OAPEN is a site that provides free access to academic monographs on a wide range of topics from major sector publishers. Typing “women” into the search bar yields over 18,000 hits of books and chapters.
Archive for Books
Award Winning Novels of 2023
From the Booker to the Hugo, here is a list (with links to the reviews) highlighting the 2023 winners and the finalists.
Thousands of Books, Articles on Native Americans
The Biodiversity Heritage Library is a vast repository of materials culled from the world’s most distinguished research collections concerning life on Earth. A simple search on “Indians” or “Native Americans” results in over 50,000 hits from books, proceedings, journals, and the like with publication dates ranging from 1600 until the present. Among the collections represented are: the Smithsonian; the universities of California, Toronto, Cornell, Illinois; Natural History Museum London; and the American Museum of Natural History.
“The North American Indian” by Edward Curtis
Curtis set out to record Native American culture and published twenty volumes of text and photographs between 1907 and 1930. The work is concentrated on the trans-Mississippi West as native cultures in the east had been eradicated by that time. Because of the cost of printing, only 500 were planned; it is thought that only 300 sets were actually published.
His work has engendered controversy and praise; here is an informed summary of his legacy.
Academic Freedom, Banned Books, and Censorship
News media are replete with features on the ever-increasing number of book-banning efforts taking place in our local libraries and public schools. This special collection from SAGE allows access to materials formerly held behind paywalls.
The Greatest Children’s Books Of All Time
BBC Culture surveyed 177 children’s books authors, illustrators, bloggers, critics, and journalists to arrive at the listing of the 100 best. (I am glad to see Tolkien, Pullman, and CS Lewis figure in the list, all three appearing in the top 10). This extensive feature provides methodology, overview, and a tally of those surveyed along with each individual’s choices.
Open Access, Scholarly Books on Women
Hundreds of peer-reviewed titles, many from highly-regarded academic presses, are available online at Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB). Another worthy site is OAPEN that has numerous monographs on women as well, ranging from literary theory to sociology.
Amazon’s Best Books of 2022
There are twelve categories containing at least a dozen titles each, and by clicking on the image of the book cover, you can read excerpted reviews.
Publishers Weekly 2022 Best Books
These are divided into thirteen categories ranging from fiction to young adult. The PW book review is attached to each entry; access to previous lists is also available.
New York Public Library’s Best Books of 2022
The list is divided into separate sections, each section curated by librarians and professional staff at NYPL. The categories are: Best New Books for Adults; Best New Books for Kids; Best New Books for Teens; and Los mejores libros nuevos para pequeños. Over 250 books are included in the various enumerations. Previous lists can be found here.
“Black Sea Studies”
This series is an open access collection of monographs, the vast majority in English, that center around the ancient history/archaeology of the Black Sea region. Because of current events, these tomes provide insight into such areas as Crimea with featured authors hailing from various countries, including Ukraine.
Open Access Books at the Library of Congress
“All of these books have been made available for download on the Library’s website in keeping with the intent of their creators and publishers, which chose to publish these works under open access licenses to allow the broadest possible access and reuse. All books added to the collection go through a selection process whereby subject matter experts determine which works are in scope based on the Library’s Collections Policy Statements.” (About this Collection) More than 3700 titles are available in this growing collection that reflects the breadth and depth of this library’s holdings.
Additional Books On the History and Culture of Ukraine Now Freely Available Online
These academic monographs are from prestigious presses.
Open Access Books for Women’s History Month
Dozens of recently published scholarly monographs are available courtesy of Project Muse; JSTOR also has open access titles of interest from various publishers and university presses.
Portrayal of African Americans in Children’s Books
The site – The Black Experience in Children’s Books: Selections from Augusta Baker’s Bibliographies – contains 152 works taken from the extensive lists compiled by Augusta Baker, a librarian who played a pivotal in the development of children’s literature and the postive portrayal of African American life.
Thousands of Copyrighted Books Become Available on January 1, 2022
Public Domain Day will see 50,000+ books come out from under U.S. copyright laws. Additionally, plays, films, and music will also be accessible. Works such as Murnau’s silent film Faust; Dororthy Parker’s poetry collection Enough Rope; The Scarlet Letter starring Lillian Gish; and all sound recordings published before January 1, 1923 will all be accessible.
Happy National Dictionary Day!
It is held on October 16, the birthdate of Noah Webster. In 1806, he produced the first fully American dictionay – A compendious dictionary of the English language. In which five thousand words are added to the number found in the best English compends….His great masterpiece would appear twenty-two years later – An American Dictionary of the English Language (vol. 1 and vol.2).
Here are various different editions of the latter work, along with his other writings.
For letters he exchanged with some of the Founding Fathers, please look here.
Here is a portrait of The Dame of Dictionaries.
Online Early Children’s Books
The Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books is among the largest in the world; more than 5,000 volumes are represented in digital form. Fairy tales, juvenile fiction, chapbooks, poetry, and nursery rhymes are among the genres included here. The earliest works date to 1800.
Recent Scholarly Volumes on Romanticism
The Romantic Circle Praxis Series consists of peer-reviewed volumes of essays devoted to a single topic/person. A sampling of these volumes includes: The Prose of Romanticism, Circulations: Romanticism and the Black Atlantic, and Romanticism and Buddhism. A volume on one of my favorite authors – William Blake – is accompanied with links to other works of interest as are all the other volumes in this endeavor.
The Most Translated Books in the World by Country
Setting aside religious texts, this feature allows you to scan by country the most translated books. The winner? France – with The Little Prince translated into more than 382 languages. Here are the various sources used to compile this list.
Congressman Frank J. Guarini Library Blog 