Skip to main content

Celebrating local history publishing

Next month we will be celebrating local history publishing.  As part of the CILIP Local Studies conference hosted at the David Wilson Library, we will be presenting the winners of the Alan Ball Award 2017 with their prizes. The Alan Ball Award rewards excellence in local history publishing. The award is open to publications produced by local authority organisations and heritage/community groups who have received public funding. 

The judges choose one print and one electronic publication every year from the nominations received. The award is named after Alan W. Ball, former Chief Librarian of the London Borough of Harrow, and author of many local history publications. The award is now run by the Local Studies Group of CILIP.  


Books by Alan Ball in the David Wilson Library

I have created an online reading list of the recent winners. Also included are books by Alan Ball, that we have in the local history collections. Our holdings reflect Alan Ball's specialism in topographical illustrations. 

The 2017 winners are:

Spratton Local History Society 

Spratton won for their high-quality website. As well as being clearly designed and providing up-to-date information, it hosts freely accessible databases and original research. Readers can search the genealogy database of families living in the village during the 19th century, and the extensive photo archive. There is also a fascinating group biography of the men of Spratton who served in the First World War. 

Wigan Archives 

Wigan Archives won for the book Miss Weeton, Governess and Traveller, edited by Alan Roby. The book is based on personal writings by Nelly Weeton (1776–1849), the Lancashire governess and diarist. Terry Bracher, convener of the  judging panel, said: “There were several high quality entries this year but we felt that ‘Miss Weeton, Governess and Traveller’ is an outstanding publication in every sense, with engaging content that is accessible to a wide range of audiences. 
Alan’s skilful editing and research for this new edition has enhanced the reader’s enjoyment and is a story that can be appreciated by audiences across the country and beyond. The book is also physically impressive and the reproduced images are brilliant in quality. Wigan Archives and Local Studies have been very active in local history publishing, so we are especially pleased that this book has been recognised.”

Popular posts from this blog

You can now export multiple citations from Google Scholar

You can now export multiple citations from Google Scholar if you have a Google Account. Go to Google Scholar and sign into your Google Account. Conduct your search. Click on the Star icon (Save) under each reference you want to export. Then click on My Library in the top, right of the screen. Select all the references and click on the Export option: Click the Star/Save Icon Choose Export Option To Export into EndNote Choose the EndNote option. Open the EndNote file that is created. The references should automatically import into EndNote. To Export into RefWorks Choose the RefMan option. Save the RIS file that is created. Login to your RefWorks account. Click on the plus (+) button. Choose Import References. Add the RIS file you just saved. Set the file import option to RIS - Reference Manager. Click import and your references will be imported. --- Good Practice Tip: Always check that all the reference information you need has been

Searching ABS Journals in Business Source Premier

In Business and Management Studies, researchers undertaking a literature review sometimes search across a defined group of journals. This is a way of focusing the literature search to make the results more relevant to the questions in hand. Groups are often chosen from the Association of Business Schools (ABS)'s  Academic Journal Guide . Read more how about how they put together the guide here . There are several ways to search across ABS journals. Here is how to do it in Business Source Premier, a leading literature database for this subject area.  1.     Login into the ABS journal guide. If you have never used it before you will need to create an account. 2.     You can use the guide to draw up a group of journals either by using the Rankings information or the Fields. Fields divides up the journals into categories of research focus e.g. Accounting, Finance etc. In this example we will use the Fields. The field we are interested is ‘Operations Research and Marketin

Advanced Search Tip: Proximity (Adjacency) Searching

Proximity (Adjacency) Searching vs Phrase Searching When you're searching literature databases you might want to find a phrase. The easiest way to do this is to put the phrase in "speech marks". E.g. "heart disease" This will find that exact phrase - with the words next to each other in that order. BUT... You may be interested in variations on that phrase e.g. heart disease, disease of the heart, diseases of the heart, diseases of the human heart. In that case it might be better to use a proximity/adjacency search - this allows you to find one keyword next to another. Or one keyword within a specified number of words of the other keyword. When using a proximity search the keywords can be in any order. Different Databases Use Different Proximity Operators In Ovid Medline : heart adj disease finds the word heart next to the word disease, in that order.    (This is the same as searching for the phrase, of course) heart adj2 disease fin