New literary resources

Citation

Latham, B. (2010), "New literary resources", Reference Reviews, Vol. 24 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/rr.2010.09924cag.001

New literary resources

Article Type: Eye on the net: new and notable From: Reference Reviews, Volume 24, Issue 3

The University of Oxford has a variety of digital collections archiving a range of unique materials. In 2008, it launched The First World War Poetry Digital Archive (www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/) which we recently reviewed at length in these columns (RR 2010/71). This digital archive makes a variety of resources relating to the literature of the First World War freely available. The multimedia online database contains primary source material (e.g. letters, manuscripts of poems) as well as images, audio, and film from the Imperial War Museum. Typifying the emerging trend in the development of open access digital archives, the creators have recognized its educational significance, and accordingly provided instructional tutorials aimed at undergraduates. There is also a community section where users can submit their own materials.

The latest addition to the archive comes in the form of the Seigfried Sassoon Collection (www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/collections/sassoon). Sassoon, born to a Jewish father and Roman Catholic mother in Victorian England, served as a second lieutenant in the First World War. Though a brave and successful soldier, Sassoon became disillusioned with the war due to the politics back in England and the death of several of his close friends in combat. His war poetry earned his name a place on the slab in Poets’ Corner at Westminster Abbey. The Digital Archive provides his poems as a list that can be browsed, or users can also search the Collection. Various photographs of the poet are also included. The manuscripts and other materials come primarily from the collections of Oxford’s Bodleian Library, the University of Cambridge, the New York Public Library, and the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

The Harry Ransom Center is also the driving force behind another recently-launched resource: The Edgar Allan Poe Digital Archive (http://research.hrc.utexas.edu/poedc/). In 2009, a Bicentennial exhibition on Poe’s works, From Out That Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Edgar Allan Poe, was held by the Ransom Center in partnership with the Small Special Collections Library of the University of Virginia. The digital collection created to accompany this exhibition contains images of all of Poe’s manuscripts and letters held by the Ransom Center, as well as other selected archival materials, such as books annotated by the author, sheet music based on his poems, and portraits.

The collection can be browsed by category (e.g. Letters to Poe) and a descriptive catalogue of the Poe manuscripts is also available, in addition to an inventory of the Ransom Center’s entire Poe collection. A keyword search feature is also provided, as are links out to other Poe websites, such as the Poe Society of Baltimore.

Bethany LathamInternet Editor, Reference Reviews , Assistant Professor and Electronic Resources/Documents Librarian, Jacksonville State University, Jacksonville, Alabama, USA