MIT Libraries News

Hayden Library — Humanities & Science — will stay open 24 hours a day during Finals

from Thursday, May 15th at 8am to Friday, May 23rd at 7pm.

Overnight hours are for the MIT community only.

Take a break from all your studying and come grab yourself a snack, compliments of the Hayden (Humanities and Science) Library. Sorry, no pizza or burgers, but plenty of cookies and beverages will available. Here are the details: Where: Hayden Library (14S-100) lobby When: Thursday May 15th, 3-4:30pm Cost: FREE!!!

Want to see if a copy of Junot Diaz’ new book is available? Can’t find the West Mezzanine? Come to our new “Quick Search Work Station,” just inside our main entrance. Easy access to The Humanities Library homepage, and Barton (our online catalog), is at your finger tips, and a new color-coded map of our library helps you find your way around.

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)

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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/

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.