McGill Library is now a supporting member of the Open Library of the Humanities (OLH).

The Open Library of Humanities is an academic-led, gold open-access publisher. With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, OLH covers its costs by payments from an international library consortium, rather than any kind of author fee.  McGill’s support means journals such as Glossa, Architectural Histories, Digital Medievalist among others can publish open access without charging any author fees.

Authors who publish in OLH journal retain their article copyright and have the rights to link, share and disseminate published article copies freely.

For more information, contact the Library’s Scholarly Communications Librarian, Jessica Lange  (Jessica.Lange@mcgill.ca or 514-398-2895).

Montreal and Shanghai became sister cities in 1985 and have engaged in multiple cultural exchanges throughout the years. Mayors of Montreal and Shanghai have visited each other’s city many times during the past 33 years.

The Shanghai Library Delegation headed by Mr. Deming Chen, Vice Director of Shanghai Library, visited McGill University Library on October 26, 2006, and “Open the Window” Ceremony was held. Since then, the co-operative project “Window of Shanghai” at McGill University Library has been carried out till today.

East year we receive gift books from Shanghai library which include many subjects, such as arts, literature, history, Chinese language and culture. Such books are especially useful for students who want to read books in Chinese and publications about China to enhance their Chinese language proficiency or to learn more about Chinese culture.

We are currently launching the “Window of Shanghai” exhibit on the Touch Table in the Redpath Library. On the home page, you’ll see four “windows”.

For example, by clicking on the first window, you’ll find some titles of our newly received books. And by selecting a title, you’ll get the record of the book and its call number.

The 2nd window is for e-books and the 3rd is for e-newspapers which you’ll be able to read online. The last window is about the past events since the establishment of the “Window of Shanghai” since 2006.

Please come to check it out, and send us some feedback if you’d like to make some comments or suggestions.

Did you know that McGill Library has purchased the Adam Matthew Digital database Empire Online? This archive of primary source materials is a compilation of resources from the world’s major research libraries and archives, including the British Library, providing information on colonialism and imperialism spanning five centuries: from 1492 to 2007.

Do your research interests touch on the events or themes of the European colonial period? The 70,000 pages in Empire Online can be searched to locate source materials “charting the rise and fall of colonial empires from the explorations of Columbus and Captain Cook, the missionary movement and the exhibitions of the 19th century, to decolonisation in the second half of the 20th century and debates over American imperialism.” [1]

The database contains many different document types from exploration journals to letter-books, periodicals, government documents, missionary papers, travel writing, slave papers, memoirs, fiction and folk tales. The curators have provided content with a European and non-European perspective and all continents are covered. Each of the sections of the database can be searched together or separately. The database sections are:

Section I. Cultural contacts, 1492-1969,
Section II. Empire writing and the literature of empire,
Section III. The visible empire,
Section IV. Religion and empire,
Section V. Race, class, imperialism and colonialism, 1607-2007.

Did you know that McGill scholars have contributed to this resource? Professor Elizabeth Elbourne, of McGill’s Department of History has written one of several thematic essays introducing and contextualizing the database content. In her essay “Religion and Empire, with special reference to South Africa and Canada”[2], Elbourne introduces the source material recording the work of the Church Missionary Society in southern Africa and in northern Canada. 

Included in the database are the journals of Rev. George Barnley, the first Christian Missionary Society envoy to do mission work in northern Quebec among the James Bay Cree, during the mid-nineteenth century. (Pictured above)

Would this resource be useful for your teaching next year? Your explorations of this rich database will uncover both manuscripts, images and printed materials. Take a tour  here: http://www.empire.amdigital.co.uk/Introduction/TakeATour. If you would like to incorporate Empire Online’s content into your course, McGill’s librarians can work with you to help make this a reality – just drop us a line.

[1] http://www.empire.amdigital.co.uk/Introduction/NatureAndScope

[2] Elbourne, Elizabeth. “Religion and Empire, with special reference to South Africa and Canada.” Empire Online. 2006. Accessed April 24, 2018. http://www.empire.amdigital.co.uk/Essays/ElizabethElbourne