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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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

Ann Wolpert, Director of Libraries at MIT, has been elected to the Governing Council of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the world’s largest archive of digital social science data. Council members guide and oversee the activities of ICPSR. Ms. Wolpert will serve a four-year term from 2008-2012.

MIT’s membership in ICPSR is provided by the Libraries’ Social Science Data Services program. For more information on the services ICPSR provides for data access and training in quantitative methods, see the MIT Libraries’ page on ICPSR.

Please join us in congratulating Ms. Wolpert on this important post!

Photo: Richard Howard

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).

Looking for profiles of countries? Need information on:

• doing business in another country
• risk analysis
• economic and political conditions
• history and factual summaries

Try these databases from the MIT Libraries:

• Business Monitor: Industry sector, economic, political and company research on 175 countries. Includes political and economic risk analysis.
• CIA World Factbook: Brief factual and graphical surveys of the economic, geographic and political conditions of 267 countries, dependent areas and other entities.
• Doing Business (World Bank): Objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement across 178 countries and selected cities at the subnational and regional level.
• EIU Country Intelligence: Analysis of historical political, infrastructural, and economic trends; forecasts of economic and political conditions; and information on operating conditions, commercial laws, and business regulations for individual countries.
• Europa World Yearbook: Detailed country surveys containing analytical, statistical and directory data for over 250 countries, territories, and regions.
• Export.gov Market Research Library: Information on the business and economic situations of foreign countries and the politics as it affects U.S. business. (Select Market Research Library, then under Report Type pick Country Commercial Guides [CCG]).

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/

This course will help researchers performing large or complex statistical analyses to identify and analyze computational problems and thus improve performance, accuracy and reliability. Topics will include: fundamentals of computer arithmetic; computing architecture and performance; statistical benchmarking; principles of performance tuning; timing and profiling statistical codes; large database management; high-performance libraries; and distributed computing approaches.

The course is offered in a one-day mixed format. The morning portion of the class will be devoted to lecture and discussion. During the afternoon, the instructor will be available to offer one-on-one consulting on projects in either the planning or active stages. Please contact the instructor in advance to reserve a specific afternoon consulting time slot.

WHEN: Monday, January 28, 10 am - 1 pm & 1 - 4 pm (Individual consulting)

WHERE: E53-220

Please note that advance sign-up is required and participation is limited to 20 participants. We require prior familiarity with fundamentals of statistical model estimation.

Contact Micah Altman, Senior Research Scientist Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University, to sign up or with any questions.

Need data to answer a research question? Interested in analyzing raw datasets with micro-level records about individual respondents? This hands-on workshop will familiarize you with the resources of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) and the Harvard-MIT Data Center, which provide access to datasets in the social sciences and related fields. Topics will include finding and downloading datasets and understanding data documentation.

WHEN: Tuesday, January 15, 2 - 3:30 pm

WHERE: 14N-132, DIRC

See http://libraries.mit.edu/guides/subjects/data/training/workshops.html for more information.

Advance sign up is required and participation is limited to 20 people. Please sign up by January 14 by contacting Katherine McNeill-Harman.

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.

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 Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the world’s largest archive of digital social science data, is hosting two opportunities for undergraduate students to gain experience in working with their data:

1. The ICPSR Undergraduate Research Paper Competitions will highlight the best undergraduate student research papers that use data from ICPSR.
   * One competition covers any dataset(s) held within the ICPSR archive or any of its special topic archives. In the second competition, the paper must address issues relevant to underrepresented minorities in the United States and draw data from the Minority Data Resource Center.
   * Up to three cash prizes will be awarded. The winner will receive a monetary award of $1,000. Second place receives $750 and third place $500.
   * Deadline for submission is January 31, 2008.
2. The ICPSR Summer Undergraduate Internship Program will take place June 9-August 15, 2008.
   * Gain experience using statistical programs such as Stata, SAS, and SPSS.
   * Learn data processing skills to prepare social science data for archiving and distribution.
   * Deadline for application is January 28, 2008.

For more information on either of these programs, contact Katherine McNeill-Harman, Data Services and Economics Librarian, at mcneillh@mit.edu.

This hands-on workshop will help graduate students learn tools that measure journal quality, publisher copyright policies, and their significance to you as an author. Includes concise overviews of:

• Measures of journal quality, including ISI impact factor and other indicators
• Copyright law as related to journal publishing (transferring copyright)
• Publisher copyright policies, including rights for posting your work on the web
• Publishing options: open access channels, in both new and traditional journals, and other types of publishing

When: Friday November 16, 2007, 11am-12pm
Where: 14N-132
Presented by: Ellen Duranceau, Scholarly Publishing  & Licensing Consultant, MIT Libraries, efinnie@mit.edu
Sponsored by: The GSC-ARC and the MIT Libraries

Today we’re making available to the MIT community a beta release of a new version of Vera, called Vera Multi-Search.

http://libraries.mit.edu/vera-beta (MIT only)

This version of Vera adds the ability to simultaneously search several databases at once, such as Web of Science, Proquest Research Library, and Barton: MIT Libraries’ Catalog.

It’s designed to help you start your library research more quickly by showing you which databases have the most hits for your query and displaying the merged results, so that you don’t have to search each database separately.

The old Vera (which lists our all of our databases and e-journals) is still available to use during the beta period. We’re offering an early look at the new Vera while we’re still developing it, so that we can get feedback from the MIT community and conduct usability tests.

To volunteer to particpate in usability tests, or to send feedback and comments, email: webmaster@libraries.mit.edu.

Due to scheduled drilling activity in the Hermann building related to the Building E62 construction project, Dewey Library will be closed Wednesday, November 21st through Saturday, November 24th. Dewey will resume normal operating hours on Sunday, November 25th at 1pm.

Other MIT Libraries will be open reduced hours on November 21st and are scheduled to close on Nov. 22nd and 23rd due to the Thanksgiving Holiday. See the Complete MIT Libraries’ fall holiday hours.

We apologize for the inconvenience. If you have any questions or concerns about access to Dewey’s resources or staff during this period, please contact Millicent Gaskell, Head Librarian, Dewey Library, at mrg@mit.edu or 3-5619.

Fall GIS Lab workshops

This class will introduce a variety of commonly used GIS tools, including learning to create and edit your own data, incorporate paper maps into a GIS (georeference), map tabular information (addresses and xy data - for example, from a GPS unit), change the projection of your data, calculate the straight line distance between points, create contour lines from a digital elevation model (DEM), and use ArcScene to visualize data in 3D. It is recommended for users to have done the Introduction to GIS exercise or have some previous experience with ArcGIS before attending this workshop.

This new hands-on class will provide a comprehensive introduction to estimating the linear regression model using ordinary least squares in Stata. Topics covered include: multiple regression, dummy variables, interaction effects, hypothesis tests, and model diagnostics. In addition, instructors will explain the substantive interpretation of regression outputs. Taught by the Harvard-MIT Data Center (HMDC) Statistical Consultant.

Prerequisites: General familiarity with Stata, including importing and managing datasets and data exploration. Familiarity with the linear regression model and ordinary least squares estimation. Students currently enrolled in a graduate-level introduction to statistics class that covers regression also are eligible.

When: Wednesday, November 7th, 12-2pm

Where: E53-220

Space is limited. To register, contact: Katherine McNeill-Harman, mcneillh@mit.edu.

Need to find news articles for your research? Want to scan today’s headlines and top stories? The Libraries provide an array of sources that can help:

General News:

• Browse current and recent editions of major papers with Factiva. Use the U.S. Newsstand to read today’s New York Times, Wall Street Journal or Washington Post, plus recent issues of Newsweek and other magazines. For more newspapers, select Business Newsstand (under Group Pages), which includes the Boston Globe and Financial Times.
• LexisNexis Academic covers major U.S. and world publications, wire services and transcripts of broadcasts. Use the initial search screen to see recent major stories or use the News tab to select from a list of sources.

Television News: The Vanderbilt Television News Archive is a huge collection of network TV news broadcasts. Users can search or browse by date.

Foreign Language News:

• Use World News Connection to monitor developments in any country or region. Articles are added daily from thousands of non-U.S. news sources and are provided in English translation.
• If you read other languages, check out the Libraries’ guide to Foreign Language News and Newspapers.

Environmental and Energy News: Greenwire has daily coverage of environmental and energy issues at the national and state level from sources in all types of media.

Ethnic News: Check Ethnic NewsWatch for articles from hundreds of newspapers and magazines of the ethnic, minority and native press.

Fall GIS Lab workshops

Location: MIT GIS lab, Rotch Library (7-238)

The US Census holds an enormous amount of demographic information dating back to 1790. New and interesting relationships can often times be observed when looking at census data on a map. Come learn about what’s in the US Census and the tools available for mapping it.

Renowned for her feminist novel “The Golden Notebook,” Ms. Lessing was described by the Swedish Academy as:

“that epicist of the female experience, who with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny.”

Check out any of the four dozen or so books by Doris Lessing, or the two dozen or so books about Doris Lessing in the Humanities Library. The book pictured above is Time Bites (call number PR6023.E833.T56 2005).