MIT Libraries News

Travelling sometime soon? Come to see the Travel Collection on the second floor of the Hayden Library right next to the comfy couch.

• Learn about the gem churches in Rome in an extensive section in the guide Key to Rome.
• The Rough Guide to the Grand Canyon will give you tips on visiting the Havasupai, Hualapai, and Navajo Indian Reservations.
• Find 35 pages of restaurant recommendations in Time Out Sydney.

You will find these and several guides for countries, cities, regions, and types of travel throughout the world. Check out what you need, and if you don’t find it, remember that you can use the Suggested Purchase form to request a guide.

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

Hayden Library (Humanities and Science) will begin special finals week hours on Thursday, May 16, 2013. Hayden will remain open every day until 2am for members of the MIT community only, from the last day of classes up to the last day of the final exam period: Thursday, May 16 through Thursday, May 23.

All other libraries will continue Spring term hours. For a complete list of library hours, visit our library hours page.

And don’t forget — the 24-hour study facilities in Barker, Dewey, and Hayden libraries will remain open as usual throughout this period.

Have questions? Ask Us!

 
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!

Classes are almost over, and summer is practically here. Keep these tips in mind for seamless library access all summer long:

• Don’t dash off without renewing your books! You can use Your Account to renew, or find answers to your questions about renewing & returning.
• Finals week study breaks! Take a study break, have a snack, and de-stress. Therapy dogs at Hayden!
• Away from campus on a tropical island? Check out these tips for off-campus access before you go!
• Want to make sure you don’t miss any cutting edge research during your travels? Subscribe to our RSS feeds of new books by topic.
• And don’t forget, if you need our help from a faraway destination, you can always Ask Us!

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.

Ed Boyden, an associate professor of Biological Engineering and Brain and Cognitive Sciences, has won Brandeis University’s Jacob Heskel Gabbay Award in Biotechnology and Medicine. Boyden shares the prize with researchers at Stanford University and the University of Oxford. It honors their contributions to optogenetics, a technology now widely used to study brain activity. In March, Boyden was also honored for this work by winning (along with five others) the Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Prize, known as the Brain Prize. Last month, Boyden traveled to the White House for President Obama’s announcement of a new initiative to understand the human brain, which will invest $100 million in research starting in 2014.

Explore Professor Boyden’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.

You may recall that MIT Libraries launched a new fellows program in October, 2012. The fellows have been involved in a number of library activities since they started and now Helen Bailey, Fellow for Digital Curation and Preservation, wants to share her experience. She has started a blog, Life Cycles of the Bits and Pages, that will chronicle her time as a fellow in the MIT Libraries. Check it out to learn more about her projects.

Music Librarian Peter Munstedt will give a gallery talk, “Musical Treasures in the MIT Libraries” on Wednesday, May 1 from noon-12:45 pm. The Maihaugen exhibit Noteworthy Connections: Music in the MIT Libraries will be on view until July 2013.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Noon-12:45 pm
Maihaugen Gallery, Bldg. 14N-130
Free and open to the public.

Interested in jazz at MIT? Photographs, recordings, scores, video clips, and other materials from the Lewis Music Library and the Institute Archives and Special Collections will be featured in a special one-day exhibit on Thursday afternoon, 4/25/2013. There will be many items from the Herb Pomeroy Collection in celebration of the 50^th anniversary of jazz becoming a part of the MIT curriculum under the leadership of Herb Pomeroy.

Date: Thursday, April 25, 3:00pm-5:00pm
Place: Lewis Music Library, Bldg. 14E-109
Free and open to the public.

The 11th annual Prokopoff violin music concert will be held on Tuesday, April 30th, from noon-1 pm in the Lewis Music Library. MIT students will perform selections by Bach, Saint-Saens, Wieniawski, Kreisler, Tchaikovsky, and Mendelssohn.  This annual event honors the collection of over 2,000 violin music scores collected by Stephen Prokopoff and donated to the library in 2001 by Lois Craig, former Associate Dean of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning. Come enjoy some wonderful music in an attractive setting!

Date: Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Place: Lewis Music Library, Bldg. 14E-109
Time: noon-1 pm

The concert is free and open to the public.

Do research on U.S. history, law, government, or elections?  Then try out these new databases from the MIT Libraries!

HeinOnline Political Science Research Package (http://libraries.mit.edu/get/hein)

Full text legal history collection of image-based documents. Includes world constitutions, treaties, U.S. Supreme Court reports, U.S. Code, Code of Federal Regulations, Congressional Record, presidential papers and resources for researching legislative histories. 1700s – present.

CQ Press Congress Collection (http://libraries.mit.edu/get/cqcongress)

Access resources and data on the U.S. Congress. Includes roll call votes, voting records, legislative histories and analyses.

CQ Press Voting and Elections Collection (http://libraries.mit.edu/get/cqvoting)

View and download historic and current data on voting and elections in the U.S. at the national and state level. Includes analyses of voting behavior, election processes, major and minor political parties, and voter behavior and demographics.  The MIT Libraries’ subscription includes access to the data sets. The site is organized into six categories:

• Presidential Elections:explanations of the presidential electoral process, analyses and data for historical and modern presidential elections, modern voting behavior, key events and issues, and biographies.
• Congressional Elections: explanations of the congressional electoral process, including reapportionment and redistricting; data for historical and modern congressional elections; analyses of modern congressional elections; modern voting behavior; modern district profiles; key events and issues; and biographies.
• Gubernatorial Elections: explanations of the gubernatorial electoral process and data for historical and modern gubernatorial elections.
• Campaigns and Elections: explores the American system of voting and elections, electoral process and reform, media, interest groups, and the impact of money.
• Political Parties: party system in America, including party strength and control, and profiles Democratic, Republican, and third parties.
• Voters and Demographics: covers expansion of voting rights, voter turnout, voting behavior, modern county census data, and modern district profiles.

—————–

Want more?  Check out our research guides to:

• Congressional Publications
• Law
• Political Science

MIT Libraries in cooperation with the MIT Earth Day Committee present a film viewing of Chasing Ice on Friday, April 26. The film will be introduced by Kerry Emanuel, Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT.

This 2012 Oscar nominated documentary follows photographer James Balog and his crew as they as they conduct the Extreme Ice Survey, deploying time lapse cameras to capture a multi-year record of the world’s changing glaciers. Register for the MIT Sustainability Summit to see a talk by Chasing Ice photographer James Balog on Saturday evening!

Refreshments at 4 PM in lobby outside 6-120; Film starts at 4:30 in 6-120. Free and open to the public.

For more information, contact: Heather McCann; hmccann(at) mit.edu 617.253.7098

Web site: http://web.mit.edu/earthday

Sponsored by MIT Libraries, Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, EHS, MITEI, and the MIT Earth Day Committee

The MIT Libraries will be closed on Friday April 19th. More information is available at emergency.mit.net

photo by Christopher Maynor

Take a study break, have a snack, and de-stress!

Thursday, May 16, 2-3:30 PM
Hayden Library (14S) – Cookies with Canines

Monday, May 20, 2:00 PM
Dewey Library (E53-100) – Study Break

Monday, May 20, 2-3:30 PM
Rotch Library (7-238) – Study Break

Tuesday, May 21, 2-3:30
Barker Library (10-500) – Study Break

Cookies and beverages will be served near the entrance to each library. Therapy dogs from Dog B.O.N.E.S. will make a special visit to Hayden Library for Cookies with Canines.

In 1997, economist Robert Townsend and colleague Sombat Sakunthasathien, a Thai government researcher, began to gather data on family and community finances in rural and urban Thailand. They’ve never stopped. Their program, the Thai Family Research Project (part of the Townsend Thai Project), includes surveys of 2,880 households and 262 community groups. It has resulted in hundreds of thousands of data points, making it one of the largest datasets in the developing world. Among their findings is that much of Thailand’s expanding economy is coming from rural areas. They’ve now written a book, Chronicles from the Field, which delves into statistics but also recounts the human side of doing field work. “Organizations deal with people, and this is all about the people,” Townsend tells the MIT News. “You need to build up trust. The households need to understand why you’re asking them all these questions, and you need to be honest with them. By going back, you establish that you care.”

The book is accompanied by a documentary film, “Emerging Thailand: The Spirit of Small Enterprise,” which will screen at MIT on April 23 at 5:30 p.m. in E25-111.

Explore Professor Townsend’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.

Due to Monday’s tragic events at the Boston Marathon, the Libraries’ grace period for loans has been extended and fines are suspended until next Wednesday, April 24.

This extension applies to all items with a loan period of 14 days or longer.

Have questions? Ask Us!

Micah Altman, MIT Libraries’ Director of Research, has been awarded the Antonio Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest for his work developing software that encourages transparency and public participation in the electoral redistricting process. The award was presented today, April 13, at the 2013 Nonprofit Technology Conference of the National Technology Network in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The drawing of legislative districts has always been one of the least transparent — and most easily manipulated — steps toward democratic governance. Altman teamed up with Michael McDonald, Associate Professor at George Mason University, to find a way to break the political insider lockgrip on the electoral mapping process.

The initiative the scholars went on to launch, the Public Mapping Project, involved government and nonprofits across the country in an effort to develop redistricting software that any concerned citizen could use.

DistrictBuilder, the software that eventually emerged out of this effort, runs on ordinary Web browsers. Anyone with a computer can access DistrictBuilder and use it to both create legislative maps that fairly divide political power, and evaluate the maps that legislators create. DistrictBuilder has already been used to support redistricting efforts in the states of Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Virginia and others.

In addition to being honored by the prize, Altman finds it rewarding to see a new generation of voters involved in the process.

“It’s been very gratifying to see students use the software to create legal districts and really engage with the political process,” Altman said.

The $10,000 cash grant is awarded annually to those who have created or led an effort to create an open source software product of significant value to the nonprofit sector and movements for social change. The prize is named after MIT computer science graduate and open source computing advocate, Tony Pizzigati ’92 who worked at the MIT Media Lab and the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science.