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The Lamont News-List lamref(a)fas.harvard.edu
November 22, 2005 http://hcl.harvard.edu/lamont
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Lamont Library Factoid: On a typical day, our Reference Room printers use
up to 3.5 reams of paper--or about 1750 single-sided sheets. You've
wanted a cost effective solution that's also environmentally sound. It's
arrived!
Our Reference Room computers now allow duplex printing of PDF files. If
you're not sure how to select this option, ask at the Desk and we'll show
you what to do!
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IN THIS ISSUE:
-- E-Research Cool Tool
Academic and scholarly books that you can search--and read--online!
-- Lamont Library Hours over the Thanksgiving Break
Just in case you'll be around!
-- Power Searching Tip
no. 2: "Availability" v. "Holdings" screens in the HOLLIS catalog
-- A few good books that are new on our shelves
Perfect to take with you for a long weekend of reading!
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E-RESEARCH COOL TOOL
Academic and scholarly books that you can search--and read--online!
ebrary
http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.eresource:ebraryxx
Chances are good that if you've found a book in HOLLIS with an "internet
link," it's one of the more than 25,000 digitized items that the Harvard
Libraries make available to you through a collection called ebrary
Academic Complete.
Ebrary titles come from some of the most respected publishing houses in
the business: MIT, Cambridge, Oxford, Knopf, and Kluwer (among others).
That means that you can count on getting authoritative content across the
humanities, social sciences, sciences, and their subdisciplines. You can
count on the currency of that content as well. The majority of books in
the ebrary collection have been published within the last 5 years.
In ebrary, you're given simple and advanced searching options and, as in
HOLLIS, you can search by author, title, publisher, special subject terms,
or some combination of these. Keyword searching is an option in ebrary,
too.
If you've only experienced ebrary through a HOLLIS link, you may
not have discovered the features that make it such a good research tool.
Once you sign in to the ebrary database and set up your (free)
password-protected account, here's just a few of the things that you can
do:
** create your own online bookshelf of titles. Store the books you want
to return to later in your virtual research space. You can check them out
for as long as you like or as long as you need and you'll never accrue
fines . . . or get a recall notice!
** bookmark the page or pages in a book that are especially important to
your work.
** highlight important passages in the online books you're reading.
They'll automatically be saved to your bookshelf for future reference.
** annotate the text you're reading using the "Notes" tab. You can keep
track of ideas as they occur to you, and your notes will be saved to your
bookshelf for later review.
** copy and paste text from an ebrary item into a Word document you're
working with. Ebrary will even generate a bibliographic citation
automatically and in a style (like APA or MLA) that you specify.
A nice research bonus is the set of "Info Tools" that ebrary puts at your
disposal. Highlight a word, right click on your mouse, and a dictionary
definition will appear. Ask ebrary to "explain," and a more detailed
encyclopedia entry will put a person, place or concept in its larger
contexts. Foreign words and expressions can even be translated on the
spot.
Ebrary doesn't allow you to download entire books, but you can print
portions of them out: 10 pages at a time or a total of 40 per session (due
to copyright rules).
Download the free ebrary reader to your laptop or PC and try your hand at
exploring. Or just go browsing: ebrary uses subject terms like those in
the HOLLIS catalog to help you find your way!
You'll find an ebrary "Quick Guide" at http://tinyurl.com/bukbt
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LAMONT LIBRARY HOURS DURING THANKSGIVING BREAK:
When we're open, when we're not, and what to know about reserves readings
Wednesday, November 23 library closes at 4:45 p.m.
Thursday, November 24 CLOSED
Friday, November 25 8:00 a.m. - 4:45 p.m.
Saturday, November 26 8:00 a.m. - 4:45 p.m.
Sunday, November 27 library opens at noon
DID YOU KNOW? Unless it's the only copy or the last copy of an item, you
can take reserves readings with you for the holiday weekend. Checkout
begins at 2 p.m. on TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 23. Just be sure to return reserves
materials by 9 a.m. on Monday November 28.
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POWER SEARCHING TIP:
no.2: "Availability" v. "holdings" screens in the HOLLIS catalog
"Location, location, location." At an institution that has close to 100
libraries, the physical and intellectual siting of materials listed in
HOLLIS (by building and call number) is obviously critical. But we've
probably all had the experience of jotting down a call number and heading
straight for the stacks, only to find out that the books aren't where they
should be or the library doesn't have the journal issue that we need.
Taken at face value, location information can indeed be deceiving. That's
why the HOLLIS catalog provides you with links to "availability" and
"holdings" screens. You'll find them listed after an item's call number,
sitting side by side.
But which of these links should a puzzled undergraduate follow? Here's
our rule of thumb:
When you come across a *book* in the HOLLIS catalog, the "availability"
screen is always essential. "Availability" tells you about the status of
the item: if it's in the building and (presumably) on the shelf, missing
from the collection, on reserve, and so forth. You could click on the
holdings information, of course, but you wouldn't learn much more than you
already know: that a copy of the book is owned ("held") in one or more
places in the Yard (or just beyond).
When you're after a *journal* or *magazine* (materials that librarians
call "periodicals"), the reverse is actually true. Since libraries rarely
let patrons check journals out, availability shouldn't be at issue. In
theory at least, if the library is open and its materials can't leave the
building, you should always be able to get your hands on them there. For
periodicals, then, HOLLIS "holdings" screens are key. That's because
holdings verify the particulars of the coverage--the extent to which a
library's subscription is complete.
Let's say you want to look at the very first issues of _Forbes_ magazine,
which dates back to 1918. Unless you checked the holdings information, you
might not realize that Lamont began getting issues of _Forbes_ much
later--our subscription started in 1979, with volume 123. So plunging
headlong into our Periodicals collection on Level 2 would waste good
research time, and ultimately, land you back at the HOLLIS catalog--or at
the Reference Desk.
It's not that the availability screen tells you nothing about a
periodical. But making sense of the information there often takes more
effort and more time. Availability screens list each individual volume on
a separate line, and the list often doesn't follow a chronological order.
Holdings screens answer your questions at a glance by clearly presenting
volume ranges.
Holdings screens will tell you other things, too: if issues are missing,
for example, or whether portions of the journal are in the Harvard
Depository.
And by the way: if you've wondered about the strange term "current
receipts" that sometimes appears in the holdings information, it's
language librarians use to indicate the recent issues of periodicals that
have arrived. "Current receipts" information can be an important
navigational aid. In Lamont, current issues of magazines and journals are
arranged alphabetically on Reference Room shelves; current receipts of
many Widener publications, some arranged alphabetically, some by region,
and some by call numbers, are displayed on shelves in the first floor
Periodicals Reading Room.
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A FEW NEW TITLES ON THE LAMONT SHELVES
Perfect to take with you for some long-weekend reading!
*** CHASING THE DEVIL'S TAIL: A MYSTERY OF STORYVILLE, NEW ORLEANS, by
David Fulmer. Harvest, 2001. [NEW BOOK SHELF PS3606.U56 C49
2003]
Storyville, 1907: In this raucous red-light district, where two thousand
scarlet women ply their trade, where cocaine is sold over the counter and
rye whiskey flows freely, there's a killer loose. Someone is murdering
prostitutes and marking each killing with a black rose. Fulmer's novel,
his first, was a _Booklist_ "Best New Mystery Series" winner and an _L.A.
Times_ Book Prize Finalist.
*** WORMWOOD FOREST: A NATURAL HISTORY OF CHERNOBYL, by Mary Mycio. Joseph
Henry Press, 2005. [NEW BOOK SHELF QH543.5 .M93 2005]
Twenty years after the worst nuclear power plant accident in history,
intrepid journalist Mary Mycio donned a dosimeter and camouflage
protective gear to explore the world's most infamous radioactive
wilderness. And she is shocked to discover that the area surrounding
Chernobyl has become Europe's largest wildlife sanctuary. Like the
forests, fields, and swamps of their unexpectedly inviting habitat, both
the people and the animals are all radioactive. Cesium 137 is packed into
their muscles and strontium-90 is in their bones. But quite
astonishingly, they are thriving.
*** The LAVENDER SCARE: THE COLD WAR PERSECUTION OF GAYS AND LESBIANS IN
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, by David K. Johnson. U of Chicago
Press, 2004. [NEW BOOK SHELF JK723.H6 J64 2004]
The McCarthy era is generally considered the worst period of political
repression in recent American history. But while the famous question "Are
you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party?" resonated
in the halls of Congress, security officials were posing another question
at least as frequently, if more discreetly: "Information has come to the
attention of the Civil Service Commission that you are a homosexual. What
comment do you care to make?" David Johnson, a historian, relates the
frightening and largely untold story of how, during the Cold War,
homosexuals were considered a national security threat.
*** WHY DOES LITERATURE MATTER?, by Frank B. Farrell. Cornell U P, 2004.
[NEW BOOK SHELF PS221 .F37 2004]
Farrell maintains that recent literary theory has badly misread findings
in the philosophy of language and the theory of subjectivity. That
misreading has tended to endorse ways of understanding literature that
make one question its importance overalll. Farrell's book attempts to
provide an answer. Among the writers discussed are John Ashbery, Amit
Chadhuri, James Merrill, W.G. Sebald, Cormac McCarthy, and Marcel Proust.
Philosophers important to his argument include Donald Davidson, Daniel
Dennett, Martin Heidegger, and Bernard Williams. The literary theorists
addressed are Stephen Greenblatt, Marjorie Perloff, and Paul de Man.
*** THE GREAT DECEPTION: THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE EUROPEAN UNION, by
Christopher Booker and Richard North. Continuum, 2003. [NEW BOOK
SHELF JN15 .B6393 2005x ]
This book tells the "inside story" of the most audacious political project
of modern times: the plan to unite Europe under a single supranational
government. The book shows how Britain's politicians, not least Tony
Blair, have consistently been outplayed in a game--the rules of which they
never understood. It ends by asking whether, from the euro to
enlargement, the "project" has overreached itself, and is a gamble doomed
to fail.
*** FALLINGWATER RISING: FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, E.J. KAUFMANN, AND AMERICA'S
MOST EXTRAORDINARY HOUSE, by Franklin Toker. Knopf, 2005.
[New Book Shelf NA737.W7 T65 2005x]
Wright's Fallingwater house made America fall in love with modernist
architecture, according to Franklin Toker. The analysis of Wright's
character and creativity, the often lyrical evocations of his buildings,
and the insightful overview of the modernist intellectual milieu of the
1930s make the book a wonderful exploration of the psychological and
social meaning of architecture.
*** THE ELEMENTS OF MURDER: A HISTORY OF POISON, by James Emsley. Oxford,
2005. [New Book Shelf HV6553 .E47 2005x]
Emsley combines history, chemistry, and true crime in this compelling
account of murderous chemical elements. Mercury, arsenic, antimony, lead,
and thallium-- all have caused death, sometimes by accident, sometimes by
design. Through vividly told stories of innocent blunders, cunning
poisoners, and deaths that remain a mystery, he uncovers the dark side of
the Periodic Table.
*** NEOCONOMY: GEORGE BUSH'S REVOLUTIONARY GAMBLE WITH AMERICA'S FUTURE,
by Daniel Altman. Public Affairs, 2004. [New Book Shelf HC106.83 .A45
2004]
The neoconomy is a place where taxes have disappeared on everything except
your labor. In this compelling book, Daniel Altmann explains how the
White House began dismantling the tax system, passing their tax cuts off
as a cure for stagnation; how Bush locked the nation on his chosen path,
incurring huge risks while casting the nation into debt; and finally, how
the whole gamble might play out. _Neoconomy_ was a _Publisher's Weekly_
Best Book of 2004.
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HAVE A TOPIC you'd like to see us cover in a future issue of the Lamont
News-List? A research question you need answered? A tip you want
to pass along to other Lamont News-List readers? All suggestions welcome!
Send your thoughts and comments to sgilroy(a)fas.harvard.edu.
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You received this email because you subscribed to the Lamont News-List.
If at any time you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, point your
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Copyright 2005 President and Fellows of Harvard University
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The Lamont News-List lamref(a)fas.harvard.edu
November 9, 2005 http://hcl.harvard.edu/lamont
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Did you know? The Lamont Reference Room now has a public scanner
available--and use of it is free! Files can be saved to a USB flashkey.
Or--if you have an "fas.harvard.edu" email address, you can FTP them.
Ask us to show you how!
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IN THIS ISSUE:
-- Power Searching Tip
no. 1: Truncating in HOLLIS and other Harvard E-Resources
-- E-Research Cool Tools
Music resources that make it easy to listen while you learn!
-- The Visiting Committee Prize for Undergraduate Book Collecting
Calling all bibliophiles!
-- And speaking of good books . . .
A law student reflects on time spent browsing in our Farnsworth
Room
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POWER SEARCHING TIP
no. 1: Truncation in HOLLIS and other Harvard E-Resources
At 15,000,000 item records, the immensity of the HOLLIS catalog is
staggering. Yet when students drop by the Lamont Reference Desk with
questions about HOLLIS, they often do so not because they've been
overwhelmed with hundreds of results. In fact, they may find themselves
faced with the opposite problem: their HOLLIS search has retrieved too
few. They know that "more" has to be out there; what they need is advice
on ways of widening the search or extending its reach.
In these situations, we'll usually recommend a technique called
TRUNCATION. Here's why:
TRUNCATION is a way of using a word root or word stem to retrieve variant
forms of a term. In the HOLLIS catalog, the truncation symbol is the
question mark (?).
MAGIC?, for example, will retrieve catalog records containing such words
as "magic," "magical," and "magician." TIME? will retrieve "time,"
"times," "timely," and "timeless" (among others).
You can construct more complicated searches with truncation, too. GLOBAL?
AND DISEASE? will look for words like "global," "globalism," "globally,"
"globalization," or "globalisation." Then it will combine whatever
variant it finds with words like "disease" or "diseases" or "diseased."
GLOBAL? AND DISEASE? AND MEDIC? would add words like "medical" or
"medicine" to the mix.
Think of truncation as shorthand for using "or" between lots of similarly
spelled terms. Truncation not only saves keystrokes, but also increases
the inclusiveness--and thus, the comprehensiveness--of a search. You'll
often be surprised at how much good information truncation turns up (and
how much you might have missed without it).
AND BY THE WAY:
Truncation is a feature that most of Harvard's e-resources
support. The truncation symbol may vary from resource to resource,
although the most common form is the asterisk (*). Ask a librarian if
you're not sure which one to use or can't find the information easily in a
database's HELP files.
Here are examples of acceptable truncation symbols for some of the most
heavily used of our E-Resources:
-- EBSCO databases (e.g., Academic Search Premier, PsycInfo, MLA, ERIC
Religion Index): * [asterisk]
-- LexisNexis: ! [exclamation point]
-- ProQuest Databases (e.g., The New York Times Historical, ABI Inform,
Dissertations and Theses Full-Text): ? [question mark]
-- CSA Illumina databases (e.g., Worldwide Political Science Abstracts,
Sociological Abstracts, EconLit, PAIS): * [asterisk]
-- PubMed: * [asterisk]
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E-RESEARCH COOL TOOLS:
These resources will be music to your ears!
Classical Music Library
http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.eresource:classicm
Smithsonian Global Sound
http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.eresource:smithglo
Harvard students have always had excellent music, audio, and spoken word
collections available to them in and around the Yard: in the Loeb Music
Library, for example, in Morse Music & Media (Lamont, Level 2) and in the
Woodberry Poetry Room (Lamont, Level 5). Last year, Naxos Music Library
finally arrived. Available via the "Find E-Resources" page
(http://e-research.lib.harvard.edu?func=find-db-1), it offers audio access
to 85,000 or so classical, jazz, folk, and world music tracks--everything
produced under the Dacapo, Marco Polo, and Naxos recording labels.
In late October, two more online audio collections went live on the
Harvard Libraries site: Classical Music Library and Smithsonian Global
Sound. If you're enthusiastic about music, you'll want to give these
e-resources a try.
Smithsonian Global Sound, which aims to preserve musical forms and
traditions, is an amazing--and amazingly eclectic--compilation: it
features world music, jazz, blues, native American, and American folk
songs as well as classical music, Broadway show tunes, and more. It
advertises itself as a compendium of non-musical sounds, too, taken from
the natural, manmade, and animal worlds and the realm of human speech.
Within this one resource, you can sample a great many things: 17th century
lullabies, Seneca Indian dances, even the sounds of "snapping" shrimp. You
can listen to Ho Chi Minh denounce French colonialists in Vietnam, and
Angela Davis defend communism; you can hear Sir Edmund Hillary talk about
the dangers of mountain climbing and Margaret Mead discuss anthropology as
a career; you can experience Burton Raffel reading Anglo Saxon verse or
listen in on a performance of a Shakespeare play.
Though more narrowly focused than Smithsonian Global Sound, Classical
Music Library offers great depth. In fact, CML identifies itself as "the
world's largest multi-label database of Classical music recordings for
listening and learning." And these labels are impressive: EMI, Hyperion,
Gaudeamus, Vox, the Royal Philharmonic, Arabesque, and Nuovo Era listed
among them.
You can browse by label, if you're so inclined. But you can also search
for music other ways, too: by composer, by period, by instrument, by
conductor, or by genres (e.g., orchestral, opera & operetta, stage &
screen).
And there's more to this resource than meets the ear, of course. Images
and photographs of composers, biographies, links to a music glossary, and
a concise history of western music enrich the experience of using
Classical Music Library and extend its value as a research tool.
One of the really nice features of Classical Music Library is that it
makes comparative listening quite easy, since recordings are grouped by
track. A search on the composer Tomaso Albinoni, for example, pulls up
six interpretations of his popular /Adagio for organ and strings/ /in g
minor/.
Classical Music Library allows you to set up your own playlists (or to
listen to preselected playlists offered to you on a variety of themes).
Customizable playlists are soon to be available in Smithsonian Global
Sound.
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THE VISITING COMMITTEE PRIZE FOR UNDERGRADUATE BOOK COLLECTING
An annual Library event for bibliophiles of every kind
Do you collect books of a certain type, on a particular topic or theme, or
for a special reason? If so, you should consider entering this year's
Undergraduate Book Collecting Prize Competition. First Prize is $1000;
Second Prize is $750; and Third Prize is $500. Winning collections in
past years have centered on the Berlin subway system, ocean liner books
and memorabilia, antique cookbooks, autographed books, and "labyrinthine"
literature.
Last year's winning collections are displayed in the exhibit cases on
Level 5 in Lamont.
More detailed information about the Visiting Committee Prize, including
rules for applying, can be picked up in the Lamont, Quad or Cabot
Libraries. House Masters, House Librarians, Senior Tutors, and Freshman
Deans have this information as well.
Find out more online:
http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/lamont/book_collecting_prize.html
If you're interested in entering the Competition, you should notify
Heather Cole, Librarian of the Lamont Library, of your intention to apply
We ask that you declare that intention, in writing, by FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2,
2005.
Address your letter to her c/o The Lamont Library or send via email to
this address:hcole@fas.harvard.edu
The deadline for submitting an essay and annotated bibliography
describing your collection is FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2006.
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AND SPEAKING OF BOOKS:
A Law Student Reflects on Time Spent Browsing in our Farnsworth Room
If you haven't explored this lovely room on Level 5, perhaps this article
will inspire you to make the trip.
http://tinyurl.com/cyyx3
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HAVE A TOPIC you'd like to see us cover in a future issue of the Lamont
News-List? A research question you need answered? A tip you want
to pass along to other Lamont News-List readers? All suggestions welcome!
Send your thoughts and comments to sgilroy(a)fas.harvard.edu.
*********************************************************
You received this email because you subscribed to the Lamont News-List.
If at any time you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, point your
browser to http://lists.fas.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/lamontnews-list.
Directions for unsubscribing are at the bottom of the page.
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Copyright 2005 President and Fellows of Harvard University
