Retired Faculty Services

Welcome to the Rice Retired Faculty Digital Library. This resource is offered to assist in the intellectual and professional development of certain retired faculty to explore online a variety of topics that may be of interest. Online research tools currently include:

• ABI/INFORM Collection - "The database features thousands of full-text journals, dissertations, working papers, key business and economics periodicals such as the Economist, country-and industry-focused reports, and downloadable data. Its international coverage gives researchers a complete picture of companies and business trends around the world (ProQuest)." The ABI/Inform Collection is made up of several products: ABI/INFORM Global, ABI/INFORM Trade and Industry and ABI/INFORM Dateline.
• Academic Complete from Ebook Central - Full-text access to more than 150,000 multidisciplinary ebooks with unlimited, multi-user access.
• AM Explorer - This is a searching tool that is a quick and convenient way to search Adam Matthew's "unique primary source products for the social sciences and humanities (Adam Matthew)."
• African American Communities - "Focusing predominantly on Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, New York, and towns and cities in North Carolina this resource presents multiple aspects of the African American community through pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records, reports and in-depth oral histories, revealing the prevalent challenges of racism, discrimination and integration, and a unique African American culture and identity (Adam Matthew)."
• Age of Exploration - "Delve into the earliest voyages of Vasco da Gama, the opening of trade with the Spice Islands, the colonisation of the Americas and Australasia, the search for the Northwest and Northeast Passages, and finally the race for the Poles with this robust primary source collection. Featuring rare manuscript and early printed material, highly illustrated maps and documents, diaries and ships' logs from some of the most well-known voyages in history, this collection provides access to key events in the history of European maritime exploration from c.1420-1920 (Adam Matthew)."
• American History, 1493-1945 - "This unique collection documents American History from the earliest settlers to the mid-twentieth century. It is sourced from the Gilder Lehrman Collection, one of the finest archives available for the study of American History (Adam Matthew)." It consists of Module I: Settlement, Commerce, Revolution and Reform: 1493-1859 and Module II: Civil War, Reconstruction and the Modern Era: 1860-1945.
• American Indian Histories and Cultures - "Explore manuscripts, artwork and rare printed books dating from the earliest contact with European settlers right up to photographs and newspapers from the mid-twentieth century. Browse through a wide range of rare and original documents from treaties, speeches and diaries, to historic maps and travel journals (Adam Matthew)."
• American Indian Newspapers - "From historic pressings to contemporary periodicals, explore nearly 200 years of Indigenous print journalism from the US and Canada. With newspapers representing a huge variety in publisher, audience and era, discover how events were reported by and for Indigenous communities (Adam Matthew)."
• American West - "Through a mixture of original manuscripts, maps, ephemeral material and rare printed sources, this collection will act as a dynamic teaching and research resource. Papers of early pioneers, explorers and hunters are well represented, including items such as the original manuscript journal and papers of James Audubon. Canada and the Pacific Northwest are well documented including accounts of the Gold Rush and of the landscape... The growth of railway and road networks can be explored through maps and through records of key railroad companies. Emigrants guides, manuscript travel journals, store catalogues, illustrations and maps enable scholars to understand the phenomenon of Westward expansion... There are rich resources for the study of Texas, Mexico and the South. Literary and historical works - as well as contemporary newspapers and posters - enable a better understanding of the real and mythic West - with first hand accounts of the lives of vigilantes and outlaws (Adam Matthew)."
• Americana - Americana is a single platform for searching "millions of pages of essential American history, literature and culture. Uncover captivating manuscript and typescript letters, diaries, notebooks, journals, newspapers, plus incredible art works, illustrations, photographs, video and 360-degree objects (Adam Matthew)."
• Area Studies: Japan - This collection includes "a wide range of sources, by writers, diplomats, tourists, businessmen, missionaries and others, documenting the political, cultural and social history of Japan from 1400 to the 20th century (Adam Matthew)."
• China, America and the Pacific: Trade & Cultural Exchange - "Explore an extensive range of archival material connected to the trading and cultural relationships that emerged between China, America and the Pacific region between the 18th and early 20th centuries. Manuscript sources, rare printed texts, visual images, objects and maps document this fascinating history (Adam Matthew)." It consists of Module I and Module II.
• Church Missionary Society Archive - "Scholars of missiology and global history will find this varied archive an invaluable research resource. It includes records of both the CMS and the many other missionary societies which have become associated or amalgamated with it over its lifetime (Adam Matthew)."
• Church Missionary Society Periodicals - "From its roots as an Anglican evangelical movement driven by lay persons, this resource encompasses publications from the CMS, the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society and the latterly integrated South American Missionary Society. Documenting missionary work from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, the periodicals include news, journals and reports offering a unique perspective on global history and cultural encounters (Adam Matthew)."
• Colonial America - "Colonial America makes available all 1,450 volumes of the CO 5 series from The National Archives, UK, covering the period 1606 to 1822. CO 5 consists of the original correspondence between the British government and the governments of the American colonies, making it a uniquely rich resource for all historians of the period (Adam Matthew)." It consists of:
  • Module I: Early Settlement, Expansion and Rivalries
  • Module II: Towards Revolution
  • Module III: The American Revolution
  • Module IV: Legislation and Politics in the Colonies
  • Module V: Growth, Trade and Development
• Confidential Print: Latin America, 1833-1969 - "The Confidential Print series, issued by the British Government between c. 1820 and 1970, is a fundamental building block for political, social and economic research... This collection consists of the Confidential Print for Central and South America and the French and Spanish-speaking Caribbean. Topics covered include slavery and the slave trade, immigration, relations with indigenous peoples, wars and territorial disputes, the fall of the Brazilian monarchy, British business and financial interests, industrial development, the building of the Panama Canal, and the rise to power of populist rulers such as Peron in Argentina and Vargas in Brazil (Adam Matthew)."
• Confidential Print: Middle East, 1833-1969 - "The Confidential Print series, issued by the British Government between c. 1820 and 1970, is a fundamental building block for political, social and economic research...This collection consists of the Confidential Print for the countries of the Levant and the Arabian peninsula, Iran, Turkey, Egypt and Sudan. Beginning with the Egyptian reforms of Muhammad Ali Pasha in the 1830s, the documents trace the events of the following 150 years, including the Middle East Conference of 1921, the mandates for Palestine and Mesopotamia, the partition of Palestine, the 1956 Suez Crisis and post-Suez Western foreign policy, and the Arab-Israeli conflict (Adam Matthew)."
• Defining Gender - This resource "explores the study and analysis of gender, leisure and consumer culture; one of the most vibrant areas of social, cultural and intellectual research, transcending traditional disciplinary boundaries. This exciting collection of original source material from the Britsh archives enriches the teaching and research experience of those studying history, literature, sociology, education and cultural studies from a gendered perspective (Adam Matthew)." Key topics can be explored in five thematic areas: 1) Conduct and Politeness; 2) Domesticity and the Family; 3) Consumption and Leisure; 4) Education and Sensibility; and 5) The Body.
• Eighteenth Century Drama: Censorship, Society and the Stage - "Delve into the theatrical world of eighteenth century society and explore how the Larpent plays reflect the politics of the time, the role of women, views on race and religion, opinions on empire, and European and British history. Eighteenth Century Drama features three distinct areas:
  1. Primary source documents, the focus of which is the Larpent collection of plays and Anna Larpent's Diaries;
  2. The London Stage Database;
  3. The Biographical Dictionary Database (Adam Matthew)."
• Eighteenth Century Journals (1685-1815) - "Bringing together rare journals printed between c. 1685 and 1835, this resource illuminates all aspects of eighteenth-century social, political and literary life. Topics covered are wide-ranging and include colonial life, provincial and rural affairs, the French and American revolutions, reviews of literature and fashion throughout Europe, political debates, and London coffee house gossip and discussion (Adam Matthew)."
• Empire Online - "This resource brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of 'Empire' and its theories, practices and consequences. The materials span across the last five centuries and are accompanied by a host of secondary learning resources including scholarly essays, maps and an interactive chronology (Adam Matthews)." The documents are organized in five sections: 1) Cultural Contacts, 1492-1969; 2) Empire Writing and the Literature of Empire; 3) The Visible Empire; 4) Religion and Empire; and 5) Race, Class and Colonialism, 1607-2007.
• Everyday Life & Women in America c.1800-1920 - This database "is a resource for the study of American social, cultural and popular history, providing access to rare primary source material from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History, Duke University and The New York Public Library. It comprises thousands of fully searchable images of monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes. The collection is especially rich in conduct of life and domestic management literature, offering vivid insights into the daily lives of women and men, as well as emphasizing contrasts in regional, urban and rural cultures (Adam Matthew)."
• FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals - "The International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF), indexes more than 500,000 articles from 340 of the world's foremost academic and popular film journals, dating from 1972 onward. The database also incorporates the International Index to TV Periodicals; Treasures from the Film Archives, which identifies silent film holdings in archives around the world, and the International Directory of Film/TV Documentation Collections. The full-text version of the index, FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals Plus, adds searchable full text from many of the most important FIAF journals, including full-text coverage of FIAF index records from key titles such as Sight and Sound and Positif. Both resources provide in-depth, discipline-specific indexing and abstracts, with full searching functionality and citation management support (ProQuest)."
• Foreign Office Files for China, 1919-1980 - "The six parts of this collection make available all British Foreign Office files dealing with China, Hong Kong and Taiwan between 1919 and 1980:
  • 1919-1929: Kuomintang, CCP and the Third International
  • 1930-1937: The Long March, civil war in China and the Manchurian Crisis
  • 1938-1948: Open Door, Japanese war and the seeds of communist victory
  • 1949-1956: The Communist revolution
  • 1957-1966: The Great Leap Forward
  • 1967-1980: The Cultural Revolution"
  "Due to the long-unique nature of the relationship between Britain and China, these formerly restricted British government documents, consisting of diplomatic dispatches, letters, newspaper cuttings, maps, reports of court cases, biographies of leading personalities, summaries of events and diverse other materials, provide unprecedented levels of detail into one of the most turbulent centuries of Chinese history (Adam Matthew)."
• Foreign Office Files for Japan, 1919-1952 - "This collection provides significant insight into the events between First World War victory and Second World War defeat, crucial to understanding the political journey of Japan during this period (Adam Matthew)." Fondren owns access to the following modules:
  • Module I: Japanese Imperialism and the War in the Pacific, 1931-1945
  • Module II: Occupation of Japan, 1946-1952
  • Module III: Japan and Great Power Status, 1919-1930
• Foreign Office Files for the Middle East, 1971-1981 - "This collection is an essential resource for understanding the events in the Middle East during the 1970s. It addresses the policies, economies, political relationships and significant events of every major Middle East power. Conflicts such as the Arab-Israeli War, the Lebanese Civil War and the Iranian Revolution are examined in detail, as are the military interventions and peace negotiations carried out by regional and foreign powers like the United States and Russia. Commercial interests are also scrutinised, with in-depth analyses of Middle East nations' economic stability and reviews of international arm sales policies. The activities of oil producing nations such as Saudi Arabia are closely monitored, with particular reference to the Gulf States and members of OPEC. Utilizing the significant collection of diplomatic correspondence, minutes, reports, political summaries and personality profiles, students and researchers can explore a decade characterized by conflict (Adam Matthews)."
• Frontier Life: Borderlands, Settlement & Colonial Encounters - "Journey to the far reaches of settler frontiers across the globe. Through a large array of unique documents, this multi-archive collection captures the lives, experiences and colonial encounters of people living at the edges of the Anglophone world from 1650-1920. It ranges across the various colonial frontiers of North America before touching on the settlers of Southern Africa, Australia and New Zealand (Adam Matthew)."
• Global Commodities: Trade, Exploration & Cultural Exchange - "This resource brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of global commodities in world history. The commodities featured in this resource have been transported, exchanged and consumed around the world for hundreds of years. They helped transform societies, global trading operations, habits of consumption and social practices (Adam Matthew)."
• Grand Tour (The) - "The Grand Tour was a rite-of-passage for many aristocratic and wealthy young men of the eighteenth century: a phenomenon which shaped the creative and intellectual sensibilities of some of the eighteenth century's greatest artists, writers and thinkers. These accounts of the English abroad, c1550-1850, highlight the influence of continental travel on British art, architecture, urban planning, literature and philosophy. This collection of manuscript, visual and printed works allows scholars to compare a range of sources on the history of travel for the first time, including many from private or neglected collections. We include letters; diaries and journals; account books; printed guidebooks; published travel writing; paintings and sketches; architectural drawings and maps. The Grand Tour is a wonderful source of information about daily life in the eighteenth century, highlighting such everyday issues as transportation, money, communications, food and drink, health and sex. The material also covers European political and religious life, British diplomacy; life at court, and social customs on the Continent, and is an invaluable resource for the study of Europe's urban spaces. There is a wealth of detail about cities such as Paris, Rome, Florence and Geneva, including written accounts and visual representations of street life, architecture and urban planning (Adam Matthew)."
• India, Raj and Empire - "Explore the history of South Asia between the foundation of the East India Company in 1615 and the granting of independence to India and Pakistan in 1947, through the wonderfully rich and diverse manuscript collections of the National Library of Scotland (Adam Matthew)." It includes original manuscript material, comprising diaries and journals, official and private papers, letters, sketches, paintings and original Indian documents.
• Jewish Life in America, c1654-1954 - This database "will enable you to explore the history of Jewish communities in America from the arrival of the first Jews in the 17th century right through to the mid-20th century. This rich collection brings to life the communal and social aspects of Jewish identity and culture, whilst tracing Jewish involvement in the political life of American society as a whole (Adam Matthew)." It includes a chronology, interactive maps, essays by leading scholars, a selection of American Jewish Year Book articles, a visual resources gallery, biographies and links to other useful websites.
• Literary Manuscripts: 17th and 18th Century Poetry from the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds - "This path-breaking project offers literary scholars the opportunity to examine complete facsimile images of 190 manuscripts of 17th and 18th century verse held in the celebrated Brotherton Collection... These manuscripts can be read and explored in conjunction with the powerful BCMSV database... The database includes first lines, last lines, attribution, author, title, date, length, verse form, content and bibliographic references for over 6,600 poems within the collection (Adam Matthew)."
• London Low Life: Street Culture, Social Reform and the Victorian Underworld - This database "is a full-text searchable resource, containing colour digital images of rare books, ephemera, maps and other materials relating to 18th, 19th and early 20th century London. It is designed for both teaching and study, from undergraduate to research students and beyond. In addition to the digital documents, London Low Life contains a wealth of secondary resources, including a chronology, interactive maps, essays, online galleries and links to other useful websites (Adam Matthew)."
• Macmillan Cabinet Papers, 1957-1963 - This resource "provides complete coverage of the Cabinet conclusions (minutes) (CAB 128) and memoranda (CAB 129) of Harold Macmillan's government, plus selected minutes and memoranda of policy committees (CAB 134)... This collection also includes 165 files from the Prime Minister's Private Office (PREM 11). These provide an important supplement to the Cabinet records and cover all aspects of policymaking (Adam Matthew)."
• Medieval Travel Writing - This collection "presents manuscripts of some of the most important works of European travel writing from the later medieval period. The chief focus is on journeys to central Asia and the Far East, including accounts of travel to Mongolia, Persia, India, China and South-East Asia... It features a number of medieval maps such as the famous 'Beatus' and 'Psalter' maps, individual manuscript illuminations, and some modern translations of key travel texts. It should become an indispensable source for scholars of medieval travel, geography, exploration, trade, literature, and the new field of medieval postcolonial studies. (Adam Matthew)."
• Meiji Japan - This database contains the archive of Edward Sylvester Morse (1838-1925). He "was a great polymath – notable for his work in natural history, ethnography and art history – but, perhaps most famous for his work in bringing Japan and the West closer together (Adam Matthew)."
• Migration to New Worlds - ""Migration to New Worlds explores the movement of peoples from Great Britain, Ireland, mainland Europe and Asia to the New World and Australasia. Split across two modules, and including collections from 26 archives, libraries and museums, Migration to New Worlds brings together the movement and memories of millions across two centuries of mass migration (Adam Matthew)." It consists of Module I: The Century of Immigration and Module II: The Modern Era.
• Perdita Manuscripts: Women Writers - "This resource is produced in association with the Perdita Project based at the University of Warwick and Nottingham Trent University. 'Perdita' means 'lost woman' and the quest of the Perdita Project has been to find early modern women authors who were 'lost' because their writing exists only in manuscript form (Adam Matthew)." This resource includes over 230 manuscripts from 15 libraries and archives in the UK and North America: works of poetry, religious writing, autobiographical material, cookery and medical recipes, and accounts. Contextual essays from academics working in the field, as well as biographical and bibliographical resources, are also included.
• Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975 - "Popular Culture explores the dynamic period of social, political and cultural change between 1950 and 1975. The resource offers thousands of colour images of manuscript and rare printed material as well as photographs, ephemera and memorabilia... Explore our interactive chronology to learn a wealth of fascinating facts, take a tour of our visual resources, and watch video footage to experience the spectacular sights and sounds of the period for yourself (Adam Matthew)." Includes Modules I and II.
• Project Muse - Project Muse provides full-text online access to more than 300 high quality humanities, arts, and social sciences journals from 60 scholarly publishers. The complete content of each and every issue is online -- including all charts, graphics and images -- with articles available in HTML or PDF formats.
• Romanticism: Life, Literature & Landscape - "Discover the working methods of Romantic poets and trace the evolution of celebrated verse in this powerful digital resource. Presenting the manuscript collections of the Wordsworth Trust, this digital collection offers ... unique access to the working notebooks, verse manuscripts and correspondence of William Wordsworth and his fellow writers, including Dorothy Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey and Robert Southey... All of the documents are digitised in colour and include: verse manuscripts, printed manuscripts, prose manuscripts, printed verse, correspondence, diaries, travel journals, autograph albums, guide books, fine art and maps (Adam Matthew)."
• Shakespeare in Performance - This database "showcases rare and unique prompt books from the world-famous Folger Shakespeare Library. These prompt books tell the story of Shakespeare's plays as they were performed in theatres throughout Great Britain, the United States and internationally, between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries (Adam Matthew)."
• Slavery, Abolition, and Social Justice - "Bringing together primary source documents from archives and libraries across the Atlantic world, this resource allows students and researchers to explore and compare unique material relating to the complex subjects of slavery, abolition and social justice. In addition to the primary source documents there is a wealth of useful secondary sources for research and teaching; including an interactive map, scholarly essays, tutorials, a visual sources gallery, chronology and bibliography (Adam Matthew)."
• Socialism on Film: The Cold War and International Propoganda - "This collection of films from the communist world reveals war, history, current affairs, culture and society as seen through the socialist lens. It spans most of the twentieth century and covers countries such as the USSR, Vietnam, China, Korea, much of Eastern Europe, the GDR, Britain and Cuba (Adam Matthew)." It consists of:
  • Module 1: Wars & Revolutions
  • Module 2: Newsreels & Cinemagazines
  • Module 3: Culture & Society
• Victorian Popular Culture - "An essential resource for the study of popular entertainment in America and Europe, Victorian Popular Culture welcomes readers into the darkened halls, small backrooms and travelling venues that hosted everything from spectacular shows and bawdy burlesque to spiritualist séances and magic. Victorian popular culture is encapsulated in a range of materials selected for their interesting nature and rarity from a variety of world-renowned archives and libraries. Resources include rare books, periodicals, moving images, posters, photographs, scrapbooks and ephemera such as postcards, programmes and newspaper cuttings.
  • Module 1: Spiritualism, Sensation and Magic
  • Module 2: Circuses, Sideshows and Freaks
  • Module 3: Music Hall, Theatre and Popular Entertainment
  • Module 4: Moving Pictures, Optical Entertainments and the Advent of Cinema (Adam Matthew)."
• Virginia Company Archives - "This online project presents those Ferrar Papers which are in Magdalene College, Cambridge... In addition, transcripts of those documents that throw light on the Virginia Company of London are included, as are the four volumes of The Records of the Virginia Company of London (Washington, D.C., 1906-35), edited by Susan Myra Kingsbury (Adam Matthew)."