The Royal Society has made its its digital archive accessible free of charge until 1 February 2009. The archive, which contains the Royal Society’s publications since the foundation of Philosophical Transactions in 1665, is an amazing resource for historians of science and technology. The archive is normally only available to subscribers as part of one of the Royal Society’s ‘packages’ of journals. Not only does it include a great variety of current science and technology, but it also includes papers from great scientists, such as Humphry Davy and William Herschel.

Enjoy this resource while they are free!

The New York Times reported this last week on the financial difficulties that higher education institutions are experiencing and today I went to a mentee workshop for the Oxford Career Center’s “Career Accelerator” program. What do these two things have in common? Well, with universities as diverse as Arizona State and Brown cutting jobs, it is important that I have every advantage possible to get a job in this slightly tougher atmosphere. Read the rest of this entry »

The House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (HCPP) includes over 200,000 House of Commons sessional papers from 1715 to the present (2003/4 session), with supplementary material back to 1688. The HCPP delivers page images, searchable full text, and downloadable PDFs for each paper.

The British Official Publications Collaborative Reader Information Service is a slightly smaller archive but has a much-better developed system of indexing, which makes it easier to use. Unfortunately, it does not cover all papers, like the HCPP does, instead it covers the important papers from sources other than just Parliament.

Anybody doing political, social, or economic history will find these two sites a wonderful resource and a true treasury trove of information!

We stayed up until nearly 3a watching election results. Then, we got up to watch the last of the results this morning after only a few hours of sleep. But all of that is worth it because America has turned a corner!

Today, when I woke up, the entire world has a different view of the United States and for that I am proud to be an American. Since I moved out of the USA, the quality of Americans have been questioned because of our choices in past elections, but that has changed! At times, America is slow to get started, but now that it has woken up! Hopefully that means that we can return to being a force for good throughout the world … and restore the former glory and power of the USA.

Over the last few months, an academic storm has been brewing over! The European Science Foundation has been working on their new initiative - a European Reference Index for the Humanities. In other words, their goal is to rate every journal in every subject as either A, B, or C. Essentially, in British vocab, they are creating a league table with three divisions … and, as one can imagine, that makes a lot of people uncomfortable. To that point, more than 50 journals in the history of science, technnology, and medicine from around the world have requested to be removed from the list. They are all publishing a joint editorial highlighting the issues that these leaders in the field have with this process .. which are many and very valid! I completely agree with all of the points raised in the editorial. The whole process has been a travesty and I hope that the pressure brought to bear will be successful by either having the journals removed from the listing or, more dramatically, having the whole process scraped!

If you have any opinions of your own, feel free to speak your mind below or on the Royal Society’s website.

Check out the Museum of the History of Science’s Flickr page.  It is full of nice images taken around the MHS by tourists.  Some of them are very interesting and some of them are just okay …

Yesterday was the parade to celebrate the medals won by Team GB in China, and it was a great day for the athletes. For me, watching on TV, the highlight of the coverage was the speech of Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London. It was short, witty, upbeat, and emphasized the achievements of the athletes. Here are a couple of the better quotes:

About the achievements of the athletes:

There is no wrong time of the day or the week to commemorate the best cycling result by any team ever in the history of sport, or the incredible achievements of our rowers, British rowers, British swimmers, and sailors, who together have produced the most extraordinary British aquatic triumph since Horatio Nelson won the Battle of Trafalgar itself.

About London 2012:

I know the sceptics will say or that we can’t match the Chinese or deliver a fantastic Olympics in a recession and I say to them that it is exactly because of that downturn that we must seize the chance to rejuvenate, regenerate part of East London, that has been neglected for decades, with all the potential that brings for jobs and growth … I think it’s going to knock China for six from that point of view, not necessarily just from the facilities.

For a complete script of the speech, see this page.

The Scientific Instrument Society’s 25th Anniversary Exhibition is currently on exhibit at the Museum of the History of Science until 26 September 2008. It is a loan exhibition from members of the SIS of 50 items from 20 private collectors. The web version of the exhibition contains images of all the items plus the descriptions written by the collectors and the exhibits two curators. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, I attended the History Faculty’s session on finding a job after completing the DPhil. In some ways it was pretty basic, but it was also very helpful because it reminded me of a couple of important things. Here are a few of my notes from the session …

On a career in journalism:

• There is no defined career path and most who are successful mix & match various jobs to form a career.
• Networking is the key to this career.

Moonscope was a special exhibition at the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford from 24 May - 16 September 2007 and now the web version of it is available - Web Version of Moonscope. It showcased the work of two artists, Rebecca Hind (a local Oxford watercolorist) and John Russell (an 18th century painter/polymath). John Russell was both a royal portrait painter and a keen amateur astronomer, with very good connections - including to Sir William Herschel and Nevil Maskelyne. The Russell material was a selection of pencil drawings made of the moon, his main astronomical interest, and the large 5ft pastel of the moon that normally hangs in the stairwell of the MHS.

The web version has the full complement of watercolors and pencil drawings that were on exhibit in the Old Ashmolean.

PDF version of the Broadsheet that went with this exhibition (John Russell Material)