John Barth Reading Tuesday at Mason Hall

The Friends of the Johns Hopkins University Libraries present acclaimed novelist John Barth, who will read from his latest book, The Development.

Tue, April 28, 2009
Mason Hall Auditorium ~ Homewood Campus
5 p.m. Book Signing and Reception, 6 p.m. Reading

Barth is the author of such honored works as The Floating Opera (1956); The Sot-Weed Factor (1960); Giles-Goat Boy (1966); Chimera (1972), which won the 1973 National Book Award; and The Book of Ten Nights and a Night (2004). He attended Johns Hopkins as a writing major, earning his bachelor’s degree in 1951 and his master’s in 1952. Barth is Pro­fessor Emeritus in the Writing Seminars.

The event is free, but reservations are suggested. Contact Stacie Spence at libraryfriends@jhu.edu or 410-516-7943.

Honoring Student Book Collectors

Stop by M-Level to see selections from this year’s winning entries from the Betty and Edgar Sweren Student Book Collecting Contest.

Open to all undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in a degree program at the university, the contest is sponsored each year by the Friends of the Johns Hopkins University Libraries and was endowed last year through the generosity of long-time Friends Betty and Edgar Sweren.

Participants must write an essay describing how and why the collection was assembled and submit an annotated bibliography of up to 50 titles. Entrants also submit a wish list of up to 10 titles to reflect future collection goals and areas of interest. Cash prizes are awarded to six students in all, honoring first place, second place, and an honorable mention in separate graduate and undergraduate categories.

First place and $1000 prizes went to sophomore Shrivats Iyer and fourth-year graduate student Sarah Richardson. Iyer, a biomedical engineering major from Dubai, won for his collection More than Saffron and Incense: Modern Indian and English Literature. Richardson, who is studying human genetics at the School of Medicine, was recognized for Voices from Conflict: Oral Histories from 20th Century Wars.

See the Sheridan Libraries news release for additional contest information and the full list of this year’s winners.

Earth Day

Wednesday, April 22 is Earth Day.  Take this day (which should be year-round!) and inform yourself about the environment.  Concerned about our water usage? Apprehensive about pollution?  Consult the books on display to the left of the Reference Office.  Or, search for these and other topics in the Environment Index.  Want more?  Ask a librarian!

World Digital Library Launches Today

The World Digital Library is a partnership between the Library of Congress and UNESCO, with a little help from Google. This new project aims to “promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness, provide resources to educators, expand non-English and non-Western content on the Internet, and to contribute to scholarly research.”

The site will include significant primary materials from around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials. Navigate in seven languages, and browse by place, time, topic, type of item, and contributing institution.

In a word? It’s awesome - check it out!

Image: Dysart & Jones Associates

Check out a Locker in the MSE Library

In response to student requests, the loan time for short term lockers has been increased to one week with one renewal. The overdue fee is $3/day.

Check out locker keys at the circulation desk.

World Atlas of Language Structures Online for Free

If you’re interested in the properties and structural diversity of languages, you’re in luck. A new edition of a print reference has moved online, and is freely available. The World Atlas of Language Structures Online (or WALS Online) offers 141 maps, detailing information about a total of 2,650 languages.
Our print edition resides in MSEL’s General Reference Collection at P143.W67 2005 Quarto. We do have a catalog record for the online edition, also.
I love seeing reference works move online, especially when that means you can interact with the information. The maps in WALS Online let you zoom in and out, click on data points for more information, and alter the map legends. If you want to use or re-use this digital information in some fashion, please read the information they provide on the Creative Commons license and the Google maps guidelines. WALS Online also gives you information about how to cite the information they provide.

New Features in Find It

If you’re a frequent searcher of library databases, I hope you recognize the Find It button as the place to go a) to find out if the article is available online, if not then b) to see if we have the journal in print, or if neither of those options exist c) to click the MSE Borrowers link to initiate an interlibrary loan request. We’ve added a lot of functionality to Find It over the years, including going straight to full-text online when possible and pulling the call number in to the Find It result so you no longer have to link to the catalog.

Our latest improvements to Find It help you extend your research. Now, when you’ve found an article you want in Find It, you can also link to articles that cite the article, more articles by the author(s), and similar articles. This information is pulled from the databases ISI (Web of Science) and Scopus. For an example, check one out here. However, because Find It takes you to the full-text of an article whenever possible, you may need to click on the See More Options link in the banner above the article to see these new features.  We hope you find these new features helpful! Questions? E-mail asklib@jhu.edu or click on the MSE Librarian link in the Find It box.

Create Your Own Database List

Now that you’ve had time to use our new database lists, which allow you to search several databases at once, we have a new feature for you: build your own database list! Use this feature if you’d like to search across a few databases that aren’t pulled together by one of our 70 database lists.

How to do this? In the upper right corner of JHsearch is a box titled My Account. Click on the My Saved Databases link and login with your JHED info. You start with one collection called Databases. Click on Edit and you can add (or delete) databases to the list. You can create other collections using the Add a New Collection on the right. Below is a screenshot of my saved databases (click to enlarge).

The Edit button is key - clicking that gives you all the options. Please play with this, and send any questions or feedback to your librarian or me.

We’re on Twitter (in 140 characters or less)

The Milton S. Eisenhower Library is now on Twitter. Follow us for a stream of news, recommended resources, and research-related tweets.

On Twitter yourself? Send your questions or feedback @mselibrary.

“April is the Cruellest Month”

Thanks to T.S. Eliot, that line pops in my head every single April without fail. And how appropriate then that April is National Poetry Month. Search the Faber Poetry Library for full-text of “The Wasteland” or if you’re feeling in a Dickinsonian mood (as opposed to a Dickensian mood!) search Literature Online (LION) for full-text of poems from a variety of eras and countries. Want to know more about the poets themselves and the vocabulary of poems? Check out our display of reference books to the left of the Reference Office. More questions? Ask a librarian!