Search
Loading
December 11th, 2020
There is a planned ITAP outage upgrade on December 27th which will also affect access to Libraries accounts and eResources.
Any Library systems that require authentication will be unavailable during this time, some examples include:
• My Library Account
• Illiad (ILL)
• Book Requesting
• Off-campus access to electronic materials
Library search will continue to work, but access to electronic materials or the requesting of books will not be possible.
Filed under: Alerts: ExpiredDecember 7th, 2020
We talked to Annemarie Steidl, the author of On Many Routes: Internal, European, and Transatlantic Migration in the Late Habsburg Empire.
On Many Routes is about the history of human migration. With a focus on the Habsburg Empire, this innovative work presents an integrated and creative study of spatial mobilities: from short to long term, and intranational and inter-European to transatlantic.
Q: What is the main goal of this project, and what motivated you to write it?
Annemarie Steidl: The main goal of the book is to contextualize transatlantic migrations from the Habsburg Empire to the United States of America before World War I with the high spatial mobility in the Habsburg Empire to other European regions. Up to five million people from Late Imperial Austria and the kingdom of Hungary went overseas. However, more Austrian and Hungarian nationals moved from western parts of the kingdom to Lower Austria or from the province of Galicia to the grain fields in the German Reich.
I started the yearlong project with an analysis of transatlantic ship passenger manifests from the Norddeutsche Lloyd in Bremen and from the Hamburg America Line. During the research it became obvious that the route to the Americas was only one of various migration routes that people from Austria-Hungary took during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.
Q: How did you define “migration” and why did you make this distinction?
Steidl: In this book I define migration in its widest sense. This includes all changes of residence irrespective of distance moved or duration of any given stay. A broad definition of migration is one that includes all permanent or semi-permanent changes of residence with no restriction on distance moved. It can describe short-term and permanent changes of residence, as well as patterns of seasonal, circular, or permanent mobility, such as vagrants or traveling people. The term “migration” is applied to international and administrative border crossings, as well as short-distance and transoceanic movements.
Modern territorial states and their bureaucracies create categories like internal and international migration, because administrators need of clear guidelines by which to classify migrants in order to document, tally, and ultimately officially manage these individuals. These administrative classification systems not only obscure the complex daily practices that comprise migration, but diminish the term migration itself by defining it in terms of the state. In order to overcome nationally confined approaches, we have to plead for an open and integrative definition of migration that allows for the incorporation of international and continental as well as temporary movements like seasonal migrations within rural regions, the movement of agricultural servants from villages to towns, and those of traveling artisans and highly mobile soldiers during wartime. New approaches call for an integration of mobility studies concepts and migration research, which would help to loosen strong current associations between the term migration and nation-state logic. This can broaden our understanding of spatial mobility as a fundamental aspect of social life.
Q: Are there any common misconceptions about migration in this area that you were able to dispel? Or shed a more clear light on?
Steidl: Traditional research on transatlantic migration from the Habsburg Empire most often only focused on one direction – from the empire to overseas – and broadly neglected high mobility rates. Studies on spatial mobility within Imperial Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary, as well as seasonal migrations to the German Empire, Switzerland, or the Romanian Kingdom, were not studied with the transcontinental moves. However, a local study of migration patterns of people from Vorarlberg, the westernmost part of Imperial Austria, gives a clearer picture of these dynamics. Since the late sixteenth century people from the Bregenzerwald and Montafon travelled to German speaking areas in the Southwest, like Alsace Lorrain and as far as Paris, France, mostly as temporary construction workers. These people were well connected, with information networks in the German and French speaking world. In addition, Vorarlberg’s textile production was part of a greater network in Switzerland around St. Gallen. Weavers and their families used to move back and forth within this greater region. It is no surprise that Vorarlbergers were among the first to leave for the new continent through French Harbors in the first half of the nineteenth century, as they already had migration experiences within families and circles of friends.
Traditional migration experiences increased the likelihood of transatlantic migration during the nineteenth century, while other traditions of spatial mobility coexisted. Mobility rates were already high before new transportation and communication technologies were introduced during industrialization. The building of railroads, increased use of steamships, stable communication with regions overseas through mail, and bank services contributed to the enormous growth of transatlantic mobility rates since the 1880s. During the second half of the nineteenth century Vorarlberg’s textile production flourished and provided many jobs for Italian speaking women and men from Trento and other northern Italian regions across the border. While we saw an in-migration from other Habsburg Provinces and the Kingdom of Italy, Vorarlberg’s textile entrepreneurs moved whole factories overseas to New York and New Jersey, taking many of their laborers with them. Vorarlberg was neither a region of emigration nor immigration, rather a province with a high turnover, with people coming and going.
In the last decades before World War I, most Habsburg transatlantic migrants originated from economically weaker provinces such as Galicia, the northwestern areas of the Hungarian Kingdom, and Mediterranean coastal regions in the south of the empire. Due to this most historical research focused on economic distress as the main cause for leaving one’s home country. However, as is the case in Vorarlberg and other prosperous regions of the Habsburg Empire, people more often left for chances in the United States labor market rather than because of abject poverty. These men and women were attracted to America by an incredibly fast-growing economy, new opportunities: cheap land and well-paid jobs in heavy industry, mines, and urban factories.
Q: Why study migration in this manner? What does it tell us about these people?
Steidl: This book deals with a lot of numbers and its analysis is mostly based on statistical data: population censuses in Late Imperial Austria, the Kingdom of Hungary, and the United States of America, ship passenger manifests from the Norddeutsche Lloyd and the Hamburg America Line, as well as local surveys on spatially mobile people. The Habsburg Empire stretched over more than 676,600 square kilometers and, in 1910, housed more than 51 million people who spoke more than ten official languages, followed different denominations and religions, were part of different social classes, and inhabited economically heterogeneous provinces, counties, and smaller regions. The intention of the mostly macro-level focus and quantitative methodical approach was to link migrations of all Habsburg regions to economic, social, and cultural characteristics. This way, I was able to cultivate a more complete understanding of the timing, selectivity, and nature of various migration patterns. I am well aware that this is a rather poor substitute for everyday practices of people living and migrating in the Habsburg Empire. Whenever possible, statistical result will be illustrated by local and individual examples. However, even this flawed evidence offers indication of the extent to which individuals were mobile in the past and that migration was a common experience for a large portion of the population in Late Imperial Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary. Some questions can only be answered by numbers.
Thank you to Annemarie! If you would like to know more about this book you can get your own copy or request it from your local library.
You can get 30% off these titles and any other Purdue University Press book by entering the code PURDUE30 when ordering from our website.
Filed under: PurduePressDecember 1st, 2020
By: Matthew N. Hannah
Over the past year or so, I’ve been engaged in a series of conversations facilitated by Indiana Humanities in Indianapolis, which brought together various digital humanities (DH) efforts around the state to discuss future possibilities for collaboration. As a result of those conversations, and under the leadership of James Connolly (Ball State), I’m excited to announce the official launch of the Indiana Digital Humanities Initiative (INDHI). Like our colleagues in New York and California, who have successfully organized impressive statewide DH consortia, INDHI will foster statewide collaboration and coordination around events, initiatives, institutes, grants, and programming across the state of Indiana. As a discipline, DH represents a wide range of scholarly and public efforts to apply computational methods to the study of the humanities and to encourage humanistic forms of critique around issues of technology and media.
As many of you know, Purdue has been developing its digital humanities efforts over the past few years with an impressive array of projects, grants, conferences, and, most recently, curricula. We have become a hub for innovative projects in the humanities in keeping with Purdue’s Boiler spirit. Joining INDHI as a founding member will allow us to showcase our efforts and partner with equally impressive initiatives at other universities, public libraries, humanities centers, historical societies, and cultural organizations in a shared spirit of teaching and research in this exciting area. As with our leadership in the Big Ten Academic Alliance, Purdue’s partnership with INDHI promises to foreground our commitment to place Indiana square in the middle of DH work in the region, a place Indiana has long been comfortable in as the “Crossroads of America.” Read more about INDHI at our official press release and see what our colleagues are up to at our founding members’ projects page. There is so much great work happening around the state.
We have already begun to see the fruits of our collaboration with the launch last year of the Digital Humanities Research Institute at Notre Dame and St. Mary’s College, an event that brought scholars from around the region to South Bend for an intensive weeklong workshop. Purdue had planned a similar event for May, with a follow-up planned at Indiana University in 2021, but the impacts of COVID-19 have delayed us from hosting it. In organizing these institutes, we came to imagine new possibilities for coordination at a higher level. Such collaborative efforts will only grow as we formalize our relationship with other institutions and initiatives across Indiana and around the region, and we anticipate that Indiana will soon become the crossroads of digital humanities.
INDHI’s advisory board meets regularly to plan new initiatives and outreach events in both digital and public humanities around the state. The initial phase of the consortium is comprised of DH representatives from Ball State University, Indiana University, Purdue University (Fort Wayne), Purdue University (West Lafayette), University of Indianapolis, University of Notre Dame, the Indianapolis Public Library, The Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI), the Indiana Humanities Center, and many more. In future expansions of the consortium, we hope to reach out to historical societies, museums, and colleges around the state in an effort to develop a robust statewide project meeting the needs of humanities scholars and teachers.
If you have a digital project, teach a course, or know about an initiatives you’d like to see featured on the Purdue University West Lafayette projects page, please contact Matthew Hannah at hannah8@purdue.edu.
Filed under: faculty_staff, general, press_releaseNovember 25th, 2020
This article originally appeared in Provost Akridge’s November 2020 edition of Momentum: A Web Letter from the Office of the Provost.
Having recently announced that Purdue University and its regional campuses have entered negotiations with major for-profit academic publisher Elsevier, Libraries will prioritize broadening campus understanding of alternative means of accessing scholarly information, focusing on access over ownership. For the uninitiated, access over ownership means that, in the face of the rising cost of subscription resources, the necessity of stringent University budgets, and the growing demand for electronic resources over print, library systems like ours must redirect funds away from physically owning a wide breadth of scholarly information and focus instead on opportunities that expand timely access to articles, journals, and other materials, regardless of whether or not they are housed in Purdue University’s collections.
“Our commitment to access over ownership is not directly tied to our relationship with Elsevier or any other publisher,” said Beth McNeil, Dean of Libraries and Esther Ellis Norton Professor of Library Science. “But rather, an acknowledgement of a cultural, philosophical, and financial shift towards sustainable scholarship, which, in turn, does impact our priorities in terms of negotiating with publishers.”
Libraries is encouraging faculty, students, staff and researchers to begin exploring means of alternative access for the scholarly resources they need now. “In most instances, there is more than one way to find information,” Dean McNeil said, “but most of us stop at whatever method is most familiar or convenient. Our goal is to assist campus so that everyone understands that sustainable methods of accessing information are not inherently more difficult, and that any extra effort is worth the payoff.”
New or rapidly expanding methods of attaining sustainable scholarly information include the use of free browser plug-ins like Unpaywall to locate open access copies of articles. Faculty, staff, and student researchers can also search for open access copies using indexes/repositories like Google Scholar, PubMed Central, SHARE, arXiv, and SSRN to locate resources beyond Purdue’s collections. They can request a copy directly from the author via social networking sites like Academia.edu or by messaging the author on twitter. If full text is not available, article requests can be submitted through Interlibrary Loan (ILL) where requests will be fulfilled as quickly as possible.
“Above all, we want campus to understand that this is a positive way forward,” Dean McNeil said. “You will be able to access the information resources you need and Libraries will help you locate them. The path may change, but the destination remains the same.”
Filed under: collections, faculty_staff, general, Open_Access, press_releaseNovember 24th, 2020
In October 2020, we announced that Purdue University and its regional campuses had entered into contract negotiations with major for-profit academic publisher, Elsevier. Today, we write to you with an update on these negotiations and next steps.
Our negotiation team met with Elsevier again this fall. After multiple rounds of proposal reviews that failed to address our needs, and much discussion and deliberation, we concluded that the only appropriate path forward was to commit to a one-year, title-by-title contract for 2021. This decision was informed by local usage data, as well as data from Unsub, a tool that identifies high value titles and projects future spending. The great news is that Unsub revealed a high rate of usage retention under the new title-by-title model. West Lafayette campus is projected to retain access to 90% of its usage, while Purdue Northwest and Fort Wayne are projected to retain 88% and 85% of their usage, respectively.
Our next step is to hear from interested faculty, staff, and students across all three Purdue campuses. Libraries recently launched a libguide focused on sustainable scholarship, and we encourage you to visit, review the list of proposed Elsevier cancellations, and provide feedback using the Qualtrics form included on the libguide. Your needs and insights are important to us as we make final decisions regarding which Elsevier titles will be renewed and retained. The deadline to submit feedback is Friday, December 4, 2020.
We expect to deliver our final list of retained subscription titles to Elsevier in January 2021.
As always, we want to assure you that Libraries will provide campus with alternative means to access the content that our students, staff, researchers and faculty need to meet their information resource needs. Please visit our sustainable scholarship libguide, which includes information on how to get started with alternative access tools and resources.
Filed under: collections, general, press_releaseNovember 15th, 2020
Purdue University Press is offering a 40% discount on ALL TITLES through the end of 2020, ending at 11:59 p.m. ET on December 31. All you need to do is enter code 21GIFT40 when ordering directly from our website.
From gorgeous coffee-table books on Purdue & Indiana to stirring biographies on some of the most important figures in the space race; books for green thumbs and naturalists to stories of survival in times of war, persecution, or health crisises; Purdue University Press has plenty of books that would make wonderful gifts for your loved ones or yourself!
Here’s a guide to just a few of our favorite gifts:
Filed under: PurduePress
November 12th, 2020
This post is part of the blog tour hosted by the Association of University Presses in celebration of University Press week. To see the rest of the posts in the tour, click here.
The theme of University Press Week this year is Raise UP, this theme highlights the role that the university press community plays in elevating authors, subjects, and whole disciplines that bring new perspectives, ideas, and voices to readers around the globe. The theme for today’s blog tour is “scientific voices”, and we’re highlighting our book series New Directions in the Human-Animal Bond.
The idea that animals can have a positive impact on humans is not a new one. Pets are an accepted part of life and at places like college campuses you’ll often see events held with puppies, kittens, and other adorable animals intended to boost morale during especially stressful times. Unfortunately, many still balk when they hear terms like “emotional support animal”, when reactions can range from citing a “lack of scientific evidence” to accusing owners of using the term to get a “normal pet” into places they would otherwise not be allowed.
Fortunately, research continues to be done that can provide powerful testimonial to the relationship between humans and animals. Our book series New Directions in the Human-Animal Bond provides an outlet to this research, and sheds light on the many benefits that it can offer.
“There are many important things that have emerged from recent human-animal interaction research.” said Maggie E. O’Haire, Associate Professor of Human-Animal Interaction at Purdue University and one of the series editors of the series. “For me, I am always excited to see quantifiable metrics for behavior and physiology that are impacted by interactions with animals. For example, our recent work identified that veterans with service dogs show a different pattern in their stress response hormone cortisol.”
O’Haire contributed a chapter to last year’s book Transforming Trauma: Resilience and Healing Through Our Connections With Animals edited by Philip Tedeschi and Molly Anne Jenkins. A perfect example of the positive impact the series makes, the authors examine research developments, models, and practical applications of human-animal connection and animal-assisted intervention for diverse populations who have experienced trauma.
“In a field that has historically been characterized by a reliance on emotional intuition, our goal is to bring strong science to understanding how, why, and when the human-animal bond can influence human mental health and wellness. The Purdue University Press series on New Directions in the Human-Animal Bond offers exciting and engaging scholarly resources to address the latest topics in the field.” said O’Haire. “I am also constantly inspired by the pioneering work of our Center Director, Dr. Alan Beck, who has paved the way to answer many of the questions current scholars pose.”
Beck, the director of the Center for the Human-Animal Bond at Purdue University, is a longtime expert on the dynamic relationship between people and animals and how each influences the psychological and physiological state of the other. He’s also the other series editor for New Directions in the Human Animal Bond and has even contributed a few books himself.
“All indications are that companion animals play the role of a family member, often, a member with the most desired attributes. Ordinary interactions with animals can reduce blood pressure and improve survival after a heart attack. Animal contact can improve mood, encourage exercise, and help people better deal with stress. Pets, for some, afford increased opportunities to meet people, while for others; pets permit people to be alone without being lonely.” said Beck. “When done correctly, the interaction benefits both people and the animals—a bond that is significant and mutual.”
Clearly there is no shortage of interaction between humans and animals, and our series seeks to represent the breadth of research being done. Some recent books include:
The impact of this research is clear, and Purdue University Press hopes our role in lifting up the voices of these researchers and authors will help many reap the benefits. Alan Beck may put it best.
“People benefit from their relationship with nature and the living world, and for many it is their relationship with tame and domesticated animals. Every culture has some version of the relationship. Our companion animals permit people to continue to enjoy their inborn desires to nurture throughout their life.”
You can learn more about Maggie O’Haire’s research with veterans and service dogs here.
You can get 30% off human-animal bond books, and all other Purdue University Press titles by entering the code PURDUE30 at checkout on our website.
Other #UPWeek blog posts:
University of Alabama Press
#RaisingUP Scientific Voices with NEXUS Series
A conversation with series editors Alan Marcus, Alexandra Hui, and Mark Hersey
Purdue University Press
Raising Up the Science behind the Human-Animal Bond
Princeton University Press
Six Impossible Things
Ingrid Gnerlich
Bristol University Press
The Relevance of Science Communication in the Era of COVID
Claire Wilkinson
Indiana University Press
Science and Critical Thinking
Donald R. Prothero
University of Toronto Press
Science Writing in a Time of Crisis
Mireille F. Ghoussoub
Scientific Trust in the Era of COVID-19
Lacey Cranston
Vanderbilt University Press
Stories from the Natural World
A book trailer for Between the Rocks and the Stars
Columbia University Press
6 Things to Consider before Applying to PhD Programs
Ashley Juavinett
Oregon State University Press
Rebuilding Ecological Resilience
Bruce A. Byers
November 10th, 2020
Purdue University Press is pleased to announce the list of new books for our 2021 Spring/Summer season. This new season of books will cover subjects including Jewish studies, central european studies, the human-animal bond, literature, and modern weather sciences.
In Reginald Sutcliffe and the Invention of Modern Weather System Science author Jonathan E. Martin shines a light on the understudied and underappreciated life of Reginald Sutcliffe, perhaps the foremost British meteorologist of the twentieth century and a pioneer of modern weather systems science.
This season also adds to our New Directions in the Human-Animal Bond series with Pioneer Science and the Great Plagues: How Microbes, War, and Public Health Shaped Animal Health by Norman F. Cheville and The Canine-Campus Connection: Roles for Dogs in the Lives of College Students edited by Mary Renck Jalongo. Pioneer Science and the Great Plagues covers the plagues from 1860 to 1960, highlighting the essential role that veterinary science played the strategies we learned to defeat them. The Canine-Campus Connection provides authoritative, evidence-based guidance on bringing college students and canines together in reciprocally beneficial ways.
Refuge Must Be Given: Eleanor Roosevelt, the Jewish Plight, and the Founding of Israel by John F. Sears details the evolution of Eleanor Roosevelt from someone who harbored negative impressions of Jews to become a leading Gentile champion of Israel in the United States, adding to our large collection of books on Jewish studies.
To learn more about these books and view a complete list of all forthcoming titles download the seasonal catalog or subscribe to our newsletter at www.press.purdue.edu/newsletter.
Filed under: PurduePress
November 4th, 2020
On November 16, 2020, The Wiener Holocaust Library at the University of London will welcome Rabbi Baroness Julia Neuberger, Dr. Rachel Polonsky, Dr. Mika Provata-Carlone and musician Robert Max to a virtual discussion of music, art, and how they can sustain humans in recognition of the recent publication of Escaping Extermination: Hungarian Prodigy to American Musician, Feminist, and Activist by Agi Jambor, edited by Frances Pinter.
Agi Jambor wrote this memoir shortly after the close of World War II and it is now being published for the first time. From the hell that was the siege of Budapest to a fresh start in America, Jambor describes how she and her husband escaped the extermination of Hungary’s Jews through a combination of luck and wit.
You can learn more about the event and register for free here.
Details available at this link on how to order the book with a discount from our UK-based distribution partner Eurospan. USA-based buyers can find our domestic discount information below.
Agi Jambor was born in 1909 in Budapest, Hungary, the Jewish daughter of a wealthy businessman and a prominent piano teacher. A piano prodigy, she was playing Mozart before she could read and at the age of twelve made her debut with a symphony orchestra. She studied under Zoltán Kodály and was a pupil of Edwin Fischer at the Berlin University of the Arts. Arriving in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1947, she was widowed shortly thereafter. She became a professor of classical piano at Bryn Mawr College and was briefly married to the actor Claude Rains from 1959 to 1960. Agi’s life in America was full of intellectual and musical abundance. She was active in opposing McCarthyism and fought against the Vietnam War, giving proceeds from concerts to her charity that bought food for Vietnamese children. She was much loved by students as a charming yet feisty role model. She died in 1997 in Baltimore.
You can get 30% off of Escaping Extermination and any other Purdue University Press book by ordering from our website and using the discount code PURDUE30 at checkout.
Filed under: PurduePressNovember 2nd, 2020
ILS 59500: Information and Communication Strategies for the Technical Workplace
Meeting Times: DIS
Instructors: Margaret Phillips, Dave Zwicky, Michael Fosmire
This course emphasizes the importance and role of strong information and communication skills (written, oral, graphical, and interpersonal) in a successful engineering or technology career. Search, evaluate, access, use, and synthesize technical information in order to present information clearly, ethically, and effectively in a variety of professional formats.
1) Articulate the importance and role of strong communication skills in a successful engineering or technology career
2) Recognize the different kinds of technical publications and the processes by which they are created
3) Efficiently search, access, use, and synthesize relevant and appropriate technical literature
4) Critically evaluate information and determine whether it is applicable to the task at hand.
5) Present information clearly and effectively in a variety of technical and professional formats, following appropriate style guides, citing sources, and considering the ethical use of information.
6) Develop effective knowledge management practices, including literature and data management.
