MIT Libraries News

Need to compare data on energy production and use across countries over time?  Try the United Nations Energy Statistics Database, available for download from the Harvard-MIT Data Center.  This new dataset covers the historical period of 1990-2005 and provides comprehensive energy statistics on more than 215 countries on topics such as:

• production
• trade
• transformation
• consumption

Note: this dataset comes as a fixed-field dataset that can be understood utilizing the accompanying documentation.  For questions about using this or other research datasets in the social sciences, contact Katherine McNeill, Social Science Data Services Librarian, at mcneillh@mit.edu.

For updated data covering more recent years, see the Energy Statistics Database via UNdata.

Looking for more energy statistics or other available datasets? See:

• The statistics page on the Libraries’ guide to Energy resources.
• All data available via the Harvard-MIT Data Center

MIT’s history comes alive in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. Come explore!

• Kevin Lynch’s The Image of the City is a landmark of city planning. Consult his field notes.

• Howe, Manning & Almy was the first Massachusetts architectural firm founded by women. All three founders were MIT alumnae, and you can read their papers at the Institute Archives & Special Collections.

• Ever wondered where William Barton Rogers spent his honeymoon? Read his diary.

• In 1962 Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions set a new standard in the philosophy of science. Read his drafts in person at the Institute Archives & Special Collections.

Many at MIT and thousands around the globe are well acquainted with SciFinder, the most comprehensive discovery tool for chemical information. Now it sports a new interface designed to save you time and improve the search experience. Use the “get URL”: http://libraries.mit.edu/get/scifinder to see if you agree with Christine McCue of CAS who says:

“We are confident that the improvements unveiled today will enhance the SciFinder user experience and enable new and faster scientific breakthroughs.”

For more information contact Erja Kajosalo, kajosalo@mit.edu, Librarian for Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. She knows tips like ‘Chrome on the Mac is not usable with SciFinder and Substance or Reaction Explores due to Java not being compatible.’  Or, use  Ask Us!

Edmund Bertschinger

Last week, MIT Provost Chris Kaiser announced that physics department head Edmund Bertschinger will take on a newly created role as Institute Community and Equity Officer. Bertschinger will work with Kaiser and President Rafael Reif to “help make MIT a place where everyone truly feels they belong,” said Reif. Bertschinger has worked for years on issues of diversity and inclusion: he’s served on MIT’s Committee on Race and Diversity since 2009 and has chaired the Faculty Advisory Committee of the Office of Minority Education since 2010. As department head, he has used mentoring to encourage women and underrepresented minorities to get involved in physics research and education. Bertschinger’s research is in cosmology with a focus on the growth of the structure in the universe.

Explore Professor Bertschinger’s research in the Open Access Articles collection in DSpace@MIT, where it is openly accessible to the world.

Since the MIT faculty established their Open Access Policy in March 2009 they have made thousands of research papers freely available to the world via DSpace@MIT. To highlight that research, we’re offering a series of blog posts that link news stories about scholars’ work to their open access papers in DSpace.

This summer, we’re trying an experiment, and we need your help! In the past, you may have contacted us with questions by web form, email, phone, or by dropping by a library desk.  (And we love all your questions! Keep them coming!)

This summer, in addition to all the usual ways to contact us, we’ll be happy to answer your questions by chat between 12-5pm, Monday-Friday. To start a chat with us, visit the Ask Us! page. At the end of the chat, we’ll ask you to fill out a very short survey that will help us to figure out how valuable you think the service is.

In August, we’ll evaluate the beta service and decide whether to continue it into the Fall term or not. To see a list of other experimental library tools and services, see our betas & widgets page.

MIT and Harvard libraries will play a role in ensuring a new generation of library school graduates will be prepared for jobs in digital stewardship. The universities were jointly awarded a 2013 Laura Bush 21^st Century Librarian Program Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) that will fund a pilot program to help recent graduates gain the skills, experience, and network needed to begin successful careers.

“There’s a real gap between students graduating and the skills they need for available jobs. The program aims to bridge that gap,” said Nancy McGovern, head of curation and preservation services for MIT Libraries, and a co-author of the grant proposal.

The program will mirror a national digital curation residency program developed by the Library of Congress, but it will be the first of its kind in the Boston-area. Over the course of two years a total of ten residents will get hands-on experience in projects that involve digital library collections, long-term preservation, and accessibility of digital assets. Recent library school graduates will have a chance to apply for the program that will give them the opportunity to work with a host institution in the Boston-area, and network with other area institutions, industry leaders, and peers.

“It’s an exciting opportunity for the MIT Libraries to participate in raising awareness, and building community and competencies in this field,” said McGovern.

McGovern will coordinate the development of the program’s curriculum, in collaboration with Andrea Goethals, manager of digital preservation and repository services for Harvard Library, and lead author of the grant proposal. The first year of the grant will cover planning and preparation. The program will welcome the first cohort of residents in fall 2014.

MIT and Harvard will also work closely with a similar grant-funded project in New York led by the Metropolitan New York Library Council and Brooklyn Historical Society. See the full list of 2013 Laura Bush 21^st Century Librarian Program Grant recipients.

MIT will soon be able to tap into the book collections of yet another top institution when the University of Chicago joins Borrow Direct, a partnership that allows for the sharing of library materials between member institutions, this fall.

The Reading Room, Mansueto Library, University of Chicago. Photo by John Schiebel

The University of Chicago Library is the ninth largest research library in North America with 10.7 million volumes in print and electronic form. Chicago will become the tenth university to join the Borrow Direct partnership, which already includes MIT and the libraries of Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Penn, Princeton, Yale, and Harvard.

Through Borrow Direct, faculty, students, and staff from participating institutions can search over 50 million volumes in the school’s combined library catalogs, and request circulating materials directly from the library where they are held.

“The strength of the combined collections of the outstanding libraries represented in Borrow Direct [is] a tremendous asset to our community and to library users across the cooperative,” said Ann Wolpert, MIT’s Director of Libraries, when MIT joined the partnership in 2011.

Since the Borrow Direct service was implemented at MIT, MIT users have borrowed nearly 2,500 items from other institutions. The average turnaround time to receive a requested item at MIT is 3.5 days.

Learn more about how to use Borrow Direct, or go directly to MIT’s WorldCat to search for books from Borrow Direct libraries.

MIT has issued a response to the White House in support of open access again — this time to the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), in relation to the OSTP’s February 22 directive on public access to federally funded research and data. The directive asks each federal agency with over $100 million in annual research and development expenditures to create a plan to support increased public access to the results of research they fund, and gives them six months (until August 22) to come up with policies that would make both articles and data openly available to the public.

For articles, MIT’s response calls for copyright to be “assigned…in a non-exclusive manner to ensure frictionless reuse” including for “discovery, sharing, and text mining.” MIT also supports enhancing access through the use of open licensing (e.g. via Creative Commons), which would maximize the potential for reuse and “fuel innovation.” The response recommends that publications be made available within six months of publication — but certainly no later than 12 months — and that “common procedures, requirements, and processes should be established across all funding agencies” so that participation is convenient for authors.

For data, MIT reiterated the call for common practices. In addition, MIT recommended persistent identifiers for data sets, and an “agreed-upon standard for citing data” which would “enable easy reuse and verification,” as well as “allow the impact of data to be tracked.” Other recommendations open access to data included developing a “minimum set of core metadata” and “an API for standards-based data exchange, to help ensure a level of interoperability and discovery across all disciplines.” The response also emphasizes the need for common legal agreements that ensure discovery, mining, reuse and sharing and recommends against allowing any “single entity or group” being allowed to “secure an exclusive right over digital data or new business opportunities.”

Following MIT’s response, the Association of American Universities, Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, and the Association of Research Libraries issued a proposal called SHARE in response to the directive. The proposal emphasizes that “universities have invested in the infrastructure, tools, and services necessary to provide effective and efficient access to their research and scholarship,” and that to meet the goals of the White House directive they could develop a federated “system of cross-institutional digital repositories” to be called the “SHared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE).” Publishers have also put forward their own proposal.

Background information:

White house directive on open access to data and publications

Responses to directive, including MIT’s on publications (see p. 71) and on data (see p. 25)

Publisher proposal (CHORUS)

Association of American Universities, APLU, and ARL proposal (SHARE); also discussed in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Prior MIT Responses to open access inquiries from the OSTP in 2010 and 2012

Ram Sasisekharan

New studies coauthored by biological engineering professor Ram Sasisekharan show that two bird flu strains could become highly infectious among humans with just a few genetic mutations. Both strains have already jumped from birds to humans, though neither has spread beyond a few hundred people. “There is cause for concern,” Sasisekharan told the MIT News. But the researchers hope their work can be used to develop better vaccines. “Our research provides insights to help keep track of potentially important mutations so that proactive steps can be taken to be better prepared against dangerous viruses,” he said.

Explore Professor Sasisekharan’s research in the Open Access Articles collection in DSpace@MIT, where it is openly accessible to the world.

Since the MIT faculty established their Open Access Policy in March 2009 they have made thousands of research papers freely available to the world via DSpace@MIT. To highlight that research, we’re offering a series of blog posts that link news stories about scholars’ work to their open access papers in DSpace.

Need data on banks and banking?  Try these databases from the MIT Libraries:

For banks in OECD-member countries, from the OECD: http://libraries.mit.edu/get/oecdbank
Access data since 1979 on classification of bank assets and liabilities, income statement and balance sheet and structure of the financial system for OECD-member countries.   This is just one of many statistical databases you can access from the OECD.

For U.S. banks, from Wharton Research Data Services:

1. Bank Regulatory Database: http://libraries.mit.edu/get/bankreg
   Provides accounting data for bank holding companies, commercial banks, savings banks, and savings and loans institutions.
2. FDIC: Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Datasets: http://libraries.mit.edu/get/fdic
   Historical financial data for commercial banks, savings banks, and savings and loans.
3. Federal Reserve Bank Reports: http://libraries.mit.edu/get/wrds-frbr
   Includes: Foreign Exchange Rates (H.10 Report), Interest Rates (H.15 Report), and FRB-Philadelphia State Indexes.

For more Libraries’ guides related to banking, see:

• Tips on researching banking in Ask-Us! – Quick Answers
• Economics
• Finance

MIT people love to make things and now that summer is here, perhaps you can make time to pick up that put-off  project or learn to use that tool everyone else (you think) already knows how to wield. The MIT Libraries has a place to get started.

Mechanical Engineering Librarian Angie Locknar has created a guide to the shops and tools on campus here:  http://libguides.mit.edu/make. “We wanted to have one place to go to find things that people might need if they like to invent/create/build … plus we’re hoping users will send other helpful links to include.”

Make this summer to design and make stuff!

In 2012 CMS/WHS Professor Nick Montfort published The Trivial Program ‘yes’, the first of a series of technical papers, the “Trope Report Technical Report Series.” Read the first five tech reports in DSpace. Note, too, that “trope report” is a palindrome, one of Professor Montfort’s favorite literary genres.

The “Trope Tank” is the name of his lab for creative computing at 14N-233, and there’s more about it at http://trope-tank.mit.edu.

Umbrella Project performance premiere, fall 2012

Earlier this month, more than 250 members of the MIT community gathered on Jack Berry Field carrying specially made umbrellas that lit up with red, blue, and green LED lights via handheld controllers. They were there to perform UP: The Umbrella Project, a collaboration between CSAIL’s Distributed Robotics Lab and the dance company Pilobolus. Directed by a Pilobolus team member and shot by video from above, UP participants walked about, changing the hue of their umbrellas in a live performance piece. The purpose wasn’t solely artistic: CSAIL director Daniela Rus and fellow researchers will study the video to explore the behaviors of large groups. “While our work with robotics and Pilobolus’ work with modern dance may seem at first glance unrelated, we have found there is a wealth of knowledge to be gained at the intersection of art and science that offers deep insight into human behavior, findings that are incredibly useful to the field of computer science,” said Rus.

Explore Professor Rus’s research in the Open Access Articles collection in DSpace@MIT, where it is openly accessible to the world.

Since the MIT faculty established their Open Access Policy in March 2009 they have made thousands of research papers freely available to the world via DSpace@MIT. To highlight that research, we’re offering a series of blog posts that link news stories about scholars’ work to their open access papers in DSpace.

Adam Berinsky, Professor of Political Science and director of the Political Experiments Research Lab (PERL), has won the Warren J. Mitofsky Award for Excellence in Public Opinion Research from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.  Berinsky shares the award with Eric Schickler of the University of California, Berkeley.

The award honors their project of rehabilitating hundreds of under-utilized opinion polls from the 1930s-1950s that were in an obsolete and cumbersome format.  At the project’s completion, nearly one thousand surveys will have been reformatted, labeled and re-deposited with the Roper Center for easier access by the research community.

Want to access this public opinion data yourself?  Use aggregate statistics or micro-level poll results?  Access the Libraries’ Roper Center membership at: http://libraries.mit.edu/get/roper  (note: you’ll need to set up an individual account on their site to download data).

The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research is a leading archive of social science data, specializing in public opinion. The data held by the Roper Center range from the 1930s, when survey research was in its infancy, to the present.

For more resources, see also:

• Libraries’ Guide to Public Opinion Data
• Explore Professor Berinsky’s research on this project in the Open Access Articles collection in DSpace@MIT.

Intellectual property rights may give incentive to people and companies to do creative work, but do they also hinder subsequent innovation? This is the question economics professor Heidi Williams asks in a new paper published in a recent issue of the Journal of Political Economy. Over a decade ago, the government-funded Human Genome Project and the private firm Celera each published work on human genome sequencing. From day one, the HGP put its sequenced genes in the public domain, while Celera relied on IP rights to protect its work, selling data to firms and requiring licenses for any commercial products developed.

Williams investigated how the 1,600 genes covered by Celera’s IP—which all eventually went into the public domain—fared compared with genes initially sequenced by the HGP. She found that Celera’s genes were less likely to be the focus of both scientific research and commercial development, even years after the Celera genes were freely available. “One additional year of Celera’s intellectual property translates to a persistent and permanent difference in whether we figure out whether it is linked to disease,” Williams told the Boston Globe. She suggests that IP rights reduced subsequent scientific research and product development by 20 to 30 percent.

Explore Professor Williams’ research in the Open Access Articles collection in DSpace@MIT, where it is openly accessible to the world.

Since the MIT faculty established their Open Access Policy in March 2009 they have made thousands of research papers freely available to the world via DSpace@MIT. To highlight that research, we’re offering a series of blog posts that link news stories about scholars’ work to their open access papers in DSpace.

Four years after the MIT faculty adopted their Open Access Policy, a significant new milestone has been reached: Papers made openly available through the Open Access Articles Collection have been downloaded over 1 million times. Total downloads from the collection of just under 9,000 papers reached 1,045,518 by the end of April.

Another highwater mark was met in April as well: monthly downloads topped 65,000 for the first time, with a total of 67,319 downloads from around the world that month.

These downloads come from all around the world, reaching traditional as well as new audiences for MIT faculty publications.

More information about the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy:

FAQ about the Policy
Deposit a paper under the Policy
Readers of MIT Open Access Papers

 
Announcing the blog, Engineering the Future of the Past, by staff of the MIT Institute Archives and Special Collections.

Are you interested in knowing what the MIT Libraries is doing about digital archives?  Follow Digital Archivist Kari Smith as she writes about the processes and practice of dealing with digital records and archives.

Looking for a paper from ASME?  (What IS ASME, you say?)

MIT Libraries has subscribed to The American Society of Mechanical Engineers digital library for several years. Now it has a new interface!

ASME Digital Collections is the place to search for full text articles in ASME journals (all years) or for conference papers from 2002 – present.

AND…if you need a conference paper prior to 2002?  The Barker Engineering Library has thousands of ASME technical papers in its collections. Use the ASME Papers & Publications guide to locate them.  Or just Ask Us!

Move over ACME….Beep Beep!

The Libraries is pleased to announce new offerings in streaming media that support our MIT communities.

Art and Architecture in Video
http://libraries.mit.edu/get/artv
This streaming video database offers more than 400 documentaries and interviews illustrating the history, theory, and practice of art, design, and architecture. This database includes real-time transcript highlighting, the ability to make clips, and offers links for embedding in course management systems.

OnArchitecture
http://libraries.mit.edu/get/onarch
This streaming video package contains more than 150 interviews with architects, project walk-throughs, and other original video about architectural design. Watch an interview with Ai Weiwei: http://www.onarchitecture.com/interviews/ai-weiwei-0. This resource offers closed captioning.

OntheBoards.tv
http://libraries.mit.edu/get/ontheboards
Sponsored by On the Boards in Seattle, the videos in this collection cover contemporary theatre, dance, and performance art. All are recordings of performances at either On the Boards or other arts organizations around the country.

Smithsonian Global Sound
http://libraries.mit.edu/get/globalsound
This streaming audio collection of world music provides access to over 42,000 tracks from the Smithsonian Archives and world music archives in Asia and Africa. Coverage includes over 169 countries worldwide, 1,000 genres, 1,400 cultural groups, and 450 different languages.

For more information or to learn more about how these resources may enhance research or teaching, please contact an MIT Libraries subject specialist.