The Islamic Heritage Project

Here's a new resource about which I'm very excited: the Islamic Heritage Project is a digital collection of over 145,000 pages, including more than 260 manuscripts, 50+ maps, and nearly 300 printed texts from Harvard's library and museum collections. Materials date from the 13th to 20th centuries, and represent many regions (including Saudi Arabia, North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and South, Southeast, and Central Asia), various languages (primarily Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish, as well as Urdu, Chagatai, Malay, Gujarati, Indic languages, and several Western languages), and numerous subjects [including religious texts and commentaries, Sufism, history, geography, law, and the sciences (astronomy, astrology, mathematics, medicine), poetry and literature, rhetoric, logic, and philosophy, calligraphy, dictionaries and grammar, biographies, and autobiographical works]. The database is searchable by keyword, title, name/creator, subject, and form/genre. It is also browsable by title, author/creator, country of origin, language, and by selected topics. Many of the materials in the collection are unique.

The project was produced by two coordinating partners: the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program at Harvard University and the Harvard University Library Open Collections Program. It was made possible by the generous support of Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal. This is a treasury of research material and a true jewel of an online collection, and I hope you will explore it at length.

At your service,
Cheryl

College Library Workshops for Grads in JTerm

The College Library is offering a series of workshops for grad students during the January term. They include a Harvard Map Collection Orientation, Basic Geographic Analysis, Working with Digital Historic Maps, an EndNote Workshop for the Sciences, Bibliography and History of the Book, and a RefWorks Basic session. Some sessions have limits on size, and they all require registration; you can get the direct info. to do so here.

Enjoy the break, and hope you take advantage of these special, free programs!
At your service,
Cheryl

Holiday and J-Term Library Hours

All of the College libraries will be closed from noon December 24, 2009 through January 3, 2010. From January 4th - 24th library hours will vary, so please check the library hour's page to see if the library you wish to visit will be open.

Happy holidays to everyone!
At your service,
Cheryl

HCL is now Twittering

The College Library (HCL) has recently launched a Twitter page as one more way to reach library users. Find our tweets at twitter.com by searching for: HCLibraries, or go to: http://twitter.com/hclibraries if you'd like to follow our tweets.

At your virtual service,
Cheryl

The Fine Arts Library Media & Digital Lab

Just wanted to make sure you all know about this: the Fine Arts Library now has a Media & Digital Lab located on the lower level of the Sackler Building. The Lab has MAC and PC workstations with software for creating, editing, presenting, and viewing digital media, and these are all available to Harvard students and faculty. Software available includes: ARTstor Offline Image Viewer, PowerPoint, Photoshop, Keynote, iMovie, iDVD, Photo Booth, and Garage Band.

Lab hours are: Monday-Thursday: 9 AM-10 PM; Friday: 9 AM-6 PM, Saturdays: 10 AM - 5 PM, Sundays: 1 PM-6 PM.

Drop-in help is available: Monday-Thursday: 3-9 PM; Friday: 3-6 PM.

Get in touch with FAL Media Lab Staff for assistance:
Spruill Harder, Visual Resources Librarian, sgharder@fas.harvard.edu, and
Al Morales, Public Services Supervisor, admoral@fas.harvard.edu; and
telephone: 617-495-4982.

At your service,
Cheryl

Digitized Scrolls from the Japanese Manuscript Collection, 1158-1591

The Harvard Law School Library has just put up on the web a digital collection entitled, Digitized Scrolls from the Japanese Manuscript Collection, 1158-1591 . The Japanese Manuscript Digital Collection consists of twenty-two medieval legal manuscripts and annotated facsimiles in scroll form called komonjo (komonjo are remnants of day-to-day legal transactions which frequently focus on land and property issues, though they can also represent edicts and judicial rulings). This collection spans nearly 450 years, and provides a rare window into legal transactions in the Heian (794–1185), Kamakura (1185–1333), Moromachi (1333–1568), and Momoyama (1568–1600) periods. It is part of a large donation presented to the Harvard Law Library in 1936, and is one of the finest collections of its type outside Japan. You may view the individual scrolls via the link, above.

At your service,
Cheryl

More RefWorks Sessions Being Offered

Lamont librarians have scheduled these three additional sessions of basic training in RefWorks, the online citation management tool:

Monday, October 19, 11:00-11:50am. Room 310 (LAMONT 3rd FLOOR)
Thursday, October 22, 2:00-2:50pm. Room 310 (LAMONT 3rd FLOOR)
Wednesday, October 28, 2:00-2:50pm. Larsen Room (LAMONT 1st FLOOR)

Because space is limited, students need to sign up for the session of their choice by contacting Steve (kuehler@fas.harvard.edu) or Chris (lenney@fas.harvard.edu), or by going to the Research Services Desk on Level B of Lamont.

At your service,
Cheryl

Library Orientation for New NELC Grad Students

I’ll be giving an orientation to library research for new NELC graduate students on Friday, September 25^th, from 3:30 to 4:30 PM in Room G-55 on the ground floor of Widener Library. I look forward to seeing you there!

At your service,

Cheryl

HOLLIS vs. HOLLIS Classic

As you may already know, 2 different HOLLIS systems are available for you to use in searching for library materials at Harvard: HOLLIS (the new "discovery" system released earlier this year) and HOLLIS Classic (the online system we've been using for a some time). The Baker Business Library recently defined the main differences between the two systems, and they did such a nice job I'm simply going to reproduce their definitions here (with thanks to them!):

HOLLIS  

    * Intuitive search and display

    * Defaults to relevance ranking. Sorting by date is an option.

    * Suggests related terms, alternative spellings and other ways to refine or expand your search

    * Forgiving search interface, relevence ranking, inclusion of tables of contents make it best for discovering what is available.

    * Relevance ranking makes it good for finding known items with imprecise information (eg: the journal, Science).

HOLLIS Classic

    * Use to search in non-roman alphabets

    * Supports string (phrase) searching

    * More display options for print/save/send

    * Best for precision searches for known items.

    *  Allows emailing of selected records

    * Most up to date information. Use for new titles

We have been told that the new HOLLIS should be able to support searching in non-roman alphabets by the end of 2010, and that HOLLIS Classic will be maintained until it does.

For more details, please see the Baker Business Library page, Which catalog to use?

At your service,

Cheryl

AskUsLive! (the online chat service through which Harvard University affiliates can "speak" with a Harvard librarian in real time online) is live again, starting today. We're offering this free service Sundays through Thursdays, 3PM-9PM; to use it just click on the AskUsLive! icon on the Harvard College Library web site home page.

At your service,
Cheryl

Scan & Deliver: Easy, Free, Green

Scan and Deliver is an electronic document delivery service which enables you to obtain scans of book chapters or journal articles from participating Harvard libraries. The current list of Scan and Deliver-participating libraries includes: Andover Theology, Baker, Cabot, Chemistry, Countway, Ernst Mayr, Fine Arts, Frances Loeb Design, Fung, Gutman, Kennedy, Lamont (Poetry Room and Government Documents only), Law, Loeb Music, Physics Research, Tozzer, and Widener. For more information on the service, please see the Scan and Deliver FAQ.

At your service,
Cheryl

RefWorks Training for Fall 2009

Lamont librarians are offering 50-minute basic training sessions in RefWorks (a web-based bibliographic management program that allows users with a Harvard ID and PIN to create a personal database of citations, abstracts, images, and other materials in electronic form, and to integrate these sources into bibliographies, articles, etc. written with Word and other word processors) on:

Thursday, September 10, 4:00-4:50pm ROOM 310 (LAMONT 3rd FLOOR)
Thursday, September 17, 4:00-4:50pm. ROOM 310 (LAMONT 3rd FLOOR)
Tuesday, September 22, 11:00-11:50am. LARSEN ROOM (LAMONT 1st FLOOR)
Wednesday, September 23, 3:00-3:50pm. ROOM 310 (LAMONT 3rd FLOOR)
Wednesday, September 30, 2:00-2:50pm. ROOM 310 (LAMONT 3rd FLOOR)
Thursday, October 1, 4:00-4:50pm. ROOM 310 (LAMONT 3rd FLOOR)

All students, faculty, and staff are welcome, but registration is necessary because space is limited. To sign up, contact Steve (kuehler@fas.harvard.edu) or Chris (lenney@fas.harvard.edu), or come by the Research Services Desk on Level B of Lamont.

Future training sessions will be posted on the Citation Tools iSite at
http://isites.harvard.edu/citationtools -- just go to "Instruction and Assistance."

At your service,
Cheryl

Research Guide Links for Liaison Departments

As the term approaches I thought it might be useful if I put together in one place a set of links to guides available for various of my departments/programs of liaison. So here they are:

Library Research Guide for the Center for Jewish Studies' Visiting Scholars and Starr Fellows,

Library Research Guide for the Center for Middle Eastern Studies,

East Asian Studies Research Guide,

Resources for Freshman Seminars,

and

Library Research Guide for Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

These are general guides for introducing you to various resources in your research; most of the sources on them are electronic. I can also devise individual course research guides tailored to your specific course (for example, the Library Research Guide for Abé Mark Nornes' Japanese Literature 160: The Pacific War Through Film), so please do get in touch with me if you’d like such a guide for your course.

At your service,
Cheryl

New HOLLIS Discovery System Usability Testing

Are you interested in participating in the usability testing we'll be doing for the new HOLLIS Discovery System this summer? If so, please let me know ASAP -- we're scheduling usability interviews with students, administrative staff, and faculty to find out what you like, and what you'd like changed, in the new system.

My e-mail is: claguard@fas.harvard.edu.

Hope to hear from you! and many thanks, while at your service,
Cheryl

Considering Use Images in Your Research? Please Take the Image User Survey

The Harvard University Image User Survey is now available for you to respond (anonymously) about your use, or non-use, of images in your research, teaching, or class work. You can take the survey up until May 31st.

The purpose of the survey is to gather user feedback to assist in the "evolution of image tools provided by the Harvard University Libraries and the Harvard Museums." The survey doesn't take long to fill out, and we'll be grateful to you for responding.

At your service,
Cheryl

Leaving Harvard? Backup or Export Your RefWorks File

If you are a RefWorks user and are leaving Harvard, you should save your RefWorks data before June 5th while you still have access to licensed resources. Here are the instructions to follow if:

1. You are moving to another institution that provides access to RefWorks, and you want to transfer your Harvard account to another institutional account; or if you want to
2. Transfer your Harvard RefWorks account to an individual account; or if you want to
3. Export your references to your computer in one of a number of formats

At your service for RefWorks and all things library,
Cheryl

Google Public Data

Thanks to my colleague George Clark for the heads up about this new Google feature, Google Public Data. Google recently “launched a new search feature that makes it easy to find and compare public data” – and it really is incredibly easy, as well as powerful.

For example, if you go into Google and do a search for: unemployment rate Massachusetts -- the system goes into Google Public Data and delivers a graph showing the latest reported unemployment figures for Massachusetts. If you then click on one or more of the boxes in the list of states at screen left, the system overlays the comparative graphs of unemployment for each state selected (the data source for these graphs is the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, BTW). Pretty useful. And that’s just one application for it….

At your service,
Cheryl

Scan and Deliver: The New Electronic Document Delivery Service

Scan and Deliver is a free new library service that will deliver scanned articles or chapters from materials at HD and participating libraries to researchers’ desktops. How does it work? On the availability screen in HOLLIS Beta and HOLLIS Classic, a Request PDF button will show next to the item if it is eligible for Scan and Deliver service. Researchers can make a Scan and Deliver request from within HOLLIS Beta and HOLLIS Classic – you’ll be authenticated through the Harvard PIN server, and then guided through the request process by succeeding screens. When an item is scanned it will be uploaded to a server and the researcher will receive an e-mail with a link to the document in PDF format.

There’s a page limit of 30 pages for an article or book chapter, complying with the Copyright Act Section 108(d)&(e). [Do note: limits are imposed manually by staff.] A researcher may make 2 requests per day. The target turnaround time for filling requests is 4 business days; some libraries may be able to provide faster service, as time allows.

The service went live yesterday, April 22, 2009 -- so it’s there at your service, now.
Enjoy!
Cheryl

Non-Roman Character Searching in the New Discovery Tool

About the new Discovery Tool (HOLLIS Beta): as you may have "discovered" already, it does not currently support searching in non-roman characters. The vendor is supposed to have completed this development for the system by December 2010 (although we hope that it might be available prior to that time). Meanwhile, HOLLIS classic will continue to support this kind of searching, so you can still perform non-roman character searches in it.

At your service,
Cheryl

Lilac Sunday at the Arnold Arboretum

Sunday, May 10, 2009 is Lilac Sunday at the Arnold Arboretum. That day lilac-lovers from all across New England flock to the Arboretum to picnic, watch Morris dancing, and enjoy the remarkably beautiful lilac collection.

The event takes place rain or shine, and the Arboretum is open (as usual) from dawn to dusk. Refreshments are available for purchase from 10 AM to 4 PM.

At your service,

Cheryl

The New HOLLIS Discovery System

The new HOLLIS discovery system is now available for your use, at:

http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.eresource:hollisds

All 11+ million records from HOLLIS are available for searching. The new system also provides relevance-ranked search results; options to refine your search by topic, format, language; persistent library location selection; spelling suggestions; and exports to Refworks and to Endnote. And… you can help make the system even better as we actively work to make the system more useful to the Harvard Community. Tell us what you think via the Feedback and suggestions link off the new front page of the discovery system.

At your service,

Cheryl

Working with Video? Try Embedr

If you incorporate video in any of your online work, you might want to take a look at Embedr. It's "a free service that lets anyone create a custom playlist of videos from the top video sites on the web." That is, you can take up to 100 videos from all over the web and make them into a single standard playlist.

Here is the list of video services compatible with Embedr. And did I mention it's a free service? You'll be asked to set up an account, but it is free. And BTW, you can embed your Embedr playlist on your Facebook and MySpace pages, too.

At your service,
Cheryl

RefWorks Training

On Tuesday, March 31, 2009, Chris Lenney and Steve Kuehler will offer basic training in RefWorks, the online citation management tool. The session will take place 4:00-4:50pm in Room 310, on the third floor of Lamont Library. Sign up by contacting Steve (kuehler@fas.harvard.edu) or Chris (lenney@fas.harvard.edu).

Faculty and staff are also welcome to attend this training. Future training sessions will be posted on the Citation Tools iSite.

At your service,
Cheryl

Name the New Discovery System!

The Harvard University Libraries will be implementing a new search and discovery system soon, and we need a name for it. HOLLIS has been used already, so what should this new system be called?

[Want an idea of what the new system will do? Take a look at this installation at the University of Chicago.]

We urge Harvard researchers to give us naming ideas for the new Harvard online system. Just ask at any library public service desk to “take the naming survey” (only 4 questions) to get your ideas to us (BTW, we have a tiny window of opportunity to name the system, so we want your ideas as quickly as you can get them to us).

Many thanks for your ideas, so we can make the system “at your service,”
Cheryl

The Harvard Iranian Oral History Project

The Harvard Iranian Oral History Project was launched by Habib Ladjevardi, MBA ’63, following the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran (Ladjevardi was working as a research associate at Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the time). The project’s goal was to preserve eyewitness accounts of the revolution before they were lost, which was done using cassette tapes and paper, both of which became increasingly fragile over time. But as of this writing, 118 of the 134 interviews conducted as part of the project have been digitized, and so are available to scholars worldwide on the Iranian Oral History Project site, where you can read background on the project and search or browse the interviews.

At your service,
Cheryl

Consult Judaica Division

For some materials in the HOLLIS catalog you’ll find the location listed as, "Harvard Depository…Consult Judaica Division" or "Consult Judaica Division." These items include non-circulating material located at the Harvard Depository as well as in-process materials located in the Judaica Division in Widener Library.

To gain access to these materials, use the “Consult Judaica Division Request Form,” located on the HCL web site. The completed form goes directly to the Judaica Division, and staff there will e-mail you as soon as the item you requested is available.

It’s all about getting the material into your hands.
At your service,
Cheryl

The Harvard Semitic Museum Photographic Archives

The Harvard Semitic Museum Photographic Archives was developed at the Semitic Museum between 1891 and 1992. It is an important set of Middle Eastern photographic collections, with over 38,500 images in a wide variety of formats, including albumen silver prints, multiple-image panoramic views, stereographs, snapshots, picture postcards, photogravures, autochromes, lantern slides, color slides, films, and audiotapes.

For further information about the Archives, please check the web link, above, or get in touch with Jeff Spurr, Islamic and Middle Eastern Specialist, Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, by phone at 617-495-3372, by fax at 617-496-4889, or via e-mail at spurr@fas.harvard.edu.

At your service,

Cheryl

Botanical and Cultural Images of Eastern Asia, 1907-1927

In the spring, our fancy in Cambridge lightly turns to thoughts of GREENERY, and whether we'll ever see any again (*deep sigh!*). If you are experiencing a frantic need for a renewal of the great outdoors, right now might be the optimal time for you to explore the Arnold Arnoretum's Botanical and Cultural Images of Eastern Asia, 1907-1927 online.

This is a collection of eastern Asian photographs that represents the work of plant explorers who traveled to Asia in the early years of the twentieth century and brought back to the Arboretum live plants, seeds, dried specimens, and the amazing images of Asian botany and culture you can see here. It's a quick and easy getaway online, an immersion in another time, other places, and very little snow or ice in evidence (the above picture notwithstanding).

At your service,
Cheryl

Cambridge Histories Online

Harvard scholars now have full access 24/7/365 to the Cambridge Histories Online, over 250 volumes published by Cambridge University Press since 1960, covering over 15 different academic subjects. You can search and browse the full-text content, save searches, bookmark sources, and export citations from within the system. Volumes in this online series include: Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period, The Cambridge Economic History of India, The Cambridge History of Ancient China, The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature, The Cambridge History of China, The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, The Cambridge History of Egypt, The Cambridge History of Islam, The Cambridge History of Japan, The Cambridge History of Judaism, The Cambridge History of Russia, The Cambridge History of Russian Literature, The Cambridge History of South-east Asia, The Cambridge History of the Bible, The Cambridge History of Turkey, The New Cambridge History of India, and The New Cambridge Medieval History. New volumes from the print series will be added each year (averaging about 5 titles per year).

Information at your service,
Cheryl

Ask Us Live!

If you have a research problem or question away from the library you can IM a Harvard College librarian for help. The "Ask Us Live!" instant messaging program lets you go online (at: http://hcl.harvard.edu/askuslive/) during the hours 3-9 PM on Sunday through Thursday to ask for research assistance.

My colleagues and I answer research questions online, refer you to other colleagues, and schedule individual research consultations as needed, so please do "ask us live" via this service -- we're here to help.

At your service,

Cheryl

GSAS Student Reception Today

A reminder and invite for GSAS students: please join research and collections librarians from across Harvard’s libraries for an informal gathering on Wednesday, March 4th, from 4:30 to 6:30 PM in the Edison and Newman Room at Houghton Library. Hors d'oeuvres, wine, beer, and other beverages will be served. I hope very much to see you there!

At your service,

Cheryl

The Harvard/Radcliffe Online Historical Reference Shelf

Annual reports of Presidents and Treasurers of Harvard (1826-1995) and Radcliffe (1879-1988). Lists of Harvard graduates, 1642-1857. Dorm History Search (search by any combination of room number, class, and name). Harvard University Buildings. List of Harvard Presidents. The Harvard Fact Book with current statistics about Harvard and Radcliffe. Harvard songs sung at football games and other ceremonial occasions. Newspapers and Magazines about Harvard, 1873-present.

All this and more is available to you online via the Harvard/Radcliffe Online Historical Reference Shelf, a joint project of the Harvard University Archives and Radcliffe Archives that consists of over 100,000 full-text searchable pages of frequently consulted sources on the history of Harvard and Radcliffe. If you’re looking for facts and figures and the histories of Harvard and Radcliffe, this is a good place to start.

At your service,
Cheryl

The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Online

Would you like to hear how a Jewish cantillation (“Bereshit bara,” 'In the beginning', Genesis 1:1-5) sounds, as performed by Menashe Cohen in 1970? Or perhaps you would like to listen to a Berber wedding song, ahwash, from the Anti-Atlas, performed by Berber women and recorded in 1979? Or an excerpt from Pi-p'a-chi performed by an instrumental ensemble of dizi (ti tse) and the sanxian, as well as wooden sticks and a gong?

All of these recordings are available to you online via the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, a reference source with thousands of pages of material and 700 entries by expert contributors. Its content includes audio examples, illustrations, photographs, and drawings, song texts and score examples, charts and maps of world regions. It’s fully searchable, as well as browsable – you can browse by Audio Tracks, Audio Albums, People, Subjects, Genres, Instruments, Ensembles, Cultural Groups, and Places, as well as by Genres. And you can create and save playlists within the system (just be prepared to download the free Sibelius Scorch browser plug-in to play music online from the Encyclopedia).

If you’re interested in enhancing your research and your understanding of cultures and regions, do take a look at this versatile, online multimedia encyclopedia.

At your service,
Cheryl

Transliteration Tables

The ALA-LC Romanization Tables: Transliteration Schemes for Non-Roman Scripts are the scanned, full-text, standard transliteration tables for Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Kurdish, Ladino, Malay, Mongolian, Ottoman Turkish, Persian, Sanskrit, Thai, Tibetan, Urdu, and Yiddish, among other languages. Links in the tables are to PDF files that require the Adobe Acrobat Reader (the free Reader may be downloaded from the Adobe web site).

At your service,
Cheryl

A reception for GSAS students

For GSAS students: please join research and collections librarians from across Harvard’s libraries for an informal gathering on Wednesday, March 4th, from 4:30 to 6:30 PM in the Edison and Newman Room at Houghton Library. Hors d'oeuvres, wine, beer, and other beverages will be served.

I hope very much to see you there!
Best wishes,
Cheryl

Getting Your Hands On On Order / Ordered Received Books

Ever search HOLLIS and find that a book you want is listed as “On Order” or “Ordered/Received”? Would you like to know the fastest way to get your hands on it?

Go to the Request "On Order" or "Ordered-Received" Materials form (it’s located on the HCL home page) and fill in the information it requests. If the book is on order, as soon as it arrives in the library it will be processed and made available to you (they’ll send you an e-mail notice that it’s in). If the book is ordered/received, the library will process it quickly and make it available to you (again, they’ll send you an e-mail notice that it’s in).

It’s all about getting the books to you.
At your service,
Cheryl

Web-Based Research Guides Created So Far for Spring 2009

Here are research guides I've created (some in collaboration with other librarians, as noted) so far for Spring term 2009; if you'd like me to create a guide for your course please do e-mail me, at: claguard@fas.harvard.edu):

Library Research Guide for John Huehnergard's Social Analysis 74: Visible Language: Writing Systems, Scripts, and Literacy,

Library Research Guide for Ian J. Miller's Historical Study B-67:Japan's Modern Revolution,

Library Research Guide for Hue-Tam Ho Tai's Core Course:Foreign Cultures 60 — Individual, Community, and Nation in Vietnam,

Library Research Guide for Jay M. Harris's Culture and Belief 13:The Contested Bible, The Sacred-Secular Dance,

Library Research Puzzle Guide for East Asian Studies 210 / History 2628 / Religion 3015: Asia in the Making of the Modern World, a Graduate Seminar in General Education,

Library Research Guide for Elizabeth D. Lyman's English 97 Seminar: Going to Extremes: Literature of Moderation and Excess,

Library Research Guide for Ofrit Liviatan's Freshman Seminar 42k:Comparative Law and Religion,

Library Research Guide for Professor Stephen Greenblatt's and Professor Louis Menand's Humanities 10 Colloquium,

Library Research Guide for Nicole D. Newendorp's Social Studies 98gf:Modernity and Social Change in East Asia,

and

Library Research Guide for Harvard College Student Advocates for Human Rights.

There are more to come, as I'm working on 6 other guides for Spring courses and workshops right now. If you would like a guide, I'll be glad to create one (I can usually just work from your syllabus, and I can link the guide directly off your course site).
At your service,
Cheryl

Search the Harvard-Yenching Newspaper Collection Online

You can search Harvard-Yenching Library’s Newspaper Collection online, at: http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/harvard-yenching/collections/newspapers/search.cfm. The collection is searchable by language (Chinese, English, Japanese, Khazakh, Korean, Uighur, and Vietnamese), region (China, Europe, Hong Kong/Macao, Japan, Korea, North America, Russia/USSR, Southeast Asia, Taiwan, and Vietnam), and format (print, microform, and electronic), and access search points include city, title, call number, and year. You can opt to include holdings stored off-site at the Harvard Depository in your searches. There’s an in-depth Search Help section, too.

Many researchers have already noted this has been very useful to them; hope it’s helpful to you, too.
At your service,
Cheryl

The Index of Jewish Periodicals and RAMBI

Two databases anyone doing research in Jewish studies will want to know about are:

The Index of Jewish Periodicals is an index on Jewish history, activity and thought. The database provides a guide to English-language articles, book reviews, and feature stories in more than 160 journals devoted to Jewish affairs. The file is intended for students of Jewish thought and others interested in contemporary Jewish and Middle Eastern affairs, with journal coverage going back as far as 1988,

and

RAMBI: The Index of Articles on Jewish Studies is a selective bibliography of articles in the fields of Jewish studies and the study of Eretz Israel. Material here is gathered from thousands of periodicals and from collections of articles in Hebrew, Yiddish, and European languages, mainly from the holdings of the Jewish National and University Library, a world center for research on the Jewish people and Eretz Israel.

I'll continue to highlight resources of interest to my areas of liaison with future posts. Hope this information is helpful to you.
At your service,
Cheryl

Oxford Islamic Studies Online

If you are doing any research in Islamic studies you will probably want to take a look at Oxford Islamic Studies Online. Contents include: features articles, biographies, primary texts, Qur'anic materials, and books by scholars in areas such as global Islamic history, concepts, people, practices, politics, and culture, with articles from The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World, The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, The Islamic World: Past and Present, The Oxford Dictionary of Islam, The Oxford History of Islam, and What Everyone Needs To Know About Islam. The Koran Interpreted (a verse translation by A.J. Arberry) and The Qur'an (a prose translation by M.A.S. Abdel Haleem) are also included, as is the first electronic version of Hanna E. Kassis's A Concordance of the Qur'an and a date converter from western to Islamic dates and vice versa.

Hope this is useful to you -- I'll provide more highlights of individual resources in upcoming posts.
At your service,
Cheryl

Have a Citation and and Want the Article? Use Citation Linker

If you have a citation to an article, and would like to get hold of the article itself, Citation Linker may be the easiest way to locate either an online or print copy at Harvard.

For example, if you have this article citation and want to get hold of the actual article...

Jones, Wendy S., “Emma, Gender, and the Mind-Brain,” ELH, 2008 Summer; 75 (2): 315-343.

...you need first to locate the journal (ELH), then find the particular article (“Emma, Gender, and the Mind-Brain”) in Volume 75, Issue 2, Summer 2008, starting on page 315 in that journal.

Go to the Citation Linker (it's located on the Harvard Libraries portal page) and fill in the information the system prompts you to provide (journal title, volume, issue, date, starting page of the article), then click the purple Find It At Harvard button.

If Harvard owns the journal in electronic format, clicking the purple Find It At Harvard button will take you to a link message telling you where the electronic article is located, and clicking the link will take you there.

Those steps will get you to an electronic copy of an article if Harvard owns it online. It takes a couple more steps to find printed articles:

When you click the purple Find It At Harvard button, if you get the link message, “Check holdings in HOLLIS Catalog,” click that link -- it does an automatic search of the HOLLIS Online Catalog to find out which Harvard libraries own the journal in print.

Journals are usually shelved in two different places in Harvard Libraries. Current journals (published within the last year or so) are shelved in one area, while older journals are usually bound together in large book form and are often shelved alongside the books in the library stacks.

At Widener Library: Current issues of journals are in the Periodicals Reading Room on the 1st floor, and older, bound journals are shelved by call number in the Stacks. Note the call number HOLLIS provides to find journals at Widener, and use the Widener Call Number Location Chart to find older issues shelved among the books.

Hope this information will get you to the articles more surely and quickly!
At your service,
Cheryl

And on a Related Note: Editing Images

If you haven't yet seen the site, Picnik, you might want to take a look at it. It's a free, web-based site that lets you crop, resize, and rotate images in real-time -- it works with PCs, Macs, and Linux, and did I mention: it's free? It's worth repeating. And it's easy to use, too.

Referred to me by my friend and HCL colleague, Enrique Diaz, this is a site I make use of all the time.

At your service,
Cheryl

Image Collections at Harvard

Lately a number of the researchers with whom I’ve been working have been very interested in finding images online, so I thought I’d highlight a few of the image collections to which you have access as a Harvard researcher:

AP Multimedia Archive (AccuNet): a searchable database of over 700,000 Associated Press photographs, charts and other graphics from the 1840s to the present. Captions and credits are included, and images can be downloaded for later use. This database can be searched by topic, location, date and concept.
ARTstor: a database of digital images and accompanying scholarly information for use in art history and other humanistic fields of learning, including the related social sciences. The ARTstor Digital Library includes approximately 300,000 images covering art, architecture and archeology.
CAMIO (Catalog of Art Museum Images Online): contains digital images and detailed descriptions for over 115,000 works of art from major museums in the United States and Canada. Simple or advanced modes allow searching by artist, title of work, date, medium, subject, collection, and location. The standard for image resolution is 1024 x 768 pixels. Images may be printed and exported for educational purposes.
Directory to Photographs at Harvard: an online guide to the photograph collections held in libraries, archives, museums, and teaching hospitals throughout Harvard, an estimated total of 47 repositories holding approximately 7.5 million photographic images. The Directory serves as a general reference for researchers interested in exploring the collections and offers a bird’s-eye view of resources that span more than a century and a half, from the dawn of photography to the present day.
Finding Images of East Asia at Harvard and Beyond: a research guide created by Harvard College Librarians for locating Chinese, Japanese, and Korean images at Harvard and outside of Harvard.
MasterFILE Premier (EBSCOhost): full text of 2,000 journals in a broad range of disciplines including general reference, business, education, health, general science, and multi-cultural issues.
Oxford Art Online: a comprehensive art reference work covering all aspects of Western and non-Western visual art: painting, sculpture, architecture, graphic and decorative arts, and photography from prehistory to the 1990s. It includes the full text of The Dictionary of Art (1996, 34 volumes), a landmark reference work containing more than 45,000 articles contributed by 6,700 scholars from 120 countries. Each year, new articles are added to enhance the coverage of significant areas of the visual arts with the participation of more than 1,000 international art historians.
Visual Information Access (VIA): a union catalog of visual resources at Harvard and Radcliffe, including information about slides, photographs, objects and artifacts in the university's libraries, museums and archives. To date only portions of each repository's holdings are described in the online catalog. As available, thumbnail images are linked to the catalog records.
WikiMedia Commons: a repository of free content images, sound and other multimedia files.

Hope you find some useful images here! but do be aware that the materials available through these collections are just the tip of the iceburg when it comes to image collections, certainly here at Harvard. There are many more -- and I'll be glad to point you to them if you need more for your research.

At your service,
Cheryl

Virtual Edo

A colleague recently put me onto this site: Edo Japan, a Virtural Tour. It includes an interactive map (highlighting places of interest, for example: Senkakuji, the Temple of the 47 Samurai), an Art Gallery of Ukiyoe from the Edo period, and links to web sites of related interest. Much of it is done beautifully, and is worth a look.

At your service,
Cheryl

Have You Met Adam Matthew (Digital) Yet?

The Harvard Libraries have acquired several digital collections from the UK publisher, Adam Matthew Digital, and since these collections seem likely to be of interest to many researchers in my areas of liaison, I'd like to make sure you know about them. They include:

China, Trade, Politics & Culture, 1793-1980: Sources from the School of Oriental and African Studies and the British Library, London: a project that provides a wide variety of original source material detailing China’s interaction with the West from Macartney’s first Embassy to China in 1793, through to the Nixon/Heath visits to China in 1972-74;

Defining Gender Online: Five Centuries of Advice Literature for Men and Women (1450-1910): ten thousand images of original documents focusing on advice literature for men and women;

Empire On-Line: provides access to images of original documents and printed materials relating to the British Empire in Africa, Australasia, the Americas, Oceania, and South Asia;

India, Raj and Empire: drawing upon the manuscript collections of the National Library of Scotland, this searchable online resource provides access to digital facsimiles of diaries and journals, official and private papers, letters, sketches, paintings and original Indian documents containing histories and literary works. The collection documents the relationship between Britain and India in an empire where the Scots played a central role as traders, generals, missionaries, viceroys, governor-generals and East India Company officials. The dates of the documents range from 1710 to 1937;

Macmillan Cabinet Papers On-Line: provides online access to nearly 30,000 images of original documents from the Macmillan administration (January 1957-October 1963) as well as materials from the first three months of the Douglas-Home administration (October-December 1963); and

Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice, 1490-2007: a portal for slavery and abolition studies, bringing together documents and collections covering an extensive time period 1490-2007, from libraries and archives across the Atlantic world.

If you take a look, you'll see what extraordinary resources they can be to support your research and teaching. Hope this information is useful!

At your service,
Cheryl

Web-Based Library Research Guides: Have You Used One?

Librarians throughout the College Library are creating library research guides for a wide variety of subjects taught within FAS. We also create course-specific guides tailored to particular classes, at the request of faculty members within our departments of library liaison.

If you’re a student, take a quick look at the HCL Research Guides page to find a guide for your subject of study or for a specific course – be sure to check the Course Guide Archive for guides done over the past several years that may still be useful in your research.

If you’re a faculty member or teaching fellow in one of my departments of liaison, and would like me to create a guide for a subject or course, just let me know: claguard@fas.harvard.edu. All guides are indexed and accessible through the HCL web site, but I can also link a course-specific guide off your course site, so your students can get to it immediately.

At your service,
Cheryl

LibX: One Stop Searching

The Harvard University Library LibX Toolbar is a browser toolbar add-on that allows you to search quickly the HOLLIS Catalog, the E-Journal List, the E- Resource List, Citation Linker, and Google Scholar. It also: lets you select text on a web page and right-click for a menu of search options; leads you to Harvard’s print and licensed e-resources by embedding a Harvard shield "cue" on search results in Amazon, New York Times Book Reviews, Yahoo! and other sites; and it automatically links ISBNs, ISSNs, PubMed IDs and DOIs to Harvard's print and licensed e-resources. It can save you quite a bit of time in doing your research.

Interested? Just go to the LibX page on the Harvard Libraries site to install the software. Do be aware that LibX was designed for use in Firefox, and works best in it – although it also works in IE 6.0+.

At your service,
Cheryl

Want to learn RefWorks? Take a class

Lamont Library staff members are offering 50-minute training sessions in the basics of RefWorks during the Spring term (if you haven't yet encountered RefWorks, please go to the Citation Tools at Harvard web site for an introduction).

The classes will take place in Room 310 on the 3rd floor of Lamont. All students, faculty, and staff are welcome, but registration is necessary because space is limited. To sign up, contact Steve (kuehler@fas.harvard.edu) or Chris (lenney@fas.harvard.edu), or go by the Research Services Desk on Level B of Lamont Library.

These sessions have already been scheduled:

Tuesday, February 10, 3:00-3:50pm

Thursday, February 19, 4:00-4:50pm

If you can't make either of these sessions, please do e-mail Steve or Chris, as they'll schedule more workshops based on researchers' needs.

At your service,
Cheryl

Welcome to my library liaison blog

My goal for this blog is to get word out about new and useful library tools and services to members of the departments and programs for which I'm a library liaison. These include: the Center for Jewish Studies, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, the Freshman Seminar Program, and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. As you can see, I serve a variety of subject interests, but since it's not feasible for me to do a separate blog for each department/program, I'm hoping that the increasing interdisciplinarity of research means that the posts will be of interest to most, or all, readers.

I'm going to include a link to this blog on each web-based subject and course guide I create from now on, and I'll ask the departments I serve to include a link from their departmental sites. If you have questions about library services and resources, I hope you'll get in touch with me directly (at: claguard@fas.harvard.edu). And I hope this blog will serve as a good means of reaching many folks with timely library information.

Welcome! and come back soon.
At your service,
Cheryl