Robert Hooke Journals Now Online

I’m often drawn to figures who can be described as polymaths. The word certainly applies to seventeenth century scientist and natural philosopher Robert Hooke, having been cited for his microscopic and telescopic observations, his work in architecture, and for being both the originator of Hooke’s Law and the person who coined the term cell. So, it perked my interest to read that some of his journals are now available online.

A selection of Robert Hooke’s journals have been digitized and made available on the web by The Royal Society and the Center for Editing Lives and Letters (CELL).

In the below video, Professor Lisa Jardine talks about the rediscovery of a folio of minutes by Robert Hooke, at the Royal Society’s Summer Science Exhibition 2006. You can read more at Exploring our Archives, the blog of The Royal Society.

Read more from our library collections about Hooke. Or, read his works.

(Seen on Liberal Education Today.)

Metasearching, or the 4th law of library science

Believe it or not, but there are 5 laws of library science. Who knew? The one that always resonated with me was #4, Save the time of the reader. Students, faculty, and staff are busy people with lots of competing demands for their time. You don’t have time to run your search strategy through one database, assess the results, run it through another and so on. That’s where metasearching comes in. Metasearching allows you to search multiple databases at once, maximizing your opportunity to find citations on your topic and saving you some time. Continue reading Metasearching, or the 4th law of library science…

5 Frequently Asked Library Questions #5

#5. Where are the books?

This is my favorite question because it seems so obvious. Actually, it demands a pretty long answer.

The long and the short of it is that the books are everywhere. The libraries connected to Johns Hopkins University are many. Aren’t you lucky! Here are just a few of the libraries where books are located:

Milton S. Eisenhower Library (MSEL): My favorite of them all (of course, I’m not biased). Eisenhower functions as the main library for JHU’s Homewood campus. As of October 2007, MSEL holds over 2.8 million volumes; subscribes to over 55,000 journals; houses over 216,000 maps; and owns more than 9,700 videos and DVDs.

Libraries Services Center (LSC): The Johns Hopkins Libraries’ off-campus shelving facility. Since there is just not enough space to hold all of the items we purchase for you to use for your research, the LSC houses over a half-million books and over a half-million pieces of audiovisual material. Remember, items shelved there are requestable.

Continue reading 5 Frequently Asked Library Questions #5…

To Pudding-Making or the Pen: The Literary Output of Fanny Trollope

Fanny Milton Trollope (ca. 1780-1863), the mother of the esteemed writer Anthony Trollope, was herself a popular and successful writer in the 19^th century. Her work was so popular on both sides of the Atlantic that the term “Trollopian” was coined to describe works of literature or situations that were reminiscent of her writings; the term today, however, is used when referring to works written by her son, Anthony. Her biting travel book, Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832) was so sensational that literary critic Henry T. Tuckerman commented that it became common for any transgression of proper etiquette to be “hailed with the instant and vociferous challenge, apparently undisputed as authoritative, of ‘Trollope’!”

Though the majority of her work is largely forgotten today, she was a popular and influential writer of her era and wrote several books that continue to merit critical acclaim. Several works written by Fanny Trollope are available in Special Collections, including The Vicar of Wrexhill, The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong Factory Boy, The Life and Adventures of Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw, and The Widow Barnaby.

Continue reading To Pudding-Making or the Pen: The Literary Output of Fanny Trollope…

Introduction to RefWorks

Librarians Ellen Keith and Robin Sinn are offering a 1.5 hour workshop introducing attendees to the RefWorks application. RefWorks lets you import, organize, store, and output bibliographic citations. Many citation styles are available from APA to MLA to that favorite science journal of yours. Ellen and Robin will also demonstrate the Write N Cite plug-in that works with Word. Once you’ve used Write N Cite, you’ll never have to manually do notes again!
Workshops will held at 2 pm on Tuesday Oct. 23 and 10 am on Wednesday Oct. 24 in the MSEL Electronic Resource Center. Please register if you wish to attend.

More Literary Prizes

I love this time of year. It’s the season when literary awards are announced left and right. Following close on the heals of last week’s Nobel announcement, the Man Booker committee announced that their prize for fiction would be awarded to Anne Enright for her novel, “The Gathering.” Check out the New York Times review of the novel.

What a surprise! Most literary pundits (yes, there are literary pundits) were putting bets on the award going to Ian McEwan for his novel “On Chesil Beach” or to Lloyd Jones for “Mister Pip.” Other novels on the short list were “Animal’s People,” “Darkmans,” and “The Reluctant Fundamentalist.”

The Man Booker prize, Britain’s foremost literary award, is given to a novel written by an author from Britain, Ireland, or the Commonwealth. The winner is awarded a check for £50,000 (about $102,000 USD) and a ton of publicity which inevitably translates to an increase in sales.

Strangely enough,”The Gathering” is the only Booker short list contender that MSEL doesn’t yet own. The book was only released in the US last month and we’re still waiting for our copy to arrive. It’s coming in soon, though. So check back here to see when it’s arrived. In the mean time, feel free to pick up one of the two other Enright novels we own at MSEL: “The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch” or “The Wig My Father Wore.”

We’ll be at the Fall Technology Expo, will you?

Interested in an introduction to RefWorks? Curious to know what Library Betas are being released into the wild? Just want to chat with someone from the Sheridan Libraries? Come see us at the second annual Fall Information Technology Expo, being held next Monday, October 15, from 8am until 6pm in The Glass Pavilion/Levering Hall.

In order to attend the fabulous breakout workshops or demonstrations, you’ll need to preregister by the end of today.

Hope to see you there!

And the Winner is…..

The 2007 recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature was announced this morning in Oslo. And the winner once confounded all pundits who try each year to guess the winner. It’s British author Doris Lessing, author of many novels and short stories. Or, as the Swedish Academy put it, “that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny.” It singled out The Golden Notebook for praise, calling it “a pioneering work” that “belongs to the handful of books that informed the 20th century view of the male-female relationship.”

Lessings works are well represented in The Sheridan Libraries collections, including her recent novel, “The Cleft“, available from the McNaughton Plan books on M Level.

Details of all of this year’s winners are at the Nobel Web site.

Easter in October?

Psst. You know that search box in the upper right-hand corner of your browser? Next time you’re in the library catalog pull down the menu for that search box. You’ll get an “easter egg” fresh from the great guys in our Systems Office.

Continue reading Easter in October?…

Having trouble getting to library resources from off-campus?

The proxy service for accessing the libraries’ online resources is not working for some of our patrons at present. We are aware of the problem and working to resolve it. In the meantime, please use JHSecure, the Hopkins Virtual Private Network. Retrieve the JHSecure software at http://it.jhu.edu/remoteaccess.html .

Please check back for updates. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.