Bloomsbury Cultural History is an interactive online resource comprising the full suite of Bloomsbury’s pioneering Cultural History Series. An authoritative digital reference tool, it provides students and researchers with a set of curated, comprehensive and illustrated reference works within a single platform, alongside an extensive list of eBooks and a wide-ranging image collection, which is supplemented by a growing list of learning and research tools, as well as an interactive timeline spanning from antiquity to the present. The user-friendly platform features an engaging, easy-to-navigate interface and sophisticated indexing and searching tools to support individual research and make is easy to find what you are looking for.
The navigation on the top of the homepage provides a variety of options to access content on the site, including Explore By and Browse Content functions. The basic search bar appears below the main navigation for quick and easy searching across the site. Below the search bar is a double carousel image carousel with links to browse the Featured Content and Featured Content Archive, followed by a short description about Bloomsbury Cultural History below. Below this section are buttons which lead to a dedicated landing page on the site, including Research and Learning Tools, How to Use and Timeline. Keep scrolling to access an image slider which allows you to scroll through all the Cultural History Series. At the bottom of the page, one can find a banner promoting a featured image, which will be updated regularly.
Explore By in the top navigation menu provides options to access the content by Place, Period, and Topic. The numbers in brackets next to each term show the amount of content aggregated under each term. Clicking on any term will lead to a results page for all the content on the site that has been tagged with the term. The results page offers further filter options in the left-hand column.
Browse Contents offers options to browse by Cultural History topic, eBook, Timeline, Image Collections and Research & Learning Tools.
Cultural History Series leads to a landing page that shows a description and volume contents for each digitized set. Click into a section to read.
EBooks leads to a page where all of the eBooks are listed in alphabetical order. Click into the title or cover to view the eBook.
Timeline leads to an interactive timeline on the platform. Spanning antiquity to the modern age, the timeline provides a contextual framework through which to explore the Bloomsbury Cultural History content. Click on the images and colored pins to examine eBook chapters, Cultural History articles, maps and more.
Image Collections leads to a landing page that holds three image collections in partnership with the Rijksmuseum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Wellcome Collection. Click into any collection to explore the images with contextual information and descriptions.
Research & Learning Tools guides users through available Lesson Plans on the platform as well as subject guides to best provide instructors, students, and librarians with a simple shortcut to help them find the material they need across a number of topics.
To search, type your search term in the Search Bar at the top of each page. Clicking the magnifying glass button or pressing return will take you to the results page.
The search page will show image results and text results in order of the most relevant and can be reordered by title or date, ascending or descending. The standard text results page shows 10 results and can be adjusted to 5 or 20 results. The search results will show the article or chapter title, author(s), reference or eBook title, and content type, with a preview snippet of text that includes the search term appearing in bold.
Search results can be refined by date range, Content Type, Period, Place, and Topic via the left-hand column.
Navigate to the desired results by clicking on the item title at the top of each result.
To the right of the search bar, click on the Advanced Search button.
Enter your search term in the search bar with the option to refine by Title, Author/Editor/Creator, Summary/Abstract, Category, or Identifier. Enter additional search terms using ‘Add Field’ with search functions of ‘AND,’ ‘OR,’ and ‘NOT’ and the same options listed above.
Further refine results by Date range by year and Content Type, from Book chapter, lesson plan, Cultural History chapter, Museum, and Museum object.
Use the same search results functions on the search page to refine results further and access results.
Navigate to a specific eBook or Cultural History chapter from Browse Contents. Book pages show the title of the book, author(s)/editor(s), copyright information, DOI, ISBN, edition, place of publication, and date published online in the left-hand column and the cover. Below the copyright information is a search bar for searching within the book, followed by the table of contents with links to jump to specific sections and chapters of the book. Pagination in the table of contents matches the print edition of books.
The left-hand column of the chapter page displays the book cover, author(s)/editor(s), copyright year and imprint, and the Search Book function, followed by Subject information and extensive Related Content links.
The main right-hand column shows the chapter title, DOI and page range of the chapter, followed by a linked table of contents for easy movement to chapters within the section, followed by the full text of the chapter. Hovering over the chapter text will show the corresponding page numbers at the appropriate breaks to match the print edition of the book.
Searching within the Search Book function from the book or chapter page will bring up all references to the search term within the book.
On each content page, including book chapters, the left-hand column of the page will show Subject information, including Content Type, Period, Place, and Topic. All content on the site is tagged using these terms and clicking on any of the listed links will lead to all content tagged with that term.
Under the Subject section, a Related Content section will appear. All content on Bloomsbury Cultural History is organized as part of a powerful taxonomy. The taxonomy informs the links that appear in this section, showing content that is similar, allowing users to discover new and related content organically while using the platform.
Create a personal account using the Sign Up function to save content and searches in folders. Create an account by clicking ‘Log in’ in the top right-hand corner of the site above ‘Librarians’. At the bottom of the pop-up window, click ‘Sign up now’. After signing up or logging in to your personal account, you can save searches and content to folders. To save a search, click the ‘Save this Search’ button from any search results page, which appears on the top right side of the page. To save content, locate the ‘Save’ icon in the top right-hand corner of any page of the content (directly under ‘Advanced Search’) that you wish to save. Clicking on ‘Save’ will enable you to save the URL of the relevant page into a folder. You can create multiple folders and save different content into each. Access folders from ‘My Content’ under the welcome message in the top right corner of the site.
APA, MLA, and Chicago citations are available for all content on the platform. Click the ‘Citation’ button next to the Save and Print links. This will bring up a pop-up window with citation information that you can copy to clipboard or export as an RIS file.
Clicking the ‘Share’ button on any content page will bring up a form with options to share content via email, Google plus, Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest, with options to personalize the message before posting or emailing.
