Posted on September 6, 2018
On Monday, September 10, Morton Library (Richmond) will be closed from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. for a campus-wide memorial event. Books that need to be returned can be placed in the drop box located to the left of the front door. We appreciate your patience with regard to this exception to our normal library hours.
Posted on May 18, 2018
We are happy to announce that the Social Welfare History Image Portal at VCU has received a prestigious award from the Center for Research Libraries — the 2018 Primary Source Award for Access. Why does this concern us? Because the Union Presbyterian Seminary Library is a partner in this fascinating project, and we have contributed some of its digital image content.
Our participation is made possible by the Hal Todd Library Without Walls initiative, which enables us to make high-quality scans from unique and historic materials in our collection and provide access to them for scholars, researchers and the public.
The purpose of the VCU site is to call attention to the documents, photographs and artifacts in the archival collections of its partner institutions, directing researchers to each library’s own holdings for further information. These materials are meant to illustrate the history of social reform and social welfare work in the United States, and they include remarkable first-hand evidence of projects intended to advance social welfare, or of compelling social problems such as racism and injustice.
The William Smith Morton Library Archives has so far contributed images and information from four digital collections :
We are in the process of building other digital collections and establishing a permanent home for them. Many unique items in our Archives are now nearly inaccessible, and we hope to bring them into the light and make them freely usable for research. This recognition from the CRL indicates that we are on the right track!
Posted on April 9, 2018
Login
In order to access the library’s electronic resources from off campus, you will be automatically prompted to sign in and authenticate yourself as affiliated with Union Presbyterian Seminary using your barcode and PIN. Your barcode is the entire barcode number located at the bottom of your library card and your PIN is the first three letters of your last name.
Most off campus login screen prompts will look like the following:
However, there are a few electronic resources that require an additional step on the login screen prompt before you login. You will need to first search for and select your organization before you enter your barcode and PIN.
For additional help, please see the instructions for navigating this login screen below:
1. Type Union Presbyterian Seminary in the “Find your organisation” search box.
2. Select Union Presbyterian Seminary from the search results.
3. In the Username and Password fields to the left, login with your barcode and PIN as usual and click Sign in.
If you attempt this process and have trouble with it for some reason, please contact our Electronic Services Librarian, Ryan Douthat, at 804.278.4217, or rdouthat@upsem.edu.
Posted on January 9, 2018
We have now added new direct links to a vast set of valuable full-text historical collections for the study of history and religion.
The ATLA Historical Monographs Collection : Series 1 & 2 provides religious and theological literature from the late 13th century to 1922. Series 1 includes monographs prior to the 1893 World Parliament of Religions, while Series 2 covers 1893 through 1922. This resource is vital for scholars seeking to understand religious thought and practice, particularly in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Preserved and curated by the American Theological Library Association (ATLA), this collection contains more than 29,000 titles and features over 50 languages, including German, Italian, and Spanish. Topics covered include church life, demographics, doctrinal disputes, higher criticism, Judeo-Christian religions, Non-Western religions, and social movements.
We have also purchased access to 12 collections in the American Antiquarian Society’s huge holdings in periodical literature, specifically those with a strong thematic connection to religious studies. Periodicals are often called “the first draft of history,” and they are essential for the study of historical events as they happened and were reflected upon by people at the time. Newspapers, scholarly journals, and other content published in America from 1742 to 1904 are included in this collection, from a wide variety of denominational and confessional backgrounds.
These new collections are searchable using the powerful and accurate EBSCO interface with which you are probably already familiar. Please take a moment to explore these outstanding new databases!
HOW TO FIND THEM : Under the RESEARCH & RESOURCES tab on our Library’s homepage, click on ONLINE DATABASES. Scroll down on that page under the “A” databases to find the two listings for these databases in alphabetical order. Direct links to the individual collections are provided there.
If you are off campus, you will be asked to login. Please use your Library barcode and PIN. Your barcode is the number printed on your Library card, and your PIN is the first three letters of your last name. For more information about your login, please click HERE.
Posted on November 13, 2017
This is just a reminder that during the week of 20-26 Nov 2017, the Morton Library will have the following reduced holiday hours schedule for Thanksgiving :
Mon-Tues, 20-21 Nov, 8:00 am-5:00 pm
Wednesday, 22 Nov, 8:00 am-12:30 pm
Thurs-Sun, 23-26 : CLOSED for Thanksgiving
Please remember also that you can find Library open hours for each day (both Richmond and Charlotte campuses) in the banner at the top of our Library web pages. And to plan ahead, choose the About the Library tab on our homepage, then from the drop-down menu you may choose Richmond or Charlotte open hours.
Posted on October 12, 2017
You may notice a new shelving area at UPSem’s Morton Library this fall — the “LC Stacks”. We are in the process of changing the classification system that we use to shelve most of our library books in Richmond (“the stacks”). As we begin to use the Library of Congress (LC) System rather than the Union/Pettee System, we’re shelving newly processed books together in an area called the LC Stacks, starting on Morton’s lower level.
Eventually, as more and more books are shelved according to the LC system, the LC Stacks will expand to all four floors of the Library, but that process will take several years. In the meantime, most of our books will be split between the regular Stacks and the LC Stacks. We’ve prepared this web page to provide an overview of how books are arranged in the LC Stacks, and will be placing signage in the Library to provide additional guidance, but please ask for help at the Library’s main service desk if you have trouble locating a title. Future updates on this and other library developments will be posted on the Library’s home page and on its Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/UPSemLibrary. We apologize for the inconvenience of this transition.
If you have further questions about this process, please contact Christopher Richardson.
Posted on September 27, 2017
We can now offer access to the JSTOR Religion and Theology Collection, a database of full-text scholarly journals in a range of religious studies subject areas. This resource is available to everyone within the Library or on our two campuses (Richmond and Charlotte), and remotely to current students, faculty and staff with your account login.
When you search in our Library catalog, you will now get materials from JSTOR appearing on the tab labeled Database Results. Also, you can search using their own interface by clicking on the JSTOR link on our Online Databases page.
JSTOR is an archived digital collection that provides all issues of each journal, from volume 1 number 1, including all previous and related titles, up to a “moving wall” (usually a 2-5 year embargo). So it’s not as useful for current articles as some of our other resources, but has exceptional depth of coverage.
If you have any questions about its use, please feel free to contact Robin McCall, Ryan Douthat or Christopher Richardson.
Posted on September 19, 2017
We are in the process of upgrading the library’s catalog to support encrypted HTTPS connections, but until that process is complete, you may encounter this error message when searching or linking to the catalog, particularly on mobile devices or when directed to our home page from a search engine:
“You don’t have permission to access the requested directory. There is either no index document or the directory is read-protected…”
We hope to complete the catalog upgrade within a few days. In the meantime, clearing your browser’s cache/history and pasting this URL into its address bar (plain text, in a new window/tab) should provide direct access to the catalog on most devices:
https://upsem.ent.sirsi.net
If you do have trouble reaching our Library catalog from off campus, we have found that it’s sometimes helpful to use a different browser. Microsoft Explorer can sometimes reach the site when Firefox or Chrome cannot. You might try experimenting with this to see if it helps in the short term, while we address the underlying issues.
Sincere apologies for any service interruptions.
Posted on August 3, 2017
Do you like the free books available at the Morton Library? We have moved the table for free books and CE curriculum downstairs, to the area known as the “Lower Atrium.” There’s seating down there to perch on while you look through the books. We will continue to add new materials as they come in and remove older stuff. So there should always be something for you to consider adding to your own collection!
Posted on May 30, 2017
We are happy to announce that we can now offer access to two very valuable new databases : Oxford Biblical Studies Online and Oxford Islamic Studies Online. We are beginning to build up our holdings in electronic reference, so that our users will have access to high-quality encyclopedias, dictionaries, histories, handbooks and so on, even when you are not inside the UPSem Library.
These two Oxford products have an odd characteristic you should know about. At this time, it is necessary to use separate links for on-campus and off-campus access. You will find both links on our Online Databases page.
If you are on the Richmond or Charlotte campus, click on the on-campus link, and you should connect with the database site immediately. If you are a current student, faculty or staff member and you are using a computer outside our network, click on the off-campus link, and you will be asked to login. Enter your barcode and PIN and you should be able to access the database. We hope to be able to provide one link for each of these Oxford products in the near future.
Here are some descriptions of the two new reference databases :
Texts from selected Oxford Bibles can be viewed in side-by-side display with the user’s choice of commentary and annotations from the Study Bibles, the stand-alone Oxford Bible Commentary, and A-Z concordances for the NRSV and NAB translations. The Bible content is supplemented by collections of major apocryphal Old and New Testament texts in translation.
In addition to the Bible texts, Oxford Biblical Studies Online offers quick access to over 5,000 A-Z entries from the Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Oxford Companion to the Bible, and a wealth of other Oxford references. Users can easily navigate to hundreds of topical essays within the Oxford Study Bibles themselves, in The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies, The Oxford History of the Biblical World, The Oxford Illustrated History of the Bible, Oxford Bible Atlas, and other works, and access hundreds of searchable images and maps from these major scholarly publications.
Encompassing over 5,000 A–Z reference entries, chapters from scholarly and introductory works, Qur’anic materials, primary sources, images, maps, and timelines, Oxford Islamic Studies Online offers a multi-layered reference experience designed to provide a first stop for anyone needing information and context on Islam. The current core content titles include the following :
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World, The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, The Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art and Architecture, The Oxford Handbook of Islam and Politics, The Oxford Dictionary of Islam, The Oxford History of Islam, Makers of Contemporary Islam, two Oxford World’s Classics versions of the Qur’an: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem’s The Qur’an (a prose translation), and The Koran Interpreted (a renowned verse translation by A.J. Arberry), Hanna Kassis’ Concordance of the Qur’an, and many other resources.