In 2022, Cambridge University Library made its first large purchase of selected French and Francophone CAIRN ebooks, based on reject statistics from the previous few years (i.e. books that readers with a University of Cambridge IP address tried to access unsuccessfully). This provided a valuable addition to the library’s ongoing subscription to the CAIRN French Studies Collection of about 150 periodicals in the Arts and Humanities and Social Sciences. This blogpost highlights some of the ebook titles we recently acquired, based on last year’s usage reports (in addition to direct reader requests sent throughout the year).
In terms of subjects, history was well represented, with titles including several works on exploration, colonisation, and independence of former French colonies:
Meggie Boyle is a 3rd year student of French in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Literature and Linguistics. Earlier this year, she got in touch with us at Cambridge University Libraries with book recommendations for her Year Abroad Dissertation project. She suggested titles that we did not have, and we arranged digital alternate formats for books that were only available to buy in print format, via the Cambridge Libraries Accessibility Services. You can read here about her experience of disability which fueled her dissertation project.
“Disability has dominated my life, not only pervading every part of my physical body, but also seeping into the very core of my being, my mind: I see it in everything I do and everywhere I go.
CAIRN is a Francophone online platform originally founded by four French and Belgian publishers: Belin, De Boeck, La Découverte and Erès, focusing on social sciences and humanities periodicals. More recent partners include the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the University of Liège and the Centre National du Livre. In the past few years, especially since COVID (when the platform offered the library free access to all their ebooks for the month of May 2020), we started acquiring CAIRN ebooks, as well as receiving statistics about our readers’ attempts to access ebook titles on the platform.
Based on these information, and in order to continue diversifying the range of French and Francophone material available to our readers, while also taking into account the pricing of the ebooks, we recently made a bulk purchase of more than 200 titles selected from the Cairn catalogue, including both new and older publications that we did not already have in print. Members of Cambridge University Library now have access to about 450 CAIRN ebooks titles, available through Raven, either on iDiscover, or directly on the CAIRN platform and other websites, if you use the Lean library plugin. We are now in the process of upgrading online catalogue records for the newly acquired ebooks, which includes adding subject headings. Continue reading “New CAIRN Francophone ebooks available through Cambridge University Library”→
Following on from my recent post about new English-language acquisitions relating to modern Ukrainian history, I wanted to highlight a small sample of our holdings of modern Ukrainian literature in translation. (Click on the titles below to be taken to the record in iDiscover.)
One author whose works have gradually made their way into English translation is Oksana Zabuzhko, who has won a number of awards, including the Shevchenko National Prize. Her output spans novels, short stories, poetry, and non-fiction; we have recently acquired both her short story collection Your Ad Could Go Here and her Selected Poems, both of which appeared in English for the first time in 2020, and both of which are the work of multiple translators.
The stories in Your Ad Could Go Here deal with the Euromaidan protests and the war with Russia since 2014. Other literary responses to the conflict include Lyuba Yakimchuk’s book of poetry, Apricots of Donbas; Volodymyr Rafeyenko’s novel Mondegreen : Songs About Death and Love; and Oleg Sentsov’s short story collection, Life Went on Anyway. Each author has been personally affected by the war: Lyuba Yakimchuk’s parents and sister were forced to flee their home in the Luhansk region when it was occupied by Russian-backed militants; Volodymyr Rafeyenko moved from his native Donetsk to near Kyiv at the outbreak of war; and Oleg Sentsov was arrested on terrorism charges in Crimea in 2014 and sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment (he was released in a prisoner swap in 2019). Continue reading “Ukrainian literature in translation”→
As the Russian war against Ukraine continues, I thought it would be useful to highlight some new English-language acquisitions which focus on recent Ukrainian history. While it will obviously take some time for books to be written about the invasion and this new and terrible stage in the conflict between the two countries, there has been a war ongoing in Ukraine since 2014, and we have a number of titles, predominantly ebooks, dealing with the subject. (Click on any of the titles to be taken through to the iDiscover record.)
Last year, Harvard University Press launched the Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature, “a new book series dedicated to publishing outstanding Ukrainian literature in English translation”; we will, of course, be looking to acquire each work in this series as it is released. The very first title to be published was the journalist and writer Stanislav Aseyev’s In Isolation: Dispatches from Occupied Donbas, a collection of essays originally written between 2015 and 2017: a recent review in the TLS describes it as “a rare and unsettling insider’s account of conditions in the ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’”. It ends with his capture and imprisonment, and a subsequent work (The Torture Camp on Paradise Street) detailing his experience of incarceration is due for publication later in the year. Another first-person account of the conflict in Donbas, this time from Glagoslav Publications, is Artem Chekh’s Absolute Zero, based on the diary he kept during his time as a soldier there; and, as a previous blogpost highlighted, we hold A Loss : The Story of a Dead Soldier Told by His Sister, a memoir by Dr. Olesya Khromeychuk.
As in other parts of society, the pandemic has been challenging on both a professional and personal level and has affected University library staff in a number of ways. In France and the UK, the public understanding and political reaction to the coronavirus pandemic started in mid to late March 2020. On 11 March, the World Health Organisation classified COVID-19 as a pandemic. In France, visits to retirement homes were forbidden. On 12 March, all French nurseries, schools and universities were closed, and on 13 March, all non-essential public places. Although on 15 March the first round of city council elections was controversially maintained, on 16 March President Emmanuel Macron banned all non-essential travel and announced a mandatory home confinement – which was eventually extended until 11 May. At the beginning of June, cafés and restaurants were allowed to reopen and the travel ban of 100 km was lifted; later in June, leisure centres and schools reopened, as well as travel with non-EU countries from 1 July. From 24 July, face coverings became compulsory in all public indoor spaces. Later in the autumn and winter 2020-2021, with new peaks of infections, more sanitary measures were reinstated, including curfews (as well as the compulsory, but much derided, ‘Autorisation de sortie’ outing forms) and closure of restaurants and museums. Since July 2021, a Health pass (also controversial, and implying full vaccination, a negative test of, or a certificate of recovery from Covid) is required to attend venues of over 50 people.
In the UK, after initial advice against non-essential travel and attending leisure venues, on 23 March 2020 schools were closed and Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a stay-at-home order, banning social gatherings, and restricting non-essential travel and outdoor activity. At Cambridge University Library, most people working in our Collections and Academic Liaison department started working from home on 23 March 2020; a few members of staff decided to go on furlough. Some relaxation of the lockdown happened in England on 10 May, when those who could not work from home were advised to go to work, and outdoor exercise was not restricted anymore. In June, some classes reopened in primary schools. From 8 June, a 14-days self-isolation was required for travellers entering England from abroad, which lasted until 2 July, when this was relaxed for a large number of countries (the quarantine was suddenly re-established for travellers returning from France from 15 August). The wearing of face coverings was only required on public transport from 15 June, and in indoor shops and public spaces from 24 July. In England, with a new wave of infections, a three-tier framework was introduced in the autumn, then a second lockdown took place in November 2020, and a third one from January to March 2021. With an increased number of vaccinations, a gradual reopening took place until the month July, despite the development of the new Delta variant.
While the library was closed in the spring of 2020, print books were not accessible to readers anymore, and there was a huge emphasis on electronic resources, with additional resources made available for the purchase of large anglophone ebook packages, notably EBSCO Ebook Academic Collection and Proquest Academic Complete (see for example the bibliography of e-resources on Black Lives Matter and decolonisation in the Francophone world), but it also meant some cuts to the budgets for foreign languages acquisitions. A number of publishers (including French language Classiques Garnier, Brepols, Cairn, Droz…) helpfully opened up for free their databases and ebooks or ejournals collections, as a temporary measure, because of the lockdown. A major development in French ebooks acquisitions was the creation of the Amalivre ebooks online platform – long awaited, it was finally released in May 2021!
Working from home also enabled us to work on different cataloguing projects. At the end of June and beginning of July 2020, some University Library staff went back into the building (with new social distancing procedures), and new zero-contact services were introduced: Click and collect, for readers to order and borrow books; and Scan and Deliver of articles and parts of print books which were sent by email as digital files. In August 2020, readers were able to Book a visit and consult non-borrowable material, and the Ask a curator service was opened for enquiries regarding Special collections. Collections and Academic Liaison staff only resumed coming back to work in the building from August onwards and then took part in the Print Operations Recovery, with streamlined workflows for processing and cataloguing print books, especially readers’ requests. In September 2020, faculty libraries also started to reopen.
From November 2020, the second lockdown and third lockdown in England drastically reduced the number of Collections and Academic Liaison staff allowed to work in the department, a situation which lasted until May 2021. During that time, I had a baby girl and was on maternity leave, just after having trained (remotely) a new French assistant, with the help of my colleagues! From May onwards, more staff and readers were able to come back into the buildings, including to consult Rare books and Manuscripts; the Ghost Words: Reading the past exhibition on palimpsest manuscripts finally opened in the Milstein centre. From mid-September 2021, it has no longer been necessary for readers to book a place before visiting the University Library (apart from those using Special collections). There are now more readers in the building, which had been extremely quiet, but the footpath at the beginning of this new academic year is still quite reduced compared to previous years. We are also looking forward to the forthcoming display of 1870-71 Franco-Prussian caricatures on the first floor of the University Library. As for the Collections and Academic Liaison department, the rules on its occupancy level have been relaxed, and more people are now expected to come into the library to work, especially as some reader services such as late duties and Saturday duties have now resumed, though we still currently expect to continue to work in a hybrid way, partially from the office and partially from home…
As is to be expected, the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown led to a number of creative, analytic or polemic French language publications (see the new Library of Congress Subject Heading ‘COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020’).
In France, the introduction of the ‘Pass Sanitaire’ is one of the latest rules which has led to social and political protests and demonstrations.
Acquisitions for the French collections (some on order) include so far:
Personal testimonies
the diary Sine die : chronique du confinement (19 mars-12 mai 2020) / Éric Chevillard; dessins de François Ayroles, L’Arbre vengeur, 2021 (C206.d.6483)
Covid-19, témoignages de Guinée : le livre au service de la lutte contre la Covid-19 / Kaba Diakité, Sansy, L’Harmattan, 2020 (C217.c.7453)
La vague : l’épidémie vue du terrain / Piarroux, Renaud, CNRS, 2020 (C217.c.7298)
Tracts de crise : un virus et des hommes, 18 mars-11 mai 2020, Gallimard, 2020 (C206.d.7770)
the graphic novel Au coeur de la vague / Chappatte, Les Arènes, 2020 (Prix franceinfo de la BD 2021, on order)
Artistic and literary works produced during the lockdown
Les murs du confinement : street art et Covid-19 / Marie Christian et Cyrille Benhamou, Omniscience, 2020 (S950.e.202.2)
or the poetry collection by André Velter Séduire l’univers / avec sept tracés sonores de Jean Schwarz; précédé de À contre-peur avec quatre ciels de Marie-Dominique Kessler, Gallimard, 2021 (C206.d.6728)
Philosophical and psychological reflexions on the pandemic
Jean-Luc Nancy, Un trop humain virus, Bayard, 2020 (C206.d.7660)
Michel Onfray, La vengeance du pangolin : penser le virus, Robert Laffont, 2020 (C217.c.7297)
Vulnérables : une philosophie du risque / Alain Renaut et Geoffroy Lauvau, PUF, 2021 (C206.d.6953)
Lucien Ayissi, Méditations philosophiques d’un confiné sur coronavirus suivies de Dix méditations supplémentaires, L’Harmattan, 2021 (C217.c.4338)
Bruno Latour, Où suis-je? leçons du confinement à l’usage des terrestres, La Découverte, 2021 (C206.d.7828)
Jean-Claude Kaufmann, C’est fatigant, la liberté … une leçon de la crise, Éditions de l’Observatoire, 2021 (C217.c.4410)
Works on the social aspects and consequences of the sanitary crisis
Le monde d’aujourd’hui : les sciences sociales au temps de la Covid, dir. M. Lazar, G. Plantin et X. Ragot, Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 2020 (C206.d.7868)
Personne ne bouge : une enquête sur le confinement du printemps 2020 sous la direction de Nicolas Mariot, Pierre Mercklé et Anton Perdoncin, Univ. Grenoble-Alpes, 2021 (C217.c.794)
La société malade / Jean-Pierre Le Goff, Stock, 2021 (C217.c.4169)
L’explosion des inégalités: classes, genre et générations face à la crise sanitaire sous la direction de Anne Lambert et Joanie Cayouette-Remblière, Éditions de l’Aube, 2021 (C217.c.3445)
Sorbonnavirus : regards sur la crise du coronavirus, dir. Pierre-Marie Chauvin et Annick Clement, Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2021 (C206.d.7771)
Writings on its political implications
La grande confusion : comment l’extrême-droite gagne la bataille des idées / Philippe Corcuff, Textuel, 2020 (C217.c.5331)
Analyses of its effects on the urban landscape and environment
La résurrection des villes face à la Covid-19 : les opportunités de la revitalisation et la régénération urbaines sous la direction de Marie-Christine Steckel-Assouère, L’Harmattan, 2021, Amalivre ebook
Guy Burgel, Ville et Covid : un mariage de raisons, Karthala, 2021 (C217.c.7835)
While ebook publishing of academic titles in Germany has been lagging behind in comparison to the anglophone world, great strides have been made in the last few years and now most of the major academic publishers offer their titles in ebook format. However, one major problem is that institutional access to ebooks can often be much more expensive than purchasing the print version. The University Library has been acquiring an increasing amount of German language ebooks. We have access to many German language ebooks through our EBA (Evidence Based Acquisition) scheme with de Gruyter and we acquire numerous individual titles from the major aggregator platforms.
Recently we have purchased our first ebook packages. These are the Schöningh and Fink ebook collections which are offered by Brill. Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink are renowned academic publishing houses with Schöningh focusing on history, theology and philosophy while Fink concentrates on philology and media studies. The ebook collections are organized by subject and issued annually. We have acquired the 2020 and 2021 collections for the subject areas Early Modern & Modern History and Literature & Culture, giving us access to 240 titles. Records for these titles can be found in iDiscover. Below we list a selection of titles from the collections to give an idea of the range of topics covered; follow the hyperlinks under the cover images for access.
As many of us resign ourselves to a 2021 ‘staycation’, how about taking the opportunity to travel through the UL’s French-language collections instead? A number of recent acquisitions conveniently explore travel history and narratives!
The past year, with its challenges of library closures and restriction of movement, has highlighted for us all the importance of remote accessibility to library collections and the benefits of e-resources. Traditionally, French-language ebooks have been harder for institutions like the UL to procure, as our established ebook suppliers primarily focus on English-language material. Most French publishers individually provide their own online resources without institutional access, and where ebooks are made available they are often unfeasibly more expensive to purchase than the print equivalent. As a result, the UL’s French-language acquisitions, up to now, have had to rely heavily on printed editions.
In the last month, however, French book supplier ‘Amalivre’ has launched its own ebooks platform, offering a wide selection of material from over 70 publishers, such as L’Harmattan, Honoré Champion and CNRS! All of the available publications currently permit unlimited readers to access them at once and from anywhere in the world, provided the user is logged into iDiscover.
Cambridge staff and students now have access to nearly 10,000 Russian ebooks, through a newly started subscription to BiblioRossica’s Leading Russian Scholarly Presses package.
Languages across Borders 