The faculty of the Harvard Law School has voted unanimously to make articles authored by faculty members available in an open online repository. This is the first law school to commit to open access for its authors’ work.

As reported in the Harvard Law School news, Dean of the Law School Elena Kagan explains the motivation of the vote as a “decision to embrace ‘open access’” that “means that people everywhere can benefit from the ideas generated here at the Law School.”

“The acceptance of open access ensures that our faculty’s world-class scholarship is accessible today and into the future,” reports John Palfrey, the Executive Director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and Vice Dean of library and information resources, in the same news story.

This vote follows that of the Harvard Faculty of Arts & Sciences, which adopted a similar mandate in February 2008, also by a unanimous vote.

For more information, see stories in:

Harvard Law School news

Peter Suber’s Open Access News

And, for summaries of what MIT faculty are saying and doing in relation to open access, see:

Podcasts with MIT Faculty on Scholarly Publishing and Open Access

MIT Faculty taking action for open access

–Ellen Finnie Duranceau / Scholarly Publishing & Licensing Consultant / MIT Libraries / efinnie@mit.edu / x8483

The latest in the series of podcasts on scholarly publication and copyright is an interview with George Stiny, Professor of Computation in the Department of Architecture at MIT.

Professor Stiny explains the significance of copying in the design process from his unusual perspective - a perspective that blends art and design with calculating. Professor Stiny invented shape grammars - the idea of identifying and quantifying a set of rules that can generate an infinite range of designs, much the way rules of grammar in language can generate an infinite range of sentences. His work uses mathematics to capture the creative, generative language of shapes and design.

Download the audio file. (14:42 minutes; 13.5 MB)

We encourage and welcome your feedback, which you may direct to:
Ellen Finnie Duranceau / Scholarly Publishing and Licensing Consultant / efinnie@mit.edu

Exhibit in Rotch Library – Urban Studies/Random Views

Urban Studies/Random Views, on view from May 5th to July 18th, is a collection of recent oil paintings by Carol Schweigert of Dewey Library.

The paintings were initially inspired by the dynamic views of the ongoing construction surrounding the Library. The focus expanded to include other views in Cambridge and Charlestown, reflecting the coexistence of the natural and the architectural.

These are traditional plein air paintings with an underlying graphic composition of more modern sensibilities.

A reception is planned for 4:00PM - 6:30PM, Friday, May 9, 2008 in Rotch Library, 7-238.

Check out the new bioinformatics video tutorials, developed by the MIT Engineering and Science Libraries and Harvard’s Countway Library of Medicine. These tutorials aim to bring research help to your desktop.

The first installment of BITS covers the UCSC Genome Browser, which contains reference sequences and working draft assemblies for a large collection of genomes. The UCSC Genome Browser is developed and maintained by the Genome Bioinformatics Group, a cross-departmental team within the Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering at UCSC.

Watch these videos to learn more about the UCSC Genome Browser. Learn how to retrieve DNA sequence, display and configure the annotation tracks, identify gene intron-exon boundaries, and use the BLAT tool.

BIT 1.1: UCSC Genome Browser: Getting DNA Sequence (3:57)
BIT 1.2: UCSC Genome Browser: Using Annotation Tracks (5:47)
BIT 1.3: UCSC Genome Browser: Locating Intron-Exon Boundaries (4:56)
BIT 1.4: UCSC Genome Browser: Searching with BLAT (6:14)

Learn at your own convenience and your own pace.

Find the Bioinformatics Tutorial Series (BITS), and many other tutorials, on the video tutorials page.

Questions? Email ask-bioinfo@mit.edu.

This month the Institute Archives and Special Collections focuses on some of MIT’s early energy research. Robert J. Van de Graaff came to MIT in 1931, where he worked on the development of the high-voltage generator that bears his name. May’s Object of the Month describes the apparatus and includes photographs from the 1933 “Progress Report on the M.I.T. High-Voltage Generator at Round Hill.” The exhibit includes a link to a demonstration of the Van de Graaff generator by Professor Walter Lewin.

The Archives holds several collections that contain materials about the Van de Graaff generator: the Papers of Robert J. Van de Graaff (MC 45), the Records of the High Voltage Energy Corporation (MC 153), and the Records of the MIT President (AC 4). All are available for research, with 24 hours’ notice, in 14N-118, Monday to Thursday, 10 am to 4 pm.

Were you unable to attend a Libraries’ sponsored IAP session this January? Wish you could have attended the March workshops on Building an EndNote Library, or the recent class on Google Maps?

The Libraries are pleased to unveil recordings of our popular workshops. The sessions were recorded in cooperation with Academic Media Production Services (AMPS) and are viewable both on and off campus with your MIT Certificates.

To see a list of recordings, go to the MIT Libraries Video Tutorials page and scroll down to Videos of Recent Workshops.

Contact Angie Locknar with any questions.

The Second Annual Sparky Awards, a contest that recognizes the best new short videos on the value of information sharing, were announced today.

The 2008 contest theme is “MindMashup: The Value of Information Sharing.” Videos of two minutes or less that “imaginatively portray the benefits of the open, legal exchange of information” are due by November 30, 2008.   The winner receives a $1000 cash award.

The Sparky Awards are sponsored by SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) with additional co- sponsorship by the Association of College and Research Libraries, the Association of Research Libraries, Penn Libraries (at the University of Pennsylvania), Students for Free Culture, and The Student PIRGs.

For more information see:

Details about this year’s contest.

Last year’s winning entries.

–Ellen Finnie Duranceau / Scholarly Publishing & Licensing Consultant / MIT Libraries / x38483 / efinnie@mit.edu

Solo Eclipse, the new CD by the MIT Wind Ensemble (MITWE), has just been received by the Lewis Music Library. This exciting disc contains world premiere recordings commissioned by Dr. Frederick Harris and MITWE. Click on the cover image to see the Barton catalog record.

Music CDs and DVDs circulate for 3 days (limit of 5; no renewals). The Lewis Music Library is located in Bldg. 14E-109 and library hours are posted on the web.

Thinking about birds, flowers, and good weather? Here are a few spring-related themes on music CDs in the Lewis Music Library, selected from the more than 18,000 CDs in the collection. Click on an image to view its Barton catalog record:

Duke, John. Just-spring: art songs. [Kolb, Toglia] PhonCD D886 song	Grieg. Edvard. Peer Gynt, op.23. [Järvi] PhonCD G871 pe a	Messiaen, Olivier. Petites esquisses d’oiseaux; Catalogue d’oiseaux. [Austbø] PhonCD M563 petes
Spano, Robert. Rainbow body: Theofanidis, Barber, Copland, Higdon. [Atlanta Symphony] PhonCD Sp24 rai	Spring awakening: a new musical. [Original Broadway cast] 1487849 precat	Woolf, Randall. Where the wild things are; based on the book by Maurice Sendak. [Various performers] PhonCD W884 whe

Music CDs and DVDs circulate for 3 days (limit of 5; no renewals). The Lewis Music Library is located in Bldg. 14E-109 and library hours are posted on the web.

By February 2009, any Landsat archive scene selected by a user will be processed, at no charge, automatically to a standard product recipe and staged for electronic retrieval. In addition, newly acquired scenes meeting a cloud cover threshold of 20% or below will be processed to the standard recipe and placed on line for at least three months, after which they will remain available for selection from the archive. The USGS is pursuing an aggressive schedule to provide users with electronic access to any Landsat scene held in the USGS-managed national archive of global scenes dating back to Landsat 1, launched in 1972. Details can be found in the USGS Technical Announcement.

Bureau van Dijk’s Zephyr database is now available at MIT: http://libraries.mit.edu/get/zephyr. Zephyr provides:

• summaries and financial details about worldwide corporate mergers & acquisitions
• transactions such as IPOs, buyouts, and joint ventures
• private equity and venture capital financing details

How does Zephyr compare with SDC Platinum?

• Zephyr is web-based and requires no software download
• Zephyr also provides access to more recent deals (no 30-day embargo) and adds more deals each year
• SDC Platinum data goes back to 1980s (Zephyr goes back to 2000 (1998 for European deals))
• The databases can have different coverage so you may want to utilize both

Try out Zephyr and tell us what you think! Send your questions and comments to Alex Caracuzzo (alex3@mit.edu).

Citation Surfing: Using Databases to Track Article Citations
Michael Noga

Learn how to find and use information more effectively in our hands-on workshops. No advanced registration required. Light refreshments will be served at each session.

**NOTE that different events will be happening throughout the month of April and early May.**

WHERE: 14N-132 (Digital Instruction Resource Center – DIRC)

WHEN: Friday, May 2, 12pm (noon)

Have your ever used the Web of Science to find citations? Have you used Google Scholar? Perhaps you have used citation links in journal articles. This session will explore the different ways you can use citation searching to identify literature on a subject.

Sponsored by the MIT Libraries.

Contact the Science Library for more information.

The MIT Libraries now subscribe to over 2,000 e-books from CRC Press, adding 7 new subject collections, including chemistry, engineering, energy, materials science and polymers, nanotechnology, and mathematics.

To search all titles available to the MIT Community, visit CRCnetBASE, or go to each individual subject collection to browse titles.  With time, we will add records of these items to our catalog, Barton to make finding them easier.

List of individual CRCnetBASEs added to our collections:

• CHEMLIBnetBASE (all areas of chemistry, about 350 titles)
• CLEANTECHnetBASE (bio-energy, clean technology, renewable energy,…)
• ENGnetBASE (all areas of engineering, almost 900 titles)
• MATHnetBASE (mathematics, almost 300 titles)
• MATERIALSnetBASE (materials science, over 200 titles)
• NANOnetBASE (nanoscience)
• POLYMERnetBASE (polymers)

Previously subscribed: Combined Chemical Dictionary and CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics through CHEMnetBASE.

To see other e-books provided by the MIT Libraries, go to Vera, and select the subject “E-Books.”

Social Explorer provides over 3200 maps, and thousands of variables, painting a picture of US population change from 1790 to 2000. The MIT Libraries’ subscription to Social Explorer provides the MIT community with access to the full set of data, for all years if you use this url to enter the website: http://libraries.mit.edu/get/explorer

Come see, and check out, highlights from The Humanities Library’s book and DVD collections, and The Lewis Music Library’s music collections.

Details:

• Date: Thursday April 17th, 2008
• Time: 10:30AM - 2:30PM
• Where: Lobby 10
• Cost: FREE!!!

Don’t forget! The 6th annual Prokopoff violin music concert will be held from noon-1 pm on Friday, April 18th, 2008 in the Lewis Music Library. Concert coordinator Sherman Jia (G) has lined up MIT student musicians Mark Avara ‘08, Albert Chow ‘08, Karen Chu ‘08, Laura Jacox ‘08, David Somach ‘11, Jason Wallace ‘10, Amy Xu (G), and accompanist Hsin-Bei Lee to perform works by Bach, Gershwin, Halvorsen, Kreisler, and Sarasate.

The Lewis Music Library is located in Bldg. 14E-109 and the concert is free and open to the public. The opening celebration for the MIT Libraries’ Maihaugen Gallery follows this concert. Come join us!

Need to expand your skills in statistical methods and quantitative analysis? Attend the ICPSR Summer Program! Each year, ICPSR provides a comprehensive, integrated program of studies in research design, statistics, data analysis, and social science methodology. Registration is now open for the 2008 session. For a listing of course offerings and application information, see the ICPSR Summer Program web site.

Note: Small stipends are available to support attendance by a limited number of MIT students. For more information contact Katherine McNeill-Harman at mcneillh@mit.edu.

Introduction to Google Maps API (5 - 6 pm)

Googler Pamela Fox will give a whirlwind tour of the Google Maps API and KML, teaching the basics of each and showing off some of the really fun applications of them (like campus maps, interactive panoramas, and fantasy worlds).

Google Maps Codelab (6 - 7 pm)

Interactive codelabs in the topics addressed in the Introduction to Google Maps API. Codelab participants should come prepared with basic Javascript or XML experience, and will find debugging the Maps API easier if they have Firebug installed.

Both sessions will be held in 14N-132.

Food will be provided

Email gishelp at mit.edu if you have questions.

Have you even been in Building 10 and wondered what exactly Vannevar Bush did to get the Bush Room named after him? Have you ever looked at the names on the buildings around Killian Court and asked yourself, what’s so great about Chladni, Gramme, and Regnault that their names are carved alongside Darwin, Faraday, and Ben Franklin?

Wonder no more! They’re just a few of the more than 5000 scientists and mathematicians profiled in the Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. All 18 volumes of the classic work Dictionary of Scientific Biography are now available online, supplemented by the eight volumes of the recently published New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, which adds almost 800 new authoritative profile.

Bioinformatics for Beginners
Amy Stout, Courtney Crummett

Learn how to find and use information more effectively in our hands-on workshops. No advanced registration required. Light refreshments will be served at each session.

**NOTE that different events will be happening throughout the month of April and early May.**

WHERE: 14N-132 (Digital Instruction Resource Center – DIRC)

WHEN: Friday, April 18, 12pm (noon)

Class attendees will learn about the organization of key NCBI databases, understand the database record structure, and work with the BLAST search tool. The session is a hands-on practicum and an excellent starting point for people who are new to, or curious about bioinformatics research tools.

Sponsored by the MIT Libraries.

Contact the Science Library for more information.

The new NIH Public Access Policy of 2008 requires all NIH-funded investigators to submit their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts to the NIH’s PubMed Central (PMC) database (the digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature) upon acceptance for journal publication. 

This policy, created to conform with a new law passed by Congress, applies to all peer-reviewed articles accepted for publication on or after April 7, 2008, if they arise, in whole or in part, from direct costs funded by NIH.

The MIT Libraries have developed a step-by-step guide for MIT authors who need to comply with this policy.   In addition, the MIT Libraries’ Scholarly Publishing & Licensing Consultant is available to assist MIT authors in complying with it. 

For more information, please contact:

Ellen Finnie Duranceau / Scholarly Publishing & Licensing Consultant / efinnie@mit.edu / 617.253.8483

Junot Diaz‘ critically acclaimed first novel “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” has just been awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Diaz, a tenured professor at MIT, worked on his novel for eleven years before its publication in September, 2007. Since then it has received glowing reviews from some of the most highly-regarded publications. Michiko Kakutani, writing for the The New York Times Book Review, called the novel “An extraordinarily vibrant book that’s fueled by adrenaline-powered prose.”

More about Mr. Diaz (from the Pulitzer board):

Junot Diaz has had his fiction published in The New Yorker and The Paris Review, and four times in The Best American Short Stories. His critically praised, bestselling debut book, Drown, led to his inclusion among Newsweek’s “New Faces of 1996.” The New Yorker placed him on a list of the twenty top writers of the twenty-first century. Diaz has won the Eugene McDermott Award, the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, the PEN/Malamud Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship, a U.S.-Japan Creative Artists Fellowship from the NEA, and most recently the Rome Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Born in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic, and raised there and in New Jersey, he graduated from Rutgers and received an MFA from Cornell. He lives in New York City and Boston.

More about ‘The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” (from the book jacket):

Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. From his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his old-world mother and rebellious sister, Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fukú-the curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still waiting for his first kiss, is just its most recent victim.

Diaz immerses us in the tumultuous life of Oscar and the history of the family at large, rendering with genuine warmth and dazzling energy, humor, and insight the Dominican-American experience, and, ultimately, the endless human capacity to persevere in the face of heartbreak and loss. A true literary triumph, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao confirms Junot Diaz as one of the best and most exciting voices of our time.

And from the MIT news office:

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/diaz-pulitzer-0407.html

Come to the SHASS Open House, and meet members of the MIT Libraries community who provide support for SHASS. Subject specialists from the Dewey and Humanities Libraries will be on hand to tell you more about our online, and human, resources.

And, our Bookmobile will make special appearance, with a related collection of library materials on display…and to check out!!!

Today @ noon, in the Sala De Puerto Rico, 2nd floor of the Student Center.

On Thursday, November 15th the MIT Humanities Library hosted Professor Irving Singer who spoke about his new book, Ingmar Bergman, Cinematic Philosopher, just published by The MIT Press. A video of the event is now available on MIT World.

In this lecture, Singer discusses how Bergman used philosophical ideas “in an extended sense” — not by including philosophical discussions in his films, but through his masterful use of cinematic technique to examine the particularities of human experience. Singer also describes how Bergman wove aspects of his own life’s story into his films, in intense and vivid ways.

Irving Singer is Professor of Philosophy at MIT. He is the author of Reality Transformed: Film as Meaning and Technique, Three Philosophical Filmmakers: Hitchcock, Welles, Renoir (both published by The MIT Press), and many other books.

This event was sponsored by authors@mit. For more information, call call 253-5249, or email authors@mit.edu. See the MIT Press Bookstore’s “Events” page for a list of upcoming events.

Industry and market researchers at MIT now have access to IBISWorld Reports (http://libraries.mit.edu/get/ibisworld), a database spanning 700+ U.S. industries. Each IBIS report covers:

• industry performance and conditions
• market size
• demand determinants
• and other key variables

IBIS is searchable by keyword and is unique in grouping its reports by the NAICS industrial codes at five-digits. Note: while IBIS is among our more comprehensive sources for U.S. industries, Global Industry reports are not part of MIT’s subscription.

The spring 2008 issue of What’s the Score? the newsletter of the Lewis Music Library is now available. The web version has been posted online and print copies are on the front counter in the library (Bldg. 14E-109).

Read about library activities, projects, and new subscriptions — and don’t miss the ever-popular bad music jokes!

Managing your references: Overview of EndNote, RefWorks and Zotero
Remlee Green, Mathew Willmott

Learn how to find and use information more effectively in our hands-on workshops. No advanced registration required. Light refreshments will be served at each session.

**NOTE that different events will be happening throughout the month of April and early May.**

WHERE: 14N-132 (Digital Instruction Resource Center – DIRC)

WHEN: Friday, April 11, 12pm (noon)

Using citation management software to create and maintain a collection of references is becoming more common and important in today’s academic world. This session will focus on EndNote, RefWorks, and Zotero, the three major options for bibliographic software at MIT.

Sponsored by the MIT Libraries.

Contact the Science Library for more information.

The latest in the series of podcasts on scholarly publication and copyright is an interview with Hal Abelson, Class of 1922 Professor of Computer Science and Engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT.

Professor Abelson has played key roles in fostering educational technology initiatives such MIT’s OpenCourseWare and DSpace. He has a broad interest in information technology and policy,  and developed and teaches the course “Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier.”  He was a founding director of Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, and the Free Software Foundation, organizations that are devoted to strengthening our intellectual commons.

In the podcast, Professor Abelson reflects on the origins and impacts of these efforts, his reasons for remaining committed to more open access to research, and the concerns he has about the future.

Download the audio file. (22:53 minutes; 21 MB)

We encourage and welcome your feedback, which you may direct to:
Ellen Finnie Duranceau / Scholarly Publishing and Licensing Consultant / efinnie@mit.edu

Learn how to find and use information more effectively in these hands-on workshops. No advanced registration required. Light refreshments will be served at each session.

WHERE: 14N-132 (Digital Instruction Resource Center – DIRC)

WHEN: Fridays in April (and May), 12pm (noon)

April 11: Managing your references: Overview of EndNote, RefWorks and Zotero
Remlee Green, Mathew Willmott

Using citation management software to create and maintain a collection of references is becoming more common and important in today’s academic world. This session will focus on EndNote, RefWorks, and Zotero, the three major options for bibliographic software at MIT.

April 18: Bioinformatics for Beginners
Amy Stout, Courtney Crummett

Class attendees will learn about the organization of key NCBI databases, understand the database record structure, and work with the BLAST search tool. The session is a hands-on practicum and an excellent starting point for people who are new to, or curious about bioinformatics research tools.

April 25: EndNote Basics
Peter Cohn, Anita Perkins

EndNote is a “personal bibliographic software” package which allows you to create and manage a database of bibliographic references.

May 2: Citation Surfing: Using Databases to Track Article Citations
Michael M Noga

Have your ever used the Web of Science to find citations? Have you used Google Scholar? Perhaps you have used citation links in journal articles. This session will explore the different ways you can use citation searching to identify literature on a subject.

Sponsored by the MIT Libraries.

Contact the Science Library for more information.

Interest was high in 1861 as the proposed Institute of Technology moved through the Massachusetts legislative process. But among those opposed was the secretary of the Board of Education. In March, Governor John A. Andrew invited William Barton Rogers to a meeting of the board to persuade them of its advantages for education and industry. “Be thou the advocate,” wrote Massachusetts Governor Andrew in a letter exhibited as the Object of the Month by the Institute Archives and Special Collections. The proposal was finally approved by the Massachusetts legislature, and on April 10, 1861, Governor Andrew signed the Act to Incorporate the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Celebrate MIT’s anniversary month, and the countdown to MIT’s sesquicentennial in 2011, by learning more about the Institute’s beginnings and William Barton Rogers, the extraordinary man whose vision made it happen. Rogers’s papers and many documents concerning MIT’s early years are available for research in the Institute Archives, 14N-118, Monday - Thursday, 10:00 am - 4:00 pm.