Gounod in the Midi

New for 2012 is a series focussing each month on a particular collection of material within SAS-Space.

For January, we're featuring a new collection of critical writing on a series of key performances of Charles Gounod's 1864 opera Mireille in the Roman arenas of the Midi: at Arles. Nîmes, St-Rémy and Marseille between 1899 and 1914. The performances are of particular note as the opera itself is set in Provence, and indeed Act 2 takes place outside the same amphitheatre at Arles.

It is part of the larger Francophone Music Criticism project, in association with the Institute of Musical Research.

History in Education: dispersed data delivery in action

I'm delighted to be able to draw attention to the data collection of the History in Education project, recently concluded at the IHR. The project investigated the major curricular changes in history over the last century, and also the changing experience of history at the chalkface in English state schools.

It is another successful example of a research project within the School of Advanced Study using SAS-Space as a solution for their needs in data management and preservation, whilst maintaining their own distinct web presence which draws content from SAS-Space as it needs it. The collection of interviews and digitised samples of schoolwork can be accessed in two ways. Users of the project site can access the data using a browse interface tailored to the project. Users of SAS-Space can access the whole collection directly, and may also stumble upon data from the project whilst searching SAS-Space for something else.

Another example of this dispersed model is the Francophone Music Criticism project, whose data is similarly held in SAS-Space, but also accessed from the project's own search engine.

Workshop event: Open Access journal publishing, Oct 20th

We've now finalised the programme for this afternoon workshop at Senate House; see the programme and further details.

The event is aimed at editors of existing printed journals who are contemplating a move towards online publication, and also at those planning to start a new journal title. There will be presentations from both a prospective new journal, and from the staff of Amicus Curiae, currently making the transition from print alone to a print-and-web solution.

There will also be an opportunity for delegates to discuss issues of common concern, including business models, marketing and staffing.

The event will also see the launch of our new SAS Open Journals system, in which Amicus Curiae will be the first journal.

To book a place, contact Peter.Webster@sas.ac.uk

How well used is SAS-Space ?

One of the recent new features of SAS-Space is the provision of download statistics for the materials that it holds, as PDF or in other formats. These are now shown at the foot of each item's page, under the Statistics tab. There is also a digest for the whole site.

Champion resource remains the Register of Research in Commonwealth Countries, from the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, the various files for which were downloaded 2371 times since October 2010.

The most read paper was The Limits of Self-awareness by Michael Martin, originally published in Philosophical Studies in 2004, with 359 downloads. (See the graph below)

The top dissertation was from the Institute for the Study of the Americas: Mulherres do morro: the representation of women in Brazilian funk (2009), with 343 downloads.

The installation of the IRStats software add-on for Eprints that makes this possible was generously funded by the Dean's Development Fund of the School. It was installed for us by Richard and Rory from ULCC's Digital Archives team.

Creating unique collections: Caribbean history and culture

Part of the remit of the School is to provide services that would not be replicated elsewhere in the UK university sector. One example of how SAS-Space can help is the growing collection of scholarly resources for the history and culture of the Caribbean. There are two standard reference works for Commonwealth research from the Institute of Commonwealth Studies: Theses in Progress and the Register of Commonwealth Research.
However, these are complemented by other resources: a collection of articles on West Indian music in the Caribbean and England from an Associate Fellow of the ICwS; and articles on nineteenth and twentieth century history of Cuba from an Associate Fellow and a graduate student of the Institute for the Study of the Americas.

New articles from Amicus Curiae

Six articles from issue 84 of Amicus Curiae, the journal of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies / Society for Advanced Legal Studies are now available. This is in preparation for the journal's transition to the JISC-funded SAS Open Journals system.

Berlioz's 'Benvenuto Cellini'

A new collection of newspaper articles relating to the controversial Paris premiere of Berlioz's opera are now live.