League of Nations Archives Are Now Digital

Over a hundred years after the it’s inception, the League of Nation’s documents are now available digitally.  The Total Digital Access to the League of Nations Archives Project, or LONTAD, recently completed it’s five year long process of restoring and digitizing its expansive collection. These archives, once housed in the same Palais des Nations in Geneva as the League itself was, were all but inaccessible the public previously.  The nearly 15,000,000 pages of material, covering the period from 1919 to 1945, is now available to researchers, historians, students, and everyone in between. 

The core collection contains the following:

  • Original files of the League of Nations
    • The Secretariat Fonds that comprises all the material produced or received at the headquarters of the League of Nations.
    •  the Refugees Mixed Archives Group (“Nansen Fonds”); 
    • Commission files (records of external League offices and entities).
    • League of Nations Library Map Collection
    • League of Nations Photograph Collection
    • League of Nations Registry Index Cards
  • Private Papers
    • International Peace Movements, 1870-, including the papers of Bertha von Suttner (1843-1914) and Alfred Fried (1864-1921), and the International Peace Bureau (1892-1951); 
    • Private Papers (1884-1986) contain materials from League of Nations officials and persons or associations related to the League of Nations, such as Sean Lester, Thanassis Aghnides, the International Association of Journalists, etc.  

Even though its time as an organization was short, the League of Nations marked a historic development in internationalism, peace and diplomacy. Never before had the governments of the world formally banded together with the primary intention of peace. The League, either despite of or because of its inability to prevent WWII, set the ground work for the United Nations as we know it today. By examining the legacy of League, scholars can see not only the front-end, headline events of international diplomacy but also the more delicate and intricate processes that built the high-profile decisions. Additionally, the archive will be a rich source for the study of peace and peace movements, especially considering the League’s juncture in time, bookended by two brutal wars. 

Besides the original publications, files, minutes and other formal documents of the League, the archive will also contain private papers of League officials and individuals involved in the International Peace Movements. Of particular interest are the papers of Bertha von Suttner, a notable author, peace activist and organizer, and the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Her ideas on peace and its place in International Relations can be succinctly summed in her Nobel acceptance speech; “The contents of this agenda demonstrate that, although the supporters of the existing structure of society, which accepts war, come to a peace conference prepared to modify the nature of war, they are basically trying to keep the present system intact”. While she passed before the start of WWI, her work was influential to the League’s ideals and formation, as it was the first step in changing the war-accepting structure of society. 

The archive holds significance past the study of history. As stated by Moin Karim, UNOPS Director for Europe and Central Asia Region, “This is a flagship project. At a time in which many question the UN’s ability to maintain international peace and security, it is important that we do more to understand the challenges of our predecessor institution”(UNOPS News and Stories). In a time where our problems inaccurately seem unprecedented, the most valuable tools at our disposal are the records that show how familiar these problems are and how our predecessors fail or succeeded at addressing them. Researchers can find historical responses to the issue of Palestine, flu outbreaks, human trafficking, the legal status of refugees, natural disasters and more that can better enrich their understanding of the issue, its context, and help shape the solution.  The user interface for the archive is intuitive and simple to use, so take some time and see what the League of Nations was all about.

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Reflecting on the Anniversary of the WWI Armistice

The International and Area Studies Library has spent the past several months posting news articles, videos, and other resources related to the WWI armistice, which celebrates its 100-year anniversary on Sunday, November 11. The research about WWI is by no means exhaustive, but much information has been gathered over the last 100 years that can shed light on this period of time. Here are some of our favorite UIUC resources we’ve found relating to the end of WWI and the armistice.

World War I in the University Archives: The University and WWI:

This library guide details UIUC Archives holdings related to WWI, including information about the University’s Student Army Training Corps (SATC) and students who served. Materials can be searched for in the Archives Database.


A Guide to Researching WWI in the Library:

This library guide provides information about and links for searching library print collections, newspaper databases, and other digital collections for WWI research.

Red Cross Work on Mutilés, At Paris (1918):

In 2015, SourceLab published a digital edition of a film showing the work of Anna Coleman Ladd, an American sculptor who made facial prosthetics for World War I veterans. SourceLab is a group of UIUC faculty and students who create digital editions of historical materials. Learn more here.

1918: The year without a Homecoming

This post describes how WWI and the rampant spread of Influenza affected the UIUC campus in 1918. This story includes several photographs and documents from the University Archives.

This list highlights just a few of the great resources at UIUC for the study of WWI! For more information about researching WWI, contact the Global Studies Librarian, Lynne Rudasill, rudasill@illinois.edu,or visit the Center for Global Studies. 

 

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Happy Halloween! Celebrate with Horror Manga

On Wednesday, October 31st, Billy Tringali – a graduate student in the School of Information Sciences – will present a guest lecture as part of the IAS Library’s Halloween Spooktacular.

Read on for an interview with Tringali about his presentation on manga horror master Junji Ito:

comic panel

A Junji Ito panel

Can you describe what attendees can expect from your lecture?

The work of manga artist Junji Ito can most easily be defined as a hybrid between the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft and the body horror of Cronenberg’s The Fly. His work is terrifying, disgusting, and occasionally darkly comedic.

This short lecture will focus on how Ito expertly fuses together his writing and artistic style to create a deeply nihilistic world, crafting an overarching argument in his short stories about the inability for world to be change in a positive way.

It sounds very dark and upsetting – but I promise it will be fun!

comic panel

A Junji Ito panel

How did you become interested in Junji Ito?

I first found out about Ito through his wildly popular The Enigma of Amigara Fault. It’s a fantastic short story about the addictive nature of finding your place in the world, and how much we are willing to bend and twist ourselves to fit into the boxes society presents us with.

Ito, of course, interprets this literally [see following image].

comic panel

A Junji Ito panel

In starting my research into Ito I was shocked to find that there has not been much written about such a genius author, which really doubled-down my desire to analyze his work!

The Enigma of Amigara Fault is actually so popular on the internet it was referenced in the children’s show Steven Universe!

Gif from Steven Universe – https://imgur.com/gallery/ZxhhXR7

What draws you to this genre, and what are your related research interests?

I’ve been a big fan of anime and manga since I was in about 8th grade. It’s a medium that can be used to create such deep, inspiring stories, and I really don’t think it’s looked upon or elevated in scholarship the way it can be. With the growth of comics’ studies, I’m hoping anime and manga studies will begin to pick up more steam in the academe!

This interest also led me to found the The Journal of Anime and Manga Studies, an open access journal I was able to build with help from the University Library’s Scholarly Communication and Publishing department. The journal will be launched this spring!

comic panel

A Junji Ito panel

What are some interesting things that have come up in this research?

There is so much room for growth!

Anime and manga studies has been approached from so many different angles by so many different scholars, but there is still a massive amount of work that can (and should!) be done in this field.

I encourage anyone interested in studying anime and manga to simply dive in!

comic panel

A Junji Ito panel

You recently presented about this work at a conference – what is it like to be scholar of popular culture?

Every important piece of media, at one point, has been popular culture.

All of Shakespeare’s plays. Every Sherlock Holmes novel. It’s all been popular culture. Even literary classics like Dante’s Inferno could be seen as self-insert fanfictions.

The only difference is time.

Scholars of popular culture are on the front lines of public engagement, and I feel that analyzing popular culture is a great way to introduce students to theories, histories, and methodologies while also elevating the brilliant work happening all around us today.

Billy Tringali will present his lecture on Junji Ito at 3 pm Wednesday, October 31st at the International and Area Studies Library. Happy Halloween!

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Why I Think You Should Meet Elizabeth Wickes

By Matt Hendrick

If you’ve ever lost a folder or spent hours trying to find an old file, Elizabeth Wickes (who works with Heidi Imker, the Head of the Research Data Service (RDS), and her colleagues Elise Dunham, Colleen Fallaw, and Qian Zhang) can help you. Elizabeth is a Data Curation Specialist at the RDS who helps researchers and students learn how to properly organize and manage their data.

Help from Elizabeth can even be the reason you receive or do not receive federal funding. If you ever plan on applying for a federal grant, you will likely need to create a Data Management Plan (DMP). If you have no idea what a Data Management Plan is, the RDS can help you. If you do know what a DMP is, but don’t know how to create one or want some feedback on a draft, the RDS can help you.

Last semester, I had the opportunity to interview Elizabeth and ask her about the RDS, Data Management Plans, and the best practices for organizing data.

  1. What is the Research Data Service?

The Research Data Service is dedicated to helping Illinois researchers manage and steward their data throughout the research process. When I say data, I can mean whatever you are using to base your conclusions off of. People often say “I don’t have data.” You do. Everyone has data. You are basing your conclusions on something. This can be books, specimens, interviews, statistics, etc.

  1. What services does the RDS offer?

We have three core services: data management workshops and consultations, Data Management Plan creation help, and the Illinois Data Bank. Our workshops and one-on-one consultations are usually the best place to get started with data management and gives us an opportunity to discuss your specific situation and give you personalized advice on how to manage your data. You can book a personal consultation at http://go.illinois.edu/bookRDS. The RDS also holds regular workshops (in collaboration with the Scholarly Commons) covering various data management and data publishing topics. In addition, we offer customized data management talks or workshops to fit the needs of teams of all sizes and disciplines. We’ll be talking about the Illinois Data Bank and Data Management Plans later on.

  1. Who can use the RDS and attend its workshops?

Everyone is welcome to attend the RDS workshops; no I-Card is required. The RDS is designed to help research and data management from all individuals, at all stages. Undergraduates, graduates, and faculty have access to all of the RDS’s services.

  1. How should researchers handle data that is either confidential, private, or proprietary?

We help a great many researchers with sensitive data, but our advice is very dependent on the type of data and the context. For example, for scholars with sensitive humanities data the RDS recommends our institutional Box for storage. UIUC’s Box is approved for IRB storage and, when permissions are set up appropriately, it is one of the easiest ways to manage and share IRB data with a project team. When it comes to sensitive data and human subjects, the IRB is always the final word. We would not give the same recommendation to scholars with HIPAA data (health data), as that has very explicit legal requirements. Whatever issues you may have with sensitive data, we will walk you through the process and give you advice tailored to your specific situation.

  1. What are the best practices of data management?

Among the two most important data management steps an individual can take are: keeping secure backups of all their data (Box or an encrypted external hard drive) and maintaining personal computer security (see our library’s “Computer Security Tips” and the Technology Service’s information on security for more information).

Some general best practices for organizing your data include: having consistent and unique file names, avoiding special characters and spaces (use underscores instead), and including a version number and date for all your files (with consistent formatting). See the RDS’s pages on “Saving and Sharing Your Data” and “Organizing Your Data” for more detailed information. We also offer private consultations to help you develop and implement an organizational system.

  1. What is a Data Management Plan (DMP) and why would someone create one?

In 2013, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a memo mandating that federally funded research programs must be open access and have a plan for data management (beginning in 2015). Today, many federal grant applications must have a Data Management Plan (DMP). So if you haven’t submitted a grant in the last couple years, this will probably be new to you.

While DMP requirements do differ from funder to funder, they are usually one or two page documents that answer the specific questions of the funder. The general purpose is to explain how you will manage, secure, acquire, and share your data. You will also have to explain what your data will be, how you’ll manage it during the project, and how you’ll store it after the project is done. The level of detail they expect varies by funder and some funders place higher levels of emphasis on the DMP. Some funders consider it a key element of the grant portfolio, while others do not. You cannot simply presume the DMP is not going to matter; an increasing number of funders who initially didn’t place a great deal of emphasis on the DMP, now do.

It is primarily faculty who are applying for these funding opportunities and are required to create a DMP, but we are seeing more grad students and post-docs needing to submit ones for fellowship project applications. Also, any graduate student who is planning to remain in academia and applies for a federal grant will have to create a Data Management Plan. Sometimes graduate assistants working for a faculty member may also be involved in this process, but every team works differently. The DMP creation plan process can also be valuable for a team as they create new projects, because it makes you ask and answer many tough questions. Pain points can be discovered early on in the process rather than during crunch times.

  1. How can RDS with the process of creating a Data Management Plan?

If you send us your proposal, the call you are responding to, and a draft of your Data Management Plan, we will take a look at all those documents and provide you with expert advice. We have an entire network of subject specialists that we bring in who know your subject and your funders. The process is entirely confidential and is as simple as sending out an email to researchdata@library.illinois.edu. We also have a short list of best practices that goes over the biggest pain points we see coming in on a regular basis.

  1. What is the difference between IDEALS (Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship) and the Illinois Data Bank?

IDEALS and the Illinois Data Bank are our institutional repositories for research and scholarship. You can think of them as sibling repositories. They are intentionally separated as it is more efficient. In short, IDEALS is primarily designed for texts (dissertation, theses, papers, presentations, manuscripts, etc.) while the Illinois Data Bank is primarily designed and optimized for data. This method of dividing our data storage allows us to maximize the metadata that is being transmitted; essentially, this makes your data more discoverable and reusable.

  1. What can scholars of the humanities deposit in these repositories?

You cannot deposit anything that is under copyright or data that is sensitive (such as protected human subject data), but this is something that we can help you navigate. You do have the ability, as an alternative, to deposit your derivative data files. For example, if you are doing topic modeling on copyrighted novels, you can’t deposit the novels, but you can deposit the topic modeling information that you have created and are basing your research on. Additionally, you can deposit any field notes that you have; you can de-identify these to whatever extent you wish (so long as you are in compliance with the IRB and your participant consent).

  1. Do you have any general advice for students regarding the RDS and our library in general?

I want to encourage all students to look at all the services the library offers outside of just the collections. The library is a lot more than simply books. In addition to the RDS, we have a many experts and services that can help with a broad range of issues related to your research. I also advise students and faculty to take advantage of our library’s consultation services; these can be a tremendous resource and they are often overlooked.

The Research Data Service is on the south side of the third floor of the Main library in the rooms of 310-312. They do not have a patron-facing area and usually use the neighboring Scholarly Commons area for their meetings. You can set up a meeting by calling their phone number (217-300-3513) or sending an email to researchdata@library.illinois.edu.

In addition to Elizabeth Wickes, the staff of the RDS includes Heidi Imker (Director), Colleen Fallaw (Research Programmer), Elise Dunham (Data Curation Specialist), and Qian Zhang (CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow in Data Curation with CIRSS).

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Statement regarding Executive Order barring refugees and citizens of seven countries

To echo the University of Illinois President’s statement regarding the Trump Administration’s order barring some immigrants, the International and Area Studies Library shares the University’s value of international students, scholars, exchanges, and perspectives as a central aspect of the University’s mission.  The International and Area Studies Library would like to reiterate to the campus community that it provides a safe space for students, scholars, and the community to study, research, and discuss any topic or subject, including the current policies regarding immigrant and refugee access to the United States.

In addition, the individuals at the International and Area Studies library are able to provide all students, scholars, and members of the community with access to important resources to learn about and make sense of the rapidly changing policy environment that relates directly to many regions of the world and issues of international importance.  From print and electronic resources to human expertise, the International and Area Studies Library is available to assist you.

Support for Research on the Topic and Regions Affected

If you are specifically interested in learning more about the seven countries targeted by the Trump Administration, please contact Laila Hussein, Middle East and North African Studies Librarian.  Professor Hussein has expertise in Middle East and North African Studies and Human Rights. She can also help people interested in accessing and understanding contemporary research and journalistic resources from these regions in Arabic and Persian.

Assurance of Privacy and Confidentiality

The University Library’s faculty and staff are professionally obligated and committed to maintaining patron confidentiality.  No question you ask, resource you use, or book you read will be shared without your consent (Library Privacy Policy).

Librarians can also provide advice and instruction on privacy enhancing technologies that you may wish to consider using in online research and electronic communications.  (See Library Freedom Project: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/guest-post-library-freedom-project-bringing-privacy-and-anonymity-libraries or Heritage Foundation for more information on privacy and technology issues: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2004/05/technologies-that-can-protect-privacy-as-information-is-shared-to-combat-terrorism)

Contacts

To contact an expert in Middle East Studies, get help with research on this topic, or learn more about services, resources, and advice that the Library can offer please contact:

International and Area Studies Library: Room 321, Main Library; 1408 W. Gregory Dr.; Urbana, IL, (217) 333-1501 Email: internationalref@library.illinois.edu

For specific visa advice, and counseling, please contact International Student and Scholar Services

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: International Student and Scholar Services, (217) 333-1303 (isss@illinois.edu)

Steve Witt
Associate Professor
Head, International and Area Studies Library
Director, Center for Global Studies
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Champaign, Illinois 61820 USA
Phone: 217.265.7518
Email: swwitt@illinois.edu

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