More of a Good Thing: Oxford Scholarship Online

The Johns Hopkins community has had access to full-text Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO) e-books in Economics & Finance, Philosophy, Political Science, and Religion for awhile.  We’ve heard how convenient and useful these collections are so we’ve recently expanded our holdings to over 1800 books in these four collections.

OSO comprises many of the core scholarly monographs published by the Oxford University Press.  OSO offers many benefits, including full-text searching and analysis.  Also, having online versions of these important books greatly expands access to the entire Hopkins community - OSO makes the content of each book available simultaneously to many people.

Our OSO full-text subscription is limited to the four areas listed above, but there are tables of contents for many more books across other fields of study.  So, you can use OSO to identify chapters in many other books and use  to locate a printed copy.

Need some quick stats?

The United States Government collects an extraordinary amount of data and publishes statistics on a wide range of topics.  Need to know how many traffic fatalities there are in a given state?  Or perhaps how many women-owned businesses there are in the U.S.?  You could try a Google search to find this information, but you’d be far better served going directly to Fedstats.gov.  Use the Topics A-Z list to browse for your topic or use the cross-agency search feature.

Get social (sciences) at the MSE Library

On Wednesday, September 30, from 4:30 to 5:30, research librarians from the social sciences will be on hand at the MSE Library to offer demos and answer questions about newly acquired resources and databases. Join us, get free coffee, and get an edge on your research.

Want to explore congressional hearings from this week all the way back to 1824? How about finding streaming video of last month’s news coverage? Have you ever wondered how to research foreign news coverage of world events? Come join us for an hour and we’ll show you how with new online resources from the Sheridan Libraries.

Come to the MSEL’s Garrett Room on Q-level at 4:30pm, and see what we’ve gotten for you lately. Coffee provided by the Friends of the Johns Hopkins Libraries. All Hopkins affiliates welcome.

Featured: Black Drama, 1850 to Present

Black Drama contains the full text of 1,200 plays written from the mid-1800s to the present by more than 100 playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries. Many of the works are rare, hard to find, or out of print. Each play is extensively and deeply indexed, allowing both keyword and multi-fielded searching.

The plays are accompanied by reference materials, significant ancillary information, a rich performance database, and images. The plays deal with the social and political ills stemming from colonialism, slavery, and apartheid; the struggle for independence; African history; and neo-colonialism.

New: Statesman’s Yearbook Online

Statesman’s Yearbook Online provides reliable and timely information on every country in the world, covering key historical events, population, city profiles, social statistics, climate, recent elections, current leaders, defence, international relations, economy, energy and natural resources, industry, international trade, religion, culture, and diplomatic representatives, as well as fact sheets and much more.

It also provides extensive further reading lists and web links for research. All the data and information in the database are regularly updated. As an essential reference tool for researchers in international affairs, The Statesman’s Yearbook offers the first point of reference for anyone needing reliable, concise information on any country in the world.

Scopus and ScienceDirect Down Time

Elsevier will be doing some planned maintenance on Scopus and ScienceDirect (their online journals) tomorrow, Saturday, September 19. They should start at 8:00 am and finish by 9:00 pm, EDT.

Scopus and ScienceDirect will be unavailable during that time. Please plan your research around this.

International Women’s Periodicals

Are you intrigued by periodical titles such as Anti-Polygamy Standard, The Anti-Suffragist, Judy: A Magazine, and Woman’s Work in Heathen Lands (my personal favorite)? If so, then take a look at our newest collection, International Women’s Periodicals. The collection includes 45 full-text periodicals from the United States, France, Germany, Iceland, and the United Kingdom, published between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries. 

Researchers can search across the entire collection or browse individual issues, viewing pages as they were originally published as well as seeing a transcription of the text. This is a fascinating resource for scholars in history, history of science, women’s studies, political science, and more. Please note that due to licensing restrictions this collection is only available to members of the JHU community.

Universities in Support of Open Access

A new group, and a new acronym, have joined the open access discussion. COPE, or Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity, is proposing a way to provide reliable support to open access journals. As of today, five universities have signed the compact: Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, and UC Berkeley.

Traditional academic journals are largely supported by their subscriptions; and most of that money comes from universities through their libraries. This means that if you aren’t associated with a college or university, you may not be able to access the research if you can’t afford your own subscriptions.

Open access journals are trying to make academic research freely available to all - without a subscription. But they still have bills to pay. Many open access publishers require authors to pay processing fees. The COPE group asks that universities and funding agencies develop a model for paying these processing fees. This will allow both models: traditional and open access to be supported. Please read their overview for more details.

Teaching with Social Science Data

ICPSR is offering four free Webinar presentations on how to develop, strengthen and assess quantitative literacy in undergraduates. Please consider attending if you’re a faculty member, graduate student, or someone interested in teaching with social science data.

October 8, 2009
Using Data in Teaching (Panel), 11am - 1pm
Delivering Research Opportunities to Undergraduates, 1pm - 2pm
Tools for Bringing Data into the Classroom: SSDAN, OLC, and TeachingWithData.org*, 2pm - 3pm

*SSDAN = Social Science Data Analysis Network; OLC = Online Learning Center,

October 9, 2009
Quantitative Literacy: Assessment and Enhancement (Panel), 12pm - 2pm

For questions about these Webinars and about ICPSR in general, please contact Jen Darragh, Offical ICPSR Representative for Johns Hopkins.

Seeking First-Year Undergraduates

Want to have a say in how the libraries work for you? The Sheridan Libraries are looking for first-year undergraduates to join the Libraries’ Student Advisory Committee.

You’ll meet periodically during the academic year to give input and advise the Dean of Libraries and JHU’s Library Advisory Council on library policies and services. Interested? Please tell us why at asklib@jhu.edu.