MIT Libraries News

In conjunction with the Maihaugen Gallery exhibit opening of Glass at MIT: Beauty and Utility, the MIT Libraries have launched a new Charles J. Connick Stained Glass Foundation Collection website.

The website includes a slideshow and sampling of images from collection artwork, including stained glass panels and paper designs.  A history page provides insight into Connick as an artist, his studio, and how the collection came to MIT.  Additionally, it covers the contents of the collection and processing projects such as digitization and conservation.

Soon, researchers will be able to use the website to access digital images in the collection and to search a database of collection job files containing information on Connick windows around the country.

For more information on the Charles J. Connick Stained Glass Foundation Collection, visit the new website or contact Jeremy Grubman, Project Manager, at jgrubman@mit.edu.

On Wednesday, February 22 the MIT Libraries will host Diversity and Social Justice Advocate, Art Munin for White Privilege 101 a presentation that will uncover how white privilege has evolved, how it persists and what we can do about it.

Date & Time: Wednesday, February 22, 10am-12pm

Location: Bartos Theater (E15)

Munin, the Dean of Students at DePaul University, will present a broad introduction to the concept of privilege.  He will discuss the evolution and perpetuation of white privilege in depth and hold an interactive conversation on what the concept means for us as individuals and professionals.

The event is cosponsored by the MIT Libraries’ Committee on the Promotion of Diversity and Inclusion (CPDI) and the Institute Council for Diversity and Inclusion. This event is free and open to the MIT community. For more information contact CPDI.

The boycott of Elsevier started by mathematician Timothy Gowers has rapidily grown to nearly 5000 names, including at least 45 from MIT. MIT signers, who constitute nearly one percent of participants, come from all across MIT, including Biology, CSAIL, EECS, Linguistics, Math, the Media Lab, Philosophy, and Physics.

“I signed the petition simply because I believe that if taxpayers fund research, they should have access to the results of that research without going through a paywall,” says EECS Professor Seth Teller.

Those taxpayers would not have access to government-funded research if Elsevier has its way. Elsevier supports the Research Works Act (RWA), which would prohibit the government from requiring authors to openly share articles that result from the research it funds, thus making the existing NIH Public Access Policy, or any others like it, illegal.

For Professor Scott Aaronson, “signing this petition was a no-brainer.” He “started boycotting Elsevier and most other commercial publishers as a graduate student, because the economic model didn’t make sense” to him. “I couldn’t understand why academics were (1) donating their papers to publishers like Elsevier, (2) signing away their copyrights, (3) asking their universities’ libraries to buy *back* the papers at exorbitant, ever-increasing costs, and (4) even reviewing the papers (an onerous burden) free of charge, all while I could see for myself that the publishers were providing little or no ‘value-added,’ since most people just downloaded the papers from the arXiv or the authors’ homepages anyway.”

For Professor Aaronson, this boycott has been a long time coming. “I’ve simply been waiting for what I saw as the inevitable moment when a critical mass of academics would ‘wake up’ to the issue” that the existing publishing model, with ever-increasing prices, was “unsustainable,” he says. “Now that one of the greatest mathematicians on earth (Timothy Gowers) is spearheading the boycott movement, and dozens of other leading figures in the mathematical community have declared their support, that moment may have arrived.”

More information:

• Why Scientists are Boycotting a Publisher: Gareth Cook’s editorial in the Boston Globe
• Interview with Elsevier about the boycott, RWA, and more
• Elsevier Fact Sheet
  

or contact:
Ellen Duranceau, Program Manager, Scholarly Publishing & Licensing, MIT Libraries

Noam Chomsky, photo credit: MIT News

MIT’s Libraries were recently chosen to be the stewards of the personal archives of noted linguist, political activist, and Institute Professor emeritus Noam Chomsky. The significant collection spans a long and distinguished career, beginning when Chomsky joined MIT in 1955 in the Research Laboratory of Electronics, through his years as a professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, then as Institute Professor.

Often referred to as “the father of modern linguistics,” Chomsky revolutionized the field of linguistics and paved the way for transformational grammar and universal grammar. His book Syntactic Structures (1957) was considered groundbreaking. He also made significant contributions to the fields of psychology, cognitive science, philosophy of language and philosophy of mind.

“It’s fitting that Professor Chomsky’s papers will remain at MIT as a resource for future generations of scholars. He revolutionized the way we think about the linguistic sciences and the cognitive mechanisms of language acquisition, and his ideas in many realms have had profound influence on scholarship and public discourse here at MIT and worldwide,” MIT President Susan Hockfield said.

Over the years, Chomsky has been awarded numerous prizes, including the Kyoto Prize in 1988 and the MIT Killian Award for the academic year 1991-1992. Most recently, he won the Sydney Peace Prize in 2011. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

“Over the last fifty years, Noam Chomsky has not only created the building blocks of linguistic theory and understanding, but has built a remarkable and unique department of Linguistics that has nurtured several generations of linguists who have taken their MIT experience into and across the globe. It is wonderful that Noam’s papers, which span this long period of growth and development, will be available to scholars for many years to come,” MIT Dean of Humanities Deborah Fitzgerald said.

The collection also reflects Chomsky’s political activism and outspoken support for freedom of speech and social justice. He was once quoted as saying, “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all” (Guardian (UK), Nov.23, 1992).

He has authored numerous works on the topic, including American Power and the New Mandarins (1969), Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (2006), and Hopes and Prospects (2010).

The addition of Chomsky’s personal archives, and a large portion of his personal library, augments a small existing collection of Chomsky’s papers already in the care of the MIT Libraries’ Institute Archives.

“With this addition, the collection will be a complete archival resource that will provide researchers with unique insight into Professor Chomsky’s thinking, and the development of the field of linguistics, as well as his views on significant issues in social activism from post-WWII through current day,” MIT Institute Archivist Tom Rosko said.

Staff from the MIT Libraries and Institute Archives and Special Collections are in the beginning stages of transferring material to the Archives. Initial work in organizing the Chomsky collection will occur this year, with additional work on improving access to the collection, including online access to portions of it, continuing over the next several years. When the work is done, scholars will have unprecedented access to an enormous depth and breadth of material from one of the world’s most renowned linguists and top intellectual minds.

Want to brush up on your language skills or learn a new language? Use all that time you spend waiting for the T, and learn a new language with Byki Mobile!

Learn over 70 languages, including English, using the Byki language-learning system. Learn at your own pace with virtual flashcards and quizzes.  Byki will remember where you left off, so you can track your progress and easily learn on-the-go. The mobile app works for iPhone and Android, but if you don’t have a mobile device, you can still use Byki from any computer.

To get started: 

1. Visit Byki through the MIT Libraries from a computer or mobile device, and log in through your MIT Touchstone account.
2. Click the “Sign Up Now” button and create an account. (Or just log in, if you already have a Byki account.)
3. After you’ve logged in, click the “Byki Mobile” button, and follow the steps to download and activate the Byki Community Edition app for Android or iPhone.

To access the full version of Byki, use the same link from a computer: http://libraries.mit.edu/get/byki.

Questions? Ask Us!

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum passes are here!

The MIT Libraries now have discount passes for the Gardner Museum.  Passes are available with an MIT ID at the Hayden Library.

There are some special things to know about these passes:

• Passes are good for specific days of the week only.  Details can be found in the Barton catalog record.
• Passes are good for 2 or 4 people each depending on the day of the week – one pass per person only.
• Passes do not get you in free, but are used to receive a $5 per person admission price.

Of note to our community might be the current Special Exhibition: Illuminating the Serenissima:  Books of the Republic of Venice.

If you have any questions, please email circulation@mit.edu.

The Lewis Music Library’s over 20,000 audio CDs and more than 1,300 DVDs now circulate for 1 week (no renewals) to members of the MIT community. The collection includes music from Gregorian chant to Lady Gaga: classical, jazz, world music, film and soundtracks, and popular.

Lists of the newest arrivals: Recent Additions to the Collections.
CDs and DVDs are listed in Barton; for search tips, see Searching for Music.
Selected recent CDs and DVDs are on display in the library.

The Lewis Music Library is located in Bldg. 14E-109 and library hours are posted on the web.

The MIT Libraries spring hours begin this Monday, February 6, 2012.

Barker, Hayden (Humanities & Science)
Monday-Thursday: 9am-12am
Friday: 9am-6pm
Saturday: 11am-6pm
Sunday: 12pm-11pm

Dewey, Rotch
Monday-Thursday: 9am-11pm
Friday: 9am-6pm
Saturday: 11am-6pm
Sunday: 12pm-11pm

Lewis Music
Monday-Thursday: 9am-9pm
Friday: 9am-6pm
Saturday: 1pm-6pm
Sunday: 2pm-9pm

These hours will remain in effect until Thursday, May 24, 2012. For a complete list of library locations and hours, visit our hours page. Have questions? Ask us!

Please join us for the opening of the MIT Libraries’ latest exhibit GLASS AT MIT: BEAUTY AND UTILITY

Date: Friday, February 10, 2-4pm
Location: Maihaugen Gallery (14N-130)

A new exhibition in the Libraries’ Maihaugen Gallery explores glassmaking as revealed in glassware from MIT laboratories, blown glass from the MIT Glass Lab, and stunning stained glass windows from the Libraries’ Charles J. Connick Stained Glass Foundation Collection. Tools, early photographs, and selections from rare books demonstrate the combination of artistry and engineering that goes into the creation of glass.

This event is free and open to the community.

Nearly twenty members of the MIT community have already signed a newly posted pledge to boycott Elsevier journals by refusing to publish, referee, or do editorial work “unless they radically change how they operate.”

The boycott was launched as a result a posting by Fields medal-winning mathematician Timothy Gowers in which he railed against Elsevier’s pricing practices and support of the Research Works Act. He suggested that a public website be created where others could join him in “refus(ing) to have anything to do with Elsevier journals from now on.”

Such a website now exists, and lists (as of the time of this writing) eighteen members of the MIT community, including Professors Scott Aaronson, Hal Abelson, Allan Adams, Hari Balakrishnan, Richard Holton, David Karger, Gerald Sussman, and Seth Teller as well graduate students Andrew Correa, John Hess, and Yarden Katz.

Professor Kai von Fintel also signed the boycott, and recently made a similar public statement on his web site.

Elsevier is one of the publishers pushing to repeal the NIH Public Access Policy through a bill, the Research Works Act and other legislation that, as the boycott website puts it: “aim(s) to restrict the free exchange of information.”

Ellen Duranceau / Program Manager, Scholarly Publishing & Licensing / MIT Libraries / 617.253.8483

MIT Press was the first publisher to publicly disavow the Association of American Publishers’ support of the Research Works Act, a bill which would make the NIH Public Access Policy, along with any other similar government effort to make taxpayer-funded research openly accessible to the public, illegal.

“The AAP’s press release on the Research Works Act does not reflect the position of the MIT Press; nor, I imagine, the position of many other scholarly presses whose mission is centrally focused on broad dissemination,” says Ellen Faran, Director of the MIT Press.

Many university presses are members of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), and others have followed MIT Press in distancing themselves from the AAP’s action in recent days, including the University of California Press and Rockefeller University Press. Other publishers who are members of AAP have also spoken out against the bill, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Nature Publishing Group.

The Research Works Act “would forbid federal agencies to do anything that would result in the sharing of privately published research—even if that research is done with the help of taxpayer dollars—unless the publisher of the work agrees first” according to Jennifer Howard of the New York Times.

For more information:
Chronicle of Higher Ed: Who Gets to See Published Research?

New York Times: Research Bought, Then Paid For

The Guardian (UK): Academic publishers have become the enemies of science

Ellen Finnie Duranceau / Program Manager, Scholarly Publishing & Licensing / MIT Libraries / 617.253.8483

Photo: L. Barry Hetherington

Come hear interview excerpts of Herb Pomeroy, founding director of the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble (FJE), talking about the early days of the FJE, hiring Everett Longstreth to direct the MIT Concert Jazz Band, and recollections of notable alumni of these groups. Pomeroy was interviewed by Forrest Larson in 1999-2000 for the Music at MIT Oral History Project. Forrest will also play excerpts from interviews with Everett Longstreth and band alumni.

Friday, March 2, 2012, 1-2 pm
Lewis Music Library 14E-109
For more information: 617-253-5636

Kai von Fintel, Professor of Linguistics and Associate Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences has announced a personal open access policy. He sets requirements for openness for his journal articles, book chapters, and books.

For journals, he “will only publish in, review for, and serve on editorial boards for journals that allow authors to deposit at least the final manuscript version (“postprint”) in an open access repository (such as MIT’s Dspace or the Semantics Archive), without any embargo (such as having to wait for 24 months before making the OA version available).”

His publishing policy for book chapters is the same as for journals, but he “will consider reviewing books or book chapters that are not OA-friendly, because books are a different business from research journals,” though he “wish[es] that there was more movement towards OA books.”

As for books, Professor von Fintel will limit his publishing to books that “have a significant open access component, such as making at least the final manuscript freely available…”

Professor von Fintel has been taking action for more open access to research and scholarship for many years. In 2007, he launched an open access journal in his field, Semantics & Pragmatics, with a colleague, David Beaver. In 2009, he participated in the faculty committee that crafted the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy. He decided to post his personal open access policy publicly now because, as he tells it, “I had noticed that some of my publication and reviewing decisions were made in a rather unprincipled way that I later regretted. Having a clear personal policy will guide me towards making deliberate decisions in these matters.”

The passage of the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy makes it possible for faculty research to be shared openly on the web, von Fintel says, but a personal manifesto is still important because “faculty still have to make principled decisions such as choosing a journal that does not impose an embargo or exerts pressure to opt out of the OA Policy.”

Ellen Duranceau / Program Manager, Scholarly Publishing & Licensing / MIT Libraries / 617 253 8483

Director of Libraries, Ann Wolpert, recently announced the appointment of Dr. Micah Altman to the position of Director of Research, Head/Scientist, Program for Information Science in the MIT Libraries. Altman will be responsible for leading and growing the Libraries’ active research program in applied information science.

He joins MIT after 15 years in a variety of research positions at Harvard University, most recently as the Senior Research Scientist at the Institute of Quantitative Social Science, the Archival Director for the Murray Research Archive, and the Associate Director (through 2009) of the Harvard-MIT Data Center.

“Micah has deep experience in a broad range of research-oriented activities in the areas of information science, research data management, digital preservation, and scholarly communication – all areas that have great importance to the MIT Libraries,” said Wolpert.

Altman earned his undergraduate degrees in Computer Science and Ethics and Political Philosophy from Brown University, and his PhD in Social Sciences from the California Institute of Technology. He was awarded a post-doctoral research fellowship in the Department of Government at Harvard University. In addition to an extensive background in quantitative social science and computer science, Altman has notable expertise in archiving, librarianship, research methods, and scholarly communication through his professional roles at Harvard. He is widely recognized for his writing and presentations on topics that are of considerable relevance to research libraries. Altman’s appointment will begin in March 2012.

Have you noticed something different about the MIT Libraries homepage lately?  We recently changed a few things about the search box, based on usability testing with members of the MIT community.

What’s different?

• Search box tabs have been renamed to reflect the type of material you’re searching for, instead of the name of the search tool.  (For example, “Articles” instead of “Vera MultiSearch.”)
• Two search box tabs have been merged – “Barton Catalog” and “MIT’s WorldCat” are now together on the “Books + Media” tab.
• We added a new search box tab for “E-books.”
• A new button answers, “What am I searching?“

We realize that there are many different search boxes for finding material at the MIT Libraries, and we’re hoping that these changes will make finding things easier.  If you have ideas on the redesign, please send your comments to Tell Us!

Does something look strange about the page?  Or is something not working right?

Some users have reported that the homepage search box has some formatting issues or isn’t working properly.  If the homepage doesn’t look similar to the above image, or it isn’t searching correctly, you may need to clear your browser cache.  Eventually, your browser should clear the old page, but you can also clear your cache manually.

Follow instructions for clearing your cache in:  Firefox | Internet Explorer | Safari | Chrome

If those steps don’t help, please Ask Us!

Come help celebrate the release of Dr. Frederick Harris’ new book, Seeking the Infinite: The Musical Life of Stanisław Skrowaczewski. The author will read excerpts from the book, show films of Skrowaczewski and play selections from his compositions. Books will be available for purchase and signing. Refreshments will be served.

Dr. Harris is music director of the MIT Wind Ensemble and Festival Jazz Ensemble. Listen to a Minnesota Public Radio interview,  see the book’s web site, or read a review.

Monday, February 13, 2012, noon
Lewis Music Library, 14E-109
For more information: 617-253-5636

Wikipedia and other websites are going dark Wednesday January 18th to protest the legislation known as SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA, H.R. 3261) and its Senate counterpart, PIPA, PROTECT IP Act (PIPA, S. 968).

SOPA is said to be drafted in a draconian manner that protects content providers while taking away reasonable “safe harbor” protections for internet site operators, with significant implications for universities and sites like Wikipedia and Facebook. The bill reportedly would shift liability for copyright piracy from the infringer to the host website and makes no provision for Fair Use.

In explaining the reason for the blackout, Sue Gardner, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director, indicated that if passed, the legislation “would seriously damage the free and open Internet…. We believe that new proposed laws like SOPA and PIPA, and other similar laws under discussion inside and outside the United States — don’t advance the interests of the general public.”

For more information, see:
TED talk by Clay Shirky explaining the unintended consequences of SOPA and PIPA
Wikipedia article on the legislation
SOPA Strike
Video on PROTECT IP

Have a smartphone?  Many popular library services are available on the run through MIT Mobile!

Download the Android or iPhone app, or visit the MIT Mobile web site from your smartphone.  Then tap the “Libraries” icon to:

• Search for and request books
• Manage Your Account
• View library locations and hours
• Ask questions & submit comments or ideas
• Discover mobile tools to help with your research
• Read news from the MIT Libraries on our blog

Find out more information.

What else would you like to see on the mobile web site? Give us your ideas!

Special thanks to the MIT Mobile Computing group for their help in developing the MIT Libraries’ mobile services.

On Monday, January 16, 2012, the following libraries will open at noon (12pm):

• Barker
• Dewey
• Hayden (Humanities & Science)
• Music
• Rotch

All other library locations will be closed. Libraries resume IAP hours on Tuesday, January 17.

Have questions? Ask Us!