Send Us Your Feedback, Please!

Mary Beth Clack and I would very much appreciate any feedback you'd care to send us about the new Library Grad Guide: A Guide to Library Resources for GSAS Graduate Students. Anything not there that you'd like to have on it? Anything there you don't want on it? Want more pictures? Want more video? Want falling toasters...? Do you like / hate / feel completely ambivalent about it?

Our only goal is for the page to serve you folks, so please let us know how we can improve it.
Me (Cheryl): claguard@fas.harvard.edu,
Mary Beth: mclack@fas.harvard.edu.

At your service (and we mean it),
Cheryl

The NEW Library Grad Guide: A Guide to Library Resources for GSAS Graduate Students

Please do check out the new Library Grad Guide: A Guide to Library Resources for GSAS Graduate Students, at: http://guides.hcl.harvard.edu/gradguide. Our goal with this guide is to provide a dynamic (yet stable and on-going) resource to graduate students throughout GSAS. As you'll see, we are now including sections for Arts and Humanities, the Sciences, and the Social Sciences, in addition to general tools that will be of help to all grad students.

Please let me know if there's any information or links you'd like us to add to the guide -- we enthusiastically welcome your suggestions and ideas. To get started, you might want to take a look at this video from the new site.

At your service,
Cheryl

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