Wiley InterScience Downtime

Wiley Interscience, the web site that hosts online Wiley journals and books, will be down for maintenance starting at 7 am Saturday morning, May 24th. This outage could last between 4 and 8 hours. Please schedule your work accordingly. Hopefully, you’ll be at a barbecue rather than researching. Everyone needs a little time off!

GPS Units and Faculty Grants Available

The Government Publications and Maps section (GPML) of MSE Library recently purchased 12 mobile GPS units (2 Trimble Juno GTs & 10 Garmin eTrex legend HC-x) that faculty and students can reserve for research or classwork. GPML and the Center for Educational Resources (CER) are pleased to announce a small grant program to encourage faculty’s integration of GPS units into their courses. Potential applications include:

• Capture spatial context during field assignments (e.g., archaeology digs, river sampling, location of plants, hazardous features, environmental incidents, movement of people, location of informal businesses)
• Assist students with mapping/large-scale measuring exercises (applied math, geography, structural engineering, sociology, business)
• Prevent students from getting lost in the field!

This grant program made available through a generous gift to the Sheridan Libraries. If you are interested in applying for a grant, please contact Mike Reese at mreese@jhu.edu. More information about the grants and information about applying is available after the break.

Continue reading GPS Units and Faculty Grants Available…

Summer Hours Begin at MSEL

Finals end today (congratulations to all for surviving them!) so summer hours begin at the Eisenhower Library. The library will close at midnight tonight and the building will be operating on the following hours until classes begin September 4:

Monday through Thursday, 8 am to midnight
Friday and Saturday, 8 am to 10 pm
Sunday, 1 pm to midnight

Have time to check out a DVD now? See AV hours for the summer.

Changing C Level

Before you disappear for the summer, you should hear about the changes we’re planning for C Level of MSEL. We’ve heard your requests for more seating and more power (electrical power), and have found a way to provide you more of both.

Because we have moved so many of the science and engineering journals to online access, we can take out some of our current periodical shelving (seen in this picture) and put in more tables and chairs. This should all be done by late summer since we have to move the remaining print journals, take down shelving, have electricians run cable and install new power outlets, and then bring in the tables and chairs. But it should look great!

Have a great summer and visit C Level when you return for Fall Semester!

Make a Video and Enter to Win $1,000

The Sparky Awards are looking for your videos on the value of sharing information and ideas. Submissions must be publicly available on the Internet — on a Web site or in a digital repository like JScholarship and available for use under a Creative Commons License. Entries must be received by November 30, 2008.

Winners will be announced in January 2009. The Winner will receive a cash prize of $1,000 along with a Sparky Award statuette. Two Runners Up will each receive $500 plus a personalized award certificate. The Winner of the First Annual Sparky Awards in 2007 was Habib Yazdi, a student at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for “Share,” shown below.

Got you thinking? The Johns Hopkins Scholarly Communications Group is dedicated to fostering open access to quality information in support of learning, scholarship, research and patient care. Explore how these issues affect your own publishing.

New Lav Notes: Volume 4, Number 5

A new finals edition of Lav Notes has been posted.

In this issue: help the libraries by volunteering for a quick interview about how you work, post-HUT 24-hour study space information, and a summer checklist to make sure you’re ready to leave town for the summer and still in the know when you return next fall.

Read it online or in the comfort of the Milton S. Eisenhower Library. Stalling for time? Check out our backrun. You can always find Lav Notes from the sidebar of this blog, too.

Remember, send your suggestions for Lav Notes features to asklib@jhu.edu. If we use your suggestion, you’ll get a gift card.

3 Ways to Keep Current This Summer

As the year wraps up, here are a few ways you can prepare for summer with an eye toward keeping current, courtesy of the Sheridan Libraries Blog Archives…

1. Set up search alerts for your favorite databases. We’ve posted instructions for Scopus as well as for databases hosted on EBSCOhost (such as ERIC, Business Source Premier, PsycINFO, Inspec, and more). Have a favorite that’s not covered? Let us know!

2. Trick out your computer to reach Johns Hopkins resources quickly and easily. At the top of our recommended list are the library toolbar for Firefox or Internet Explorer, browser search plugins for the Johns Hopkins libraries catalog, and other gadgets we’ve had in development. Working from off-campus? You should be able to login to access Johns Hopkins resources by logging in to the proxy service with your JHED ID. Check here if you have trouble.

3. Subscribe to this blog. We’re here all summer, and will be posting the latest in news, tips, and tricks throughout the coming months. Start the year knowing you’re still in-the-know. Subscriptions are available via email or your RSS feed reader. Click here to subscribe in a reader. Curious what a feed reader is? Watch the CommonCraft video in our previous post to learn more.

Open Humanities Press

If you’re following the Open Access movement, you are aware that medicine and the sciences have been really pushing ahead on this. Don’t think for a moment that other disciplines aren’t working in this arena! The Open Humanities Press has pulled together 7 open access journals and hopes to include more journals in the future. All journals use rigorous peer-review and have high profile editorial board members. The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article about this new endeavor.

If you want to find out more about Open Access, Peter Suber provides an overview. Open Humanities Press also describes Open Access. Want to find out what JHU is doing about Open Access? Go to the Scholarly Communications web site and find out!

Film Friday

It’s May. And it’s Reading Period. Who has time for movies, unless they’re for a paper or an exam?

Consider this list of the 100 latest additions to the MSEL collection (after the jump) as something to look forward to once finals are done and you can contemplate “pleasure reading and watching” again!

Good luck with your finals!

Continue reading Film Friday…

MSEL Open 24 Hours

It’s that time of year—the Eisenhower Library will be open 24 hours a day starting today, Friday, May 2 until midnight on Thursday, May 15. Thank your fellow students for asking for 24/7 access to start a little earlier than usual! And, take the opportunity to visit the HUT before it closes for the next two years on Thursday, May 15 at noon.