World History & Culture (LTPSC) » New resources

Queen Victoria’s journals

Maggie Kopp — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 15:29:46 +0000

The British Commonwealth is celebrating Queen Elizabeth’s diamond jubilee (the 60^th anniversary of her accession to the throne) this year, with big events planned this weekend. The only other British monarch to reign for 60 years was Queen Victoria, who celebrated her diamond jubilee in June 1897. As part of the jubilee celebrations, the Royal Archives has digitized Victoria’s journals, which she kept from age 13 until her death in 1901. They will be freely available online ONLY for the month of June.

Printed editions of Victoria’s girlhood journals and her Journal of Our Life in the Highlands are available in Special Collections, as are printed editions of Victoria’s letters and the letters of her husband, Albert, the Prince Consort. In addition, Special Collections owns several original letters and drawings by Victoria, as well as books formerly owned or gifted by her. These items, and more material pertaining to Victoria’s life and reign, can be found by searching the library catalog for “Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, 1819-1901.”

HBLL digitizes a medieval manuscript

Maggie Kopp — Tue, 03 May 2011 17:59:01 +0000

L. Tom Perry Special Collections holds around two dozen medieval manuscripts (or manuscript fragments). Recently, the library digitized one of these treasures: an English manuscript dating from 1343 entitled Regimen Animarum. The manuscript was written for the Archbishopric of Canterbury. The text is in Latin and is a religious manual for ecclesiastical officials, covering preaching, teaching, and administering religious rites and sacraments. It also contains four leaves of music, a version of the New Office of the Corpus Christi, a portion of which is shown above.

The manuscript can be viewed online here or by searching the library’s Digital Collections.

Online resources from the JFC Harrison Collection

Maggie Kopp — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 17:09:15 +0000

The Harold B. Lee Library has scanned and made available the British Social Periodicals held in the JFC Harrison collection online at the Internet Archive. The collection includes full-text scans of periodicals related to political, cultural, and social movements, including temperance, free-thought, and working-class educational associations. The digital collection also includes literary items related to Special Collections’ current exhibit, Literary Worlds.

Updated list of British social history periodicals

Maggie Kopp — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:48:05 +0000

The list of periodicals related to British social history has recently been updated to include single-issue holdings and other titles from the J.F.C. Harrison Collection. The newly-added periodicals cover such topics as free thought, Methodism, and temperance.

Harrison Collection periodicals now online

Maggie Kopp — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 15:39:10 +0000

A select number of British sociopolitical periodicals from the JFC Harrison Collection have recently been scanned and added to the Internet Archive. A total of 16 volumes from ten periodicals are now available. Titles include the annual journal of the Scottish Cooperative Wholesale Society, John Bright’s Speeches on questions of public policy, and several titles produced by Temperance societies and labor unions. BYU anticipates adding the remaining periodicals from the Harrison Collection to the Internet Archive later this year.

Philip II letters now available online

Maggie Kopp — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:26:43 +0000

The library recently completed its newest digital project, the digitization of a collection of letters from Philip II, King of Spain, related to naval wars with France and England during the period 1592-1597. These letters were previously available in incomplete black and white facsimiles. The letters have been re-scanned in full color and the digital collection includes details like outer addresses and wax seals. The letters can be accessed from the HBLL Digital Collections page or from http://lib.byu.edu/dlib/phil2/.

New digital collection in French history

Maggie Kopp — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:26:31 +0000

One of Special Collection’s best resources in early modern history is our French Political Pamphlets collection. It consists of over 2,100 short works printed in France between 1550 and 1650. These pamphlets describe and react to the social, political, religious and economic issues and events of the period, including France’s Wars of Religion, the Edict of Nantes, and the Thirty Years War. Some of these pamphlets are unique resources not held by any other library in the world.

A multi-year project to digitize the pamphlets is now underway. Over 500 pamphlets were digitized during year one of the project and are now available online at http://www.lib.byu.edu/dlib/fpp/. This site includes a fuller description and commentary on the French Political Pamphlets collection and a bibliography of the collection along with browsable images.