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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.
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Copyright 2005 President and Fellows of Harvard University