MIT Libraries News

Boston’s MBTA celebrates its 115^th birthday this Saturday, September 1. Check out the article from the August 28, 1897 issue of Western Electrician describing the design and construction of the new subway and extolling details such as overhead arc lighting, pine wood ticket booths, and brass handrails on the stairs. “The traveler will find his ‘open sesame’ to be a five-cent piece, which he will hand into the ticket office and will receive in exchange a ticket which will entitle him to a ride…”

All issues of Western Electrician owned by the MIT Libraries have been digitized and are freely available online through the Internet Archive.

Come check out the new “Find It” information kiosk on the second floor of Hayden Library.  The kiosk features a secured iPad that gives you quick access to information like:

• how to find books
• where to find scanners, copiers and printers
• nearby food and drink options
• restroom locations
• campus map
• and much more!

The “Find It” kiosk is part of the Libraries’ betas program, which is an ongoing effort to experiment with new technologies and services to help make access to information easier.  The kiosk will remain in Hayden until IAP, when it will be evaluated to see if the program merits expansion to other library locations.

If you have questions about the kiosk or any other library services, feel free to Ask Us!

Image courtesy of Educopia Institute

The MIT Libraries are involved in collaborations that look at the broad range of digital content that universities and other organizations produce, and at ways to make content accessible across generations of technology.

The Libraries’ head of curation and preservation services, Nancy McGovern, was recently involved in an international conference that gathered more than 125 delegates from more than 20 countries at the National Library of Estonia, to explore how to create and sustain collaborations to support the preservation of our collective digital cultural memory.

An outcome of the conference is a guide written for a broad audience that includes librarians, archivists, scholars, curators, technologists, lawyers, researchers, and administrators at many different types of cultural organizations.

Aligning National Approaches to Digital Preservation was edited by Nancy McGovern, and published by the Educopia Institute. It describes successful collaborative strategies and articulates new models that may help organizations work together for their mutual benefit.

Readers can download a free PDF of Aligning National Approaches to Digital Preservation, or purchase the print publication online.

As Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt runs today for his second gold medal of the London Olympic Games, many spectators wonder: how does he go so fast? Mechanical engineering professor Anette Hosoi offers some insight in a Q&A with MIT News and in a series of videos for NBC Learn’s “Science of the Summer Olympics.”  “[T]he amazing thing about Usain Bolt, the thing that sets him apart, is his stride length, which is almost 10 feet,” she says. (By comparison, Hosoi found that her own stride was half that long.) Hosoi, whose field is fluid mechanics, also explains what makes a “fast pool” for competitors, helping the likes of Michael Phelps set world records.

Explore Professor Hosoi’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.

Two physicists were among five MIT professors given Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers last month. The awards, named by President Obama, are the highest honor from the U.S. government to researchers “selected for their pursuit of innovative research … and their commitment to community service,” according to a White House statement. Professor Jarillo-Herrero was cited for his research on graphene and his community outreach. Professor Thaler was cited for research using experiments at the Large Hadron Collider and for developing tools to better use data from the collider.

Explore Professor Jarillo-Herrero’s research and Professor Thaler’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.

Pablo Jarillo-Herrero

Jesse Thaler

Barker Reading Room, photo by L. Barry Hetherington

August 1, 2012 UPDATE–On August 14, Barker Library’s main reading room will close temporarily to allow for restoration work to the Great Dome’s ceiling, as well as renovations to the reading room itself. Most of the disruptive work is expected to be completed during August, allowing the reading room to reopen by, or shortly after, the start of the fall term.

May 14, 2012–After Commencement on June 8, 2012 the Barker Library Reading Room will close for the summer to allow for renovations to the Reading Room and Dome. The Reading Room is expected to reopen in September 2012 for the fall term, although renovations will continue through December with occasional minor disruptions.

As part of the project, a new entrance will be added to the Reading Room to make it accessible as a 24-hour study space. An around-the-clock Reading Room under the iconic Dome will significantly expand students’ options for late night study on campus. Currently the Libraries offer secure 24/7 study areas in both Hayden and Dewey libraries, the addition of the Barker Reading Room will more than triple the amount of space currently available for 24/7 study. The Libraries expect to inaugurate 24-hour service in Barker beginning in January 2013.

While the Reading Room is closed, library users can find alternative spaces for studying in Barker Library on floors six through eight, as well as in other library locations. Stay informed of renovation closures and progress by checking the Barker Library website or following @mitlibraries on Twitter.

The MIT press has just published a new book by Peter Suber which offers a concise introduction to open access. Suber, the key chronicler and de facto leader of the worldwide open access movement, says that the book is intended to be “short enough for busy people to read.”

In 170 pages, Suber covers all the bases: what open access is; why we should be motivated to make scholarly work openly accessible; what kinds of open access policies and approaches have emerged; how open access relates to copyright; what the economics of open access are and what impact it is having on the market for scholarly journals; and how authors can participate.

Suber, a former philosophy professor who is now Director of the Harvard Open Access Project and Faculty Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, captures key points succinctly:

ON THE PROBLEM
“The deeper problem is that we donate time, labor, and public money to create new knowledge and then hand control over the results to businesses that believe, correctly or incorrectly, that their revenue and survival depend on limiting access to that knowledge.”

ON COPYRIGHT
“Authors who retain rights don’t violate rights belonging to publishers; they merely prevent publishers from acquiring those rights in the first place.”

ON ECONOMICS
“OA journals pay their bills the way broadcast television and radio stations do…. Those with an interest in disseminating the content pay the production costs upfront so that access can be free of charge for everyone with the right equipment.”

The book will be available in an open access edition in June 2013. Updates and supplements are available through the home page for the book.

More information:

Electronic and Print versions, along with table of contents and sample chapters

Kindle version

Open access at MIT

Ellen Duranceau / Program Manager, Scholarly Publishing & Licensing / MIT Libraries / x38483

Courtyard in bloom, photo by: Grace Liang

The Lipchitz Courtyard within Building 14 (adjacent to Hayden Library) is a hidden gem—a quiet, leafy retreat where you can find a sunny or shady spot to pull up a chair and read a book, or enjoy artwork from MIT’s Public Art Collection.  The courtyard contains three sculptures by 20th century Cubist artist Jacques Lipchitz.

The flower beds and planters in the courtyard are full of colorful flowers, thanks to the generosity of an MIT alumnus.  Stop by and see what’s in bloom!

Do you rely on the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) Country Intelligence (libraries.mit.edu/get/eiu) for frequent forecasts of economic and political conditions?  Have you used their monthly Country Reports or their annual Country Commerce reports?  Now you can get even more frequent updates using EIU’s new events-driven analysis articles.

EIU provides two new kinds of articles commenting on issues and events arising since their last written Country Report:

1. Featured analysis: ~1000 words providing detailed analysis of an issue
2. Forecast updates: ~300 words providing:
• Brief description of the notable event
• Analysis of the event
• Expected impact on the next forecast

These both can be accessed from the home page for a particular country.

In addition, one can create a Country Report on the fly to include these latest updates.  On the home page for a country, see: Reports > Generate Country Report.  To access reports from previous months or years, see: Reports > All Reports (takes you to the old EIU platform).  Note: EIU will be consolidating all of its reports onto the new platform towards the end of this year.

For more sources of country information, see the Libraries’ guide to Country Data & Analysis.

Biology Professor Chris Kaiser started his job as provost last week, succeeding MIT’s new president, Rafael Reif. Kaiser, a cell biologist who studies protein folding, served most recently as chair of the biology department, which he joined in 1991. “At MIT, innovation is the norm, and as provost I plan not only to build upon our already-strong programs, but also to continue to foster inventive new directions in education and research,” Kaiser told the MIT News.

Explore Professor Kaiser’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.

Fourth Annual Open Archives Tour: Famous and Infamous

The Cambridge Historical Society is hosting its fourth annual Open Archives Tour, July 9-12, 2012. MIT is participating along with eleven other organizations throughout Cambridge.

With the theme Famous and Infamous, each archive will delve into their collections to display unique materials, including photographs, correspondence, ephemera, and more, offering a rare look inside some of Cambridge’s most fascinating archives. There will be twelve archives featured over four days (three per day).

Tours and Dates:

July 9, 5:00-8:00 pm

City Collections, featuring 

• Cambridge Historical Commission
• Cambridge Room of the Public Library
• Cambridge Public Works Department

July 10, 3:00-6:00 pm

Harvard Collections, featuring 

• Harvard University Archives
• Houghton Library at Harvard
• Schlesinger Library at Harvard

July 11, 5:00-8:00 pm

Cultural Collections, featuring 

• Mount Auburn Cemetery
• Cambridge Historical Society
• The Longfellow House – Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site

July 12, 3:00-6:00 pm

MIT Collections, featuring 

• MIT List Visual Arts Center
• MIT Institute Archives & Special Collections
• MIT Museum

For more information and reservations, contact: 617-547-4252 or www.cambridgearchives.org

Researchers led by biologist Hazel Sive are using zebrafish to help learn about the biological mechanisms behind human brain disorders like autism. In a recent paper published in the open access journal Disease Models and Mechanisms, Sive and her colleagues describe looking at a set of genes that are the same across species; deletions and duplications of the genes in humans have been associated with autism. When they silenced the genes in the fish, they found abnormal brain development. “That’s really the goal — to go from an animal that shares molecular pathways, but doesn’t get autistic behaviors, into humans who have the same pathways and do show these behaviors,” Sive told the MIT News.

Explore Professor Sive’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 see the Lewis Music Library’s new MediaMobile roaming around campus soon!

The MediaMobile is a moveable cart that can travel across campus to highlight the MIT Libraries’ many online media materials. It has a large monitor and audio speakers to demo streaming audio and video products, full-text books, music scores, images, bibliographic databases, etc.

The MediaMobile will be available to MIT librarians so that online information in a variety of subjects can be shared with the MIT community.

The MediaMobile was funded by the Class of 1982 Music Library Fund. To see more experimental services at the MIT Libraries, check out the list of current Betas & Widgets.

MIT researchers tackle big data

MIT will host an Intel-sponsored research center to look at ways of handling “big data,” collections of data so immense and complex they cannot be processed by tools that currently exist. The center will be led by Electrical Engineering and Computer Science professor Samuel Madden and adjunct professor Michael Stonebraker. In addition to the Intel center, the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab launched a new industry-sponsored initiative called bigdata@CSAIL. As a part of the center and initiative, faculty and scientists at CSAIL will collaborate with corporate and university researchers beyond MIT to work on projects like analyzing biological data in search of more accurate diagnostic techniques or increasing the security and privacy of financial information.

Explore Professor Madden’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.

photo: MIT TechTV

MIT’s 2012 Commencement will be webcast live by AMPS (Academic Media Production Services) with commentary provided by Institute Archivist Tom Rosko. Rosko will co-host the webcast of the 146th Commencement exercises with Matt McGann, Director of Admissions and member of the Class of 2000.

View the festivities live from anywhere around the world. Commencement exercises begin Friday, June 8, 2012 at 8:00 am EST, followed by the Commencement ceremonies at 10:00 am EST. This year’s guest speaker will be Salman Khan ’98, founder of the Khan Academy.

Tune in and join us in congratulating the graduates!

MIT researchers bid adieu to sticky condiments

It is a problem familiar to most of us: The last ounces of ketchup just won’t shake free from the bottle, so we throw it out, wasting food and money. In May, the architects of a solution won the audience choice award at MIT’s $100K Entrepreneurship Competition. Scientists from the lab of mechanical engineering professor Kripa Varanasi invented a plant-based coating they call LiquiGlide, a slippery material that helps any condiment—from honey to mayonnaise—slide easily out of glass or plastic. “We’ve talked to various folks in the supply chain, from equipment makers to bottle makers to food companies, and they all love it and want it in their bottles,” Varanasi told the Boston Globe. Varanasi’s lab has also created surfaces and coatings that keep frost off planes and allow water to flow more efficiently through pipes.

Explore Professor Varanasi’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.

The University of California San Francisco, the largest public recipient of funding from the National Institutes of Health whose faculty publishes more than 4,500 scientific papers each year, has announced a new open access policy modelled on the language in the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy.

Russ Cucina, Associate Professor at UCSF Medical Center, comments that the policy, which passed in a unanimous vote, “guarantees that scientists around the world will have access to the work done at UCSF for them to build upon.” He points to predecessors Harvard and MIT in laying the groundwork for the UCSF policy, and predicts that it will be “a model that the 9 other UC campuses will follow.”

The UCSF Policy “requires UCSF faculty to make each of their articles freely available immediately through an open-access repository” via a mechanicsm like the one established by the MIT faculty. Through their new policy, the UCSF faculty grant a license to the university, giving UCSF a “nonexclusive license to distribute any peer-reviewed articles that will also be published in scientific or medical journals.”

Cucina indicates that this new policy “may prove to be the University’s definitive response” to an endemic imbalance in the scholarly publishing market in which “the publishing companies [have] tremendous pricing power that they’ve been increasingly willing to wield.” He points to UC’s 2010 imbroglio with Nature Publishing Group, when “they proposed a 400% hike in subscription fees and UC responded by threatening a total boycott.”

The UCSF press release reports that “In the past few years, 141 universities worldwide, including Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have … created very effective blanket policies similar to the one just passed at UCSF.”

Policies modeled on the Harvard and MIT language have been put in place on many U.S. campuses, including Columbia, Duke, Emory, Oberlin, Princeton, and the University of Kansas. MIT research is made available under the MIT faculty policy through the Open Access Articles Collection in DSpace@MIT.

More Information:
UCSF press release

UCSF policy and supporting documents

FAQ about the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy

Ellen Duranceau / Program Manager, Scholarly Publishing & Licensing / MIT Libraries / x38483

The White House has posted a petition calling for public access to federally funded research results. It urges President Obama to “require free access over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research.”

This petition follows MIT’s recent participation in the Obama Administration’s Request for Information (RFI) on public access to the results of federally funded research. In the response, MIT affirmed that public access is “of substantial significance” to MIT, because public access aligns with MIT’s mission to “generate, disseminate, and preserve knowledge,” and because:

“The ability of research universities to continue to contribute to the welfare of the nation and the interests of the states and local communities in which we reside is fundamentally connected to the open availability of the research results produced by MIT and by the country’s large and small research universities.”

This new petition will help the Obama Administration identify the priorities to act on in the next few months. If it yields 25,000 signatures in 30 days, it will be reviewed by White House staff, and considered for action.

To review or sign the petition:
Visit the We The People site

For more information:
Ellen Duranceau / Program Manager, Scholarly Publishing & Licensing / MIT Libraries / x38483

Economist Finkelstein wins John Bates Clark Medal

The American Economic Association has named Amy Finkelstein winner of the 2012 John Bates Clark Medal, a prestigious annual award given to an economist under 40. Professor Finkelstein researches health insurance markets and has, among other work, analyzed the effects of Medicare and Medicaid on healthcare spending. In its announcement the AEA notes that Finkelstein’s research is “centered on some of the most important and policy-relevant issues facing developed economies today,” and calls her “one of the most accomplished applied micro-economists of her generation.”

Explore Professor Finkelstein’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.