MIT Libraries News

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.

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.

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.

On Wednesday and Thursday, March 26 & 27, sections of the basement in Hayden Library will be closed to the public. Workers will be removing materials with mold damage and cleaning the shelves in the affected areas. Mold remediation will be done by Munters, a firm that specializes in recovery, following protocols that have been reviewed by MIT Environmental Health & Safety. The mold-damaged items will be discarded and replaced by materials donated from other libraries.

Staff at the Hayden Desk will be able to retrieve many items in the closed-off area while the work is in process, but some items will not be available until the work is complete. Hayden Desk staff will retrieve materials from anywhere in the basement for anyone who is concerned about venturing into the area while mold remediation efforts are in process. Technical questions can be referred to Nancy Schrock, the Libraries’ conservator, at 452-4064 or nschrock@mit.edu.

On Friday, April 18, from 1-3pm the MIT Libraries will host a community celebration in honor of the opening of the Maihaugen Gallery. The newly constructed exhibit space will showcase some of the extraordinary items from the MIT Libraries’ collections.

The first exhibit: A Celebration of Gifts will feature rare and unique items donated to the Libraries by MIT alumni, faculty, and friends. Among the treasures that will be exhibited to the public for the first time are items from the collection of the Institute’s founder, William Barton Rogers. The exhibit will also include original notebooks from Harold “Doc” Edgerton, several rare books including a first edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, and a book of illustrations from the 1553 volume Historiae animalium by Konrad Gesner. Also featured will be items from the personal library of architect Charles Bulfinch, balloon prints from the Vail Collection, books by architect Santiago Calatrava with original artwork, works from the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, and other items given to the Libraries.

The new facility is located adjacent to the Institute Archives (14N-118). The celebration will begin at 1pm with remarks by Ann Wolpert, director of the Libraries. Refreshments will be served. Please join us!

Photos by: L. Barry Hetherington, Bottom photo: Copyright Harold E. Edgerton 1992 Trust

In 1999, the Gutenberg-e program made a big splash as one of the first experiments in online scholarly monograph publication. Co-sponsored by the American Historical Association and the Columbia University Press, Gutenberg-e offered a space for new scholars to take advantage of the power of digital media to present their research in innovative ways. Since the project’s debut, 36 historians have won the Gutenberg-e competition and had their revised dissertations published as digital monographs, which have been available to libraries through subscription. The authors were able to enhance their texts with vivid images, primary source material, pop-up glossaries, web links, and other features.

Columbia University Press has recently made Gutenberg-e open-access, making these books freely available to the general public. Visit http://www.gutenberg-e.org/ to see titles such as Sarah Lowengard’s The Creation of Color in Eighteenth-Century Europe; Maria Rentetzi’s Trafficking Materials and Gendered Experimental Practices: Radium Research in Early 20th Century Vienna; and Sherry Fields’ Pestilence and Headcolds: Encountering Illness in Colonial Mexico.

MIT Geoweb provides a web interface to search, view, and download GIS data and view metadata from the MIT Geodata Repository, an international collection of GIS data maintained by MIT GIS Services.

http://web.mit.edu/geoweb

Questions, comments, or suggestions: email gishelp@mit.edu

Did you know there are many ways to access the licensed copies of e-journals that we subscribe to? The methods below work from anywhere as long as you have MIT certificates installed or are using MIT’s VPN client.

1. Go to Vera and type the title in the search box.
(Our database called “Vera” has been the primary way to access e-journals since 2000).

2. Go to http://libraries.mit.edu/ejournals and type the title in the search box
(This page is part of a new version of Vera, which is currently in beta).

3. Go to our Full Text Finder: http://libraries.mit.edu/fulltext
If you have a complete citation to an article, you can enter it and go directly to the article (in most cases).

4. Search for an article using Google Scholar. Set your preferences to say that you want the MIT Libraries links. Then follow links that say “full text - MIT Libraries.” For details, see Making Google Scholar work for you. (Google Scholar does not index ALL of our licensed e-journals, so try Vera if you don’t find it in Google Scholar).

5. Go directly to the journal’s web site. Insert our proxy server string by typing it in front of the URL and then reload the page. See: Manually inserting the proxy string.

6. Install our bookmarklet in your browser toolbar. Go to the journal web site and then click on the bookmarklet, which inserts the proxy string automatically. See Inserting the proxy string with a bookmarklet.

7. In Firefox, install our LibX toolbar. Go directly to a journal’s web site. Right click on the page and select “reload this page via MIT Libraries’ proxy.” See a video of how this works. (A version of LibX for Internet Explorer is under development).

8. In Firefox, install our search toolbar widget for Vera:
see: http://mycroft.mozdev.org/download.html?name=MIT+vera
For more info, see: Search for journals in Vera with the new Firefox search bar.

9. If you install MIT’s VPN client and log in before you visit a journal’s web site, you will be able to access our subscription e-journals. (It will see you as if you are coming from ON CAMPUS). See VPN: an alternative off-campus option. With this method, #5, 6, and 7 above are not needed.

10. Within our licensed databases, such as Web of Science or SciFinder Scholar, look for buttons that say “Get this - MIT”. Those links will take you directly to our licensed copies of articles using our “open URL resolver” which is called SFX. To see a list of our licensed databases, see Vera shortcuts.

—

These methods work only if you are ON CAMPUS:
1. Go to our Barton catalog and search for the title. Links in Barton work only from ON-CAMPUS . (A project to change this is in the works).

2. Go directly to the journal’s web site.
If you’re ON campus, and we have a subscription, you’ll get in (in most cases).

Come see, and check out, highlights from The Humanities Library’s book and DVD collections, and The Lewis Music Library’s music collections.  Items have been selected in honor of the upcoming President’s Day holiday.

Details:

• Date: Friday February 15th, 2008
• Time: 10:30AM - 2:30PM
• Where: Lobby 10
• Cost: FREE!!!

There has been an explosion of open source and free mapping tools. In this talk we will offer a brief look into the neogeographer’s world of online mapping.

WHEN: Wednesday, January 23, 2 -3 pm

WHERE: 4-231

Complete listing of GIS workshops

Image source: http://www.joomla.org/content/view/4410/74/

Whether for research or for fun, reading historical newspapers gives us a fascinating view of the past. This hands-on workshop will show you how to find and use newspapers (online and otherwise) going back as far as the 17th century. Focus will be on U.S. papers, though international papers will also be covered.

If you need to gather facts and primary sources for papers and reports, want background information for your latest short story, or are just curious how much the critics liked your favorite classic book or movie, this session is for you!

Bring your Boston Public Library card number, if you have one.

WHEN: Wednesday, January 30, 2 - 3 pm

WHERE: 14N-132, DIRC

Contact Michelle Baildon with any questions.

Come see, and check out, highlights from The Humanities Library’s book and DVD collections, and The Lewis Music Library’s music collections, with a special focus on the African American experience.

Details:

• Date: Friday January 18th, 2008
• Time: 10:30AM - 2:30PM
• Where: Lobby 10
• Cost: FREE!!!

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

Attendees will create a personal database of cited literature by importing references from resources such as Barton, Web of Science, PubMed, & other sources of published literature. Your database can be used to automatically generate in-text citations and bibliographies in your manuscripts. It can also help you organize and manage your PDF files.

WHEN: Thursday, January 17, 5 - 6 pm
Wednesday, January 23, 5 - 6 pm
Wednesday, January 30, 12 - 1 pm

WHERE: 14N-132, DIRC

Enrollment is on a first-come, first-served basis and is limited to 20 participants.

Contact Howard Silver with any questions.

Using citation management software to create and maintain a collection of references is becoming more common and important in today’s academic world. These software packages allow users to search databases, retrieve relevant citations, and build a bibliography to be added to a paper or thesis or stored for future reference. But which software package should you use, and how do you get started? This session will focus on EndNote, RefWorks, and Zotero, the three major options for bibliographic software at MIT. We will include a discussion comparing and contrasting the three softwares, and we will introduce some of the basic concepts and functionality of each program.

WHEN: Tuesday, January 15, 12 - 1 pm
Thursday, January 24, 12 - 1 pm
Monday, January 28, 5 - 6 pm

WHERE: 14N-132, DIRC

20 computers are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Attendees are welcome to bring their laptops.

Contact Remlee Green with any questions.

Join The Humanities Library for a discussion of the book that has literary circles buzzing. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Associate Professor in Writing and Humanistic Studies Junot Díaz, has been included on several year-end “best of” lists for fiction published in 2007. The discussion will be moderated by librarian Mark Szarko.

• When: Thursday January 24, 11am-12:00pm
• Where: 14N-417
• Cost: Free
• Contact: Mark Szarko (617-258-8022, szarko@mit.edu) to register, and for further details

The first 8 registrants will receive a free copy of the novel!

Are you wondering what an RSS feed is and how it can help your research?

Want to learn more about using GIS, EndNote or RefWorks?

Need to find chemical information, energy information, social science data, or patents?

Want to learn how to marble paper, improve your photography, or how to compost with worms?

Look no further! Take a peek at all of the MIT Libraries IAP Activities offered in 2008.

The fourth episode in a new series of podcasts on various aspects of scholarly publishing & copyright is now available.

In this episode, we hear from Professor Kai von Fintel, Professor of Linguistics at MIT, whose research areas are in semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy of language, and the intersections among them.

Professor von Fintel discusses the launch of a new open access journal, Semantics and Pragmatics, with co-editor David Beaver of the University of Texas at Austin. The podcast was recorded at a critical moment in the journal’s history, a few weeks after its website was launched and opened for submissions, and a few months before the first papers are expected to appear there, in early 2008.

Download the Audio File (11:11 minutes; 10.3MB)

More information about Professor von Fintel’s open access journal is available at the Semantic and Pragmatics website, which includes a blog by the editors. A previous MIT Libraries’ blog story also contains more information.

The other episodes in the podcast series are available on the scholarly publication website.

To subscribe to the MIT Libraries’ Podcasts on Scholarly Publishing, paste this link into iTunes or another podcast reader:

http://feeds.rapidfeeds.com/6772/

This is the first series of podcasts created by the Libraries specifically for this format. We encourage and welcome your feedback as the series evolves. If you have any feedback, please direct it to:
Ellen Finnie Duranceau / Scholarly Publishing and Licensing Consultant / efinnie@mit.edu
Nicole Hennig / Web Manager / hennig@mit.edu

The Humanities Library will hold its next Bookmobile on Tues., Dec. 18th, from 11-2 in Lobby 10. Choose from books, DVDs, audiobooks and music, to keep you entertained during the long holiday break.

Come check us out!