MIT Libraries News

Sure, most of us can hammer out a few slides in PowerPoint and call it a presentation. But some PowerPoint shows look crisp and professional, while others look like amateur hour. What are the telltale signs of a not-ready-for-prime-time presentation — and how can you fix them? In this hands-on session, we’ll haul a delinquent presentation before the bar of PowerPoint justice, enumerate its crimes, and rehabilitate it. We’ll use PowerPoint 2003. (Note: This session is not for PowerPoint beginners.)

WHEN: Tuesday, January 22, 2 – 3 pm

WHERE: DIRC, 14N-132

Prerequisite: Experience creating PPT shows (preferably in PP 2003)

Enrollment is limited to 20 participants; advance sign-up required. Contact Craig Thomas to sign up or with questions.

Come see, and check out, highlights from The Humanities Library‘s book and DVD collections, and The Lewis Music Library‘s music collections, with a special focus on the African American experience.

Details:

• Date: Friday January 18th, 2008
• Time: 10:30AM – 2:30PM
• Where: Lobby 10
• Cost: FREE!!!

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), as previously reported, was directed by new legislation to mandate open access to all peer-reviewed journal articles published as a result of NIH grant funds, through PubMed Central, the digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature. NIH has now revised its home page, FAQ, and Public Access Policy, describing the new mandatory submission process.

Details that may be of interest to the MIT community:

• Timing: The policy applies to all peer-reviewed articles that are accepted for publication on or after April 7, 2008.
• Publisher Agreements and Copyright: From the FAQ: “Authors should work with the publisher before any rights are transferred to ensure that all conditions of the NIH Public Access Policy can be met. Authors should avoid signing any agreements with publishers that do not allow the author to comply with the NIH Public Access Policy.”
• Amending Agreements: Authors should be aware that if a journal presents them with a copyright transfer agreement, they need not use the form as presented. They should attach a revision to the transfer agreement that makes the contract compliant with NIH requirements. MIT offers authors such an amendment to publisher agreements whose language allows MIT authors to comply with the new NIH policy. Authors simply indicate that the agreement is subject to the amendment, and sign and attach the amendment.
• While NIH suggests some possible language that can be used to modify a publisher’s agreement, this language is provided simply as an example. Use of either the MIT amendment or one of the other addendum options included in the drop-down list on the MIT amendment page offers a complete, convenient, and sound means of complying with the policy.
• The new policy does not change the author’s copyrights’ status. The author can still “assign [copyrights] to journals, subject to the limited right that must be retained…to post the works in accordance with the Policy” in PubMed Central.
• Submitting to PubMed Central: Submitting to PMC is required even if you publish in an open access journal, or if the article is freely accessible on the publisher’s website. Principal Investigators (PIs) and authors can check a list of participating journals that will submit manuscripts to PubMedCentral on their behalf, and should not accept publishers promises to submit if the journal title is not on this list. If a title is not on the list, the author should be sure to reserve the rights to deposit directly. In all cases, authors should retain a copy of their final peer-reviewed manuscript and all supplemental material. Even if a journal is on the list, authors will need to review the article as submitted by the journal to PubMed Central, and sign off on its accuracy and completeness. This will be required before a PubMed Central reference number is issued, and that number will be needed for progress reports and applications.
• PubMedCentral Reference Numbers: Authors and PIs should be begin collecting PubMedCentral reference numbers as well as NIH Manuscript Submission System reference numbers as proof of deposit, as these will be required for all future progress reports, and grant applications.
• Publication Costs: NIH will allow PIs to pay open access publication costs from grant funds, though NIH is not budgeting additional funds for this purpose.

For further information about the new NIH policy, or using the MIT amendment, please consult the Scholarly Publication website, or contact copyright-lib@mit.edu.

The MIT Libraries’ BookPage service now allows members of the MIT and Harvard borrowing communities to request materials for retrieval at any library on campus, including an item’s home library. Only materials on four-week loan can be delivered through this service. Most books fall into this category — most journals do not. Items available for loan will be delivered in 1 business day if located at the requested library, within 2 business days if from another campus library. Requests are limited to 6 per day. An item will remain on hold at the requested library for a period of no more than 7 days, and you will be notified via email when your request has arrived.

Contact the individual library for details.

The Rotch Library is proud to present the IAP Film Series, held on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the month of January. The week of January 14 is Urban Week!

Films will be shown in the Rotch Library Conference Room (enter through 7-238) starting at 11:30AM and ending no later than 2PM. The schedule for the upcoming week will be:

Monday, January 14

• Drowned Out / Franny Armstrong
• Lost City of New Orleans / a BBC/Discovery Channel co-production

Wednesday, January 16

• Cities / directed and produced by David Springbett, Heather MacAndrew
• Subdivide and conquer : a modern western / Red Oak Films

Friday, January 18

• Farmingville / a film by Carlos Sandoval and Catherine Tambini
• Designing a great neighborhood : behind the scenes at Holiday / produced by the Sustainable Futures Society

The week of January 21 is Potluck Week! More films from Rotch on a variety of topics.

Please forward this information to interested parties! If you have any questions, please contact Heather McCann at (617) 253-7098 / hmccann@mit.edu OR Jennifer Friedman (617) 258-5595 / jrfried@mit.edu.

Thank you very much and we hope to see you!

Learn about chemical reaction searching in SciFinder Scholar by attending this hands-on virtual lab! To attend this WebEx session with CAS trainer, go to the link below for more information about the training session, including its agenda, or to join the session.

WHEN: Friday, January 18, 10 am – 12 pm

WHERE: Your office! (via WebEx teleconference)

https://casevents.webex.com/casevents/k2/j.php?ED=90618292&UID=528470012

Training session password: mitscholar

Teleconference: Call 866-469-3239 (Tollfree in US/Canada) or 650-429-3300 (US/Canada Direct)

Session Number: 661 033 867

Web: http://libraries.mit.edu/guides/cheatsheets/sci-finder/index.html

Contact Erja Kajosalo with any questions.

Geared for graduate students, addresses what copyright means to you as an author, how you can assess a publisher’s copyright policies, and how you can use web-based tools that assess journal quality. Open access publishing models and the use of the MIT amendment to alter standard publisher agreements will also be discussed.

WHEN: Friday, January 18, 2 – 3 pm

WHERE: 14N-132, DIRC

Contact copyright-lib@mit.edu with any questions.

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Entrez family of databases is the foundation of knowledge for molecular level bioscience research. 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.

WHEN: Thursday, January 10, 4 – 5 pm
Friday, January 18, 12:30 – 1:30 pm

WHERE: 14N-132, DIRC

Enrollment is on a first-come, first-served basis and is limited to 20 participants.

Contact Amy Stout with any questions.

Scientists from BIOBASE will do training on these bioinformatics databases that include Proteome, TransFac, TransPath, and ExPlain, with focus on the new database ExPlain and updates on new features for all of them. The MIT Libraries subscribes to these, and you will find them on VERA. There will be a 2 hour training session plus hands-on time to work on your own research if you wish.

WHEN: Thursday, January 17, 1 – 3 pm

WHERE: 14N-132, DIRC

Enrollment is on a first-come, first-served basis and is limited to 30 participants.

Contact Louisa Worthington Rogers with any questions.

1001 uses of MIT TechTV in support of education, research, activities, and outreach!

MIT TechTV is MIT’s free video posting and hosting service, specializing in science, engineering, and MIT-related videos. Any member of the MIT Community can use MIT TechTV to post video content for the world to see. In this seminar, you’ll learn how you can use MIT TechTV to accomplish your goals and support your group whether its a class, lab, student organization, sport team, or department.

WHEN: Friday, January 11 am – 12 pm
Thursday, January 17, 12 – 1 pm
Wednesday, January 23, 1 – 2 pm
Tuesday, January 29, 2 – 3 pm

WHERE: 9-151, Ford Room

Enrollment is on a first-come, first-served basis and is limited to 20 participants.

Questions and suggestions are welcomed and encouraged. See http://techtv.mit.edu/ for more information. Contact Kris Brewer with any questions.

Cosponsored by Academic Media Production Services

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

Attendees will create a personal database of cited literature by importing references from resources such as Barton, Web of Science, PubMed, & other sources of published literature. Your database can be used to automatically generate in-text citations and bibliographies in your manuscripts. It can also help you organize and manage your PDF files.

WHEN: Thursday, January 17, 5 – 6 pm
Wednesday, January 23, 5 – 6 pm
Wednesday, January 30, 12 – 1 pm

WHERE: 14N-132, DIRC

Enrollment is on a first-come, first-served basis and is limited to 20 participants.

Contact Howard Silver with any questions.

Are you an apartment dweller wishing for some backyard space to compost? Don’t worry, you can compost indoors and start any time of the year! In this 2-hour workshop, you will learn how to use worms to turn your garbage into “black” gold from Cambridge’s Recycling Director, Randi Mail. For the past couple years, Randi has composted food scraps in two 10-gallon plastic containers, making rich soil for her houseplants.

WHEN: Wednesday, January 16, 2 – 4 pm

WHERE: 33-116

See http://www.cambridgema.gov/theworks/departments/recycle/index.html
for further information. Contact Ryan Gray with any questions.

Enrollment is on a first-come, first-served basis and is limited to 30 participants.

Cosponsored by the Working Group on Support Staff Issues Recycling Group.

RefWorks is a web-based resource designed to help you to organize references and create a bibliography. RefWorks allows you to search, retrieve relevant citations, and build your bibliography. It allows users to create individual or group accounts, and makes it easy to write papers, or post your results to web pages.

WHEN: Wednesday, January 16, 4 – 5 pm
Tuesday, January 22, 4 – 5 pm
Thursday, January 31, 4 – 5 pm

WHERE: 14N-132, DIRC

Enrollment is on a first-come, first-served basis and is limited to 20 participants.

Contact Howard Silver with any questions.

While you won’t come out of this session qualified to be a patent attorney, you will be able to successfully find patent references from all over the world and know how to obtain patent text and diagrams. The session will be a hands-on practicum that will help de-mystify the patent literature and expose attendees to key resources for finding patents through free resources available on the web.

WHEN:
Wednesday, January 16, 5:30 – 6:30 pm
OR
Tuesday, January 22, 12 – 1 pm

WHERE: 14N-132, DIRC

Enrollment is on a first-come, first-served basis and is limited to 25 participants.

See http://libraries.mit.edu/patents for more information. Contact Darcy Duke with any questions.

Searching for molecules is possible in PubMed! Come to this session to learn how to find articles about chemicals, drugs and other substances in PubMed by using subject headings and other advanced techniques. We will also demo the NCBI PubChem Substance database that allows you to search by common name, systematic name, molecular weight and more.

WHEN: Wednesday, January 16, 12 – 1:30 pm

WHERE: 14N-132, DIRC

Enrollment is on a first-come, first-served basis and is limited to 30 participants.

Contact Louisa Worthington Rogers with questions.

Need data to answer a research question? Interested in analyzing raw datasets with micro-level records about individual respondents? This hands-on workshop will familiarize you with the resources of the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) and the Harvard-MIT Data Center, which provide access to datasets in the social sciences and related fields. Topics will include finding and downloading datasets and understanding data documentation.

WHEN: Tuesday, January 15, 2 – 3:30 pm

WHERE: 14N-132, DIRC

See http://libraries.mit.edu/guides/subjects/data/training/workshops.html for more information.

Advance sign up is required and participation is limited to 20 people. Please sign up by January 14 by contacting Katherine McNeill-Harman.

Information on energy is everywhere! How do you find the scientific and technical information you need and keep on the cutting edge of what is published? Attend this hands-on session to find out.

WHEN: Tuesday, January 15, 4 – 5 pm

WHERE: 14N-132, DIRC

Enrollment is limited to 25 participants on a first-come, first-served basis.

Contact Angie Locknar with any questions.

Using citation management software to create and maintain a collection of references is becoming more common and important in today’s academic world. These software packages allow users to search databases, retrieve relevant citations, and build a bibliography to be added to a paper or thesis or stored for future reference. But which software package should you use, and how do you get started? This session will focus on EndNote, RefWorks, and Zotero, the three major options for bibliographic software at MIT. We will include a discussion comparing and contrasting the three softwares, and we will introduce some of the basic concepts and functionality of each program.

WHEN: Tuesday, January 15, 12 – 1 pm
Thursday, January 24, 12 – 1 pm
Monday, January 28, 5 – 6 pm

WHERE: 14N-132, DIRC

20 computers are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Attendees are welcome to bring their laptops.

Contact Remlee Green with any questions.

When you read or hear news about developing countries do you feel inspired to make a difference? Come hear how one MIT staff member, and native Honduran, organized volunteer groups and shipped donations of educational material, computer equipment, and medical equipment to Honduras and other Central American countries. Learn about her latest experience working in Honduras, and how you can get involved!

WHEN: Tuesday, January 15, 4:30 – 5:30 pm

WHERE: Barker Library, Media Room, 10-500

Dessert and drinks provided. Enrollment limited to 15 participants.

Contact Olimpia Estela Caceres-Brown with further questions.

You may be a skilled investigator on the topic of science or engineering, but what do you know about business research? This session will introduce you to library-supported databases that cover company and industry information. We will use hands-on exercises to demonstrate strategies for researching two key components of a business plan: competitors and industry trends.

WHEN: Monday, January 14, 4 – 5:15 pm

WHERE: 14N-132, DIRC

Enrollment is limited to a first-come, first-served basis, with a maximum of 25 participants.

Contact Stephanie Hartman with any questions.