MIT Libraries News

Check out all of the MIT Libraries IAP events for the week covering Monday, January 18 through Friday, January 22. Also check out the complete listing for all of our sessions.

Using NCBI’s BLAST

Going Beyond Google Scholar: Using the Web of Science and Other Citation Searching Resources to Discover Articles

Introduction to Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

EndNote Basics

Introduction to Stata

Bookbinding in the Japanese Tradition

ModelBuilder for beginners

Career Research: Targeting and Researching Employers

A Sampling of Interesting Images from Rotch Visual Collections

Introduction to Spatial Statistics using GIS

Patent Searching Fundamentals

Rotch Library Film Series

Patent Searching Fundamentals

Mapping and Using US Census Data

Cool Tools for Science and Engineering Research: Meet the Developers!

RefWorks Basics

Data Management in Stata

Making Your Own Videos for the Web & MIT TechTV

Introduction to Company and Industry Research for Engineers and Scientists

Site Selection – Making Spatial Decisions Using a GIS

The International Music Score Library Project and the future of digital repositories

NOTE: Some sessions have limited availability or may require advance sign-up requirements. If you have further questions, please see individual listings for appropriate contact information.

Check out all of the MIT Libraries IAP events for the week covering Monday, January 11 through Friday, January 15. Also check out the complete listing for all of our sessions.

Rotch Library Film Series

Power Up!: Strategies for Getting Energy Information

Power Up with Maps! GIS and Energy Resources

Bioinformatics Software Tool: BIOBASE

Managing Your References: Overview of EndNote, RefWorks and Zotero

Managing Research Data 101

Course Reserves Overview

Publishing Smart: A Hands-on Workshop on Journal Quality Measures and Publisher Copyright Policies

Basics of Obtaining a Patent

Bioinformatics for Beginners

Protocols and Methods: Recipes for Successful Research

Bookbinding in the Japanese Tradition

Using Wikipedia to Create Meaningful Learning Experiences

EndNote Basics

Power-up!: Energy Industry Resources

BrainNavigator Demo: Interactive Atlas & 3D Brain Imaging Software

Writing and Formatting Your Thesis: Don’t Let WORD Get You Down

Making Your Own Videos for the Web & MIT TechTV

Finding Research Datasets: ICPSR and the Harvard-MIT Data Center

Tips & Techniques for Searching for Images Online

Keeping Current: Using RSS Feeds to Stay Ahead in Your Research

NOTE: Some sessions have limited availability or may require advance sign-up requirements. If you have further questions, please see individual listings for appropriate contact information.

Are you wondering what an RSS feed is and how it can help your research?

Want to learn more about using GIS, EndNote or RefWorks?

Need to find chemical information, social science data, or patents?

Want to kick back and enjoy a film festival, improve your bioinformatics search skills, or learn how to make your own videos for the Web?

Look no further! Take a peek at all of the MIT Libraries IAP Activities offered in 2010.

Hayden Library — Humanities & Science — will be open till 2am each night during Finals

from Thursday, Dec. 10 to Friday, Dec. 18th:

8am-2am daily, except Saturday & Sunday, Dec. 12 & 13, 10am-2am.

The extended hours are for the MIT community only.

Harriet Ritvo, MIT’s Arthur J. Conner Professor of History, will discuss her latest book The Dawn of Green: Manchester, Thirlmere, and Modern Environmentalism on Wednesday, December 9th at 4 p.m. in the Institute Archives (14N-118).

In The Dawn of Green, Ritvo reveals how today’s environmental movement can be traced to Thirlmere, a bucolic reservoir in the English Lake District, and the 19th century battle around it that pitted industrial progress against conservation.

Ritvo is also the author of The Platypus and the Mermaid, and Other Figments of Classifying Imagination and The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age.

During her talk she will show materials used in her research and sign copies of her book.  This event is sponsored by the MIT Libraries’ Institute Archives & Special Collections, and the MIT History Faculty.  It is free and open to the public.

Members of the MIT Community are encouraged to schedule the room (14E-311) for groups of three or more at Hayden’s service desk on the 1^st floor or call 253-5671 to make a reservation. Features include a large blackboard and a wall-mounted flat-screen monitor for presentations.

14E-311 was formerly the Women’s Studies Research Room.  That collection has been moved into the Hayden stacks, including the new Women in Science, Technology & Medicine Collection in the center section of the Humanities Library, 2^nd floor reading room.

Inside this issue:

• Learn about new and improved places to study in Barker & Dewey Libraries

• Connect with the Libraries on your mobile phone

• Read about the Libraries’ book that traveled into space

• Discover how a generous gift from an MIT alumnus is revealing a hidden collection in the Libraries

• Learn how Rotch librarians are helping to archive and share thousands of digital architectural images

• Follow the latest Libraries exhibits, events and more

Get a PDF copy of BiblioTech or subscribe by emailing  dev-lib@mit.edu.

The Libraries’ Bookmobile will be wheeling into Lobby 10 this Friday, Oct. 9, 2009.  From 11a.m. until 2p.m. browse through a great selection of books, CDs, DVDs and audiobooks from the Humanities and Music Libraries.  Stop by and pick up something to enjoy over the long weekend!

WHERE: 14N-132 (Digital Instruction Resource Center – DIRC)

WHEN: Friday, July 10, 12pm – 1pm

Endnote is a “personal bibliographic software” package which allows you to create and manage a database of bibliographic references. Learn how to find and use information more effectively in our hands-on workshops.

Contact Peter Cohn with any questions.

Full schedule of JulyAP 2009 workshops

Learn how to find and use information more effectively in these hands-on workshops. No advanced registration required. Light refreshments will be served at each session.

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

GeneGo Training
Wednesday, July 8, 9am – 12pm
Learn how to use this gene expression tool licensed by MIT Libraries. Bring data!
Contact: Courtney Crummett

Bioinformatics for Beginners
Thursday, July 9, 1pm – 2pm
Learn about the organization of key NCBI databases, understand the database record structure, and work with the BLAST search tool.
Contact: Howard Silver

EndNote Basics
Friday, July 10, 12pm – 1pm
Endnote is a “personal bibliographic software” package which allows you to create and manage a database of bibliographic references. Learn how to find and use information more effectively in our hands-on workshops.
Contact: Peter Cohn

OAG as a Travel Planner Tool
Monday, July 13, 12pm – 1pm
OAG Travel Planner Pro is the premier customizable online tool for business and professional travelers who need to make and manage complex travel plans.
Contact: Barbara Williams

RefWorks Basics
Friday, July 17, 12pm – 1pm
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.
Contact: Anita Perkins

Accessing the Aero/Astro Collection
Monday, July 6 and Monday, July 20, 12pm – 1pm
Find out where Aero/Astro materials are now located. This session will highlight the various Aero/Astro collections and how to access them.
This session is limited to 25 participants. To register, contact Barbara Williams.

Sequence Alignment
Wednesday, July 22, 10am – 12pm
Explore sequence alignment algorithms and their practical applications. Session will include a hands-on algorithm exercise and practical usage information (Clustal, BLAST, BLAT, Maq).
Contact: Charlie Whittaker

DSpace@MIT for Research Collections
Friday, July 24 and Monday, July 27, 12pm – 1pm
DSpace@MIT archives and makes globally discoverable the research output of MIT faculty, researchers, and students. The session will highlight MIT Libraries’ initiatives for easy upload of complete technical report and working papers series’ and will demonstrate how individuals and research groups can establish and begin populating new collections of research materials.
Contact: Craig Thomas

BLAST
Wednesday, July 29, 11am – 12pm
Learn how to use NCBI resources and optimize your BLAST protein searches to get the most out of your results. Attendance at Bioinformatics for Beginners and familiarity with BLAST are recommended.
Contact: Amy Stout

Data Management 101
Friday, July 31, 12pm – 1pm
For researchers struggling to manage their data, basic strategies will be provided for best practices for retention and archiving, effective directory structures and naming conventions, good file formats for long-term access, data security and backup options, metadata, tagging, and citation and other relevant issues.
Contact: Anne Graham

Sponsored by the MIT Libraries.

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

from Thursday May 14th at 8am to Friday, May 22nd at 7pm.

Overnight hours are for the MIT community only.

Please join authors@mit and the Humanities Library as Nicholas Ashford speaks on his book Environmental Law, Policy and Economics:  Reclaiming the Environmental Agenda.  Professor Ashford will show how environmental law cases have led to important legal, economic, and scientific developments, and how use of the law can stimulate technological change and industrial transformation.

“Ashford and Caldart have produced an extraordinary book sweeping across the scientific complexity, legal underpinnings, economic logic, and policy challenges of environmental protection…this book offers an indispensable foundation for those seeking to understand society¹s approach to environmental challenges.”

—Daniel C. Esty, Yale Law School

“Environmental Law, Policy, and Economics” is published by the MIT Press.

Nicholas Ashford is Professor of Technology and Director of the Technology and Law Program at MIT.

The book is co-authored by Charles C. Caldart, Director of Litigation of the National Environmental Law Center and a Lecturer in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT.

Where: MIT E51-145

When: Friday May 15th, 2009, 12:00-1:00 p.m.

The event is free and wheelchair accessible.

For more information, call call 253-5249, or email authors@mit.edu. See the MIT Press Bookstore’s “Events” page for a list of upcoming events.

Need a break from your studies?

Enjoy free drinks & snacks at our two Food for Thought events this week:

• Barker Library (10-500) lobby, Tuesday May 12th, 2:30-4pm

• Hayden Library (14S-100) lobby, Thursday May 14th, 2:30-4pm

Since 1983 the MIT Communications Forum has hosted cutting-edge discussions about the cultural, political, economic, and technological impact of communications, with special emphasis on emerging technologies.

Valuable summaries and transcripts from the Forum’s earlier years (1983-1995), documenting the words and impact of leading scholars, journalists, media producers and political figures, have now been digitized by the MIT Libraries and are available online at http://dome.mit.edu.

The Bookmobile is coming! The Bookmobile is coming!

Save the date, spread the word: the Bookmobile is coming to Lobby 10 on Tuesday, April 14. Stock up for Patriots Day weekend! The staff of the Humanities, Science, and Lewis Music Libraries will be pulling together a selection of materials to tempt your mental palates, so come by and check out something to enjoy over the weekend. Choose from:

• Books, audio books, and movies from the Humanities Library Browsery
• Books from the Science Library‘s new “Serendipity” Collection
• CDs and DVDs from the Lewis Music Library (which will be due on Tuesday, 4/21)

Date: Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Place: Lobby 10
Time: 11 am – 2 pm

German-Turkish poet and essayist Zafer Senocak will read from his book “Tursprachen/Door Languages.” The reading will be in both German and English, with translation provided by his translator Elizabeth Ochlkers Wright.

• When: Thursday April 2nd, 5pm
• Where: the MIT Humanities Library Reading Room (14S-200)

Want to find a thiller, romance, or drama available at the MIT Libraries? Or you want to find movies about aliens, politics, or vampires? Try our list of Humanities Library DVDs in Delicious! Three students teamed up on a project to tag the Humanities Library’s DVD collection in del.icio.us to make searching for films more flexible and fun.

Help us tag our DVD collection! We invite you to participate in further tagging this collection by going to delicious.com/mitlibdvds and sign in with user name: mitlibdvds, password: films2008. The only tag all of these DVDs have in common is “MIT-DVD,” so the collection may be retrieved as a whole. The rest is up to you!

Let us know what you think… Give us feedback.

Learn how to find and use information more effectively in these hands-on workshops. No advanced registration required. Light refreshments will be served at each session.

WHERE: 14N-132 (Digital Instruction Resource Center – DIRC)

Endnote Basics
Friday, April 3rd, 12 – 1pm

EndNote is a “personal bibliographic software” package which allows you to create and manage a database of bibliographic references.
Contact: Peter Cohn

Researching Companies for the Job Hunt
Thursday, April 9, 3-4:30pm

The MIT Libraries subscribe to a number of databases that you can use to research companies and industries. Using these databases, you can:
-Target companies by industry and geography
-Conduct comprehensive company and industry research
We will discuss why this type of research is critical to the job and internship search process, and how to use these databases effectively.

Contact: Anita Perkins

Bioinformatics for Beginners
Friday, April 10th, 12 – 1pm

Class attendees will learn about the organization of key NCBI databases, understand the database record structure, and work with the BLAST search tool. The session is a hands-on practicum and an excellent starting point for people who are new to, or curious about bioinformatics research tools.
Contact: Howard Silver

Biotechnology Patent Fundamentals and Searching
Thursday, April 16, 12-1:30pm

Come and hear attorney Sonia Guterman of Lawson & Wetzen discuss the distinctive aspects of patents that make them valuable, the role of patents in capital development, along with issues surrounding filing biotech patents. She will be assisted by Drew Lowery, who received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from MIT and is a member of Global Prior Art’s Life Science Team. Drew will discuss and demonstrate alternative ways to search biotech patent art and their suitability. At the end of the talk attendees will have the opportunity to do hands on searching.

Contact: J. Darcy Duke

Managing Research Data 101
Thursday, April 23, 12-1pm

For researchers struggling to manage their data, basic strategies will be provided for
• best practices for retention and archiving
• effective directory structures and naming conventions
• good file formats for long-term access
• data security and backup options
• metadata, tagging, and citation
• other relevant issues

Contact: MacKenzie Smith

Introduction to Market Research Databases at MIT
Friday, May 1, 12-1pm

Market research abounds on the web, but usually with a hefty price tag. This session will familiarize participants with market research accessible through MIT. We will cover types of resources available, how to navigate them, and some basic tips for using these resources.

Contact: Maggie Bartley

Check out the full listing of IAPril 2009 Libraries events!

No, Cookie Monster, not “Cookie Mobile”…Bookmobile, with our usual assortment of great books and CDs from the Humanities Library and the Lewis Music Library. But, since we are being sponsored by the letter “S,” there may be something there for you. Read on:

• “S” is for “SERENDIPITY” and “SCIENCE LIBRARY”

We will have a selection of books from the Science Library’s new “Serendipity” Collection.

• “S” is for “SPRING BREAK” and “SPECIAL LOAN” for CDs and DVDs
  

The Lewis Music Library is offering a special, longer loan period for CDs and DVDs over spring break 2009. Music compact discs and DVDs borrowed Wednesday, March 18 through Friday, March 27 will be due Monday, March 30 (by closing, 10pm). That’s more than a week, instead of the usual 3 days! Limit of 5, no renewals.

• “S” is for “SURVEY” and “SNACK!”

Fill out a survey, get a snack (who knows…maybe a cookie).

So come check us out in Lobby 10 this Friday, March 20th, between 11AM and 2PM.

For centuries humans have been fascinated by the concept of flight. From simple attempts to fashion human wings to the serious science of space exploration, our fascination with flight has been constant and compelling, and has literally known no earthly bounds. This allure is the focus of a new exhibit in the MIT Libraries’ Maihaugen Gallery.

The Fascination of Flight showcases both the dream and the reality of flight through historical materials, archival records, and current collections owned by the MIT Libraries.

The exhibit also highlights the pioneering work of the Institute’s faculty, students and heroic graduates and acknowledges their contributions to the science of powered flight.

The MIT community is invited to an opening celebration for the exhibit on Wednesday, April 1 from 1-3 pm.