After nearly 3 years of training, in May 2009 Massimino rocketed 5.3 million miles into space on a mission to repair NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.  The veteran astronaut spoke about the extensive preparation for the journey, as well as the risks and thrills that were a part of the historic final trip to Hubble.

He also returned an item to MIT that he took into space with him—a book loaned from the MIT Libraries’ collections.  The book, a limited edition facsimile of Galileo’s landmark publication Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger), was chosen to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s astronomical research, the first recorded planetary observations using a telescope.  It is on display through December 2009 in the Science Library (14S-134).

Astronaut Massimino’s talk was sponsored by the MIT Libraries, the Technology and Policy Program (TPP)/ Engineering Systems Division (ESD), and Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

These publishers make their articles available under a Creative Commons license, allowing for broad reuse.

The faculty policy, established by on March 18, 2009, makes the faculty’s scholarly articles openly available on the web. Papers are being shared via MIT’s research repository, DSpace@MIT.

To submit a paper under the policy, please send the final submitted manuscript, post peer-review, but prior to the publisher’s formatting, to oapolicysubmissions@mit.edu or upload the paper through a short web form.

To review other confirmed publisher responses, please see: Publishers and the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy. Please send any questions about publishers not yet on the page to Ellen Duranceau, Scholarly Publishing & Licensing Consultant.

For more information:

MIT Faculty Open Access Policy

Details on working with the policy

Ellen Duranceau, Scholarly Publishing & Licensing Consultant, x 38483

MIT GIS Services has released a new version of the MIT Geodata Repository Search Tool for ArcGIS. The MIT Geodata Repository holds 1,700+ layers of geographic data. This tool enables searching for GIS vectors and rasters via keywords, geographic location, and geometry type. For example, you can search for building footprints, like the ones used in the view of Manhattan shown above.

This tool is available in the MIT GIS Lab, and can be downloaded and installed on any machine running ESRI’s ArcGIS software. The help guide can walk one through how it works.

The faculty policy, established by on March 18, 2009, makes the faculty’s scholarly articles openly available on the web.  Papers are being shared via MIT’s research repository, DSpace@MIT.

To submit a paper under the policy, please send the final submitted manuscript, post peer-review, but prior to the publisher’s formatting, as an email attachment to oapolicysubmissions@mit.edu or upload a paper through a web form.

To review other confirmed publisher responses, please see: Publishers and the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy. Please send any questions about publishers not yet on the page to Ellen Duranceau, Scholarly Publishing & Licensing Consultant.

For more information:

MIT Faculty Open Access Policy

Details on working with the policy

Ellen Duranceau, Scholarly Publishing & Licensing Consultant, x 38483

If you regularly use the SciFinder client, you have probably noticed challenges in logging in. We have been dedicating fewer and fewer seats (of 11 total) for the client. All of the seats will be unavailable as of Monday, November 2.

If you have not yet registered to use the web version of SciFinder, please do so.

You will have to access SciFinder via the Libraries proxy server, which requires the use of the MIT Touchstone authentication system. Note that this is only available for MIT faculty, students, post-docs, other researchers and staff with certificates installed on their machines.

If you have any questions, please contact the Chemistry Librarian, Erja Kajosalo.

Reserves assistant Cate Gallivan has pulled together a few examples of ghoulish music.  There’s plenty more in the library collection; ooze on over to 14E-109 and find some!  CDs and DVDs circulate for 3 days, scores and books for 30 days.

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

MIT authors do not need to prepare an amendment to the AIP or AVS publication agreements or take any other special action in order to work with these publishers under the MIT policy.

To submit a paper, please send the final submitted manuscript, post peer-review, but prior to the publisher’s formatting,  as an email attachment to oapolicysubmissions@mit.edu or upload a paper through a web form.

To review other confirmed publisher responses, please see: Publishers and the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy. Publishers are being added to this web page as information becomes available.   Please send any questions about  publishers not yet on the page to Ellen Duranceau, Scholarly Publishing & Licensing Consultant.

For more information:

MIT Faculty Open Access Policy

Details on working with the policy

Ellen Duranceau, Scholarly Publishing & Licensing Consultant, x 38483

ILLiad, the interface for Interlibrary Borrowing and Library Storage Annex services is joining the Touchstone bandwagon.  Gone are the days where a separate username and password are required to place requests for materials not owned by MIT or PDFs from the Annex.

Touchstone is single sign-on across MIT applications, so if you have recently used Touchstone to access Your Account in Barton, Stellar Course Management, wikis.mit.edu, or other Touchstone-enabled tools at MIT, then access to ILLiad will be seamless.  Otherwise, Touchstone will prompt you to choose between using MIT web certificates and your Kerberos login.

In order to make the switch from manual login to Touchstone access,

• Registration for new ILLiad users will be unavailable from 8:30 am on Monday, October 26 to 8:30AM on Wednesday, October 28th.
• ILLiad will be unavailable to all users from 8:30 am to 3 pm on Thursday, October 29th.

More details about the outages can be found here.

(Photo Credit: julian- via Flickr)

Veteran Astronaut and MIT Alumnus Dr. Mike Massimino (SM TPP 1988, Engineer ME 1990, PhD 1992) will come to MIT on Wednesday Oct. 28 to talk about his recent work servicing NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and to return a book to the MIT Libraries.

In May 2009 Massimino and six other astronauts boarded the space shuttle Atlantis for a journey that took them 5.3 million miles for a final servicing of the telescope.  Massimino and other STS-125 crewmembers conducted five spacewalks to upgrade the Hubble, enabling it to send back spectacular images of the universe well into the next decade.  While on the mission the crew captured photographs and video, and Massimino became the first astronaut to ‘Tweet’ from space—sending back updates on the mission through his Twitter feed (http://twitter.com/astro_mike), which has surpassed 1 million followers.

Accompanying Massimino on the mission was a rare book loaned from the MIT Libraries’ collections.  The book, a limited edition facsimile of Galileo’s landmark publication Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger), was chosen to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s astronomical research, the first recorded planetary observations using a telescope.

In his talk, Massimino will discuss his work and show images and video from the mission.  He will also present the well-traveled book back to the MIT Community and the Libraries.

Sponsored by the MIT Libraries, the Technology and Policy Program (TPP)/ Engineering Systems Division (ESD), and Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

The policy affirms the faculty’s commitment “to disseminating the fruits of its research and scholarship as widely as possible.”

The collection consists of the authors’ final submitted manuscripts.  Published versions may also appear where the publisher’s policy allows for such posting.  Both versions are identified for readers.

MIT authors are encouraged to send their papers to oapolicysubmissions@mit.edu or use a web form for inclusion in the collection.

The MIT Libraries are administering the policy under the guidance of the Faculty Committee on the Library System, and are maintaining a list of publishers who are fully cooperating with the policy.

Ellen Duranceau, Scholarly Publishing & Licensing Consultant, can answer questions about publisher policies, the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy, or the new collection of articles.

More Information:

Publishers’ policies as they relate to MIT’s OA policy

FAQ about the Policy

MIT’s Support for the Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity

The new policy was formalized by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), the governing body that manages NCAR.   Papers will be held in a repository called “OpenSky,” which will include all peer-reviewed studies by NCAR and UCAR researchers that are published in scientific journals.  The repository will be available to the public.

More information:

• NCAR announcement
• Peter Suber’s analysis

The MIT Community is invited to an opening reception on Friday, October 23, 1-3pm in the Maihaugen Gallery (14N-130). Check out the exhibit and enjoy refreshments with friends!

1. Introduction to Stata
Get an introduction to Stata, the statistical analysis software package commonly used at MIT. With hands-on exercises, learn how to import and manage datasets. Novices welcome!

When: Friday, October 23rd, 2-5pm

2. Data Management in Stata
Learn techniques for data management using Stata. Perform hands-on exercises and learn how to create cross-sectional, time-series, and panel datasets from several data files.  Topics include importing data into Stata, labeling data and variables, converting data from string to numeric format, appending and merging datasets, and collapsing and reshaping a dataset.  Prerequisite: a general familiarity with Stata (such as taking the Intro. workshop).

When: Friday, November 6th, 3-5pm

3. Introduction to Regression Using Stata
This hands-on class will provide a comprehensive introduction to estimating the linear regression model using ordinary least squares in Stata. Topics for the class include multiple regression, dummy variables, interaction effects, hypothesis tests, and model diagnostics. Prerequisites include a general familiarity with Stata (such as taking the Intro. workshop), the linear regression model, and the ordinary least squares estimation.

When: Friday, November 13th, 3-5pm

4. Introduction to R
Get an introduction to R, the open-source system for statistical computation and graphics available on Athena. With hands-on exercises, learn how to import and manage datasets, create R objects, and generate figures. Novices welcome!

When: Friday, December 11th, 1-4pm

Where: All workshops held in the Sloan Trading Room in the basement of E52: E52-010.

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

Can’t make these times? Attend these workshops at Harvard or view the slides on your own.

Brought to you by Social Science Data Services: http://libraries.mit.edu/guides/subjects/data/

Willing to give 30-45 minutes of your time for a $15-$20 gift card?

The MIT Libraries are conducting website usability tests this Fall and are looking for volunteers. The test would take between 30 and 45 minutes of your time, depending on which of the 2 tests you are assigned to. We’ll make individual appointments with you where we’ll ask you to “think out loud” while you complete a series of tasks or sort items into categories.

As compensation, you’ll receive an Amazon gift cards for either $15 or $20.

Interested?
Contact Allison Benedetti. (Open only to the MIT community.)

This is also true for the handful of e-resources that currently require certificates even while on-campus.  This means that you can now use these resources on shared or borrowed computers, where you normally wouldn’t want to install your personal certificates.

Touchstone is single sign-on across MIT applications, so if you have recently used Touchstone to access Your Account in Barton, Stellar Course Management, wikis.mit.edu, or other Touchstone-enabled tools at MIT, then access to the e-resources will be seamless.  Otherwise, Touchstone will prompt you to choose between using MIT web certificates and your Kerberos login.

When off-campus, be sure to use Vera to access these resources, so that Touchstone is properly invoked.

Learn more details, as well as other paths besides Vera that will provide authentication:  Accessing Licensed Electronic Resources

Learn how to manage your articles and cite your references more effectively in these hands-on workshops. No advance registration required.

All workshops will take place in the Digital Instruction Resource Center (DIRC), 14N-132.

EndNote Basics

EndNote is a “personal bibliographic software” package that 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.

• Friday, 10/16: 12-1pm
• Tuesday, 10/20: 5-6pm

RefWorks Basics

RefWorks is a web-based resource designed to help you organize references and create a bibliography. RefWorks allows you to search, retrieve relevant citations, easily cite references as you write your paper, and build your bibliography. It allows users to create individual or group accounts.

• Thursday, 10/15: 5-6pm
• Wednesday, 10/21: 12-1pm

Managing Your References: Overview of EndNote, RefWorks, and Zotero

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 citation 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.

• Wednesday, 10/14: 5-6pm
• Thursday, 10/22: 12-1pm

Can’t make the classes and need help?  Try our research guides for citation software help, or ask us!

Learn about ICPSR (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research), the world’s largest archive of research data for the social sciences.  Next week (Oct 5-9, 2009), ICPSR will be broadcasting live free webinars to help you understand and utilize its many data resources.  Topics covered include:

• Data on minority populations
• Graphing quantitative data & Web 2.0 tools for visualization
• Protecting respondent confidentiality
• American Community Survey
• American National Election Survey
• Harmonized data sets
• Documentation of research data
• Quantitative literacy/Using data in teaching
• Online analysis of data
• And more!

Visit http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/or/ormeet/program/index.jsp to review the abstracts and slides and to register to attend the webinars.  Note: while these are presented in the context of the meeting of ICPSR Official Representatives, the webinars are free and open to the public; all members of the MIT community are encouraged to register and attend.

Can’t make the live webinars?  View them anytime at: http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/or/ormeet/program/index.jsp.

For more information about ICPSR, contact MIT’s Official Representative, Katherine McNeill, at mcneillh@mit.edu.

One key effort has been to work with publishers to ensure that MIT papers will be handled smoothly under the policy, and we are pleased to announce that the American Economic Association (AEA) has confirmed its cooperation.  MIT authors do not need to prepare an amendment to the AEA publication agreement or take any other special action in order to publish with the AEA under the MIT policy.

We anticipate that this will be the first in a series of announcements about publishers cooperating with the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy.   To track publisher responses, we are offering a new web page.  More publishers will be added to the page as information becomes available, and questions about  publishers not yet on the page may be sent to Ellen Duranceau, Scholarly Publishing & Licensing Consultant.

To submit a paper under the policy, please send the final submitted manuscript, post peer-review, but prior to publisher’s formatting,  as an email attachment to oapolicysubmissions@mit.edu.

For more information:

MIT Faculty Open Access Policy

Publisher Policies

Ellen Duranceau, Scholarly Publishing & Licensing Consultant

Many of the services featured on the MIT Libraries’ web site are available from a mobile phone on the MIT Mobile Web.

To get to the MIT Libraries’ mobile site, visit http://m.mit.edu from your mobile device’s web browser.

The site is currently optimized for iPhones.  In the future, we plan to create versions optimized for other mobile phones.

From the Libraries’ mobile site, you can:

• View hours & locations for each library
• Ask questions and request a meeting with the librarian for your subject
• Read news from the MIT Libraries on our blog

Read more about the mobile web site.

What else would you like to see on the mobile web site? Give us your ideas!

Special thanks to Andrew Yu and the MIT Mobile Web team for their help in developing the MIT Libraries’ mobile web site.

To support this goal, the five universities have pledged to support fees for open access publication.  Specifically, the universities commit to “the timely establishment of durable mechanisms for underwriting reasonable publication charges for articles written by [their] faculty and published in fee-based open-access journals and for which other institutions would not be expected to provide funds.”

MIT Provost Rafael Reif reflected on the significance of the compact:  “The dissemination of research findings to the public is not merely the right of research universities: it is their obligation.   Open-access publishing promises to put more research in more hands and in more places around the world.   This is a good enough reason for universities to embrace the guiding principles of this compact.”

In addition to MIT, the other initial signatories are Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, and the University of California at Berkeley.   Other universities are encouraged to join at the compact web site.

MIT news story

Compact web site

Inside Higher Ed

PLoS article by Compact author and Harvard professor Stuart Shieber

The tables were provided by the Class of 1982 Music Library Fund. There are also computers with Peak LE6 audio software on the mezzanine and Sibelius music software on the main floor. The Lewis Music Library is located in Bldg.14E-109 and library hours are posted on the web.

Barker Library Open House
Where: Barker Engineering Library (10-500)
Reading Room (under the Dome)
When: Wednesday, September 16, 4-6pm
Remarks at 4:30pm, Refreshments served

The old “journal racks” in the Barker Reading Room have been removed to open up the space and give way to a more flexible design.  New area rugs, fresh paint, refinished furniture and improved lighting make this iconic space more inviting for quiet study.

Dewey Library Open House
Where: Dewey Library (E53-100), First Floor
When: Thursday, September 17, 4-6pm
Remarks at 4:30pm, Refreshments served

The new, improved Dewey Library offers a secure 24-7 study space, an area designated for quiet study, and numerous power-enabled study carrels. There are 12 brand-new group study rooms, each with LCD screen and white board, which can be reserved online. The brighter, more open space also features many ecologically-friendly touches, such as cork floor tiles and energy-efficient lighting.

If you are interested in learning of other ways to support the Libraries please see the MIT Libraries Giving web site. ]]> http://news-libraries.mit.edu/blog/sales-suspended/1799/feed/ 0 http://news-libraries.mit.edu/blog/video-conferencing-2/1784/ http://news-libraries.mit.edu/blog/video-conferencing-2/1784/#comments Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:55:21 +0000 Darcy Duke http://news-libraries.mit.edu/blog/?p=1784 Video conferencing is now available in the Barker Library Media Suite!

Need to meet with someone who is off-campus for the day, or perhaps on the other side of the world?

Barker library is now equipped with an H.323 compatible (IP video-conferencing) system – this system can only be used with other H.323 systems (no Skype, etc.).

The Barker Media Suite is available anytime the library is open, but MIT community members may make reservations by contacting the Barker Library Service Desk.

Other resources and capabilities in the Barker Media Suite:

• DVDs and videos: view items from Barker’s collection of engineering-related DVDs and videos
• Viewing area: use for small group viewings of web-accessible seminars, lectures, and other video material available through MIT World, OCW, and non-MIT sites
• Presentation space: hook your laptop up to the 48″ plasma screen for small group presentations (or use the instruction computer attached to the lecturn)

More information about the Barker Media Suite.

The MIT Libraries have recently purchased more access to Web of Science, increasing coverage by 73 years.  You’ll now be able to search:

• Science Citation Index: 1900 – present
• Social Sciences Citation Index: 1956 – present
• Arts & Humanities Citation Index: 1975 – present

In addition to searching for articles, Web of Science is especially useful for finding out who has cited a particular article with the “Cited Reference Search.”  To see an example, within Web of Science, choose the “Cited Reference Search,” and type “Einstein, A*” in the author field.  You can quickly identify Einstein’s key papers among the results.

Not only can you get more citation information for articles, but it gets even better – we currently have an extended trial to get citation information for conference literature.

The trial includes published literature of the most significant conferences, symposia, seminars, colloquia, workshops, and conventions in a wide range of disciplines. Track emerging ideas and new research in a specific field by viewing citation information for proceedings.  Both sections of the Conference Proceedings Citation Index (Science, and Social Sciences & Humanities) are available from 1990 to the present.

We want to know what you think. To give feedback on the conference proceedings or for more information, e-mail feedback-proceedings@mit.edu.

MIT faculty, graduate students, and research staff may now apply online to get borrowing privileges to many libraries at Harvard!  To apply, fill out the Special Borrower Card Application.  Borrow at Harvard Libraries including Widener, Cabot, Fine Arts, Loeb Music, and Tozzer, and more.

Find out more information about access to Harvard and other non-MIT Libraries.

Also available: apply online for privileges at Harvard’s Countway Library of Medicine.

If you qualify, a pdf of your approved form will be sent as soon as possible, and no later than 5:00 pm the next business day.  If you need immediate access to a Harvard Library, bring your MIT ID to the service desk at Barker, Dewey, Hayden, or Rotch Libraries, and fill out the appropriate forms at the desk.