Google Scholar and Your (Now) Virtual Library

Posted on by Robin Sinn
Digital Library and Media Cropped

Andrea Copland, Outreach & Instruction Librarian, Friedheim Library and Robin Sinn, Coordinator, Office of Scholarly Communication, coauthored this post.   Google Scholar covers a large proportion of scholarly literature including: academic journals, books, institutional repositories, preprints, case law, patents, and dissertations. It indexes most of the academic journal publishers, so It’s a popular place to search for articles that support your research, learning, and teaching.   Because Google […]

Update on Open Science and COVID-19

Posted on by Robin Sinn
DNA String

While many of us are following good social distancing practices by staying home, medical researchers and practitioners continue their work out in the world. Back in January I described how Open Science supports public health research and response in these kinds of fast-moving situations. It’s time for a quick update. Before March 13th, less than […]

You Read a Lot of Open Books!

Posted on by Robin Sinn
Woman Reading Book

I’ve written here a lot about Open Access, primarily to journal articles. In fact, Hopkins has an Open Access Policy which asks our faculty to make their peer-reviewed journal articles openly available for all to read. Now it’s time to turn our attention to Open Books. These books are produced by reputable publishers, go through […]

Fair Use Can Be Fun!

Posted on by Robin Sinn

February 24 – 28 is Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week. But why should you care? You should care because Fair Use is a US law that you utilize frequently, even daily. Fair Use makes a number of things possible, including: parody and satire quoting and citing remixes scanning and photocopying Fair Use lets you use copyrighted […]

A New Coronavirus and Open Science

Posted on by Robin Sinn

News about a new coronavirus moves quickly around the world and so does the science. Have you thought about how or why that science can travel so expeditiously around the globe? Many scientists – especially those who work in public health and environmental sciences – are keen to share their research efforts quickly and openly […]

Jan 1: Public Domain Day 2020

Posted on by Robin Sinn
Flyer advertising free books

Last December we celebrated the first Public Domain Day in 20 years. Now they’re an annual event, like a birthday. On 1/1/2020, books, poems, music, and films published in 1924 in the US will enter the Public Domain. Why does that matter to you or anyone else? For one thing, it means that digital versions […]

Hopkins and Open Access

Posted on by Robin Sinn

Hi again. The year has turned and it’s time to talk about Open Access again. Last year, Johns Hopkins faculty and administrators implemented the Johns Hopkins Open Access Policy, which asks faculty to make peer-reviewed journal articles for which they are the sole or corresponding author, openly available. Many faculty did so before we had a policy and continue to […]

Professional Development Day for JHU Grad Students & Postdocs

Posted on by Robin Sinn

The JHU Graduate and Postdoctoral Professional Development Consortium is offering their second annual Professional Development Day! This is a FREE, full-day series of events featuring: 8 one-hour sessions covering a wide range of professional development skills (including 1 from the library about uniquely identifying yourself as an academic author). 9 twenty-minute mini-workshops on many topics […]

Happy Public Domain Day!

Posted on by Robin Sinn

  Why are we so happy? Because for the first time in 20 years new books, poems, music, and films will enter the Public Domain. Because of that, January 1, 2019, is Public Domain Day!! Copyright is a limited-term set of rights given to creators, to let them control (or not) how they share their […]

Have Books, Will Travel

Posted on by Robin Sinn

As you all finish up exams and papers, and head home (or elsewhere) for the holidays, here are a few tips to keep your celebrations worry-free, at least as far as the library is concerned: Renew all your books now. That way, you won’t have to worry about anything coming due. Keep all your checked […]