We have written before about the usefulness of the Libris Geschiedenis Prijs longlists and shortlists for helping us to choose suitable books on Dutch history for our collections. This is a topic that we have not revisited since 2019 so in this post I will highlight some of our relevant purchases from the last three years and also consider a couple of other new prizes worth keeping an eye on. Continue reading “Dutch prizewinners”
Tag: buying books
Dutch history update
We have written previously about the Libris Geschiedenis Prijs and how it informs our purchasing of Dutch history books. The longlist of ten titles for the 2019 prize, chosen from more than 300, was announced in July. This was then whittled down to a shortlist of five titles earlier this month, with the winner to be announced at the end of October.
Looking at last year’s shortlist, we chose to buy four of the five shortlisted titles for 2018 including the winner:
Nobel streven: het onwaarschijnlijke maar waargebeurde verhaal van ridder Jan van Brederode by Frits van Oostrom (C215.c.6483). In this book, the winner, the author has reconstructed the life of Jan van Brederode, a little-known nobleman of the late 14th century who died at Agincourt.- Thorbecke wil het: biografie van een staatsman by Remieg Aerts (601:5.c.201.24) is the first full biography of Johan Rudolf Thorbecke, an important 19th century Dutch statesman who wrote a constitution in 1848 and thus introduced parliamentary democracy to the Netherlands.
- Kolonialeoorlogen in Indonesië: vijf eeuwen verzet tegen vreemde overheersing by Piet Hagen (634:2.c.201.3) looks at five centuries of colonial wars in Indonesia and is a useful reference tool on the history of Indonesia generally.
- De toren van de Gouden Eeuw: een Hollandse strijd tussen gulden en God by Gabri van Tussenbroek (C215.c.1510) tells the story of 17th century reconstruction and power struggles in Amsterdam.
Foreign-language ebooks
When we talk about Cambridge’s amazing ebook collections, we often think only of their English-language content – yet there is a great deal of foreign-language material available too. The growth of institutional ebook availability has varied in the languages and countries that our department, Collections and Academic Liaison (CAL), deals with. Costs can also vary enormously (some ebooks cost nearly four times the print version while others can be far closer to the print price), but we are always happy to include ebooks in our language accessions as much as possible. This post provides a brief summary of major bought and open access ebook providers and packages in CAL’s languages.
Dutch history revisited
In 2015 we wrote about books shortlisted for the 2014 Libris Geschiedenis Prijs, showing that we selectively buy Dutch books on major Dutch historical topics or those with a strong interdisciplinary appeal. In this post we look at a few books acquired in the intervening years which have been shortlisted for the same prize:
First, from the 2015 shortlist, is Cees Fasseur’s Eigen meester, niemands knecht: het leven van Pieter Sjoerds Gerbrandy, Minister-president van Nederland in de Tweede Wereldoorlog (C214.c.2469). This substantial work is the first major biography of the man who held the important position of Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1940 to 1945 in exile in London.
Nominated for the 2016 prize was De roofkoning: Prins Willem III en de invasie van Engeland by Machiel Bosman (C213.c.3769). Books about William of Orange and his connections with England hold obvious appeal for us. This well-researched but concise account is a combination of history book and novel, telling the story of William’s invasion of England from the different perspectives of the main protagonists. William of Orange is a main player too in the book featured from last year’s shortlist, Oranje tegen de Zonnekoning: de strijd tussen Willem III en Lodewijk XIV om Europa by Luc Panhuysen (C212.c.6787), a comprehensive description of the intense rivalry between Louis XIV and William of Orange who were 17th century contemporaries. Continue reading “Dutch history revisited”
New Weimar on the Pacific
This post is written by David Lowe, who retired from our department in April. We hope it is the first of many retirement-era contributions.
When in August 2001 the University Library acquired its copy of Roland Jaeger’s New Weimar on the Pacific: the Pazifische Presse and German exile publishing in Los Angeles, 1942-48 (862.c.504), a history of the small private press which published eleven German language titles between 1942 and 1948, we had none of the books in the collection. That omission has now been partly rectified, and in recent years we have bought four titles, three of them presented by the Friends of the Library from the legacy of Mrs Margaret Green, wife of the former Schröder Professor of German Dennis Green.
Getting hold of the books
Many of our readers, familiar with the ease of book purchasing over the internet, often with a next-day delivery service, assume that the buying of new titles by the Library is invariably straightforward. The internet has certainly facilitated the way in which we work. Ordering 20 books on-line usually only takes a few minutes. It is much easier to establish whether a title is still in print, although publishers’ and vendors’ websites are often not completely up to date in the detail they provide. The websites of many suppliers enable us to track our requests, seeing the dates on which they order, acquire and dispatch a book. Sites such as Abebooks and Chapitre can make the acquisition of many out-of-print items far easier.
It shouldn’t be assumed, however, that the Library can always replicate the experience of the private individual, particularly in terms of e-books. Continue reading “Getting hold of the books”
Ebooks in French
Two PhD students at Trinity College have just published a book which has arrived at the University Library. Jeff Barda and Daniel A. Finch-Race edited the volume Textures : processus et événements dans la création poétique moderne et contemporaine (736:47.c.201.102, and at the MML library at classmark F5A.G.10), which presents papers from the 17th French Graduate Research Seminar held at Trinity in May 2014. Published by Peter Lang, this is the 120th volume in the series ‘Modern French Identities’, of which the University Library holds 99.
This is patently an important book for us to have in the Library, both because of its subject and its Cambridge connections. It was not a difficult decision to purchase the book. However, it is increasingly becoming a difficult decision about how to purchase books. Continue reading “Ebooks in French”
Number crunching in European Collections
In the early hours of Sunday morning each week, members of the European Collections and Cataloguing team get an email telling them how many new records have been added to the catalogue in the last seven days. The breakdown which the system gives us is either by language, or in some cases by language grouping. The figures fluctuate considerably from week to week, of course, depending on what other things people have been doing, but our aim is to achieve a reasonable level of consistency over the course of the library year, which runs from August 1st to July 31st. August and early autumn see the work of adding up these and other statistics to produce figures for the full year.
Libris Geschiedenis Prijs for 2014 : recent prizewinners on Dutch history
In deciding which Dutch language titles to buy, the Library needs to be very selective, bearing in mind that the audience for such material amongst our readership is small. What we buy in Dutch is a small percentage of Holland’s total publishing output. On the other hand the Library has excellent collections of Dutch material, and providing continuity in our collection development is important. The Dutch language collection currently numbers about 22,000 items, and we add between 200 and 250 new titles each year. Our main focus is on history, fine arts, church history and medieval literature. Contemporary literature is acquired much more selectively.
The annual Libris Geschiedenis Prijs is a useful indicator of important recent titles in Dutch history, and the shortlist is scrutinised carefully. We buy many but not all of the titles featured, restricting our choice to books relating to the Dutch-speaking world. We did not acquire the 2010 winner, for example, a book in Dutch on the history of the Congo by David van Reybrouck, although this later appeared in English translation and was therefore received under legal deposit (649:2.c.201.29).
Continue reading “Libris Geschiedenis Prijs for 2014 : recent prizewinners on Dutch history”
Icelandic collections
Whilst Finnish language items have never been energetically collected in the University Library, it has substantial collections of material in the other Scandinavian languages – Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish. Two librarians with special responsibility for Scandinavian studies built up our collections over half a century. F.T.K. Caröe had been the principal planner of the massive operation by which the University Library was moved from its old to its present premises in 1934. He retired in 1963, and in his obituary in the Staff Bulletin in January 1971, Deputy Librarian John Oates paid tribute to Caröe’s interest in the Scandinavian literatures, “his deep knowledge of which he used indefatigably in the interests of the University Library”. His successor Dr J.B. Dodsworth, who was appointed in October 1965, carried on that tradition, but since Dr Dodsworth’s retirement in 1998, collection development in this area has significantly diminished.
Languages across Borders 