Tools of the Trade

I’d like to direct your attention to a web resource (an e-book, essentially) a couple colleagues of mine (Susan Gilroy, ably assisted by our web designer, Enrique Diaz) recently created to serve Harvard freshmen — it’s Tools of the Trade: A Library Starter Kit for Harvard Freshmen. It's a literate, pragmatic, and frankly, beautiful guide to doing research, well worth a read. Take a look for excellent advice and information, as well as the pleasure of seeing a very well-done web-based research tool.

At your service,
Cheryl

RefWorks Workshops

RefWorks is a citation management tool that simplifies the “busy work” of research. It can import citations directly from HOLLIS and library databases; create your bibliography in the format you choose; and insert citations or footnotes in your text as you write.

Librarians of the Harvard College Library will offer these 50-minute training sessions in the basics of RefWorks at Lamont Library:

Tuesday, September 7, 3:00pm (Room B30, Lamont Level B)

Wednesday, September 15, 2:00pm (Room B30, Lamont Level B)

Thursday, September 23, 4:00pm (Room 310, Lamont 3rd Floor)

Tuesday, September 28, 2:00pm (Room B30, Lamont Level B)

All Harvard students, faculty, and staff are welcome, but registration is necessary because space is limited. To sign up, contact one of the instructors:
Steve Kuehler (kuehler@fas.harvard.edu)
Chris Lenney (lenney@fas.harvard.edu)
Kerry Masteller (kmastell@fas.harvard.edu)
Liza Vick (lizavick@fas.harvard.edu).

For general tips on using RefWorks and other citation tools, such as EndNote and Zotero, go to http://isites.harvard.edu/citationtools.

At your service,
Cheryl

New Library Liaisons

Just to let folks know: my responsibilities have changed since last year, and I will no longer be a library liaison to the East Asian Languages and Civilizations Department. Ray Lum (rlum@fas.harvard.edu) will continue to be a library liaison to the Department, and he is joined by:

Mikyung Kang, Librarian for the Korean Collection, Harvard-Yenching Library, mlkang@fas.harvard.edu, 617-495-0572

Xiaohe Ma, Librarian for the Chinese Collection, Harvard-Yenching Library, xhma@fas.harvard.edu, 617-496-2810

Kuniko McVey, Librarian for the Japanese Collection, Harvard-Yenching Library, kmcvey@fas.harvard.edu, 617-495-3395

Sharon Yang, Head of Access Services, Harvard-Yenching Library, yang8@fas.harvard.edu, 617-496-3623

I have enjoyed working with members of EALC very much, and I am sure the Department will be well served in future by the liaisons from Harvard-Yenching Library.

Best wishes,
Cheryl

The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe Online Version launches

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research today launched the Online Edition of the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, whose aim is to “make accurate, reliable, scholarly information about Eastern European Jewish life universally available online free of charge.” This online edition contains the information from the printed 2008 YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe (published by Yale University Press), which provides the history and culture of Jews in Eastern Europe from the beginning of their settlement in the region to the present. But there’s added content in this online edition: interactive maps, more color photographs, rare letters and documents, video and audio clips.

At the home page, researchers can Explore a Topic by clicking into pages on Arts, Daily Life & Places, Language & Literature, History & Politics, and Religion. Each of those subsequent pages includes an essay, slideshow (or other visual element), a short “teaser article,” and links to other articles. There’s a Media Gallery with almost 1,400 items, each linked to related articles including: 50 audio recordings ranging from cantorial, klezmer and theatrical performances to children’s choral music and excerpts from wedding services; 70 video clips including street scenes, horses and cattle, brass bands, public gatherings, political events, children at school and summer camp: and 192 new documents from the YIVO archives that have never before been presented to the public, including such items as: letters from Leon Trotsky; manuscript notes by Sholem Aleichem; an invitation to a service at the Great Synagogue in Warsaw in honor of a visit from the President of Poland in 1930; and a ration card from the Warsaw ghetto.

To access this freely-available site, just go to: http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org, but be prepared to want to spend a lot of time there — it is a truly remarkable resource.

At your service,
Cheryl

EEBO Interactions; a new social forum

ProQuest has just launched EEBO Interactions, a Web 2.0 social networking community those goal is to connect scholars working with the database Early English Books Online (EEBO) in an online forum. It enables scholars around the world to share their informed ideas about the works in the collection.

Contributions can consist of a simple comment on the date of a work, or be as lengthy as full essays complete with bibliographies and links to other research resources. Contributions will be reviewed by an editor to ensure that they’re relevant and appropriate, and that other users may edit or discuss them.

Anyone with an interest in the print culture of the Early Modern period can search and read the contents of EEBO Interactions. Harvard scholars can register and create a profile in EEBO Interactions to communicate with colleagues via email and create and edit contributions.

Take a look at EEBO Interactions; I’ll be interested in hearing your reactions to it.

At your service,

Cheryl

Graduating This Spring? Sign Up for an Alumni RefWorks Account

Harvard graduates can sign up for an alumni account that will allow the use of RefWorks as long as Harvard continues to subscribe to it. To create an alumni account, just go to the Harvard Citation Tools iSite: http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=citationtools&pageid=icb.page334472.

You can find instructions at that page for backing up references and creating your own alumni account.

At your service,
Cheryl

Maps with an Attitude

Tomorrow a new exhibition opens at the Harvard Map Collection: Maps with an Attitude: Cartographies of Propaganda and Persuasion, explores ways maps have been used to express points of view by examining more than a dozen maps which framed major conflicts of the 20th century, from World War I to the Bosnian War.

Items on display include a pre-World War I map depicting the nations of Europe as individuals; a World War II map, produced just after the start of the blitz in England, portraying the number and site of every English bombing raid in Germany; a 1955 map produced by Time magazine portraying communist China and the U.S.S.R. as a red-hued landmass looming over Japan, South Korea and U.S.-controlled Formosa; and a map portraying Sarajevo from 1992 to 1995, ringed by Serb tanks and rocket launchers.

Maps with an Attitude: Cartographies of Propaganda and Persuasion will be on display in the Harvard Map Collection in Pusey Library through August 14, 2010. Click here for the Map Collections' hours, and click here for directions to the Map Collection.

At your service,
Cheryl

Harvard Undergraduates Eligible for MIT Borrowing Privileges

As of April 5, 2010, Harvard undergraduates are eligible for MIT borrowing privileges (HCL and MIT have had a reciprocal borrowing program for faculty, staff, and graduate students since 1995). Harvard students can enroll for MIT library privileges either online at the HCL web site or in person at the Library Privileges Office in Widener Library Room 130 (M-F, 9am – 4:45 pm), where you’ll just need to present a valid Harvard ID.

You’ll receive a form to complete and take to the Hayden Library at MIT (14W-100, 160 Memorial Dr., Cambridge) where you’ll get a library pass valid through the end of the spring term. You can borrow from the Dewey (social sciences and management), Hayden (humanities), Lewis Music, Library Storage Annex (by appointment only), and Rotch (architecture and planning) libraries. This pilot for undergraduates will be assessed after 14 months, with both Harvard and MIT collecting data and conducting surveys to determine the program’s value.

For additional information about MIT borrowing privileges visit the HCL website or just call the Library Privileges Office at 617-495-4166.

At your service,
Cheryl

Do You Use JSTOR? Tell Me About It, Please

If you use JSTOR for your research, and have particular likes and/or dislikes about the current version of the database, please let me know what they are. As you can see from this blog post at my other blog, for Library Journal, I have some issues with it, and their Associate Director for
Education & Outreach has invited me to talk with her and one of their product managers about the database. I would like to gather information from scholarly researchers on what works well for you, and what might not work so well, so I can share it with the JSTOR folks.

You can simply comment to this blog, or to my e-Views blog, or send me e-mail directly (at: claguard@fas.harvard.edu) if you have any information you'd like to share.

Thanks for your help, and I continue to be --
At your service,
Cheryl

Books in Books: an online exhibition

Houghton Library launched today a new online exhibition, Books in Books: Reflections on Reading and Writing in the Middle Ages. It's a joint project of the Houghton Library and Jeffrey Hamburger, Kuno Francke Professor of German Art & Culture, and Chair, Medieval Studies Committee, and is a complement to the General Education Program course “Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding 16, Openings: The Illuminated Manuscript” taught by Professor Hamburger. A physical exhibition of the same name opens April 5th in Houghton Library.

If you're interested in medieval manuscripts, take a look at Houghton's Digital Medieval Manuscripts, a good resource for studying the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in Western Europe. It gives strategies for searching Houghton's medieval manuscripts plus links to bibliographies related to these materials.

At your service,
Cheryl

Exploring Reading Online: New Site

Reading: Harvard Views of Readers, Readership, and Reading History is "an online exploration of the intellectual, cultural, and political history of reading as reflected in the historical holdings of the Harvard Libraries." The site contains over 1,200 books and manuscripts which offer over 250,000 pages of web-accessible materials about reading.

Take a look to find out more about this hot intellectual and cultural topic.

At your service,
Cheryl

The Digital Collections of Harvard College Library

The Digital Collections of Harvard College Library is now available on the College Library web site. It features an index page called Explore the Collections that leads to individual descriptions each of HCL’s collections, as well as to information about Projects in Progress and other Harvard resources. There is also a page describing the HCL Collections Digitization Program.

There's a plethora of fascinating material here, and I hope it is useful to you for your research and study.
At your service,
Cheryl

Upcoming RefWorks Basics Sessions at Lamont Library

Steve Kuehler and Chris Lenney, members of the Reference Services staff at Lamont Library, will offer a 50-minute training session in the basics of RefWorks on Wednesday, February 17, at 2:00pm. The class will be held in Room 310 on the third floor of Lamont.

RefWorks is a citation organizer that can import citations directly from many of Harvard’s library databases; create your bibliography in the format you choose; and insert citations or footnotes in your text as you write. This session will get you started in building and using your own RefWorks database.

All students, faculty, and staff are welcome, just register in advance (space is limited). Please get in touch with Steve (kuehler@fas.harvard.edu) or Chris (lenney@fas.harvard.edu) to do so.

At your service,
Cheryl

The Index to Ming Dynasty Chinese Paintings

The Fine Arts Library has just announced the launch of a new electronic resource, the Index to Ming Dynasty Chinese Paintings, a searchable database of over 10,000 records with information on Chinese painters and paintings of the mid-fourteenth through mid-seventeenth century Ming dynasty period. This unique database also has searchable bibliographies about the history of Chinese painters and paintings.

The creators of the Ming Index are currently seeking queries and comments from scholars in the field. To contribute to the Index, please get in touch with Nanni Deng, Asian Art Bibliographer at the Fine Arts Library, Tel: 617-495-0570, Email: ndeng@fas.harvard.edu.

At your service,
Cheryl

Margaret Fuller: A Woman of the Nineteenth Century

From January 21 through March 26, 2010, the exhibit, Margaret Fuller: A Woman of the Nineteenth Century, will be on view in the Amy Lowell Room at Houghton Library. Margaret Fuller is credited with being the first woman granted permission to do research at Harvard, and during the 19th century she educated the country on women's issues, the problems of slavery, and the plight of Native Americans. She also reported from a war-torn Italy. The exhibit explores her various pursuits in honor of the 200th anniversary of her birth in Cambridge.

A reception will be held on January 21 at 5:30pm in the Edison Newman Room at Houghton. For details please get in touch with Heather Cole at 617-495-2449.

At your service,
Cheryl