Some sound, (hopefully) no fury

For the next few weeks, crews will be digging and drilling outside at the south end of the Milton S. Eisenhower Library. This excavation work is being done to prepare for next year’s groundbreaking and construction of the new Brody Learning Commons building. We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

The New Scientific Journal Article?

Have you been wondering when journals would take full advantage of the opportunities presented by the WWW? Are you longing for more information than a pdf with a few supplemental files can present?

If so, you should jump over to see what Cell Press and Elsevier are working on. Their Article of the Future site presents two articles in a new format. It is very cool! Some things I like:

• easy movement between images and text
• audio and video
• navigate directly to the section you want

Please take a look and send them your feedback. What features will help you present your research in the best light?

Three e-books for #musicmonday

If you use Twitter, you may have noticed the regular Monday appearance of the hashtag #musicmonday, used to suggest music to people at the beginning of the workweek. To feed our @mselibrary account with our spin on the trend, I’ve collected a few links below to music-related e-books available through Safari Books Online.

Taking your iPod touch to the Max: Get started with your iPod touch, and get more out of it with undocumented tips, tricks, and suggestions for tinkerers.

Creating Music and Sound for Games: An insider’s look into how sound designers fit into game production, including tools, techniques, and getting into the field.

Music Theory for Computer Musicians: Learn the fundamentals of musical syntax and composition to take your music to the next level.

Fun with Journal Titles

Being a science librarian, you might say I swim in journals. I help students search for journal articles on a topic, and I get requests from faculty to subscribe to new journals. A lot of my work deals with journals.

I also like words: crossword puzzles, jumbles, and bad puns. For your summer Friday fun, here are some amusing things about the names of some fine journal publications.

OMG, They’re All the Same
Science and Scientific American are similar. But some publishers have success with one journal and then name all of their other journals the same thing. Marketers will call this branding. I call it confusing. Take the newest example, the Public Library of Science. In addition to their flagship title, PLoS, there are 6 other titles that begin with ‘PLos.’ Nature Publishing Group offers 35 titles that begin with the word “nature.” The American Physical Society publishes Physical Review A, B, C, and D, and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers publishes Parts A-P of their Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Comptes Rendus, a very old and venerable journal, has had so many series that the University Libraries at the University of Washington created a diagram to keep track!

What’s the Latest Trendy Prefix?
New areas of research are often labeled by cobbling together a variety of prefixes. “Nano” and “neuro” are very hot right now. Do these titles look too prefix-y to you?
Psychoneuroendocrinology
Journal of Bionanoscience
European Neuropsychopharmacology

I’m looking for the first journal to use a word beginning with “nanoneuro-” or “neuronano-.” What’s your favorite oddball journal title?

New Content Added to LexisNexis Congressional

There is now new full-text content in LexisNexis Congressional!

First, the LexisNexis Congressional Hearings Digital Collection adds hearings dating back to 1824. There are famous hearings such as those concerning the sinking of the Titanic, the Watergate Break-in, and the Challenger Accident. In addition, over 119,000 others, covering other important (if less famous) topics in United States history, are available. Each hearing has an abstract, subject terms and bibliographic information, and a searchable PDF. The hearings can be searched by date, keyword, witness name, witness affiliation, and public law number. New hearings are added on a monthly basis. Learn more about the hearings.

Second, the Congressional Record adds the official record of the proceedings, debates, and activities of Congress. In addition to a substantially verbatim account of the proceedings and debate, it also contains extensive inserted materials, communications for the president and executive agencies, memorials, and petitions. When complete, the Digital Record will include the Congressional Record from the 43rd Congress (1873-1875) through the first session of the 105th Congress (1997) and its predecessor publications, the Annals of Congress (1789-1824), the Register of Debates of Congress (1824-1837), and the Congressional Globe (1824-1837). Additional content will be added as the Government Printing Office (GPO) releases additional volumes. As of July 2009, the Record from the 85th to the 105th Congress is complete. The Digital Record includes indexing, bibliographic information, and searchable PDFs for each day of publication. Learn more about the Congressional Record.

Happy 4th of July!

We’re celebrating our nation’s independence with a holiday for library staff on Friday, July 3. The library will be open but will be following a holiday staffing schedule, with limited services that include checking out books and DVDs.

The library will be closed on Saturday, July 4, and reopen Sunday, July 5 at 1 pm.

More Public Access to Federally Funded Research

Senators Cornyn and Lieberman have reintroduced the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) to Congress. This Act follows in the footsteps of the NIH’s Public Access Policy by requiring journal articles supported by government research funds to become publicly accessible within 6 months of publication. (And JHU receives a lot of funding from these agencies!)

S. 1373 refers only to unclassified research. Any agency that budgets more than $100 million for research would be included. Departments that meet these criteria include:

• Agriculture
• Commerce
• Defense
• Education
• Energy
• Health & Human Services
• Homeland Security
• Transportation

FRPAA would also make research funded by NASA, the EPA, and the NSF publicly available.

For more information, see the websites of the Alliance for Taxpayer Access and SPARC (The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition).