Brandeis Library has purchased access to the following resources:
- Archives of Sexuality and Gender: Community and Identity in North America Offers perspectives on society, sexual identity, community building, and gender issues. This archive focuses on North America, with collections from Canada, the United States, and Mexico. It presents social history that casts a spotlight on diversity, equity, and inclusion with materials that cover activism and social justice issues, highlight disabilities in Queer society, offer information around alternative sexualities, document interactions between sexuality and religion, and represent diverse ethnic communities across North America.
- Behind the Scenes of the Civil Rights Movements Primary source materials documenting civil rights activism by the everyday citizens of Black, Latine, Indigenous, and Asian American/Pacific Islander communities. Includes letters, correspondence, demonstration plan outlines, transportation logs and plans, meeting minutes, programs from worship services, and photographs, primarily from the 1950s and 1960s. Brandeis Library is one of the financial supporters of this open access resource.
- East View: Ukrainian Crossroads E-books Collection Captures a historical period when the definition of “Ukraine” shifted constantly and competing ideas about Ukraine, Ukrainians, and their future fueled vibrant debates and violent clashes in the first half of the 20th century. Includes history books, polemical essays, tour guides, economic statistical publications, archival collections, political instruction manuals, memoirs, and works on folk art and daily life.
Additionally, the Library has added a subscription to ComAbstracts.
- ComAbstracts With coverage back to 1915, this database contains more than 120,000 abstracts of articles and books published in the primary professional literature of the communication(s) field as well as bibliographic records.
Additionally, the Library has purchased backfiles of the following Wiley journals:
- Annals of Neurology
- Chemical Biology & Drug Design
- European Journal of Neuroscience
- Journal of Experimental Zoology
- Organic Magnetic Resonance (currently known as Magnetic Resonance in Chemistry)
- Psychophysiology
Please reach out to your subject librarian to discuss using these databases in your teaching and research.
Winners pictured, clockwise beginning with upper left: Dahlia Ramirez, Noa Emi, Danielle Wallner, Hannah Laffer, Yair Berzofsky, Adah Anderson, Gustavo Nascimento, and Irina Znamirowski.
The Brandeis Library's Research Excellence Prize recognizes students who apply sophisticated information literacy skills to the selection, evaluation, and synthesis of sources for a research project. The 2024 winners were selected from a pool of outstanding student submissions in nine categories:
“This project has taught me that sometimes when conducting research, you need to adapt and change your approach to the process. For me, this often took the form of finding new ways to speak to incarcerated people, a population I deemed to be integral to my work but also unfortunately, very controlled and hidden from the public. Throughout this research, I adapted to conversing with many from this community online and was happy to speak to a few over the phone, despite my initial aim being to meet with each person individually and in person. More than anything, this project showed me that sometimes the processes in place that limit your ability to conduct research are results in and of themselves, as my work demonstrated that Massachusetts DOC regulations for corresponding with those inside prison are made to seclude this population from those on the outside. Overall, the library resources helped me immensely throughout this research project and others I have completed in the past.” -Adah Anderson
“This was a philosophical-literary thesis, but Irina also used as primary source the Brandeis First Folio which helped her make a central argument about interaction between characters on the interestingly relevant basis of line layouts — e.g. whether lines seemed to be shared between two speakers or whether one speaker was completely done before the second speaker began.” -William Flesch, Professor of English
“noa's essay constitutes an extended and important discussion of incest and rape in two Caribbean novels. noa marshals sometimes quite difficult theoretical arguments to connect abuse in the present to past and ongoing implications of violent colonial patriarchy for constructions of masculinity and femininity for the descendants of African enslavement and South Asian indentureship: these are questions that persist into the present. noa both sifts through and constructs a convincing theoretical argument, and applies it carefully to well-selected portions of both novels.” -Faith Smith, Marta F. Kauffman Chair in African and African American Studies and Professor of English
"Hannah put a huge amount of effort into her senior thesis about climate change in Chile over the past 4 decades. In particular, I was impressed with how she managed to wrangle a ton of climatic data from across the country, including temperature, precipitation, wind and sea surface temperature. Getting some of this data even required her to request it from the Chilean Navy! She then essentially taught herself how to code in R." -Sally Warner, Associate Professor of Climate Science
"Dahlia's UWS paper represents research and writing at the highest level. Dahlia explores color theory and the psychology of grief through her original analysis of Dancing at the Pity Party, a powerful but understudied graphic memoir. Dahlia challenges conventional attitudes around ‘teenage’ and ‘adult’ literature, and persuasively argues that bright colors, simplistic compositions, and humor are appropriate elements for comics about 'serious' topics." -Rafael Abrahams, University Writing Seminar Instructor and PhD Student in History
"Undertaking this project has transformed my approach to research in several ways. I have developed a deeper appreciation for the role of library resources and services in supporting academic inquiry and scholarship. I have also learned to navigate complex information landscapes more effectively, utilizing advanced search techniques and evaluation criteria to locate and assess sources. Moreover, I have understood the value of free brainstorming and the use of a canvas that allows you to analyze your sources and personal ideas as if you were seeing them in a third-person view. Ultimately, I gained confidence in my ability to tackle research challenges and overcome obstacles in order to get a message across and, hopefully,inspire those who are reading it." -Gustavo Nascimento
"She uncovered major silent film sources, some of which are shockingly provocative both for Russia and Italy. Her work is deep, digitally grounded, and highly original." - Alice A. Kelikian, Associate Professor of History
"This was a wonderful use of Brandeis's resources--a senior essay about our First Folio, in which Abby took full advantage of the archive and its opportunities for her to understand something important about Shakespeare's publication history and reception. She studied the Folio and its digital copy very carefully, and brought new attention to this amazing resource." Ramie Targoff, Jehuda Reinharz Professor in the Humanities
"Yair is a master at digital photography, lighting, set design and music." -Alice A. Kelikian, Associate Professor of History
Congratulations to all of the winners!