Happy Halloween!

It’s a good weekend to watch some scary flicks. And eat lots of candy. And go to parties. Don’t forget that MSEL has a good selection of traditional Halloween movies. I’ve put a short list below. To look for more, just goto the Advanced Keyword Search in the catalog, put your favorite Halloween character in the General Keyword box and choose Videos, DVDs, films, slides, etc. in the Material Type box. Then sit back and be scared!

Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

An American Werewolf in London

Night of the Living Dead

photo: mariecarnes

JHU Catalog Problems

Good Morning! Our catalog is having some problems. We suggest using WorldCat until we’re back on our feet.

UPDATE: Catalog problems are fixed!  Thanks to Tony in Systems.

Lockers in the Library

Spending long hours at the library and need a break? Don’t leave your textbooks and laptop on a library table or tote them around in your backpack. Use your J-card to check out a locker key at the Circulation Desk and stow your valuables safely away.

At students’ requests, we have placed 48 lockers on the far south end of B-level. A key can be borrowed for 24 hours. Secure your stuff and save your back.

Dr. John Willinsky to Speak on Open Access & Libraries

On October 30th, Dr. John Willinsky of Stanford University will give a talk titled Proprietary Scholarship or Open Access? The New Intellectual Properties of the Library. The talk will begin at 6:30 pm in the Mason Hall auditorium. It will be preceded at 5:30 pm with a reception and book signing. Dr. Willinsky authored The Access Principle and is also a founder of the Public Knowledge Project.

If you are interested in Open Access or changing the way research is published and shared, please attend this talk. The JHU Libraries Scholarly Communication Group is sponsoring this event.

Off Campus Access to Library Resources

As a Hopkins researcher (student, staff, or faculty), you probably need to get to library resources from off-campus. This is easy, once you know how!

Your simplest and best choice is the Proxy. The Proxy is easy to use, because it doesn’t require any downloads, updates, or installations. All you have to do is start at a library web page and click on the resource of your choice. You’ll be asked for your JHED login and password and then sent straight to the resource. This login should last a few hours, and you’ll be able to move back to library pages and to other databases or online journals that the library subscribes to. We consider this the preferred method for accessing library resources.

Another option is the VPN software, available through the portal’s myJHED tab. This is software you need to download and install on your computer. To run the program, click on the JHSecure icon and login with your JHED information. The one benefit to VPN is that you can bookmark journals and databases and return to them without navigating through the library pages. The downside is that if you have the VPN running and do start from a library page, you end up invoking the proxy and logging in again. And sometimes the two systems send your computer into a tailspin.

For reminders, just see Connecting from Off-Campus or Proxy FAQs.

Featured: Sociological Abstracts

Searching on a topic in Sociology? Have an interest in marriage and the family, immigration, globalization, developing countries, labor, and more? Go no further than Sociological Abstracts. Other databases have tried to compete with it, but for me, this is the “go to” database for Sociology coverage. Why?

• It covers 1800+ journals and also includes citations to books, chapters in books, and dissertations.
• Coverage is from 1952 to the present.
• It includes foreign language journals (and you can search on language), which is helpful for those graduate students taking their language exams.
• It lends itself very nicely to cross-searching other social sciences databases, saving time.
• Researchers can set up search alerts to be notified when new articles matching their search terms have been added to the database.
• A bonus for RefWorks users—Sociological Abstracts and RefWorks are owned by the same company, so there’s a prominent direct link to exporting citations to RefWorks.

So, no matter what your interest, this is THE database for all those sociologists out there.

More than Half a Million Free Articles in arXiv!

On October 3 Cornell University Libraries announced that arXiv, the free online repository for articles in physics, math, and stats, has passed the 500,000 article mark. A good number of these articles are from Hopkins researchers. Search for your favorite prof or grad student!

arXiv was developed in 1991 and is the oldest online article repository in existence. arXiv administrators anticipate reaching one million articles sometime in 2015, if submission rates continue to increase at their current rate.

The Open Access movement is gaining momentum. arXiv can be considered the grandfather of the movement. PubMedCentral, run by the National Institutes of Health is another freely available group of journal articles you may be familiar with. JScholarship is the new repository that JHU researchers can use to make their work freely available. The Scholarly Communication Group has a website with lots of information about making research freely available.

Congratulations, arXiv!

Online Resources Unavailable–Now Available!

Currently, online reserves, databases, and e-journals are unavailable. Systems staff is working to restore access. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

UPDATE: Access to databases and e-journals has been restored. Online reserves are still unavailable.

FINAL UPDATE: Online reserves are now available too.

Recommended Resources for Financial and Economic News

Stocks, bonds, derivatives, subprime mortgages — it’s enough to make your head spin. How do you keep up with the news and understand what is happening?

• For daily news, check out key newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Search The New York Times by author to find business and financial editor Gretchen Morgenson’s columns.
• For daily coverage of the financial crisis in different parts of the United States and around the world, try Press Display, where you can find full-image access to the current editions of newspapers.
• To read the The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, the bill that failed to pass the House on September 29, 2008, go to THOMAS, where you can also track legislation and congressional activity.
• National Public Radio covers the economic news in Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Market Place. The hourlong program “The Giant Pool of Money” aired on This American Life, May 9, 2008, and provides excellent and understandable background material on how the financial crisis occurred. Alex Blumberg and NPR’s Adam Davidson, who were responsible for the program, will have a follow up report this weekend, October 4, 2008. Alex and Adam have a free daily Planet Money podcast and blog.