"I have been but little in," said Ninian hastily...

I was very excited a while back when I discovered you could get the Calendar of State Papers (historical UK government records) on CD ROM.

Now, I've found that not only the Calendar of State Papers, but the Calendar of Papers Relating to Scotland, the Calendar of Papers Relating to Ireland, and the Calendar of Documents Preserved in France are all available as free e-books from Google.

That is mind-blowingly awesome. They are not the complete text of the documents, but the calendars (basically, lists in chronological order) contains summaries of the documents. In some cases, one can find all the information one needs

And many of the State Papers collections themselves (transcripts of the original documents) are also available in the same format (amny others are available online, but in paysites, like this one).

Stunning.

Dear Society of Alumni,

As a (for now) independent researcher, pursuing academic topics in my spare time away from my day job, it's a great sadness not to have access to JSTOR, as I did at Williams and when doing my master's work. JSTOR is an invaluable archive of journals (and now books) that can be searched and accessed online. Getting tasty search hits on Google and then hitting the JSTOR firewall is like being a research bird and slamming into the plate glass window of "no institutional access".

JSTOR has begun a program that allows alumni of some colleges and universities to access its resources directly. There is some information about the program here.Williams is not yet one of the colleges participating. Might it be so at some point?

regards

Jan

ETA:

Here's the reply from my undergrad alma mater.

"Thank you for your email. We think this is a great suggestion, and we are forwarding your email along to our tech team. They will decide if it is feasible for alumni to have access to JSTOR at this time. In the meantime, please let us know if you have any other questions or concerns."

Ephs FTW! Is it any wonder Williams alums are so loyal? We have an awesome college!