from around the world and in a wide variety of languages and scripts. It includes both public domain, open access and copyright materials digitized by Google, the Internet Archive and Microsoft, as well as those digitized by member libraries in-house efforts, including Boston College.   Copyright materials included are made available in full-text to the users at the contributing institution.

Discover useful materials by bibliographic (title-level) or full-text document searching (see Search Tips).  In addition to the non-English language materials available for discovery, you can also search using such non-Western scripts as Russian, Greek, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and more (BC has made a particular effort to contribute Irish script content).  Once you find what you need, read materials online or sign in as a member of the Boston College community to download entire works available for full viewing;  without sign-in, download may be limited to a page at a time.

While all works found in HathiTrust are available for discovery, full viewing is restricted to open access works created under a Creative Commons license, items in the public domain (U.S. works published before 1923 and government documents), Australian or Canadian works prior to 1898 (see Copyright for published materials from other countries) or materials contributed by Boston College Libraries.  (FYI, Boston College Libraries staff are involved in a national, systematic effort by libraries to update public domain status on materials included in HathiTrust.)  Boston College users with print disabilities can get access to full-print materials still in copyright.

As you find materials, consider grouping them into your own collections.  Once you create a collection for future reference, you can search within it and share your collections with others by making them public.

Not only is the corpus of material available here for viewing, researchers can use tools provided by the HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) for computational analysis of vast amounts of publicly-available textual data.  Researchers engaged in non-profit and educational research and needing a secure environment for text-mining and other non-consumptive uses can create their own secure datasets or leverage those already available. Here are two such datasets available for users:   “HTRC Extracted Features Dataset Page-level” (with features from 15.7 million volumes) and  “Word Frequencies in English-Language Literature, 1700-1922”.  The HTRC launched as a partnership of Indiana University and the University of Illinois, working with the Hathi Trust Digital Library.

Look to HathiTrust as a rich and constantly expanding source of U.S. Federal Government documents issued by the Government Printing Office (GPO) and other federal agencies.  Libraries are partnering to create the United States Government Documents Registry within HathiTrust.  The goal of this ongoing effort is to create metadata and digitize all full-text materials to provide access to a complete body of federal documents from 1789 to the present.  This effort is particularly challenging, given that there is no reliable list of government documents created.

Clearly, the HathiTrust is a rich resource in all areas of public knowledge and a resource that you may want to consider including in your research efforts, whatever the discipline.

Boston College Libraries Participate in a Pilot Program with Yale University Press

Boston College Libraries is participating in a one year Yale University Press pilot program that provides access to important Art & Architecture monographs and museum catalogs.

Yale University Press, with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, recently developed the Art & Architecture ePortal, designed for students and scholars of art and architectural history.  Boston College Libraries was invited to participate in a one year (July 1, 2018 – June 31, 2019)  pilot program that offers full multi-user access to important monographs and museum catalogs to a university wide community.

Entry page of the Art & Architecture ePortal
Entry page of the Art & Architecture ePortal

The ePortal features content from the top university presses and museum publishers, such as The MIT Press, Harvard Arts Museums,  Art Institute of Chicago, Yale University Art Gallery, and Yale University Press.

The ePortal covers time periods from Ancient to Contemporary Art and geographic areas from Asia to Middle East to Latin America. It also includes books on General Art History & Theory, Architecture & Urban History, Conservation & Technical Studies, Photography, and more.

Important platform features include searching of full text, images, and metadata; online reading, annotation, citation, sharing, and printing capabilities; supplemental multimedia elements such as 3D models and video, and coursepack building tools for instructors.

The A&A ePortal is a carefully selected collection of some the best books in the field, so it is especially nice that one of the featured books, The Art and Architecture of Islam: 1250-1800, is by Boston College recently retired faculty members, Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom, both renowned scholars of Islamic Art.

The platform is easy to use and can be of interest to faculty and students beyond the fields of art & architecture, such as in Middle Eastern Studies, History, or Classical Studies.

Digital Studio Updates

The BC Libraries Digital Studio has some new personnel, and has updated the website with new descriptions and documentation, and upgraded equipment.

Happy Fall semester! Over the summer, Sarah DeLorme and I have been busy getting the Digital Studio in shape for another academic year. We had help from our TCs, Sherm Homan and Henri Hajj, their students, and, our student staff, Alben Chingo and Nicholas Sucre (recent hires). Here are some of the more notable updates.

  1. Personnel

As of August 1, 2018, Sarah DeLorme became the Associate Digital Scholarship Librarian. She has been contributing to many of our digital scholarship initiatives and projects, in addition to managing the student staff in the Digital Studio.

  1. Website & Documentation

We updated and added new content to Digital Studio related web-pages, including a new page all about the multitouch table and tutorials on various software applications (including design, statistical, publishing, and multimedia) created by student staff and librarians. General information related to space reservations and software/equipment lists can be found on the main digital studio page.

  1. Equipment

Our PC workstations have been upgraded to 64 GB RAM so they can handle projects that require larger amounts of memory and perform better. The multitouch table has been configured so that you can explore a variety of exhibits from the desktop, create or design content, and interact with 3D models. You can also use the wireless keyboard to navigate content on the touch table. Over the next year we hope to explore new ways of presenting digital content as well as developing new applications that can be used on the multitouch table. If you are working with faculty or students who may be interested in creating content for a multitouch environment or integrating this equipment into a course or research, please let us know!

Interactive multitouch table in the Digital Studio.
Interactive multitouch table in the Digital Studio.

Some of you may have already noticed, but the conference table TV display can now be connected to via AirPlay! If you have a macOS device you can mirror your screen on the display without the use of HDMI cables (although HDMI is still available for PC users).

We recently purchased an Audio-Technica LP-60 USB turntable (for all the audiophiles out there!) and are in the process of setting it up in the studio. This turntable also works with the Audacity software if you want to mix and create your own music.

The old TV display in the viewing station has been replaced with a 37″ HDMI flat-screen Samsung Display (previously in the Faculty Preview Room). We are in the process of updating the display in the Faculty Preview Room to a 65” flat-screen.

  1. Software

We have added a license for Nvivo (PC) (previously available on O’Neill level 3) to the existing software programs, four additional licenses of Adobe Creative Cloud, and two additional licenses of Avid Media Composer to our Mac computers. We ask that any requests for software installation on Digital Studio computers are directed to this page where we have outlined a policy and a submission form.

As always, feel free to reach out to Sarah DeLorme or myself if you have any questions or feedback.

Easy Access to the Wall Street Journal and Other Major Dailies

The BC Community now has access to Wall Street Journal subscriptions through the library, and access to comprehensive news databases.

This summer the Boston College Libraries acquired a subscription to The Wall Street Journal, making it possible for all current BC students, faculty and staff to register for their own online accounts.  The subscription includes a four-year archive and allows BC users to view The Wall Street Journal on a computer or mobile device. A similar subscription is available for the The Financial Times.

Additionally, many other newspapers’ articles can be accessed through several databases, including a new library subscription to the U.S. Major Dailies which includes articles from five major U.S. newspapers: Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.  Coverage: 1980 to the present.

Nexis Uni (formerly known as Lexis-Nexis Academic) has the full text of hundreds of newspapers from around the world.  You can create an account and set up an alert, which is a search that runs automatically and notifies you of any results.  (Alerts can be set by topic and/or for particular newspaper by selecting  the alert icon (🔔) above your results.)

Access World News is a collection of local, regional, and international news sources. Additionally it provides access to many sources of foreign news in translation.

See the Newspaper Guide for more details.