Librarians oppose Research Works Act

A bill introduced December 16 in the House of Representatives has exacerbated tensions between open access advocates and the scholarly publishing industry over the dissemination of publicly funded scientific and medical research.

The Research Works Act (H.R.3699), co-sponsored by Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), has only just been referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, a zone from which few bills emerge unmodified (if they emerge at all), but the measure’s import has had, nevertheless, the effect of a 3 a.m. tocsin on librarians and other open access champions who wish to raze paywalls that enclose taxpayer-funded, peer-reviewed research.

The American Library Association said today that it “vehemently opposes the bill.”

Essentially, the bill seeks to prohibit federal agencies from conditioning their grants to require that articles reporting on publicly funded research be made accessible to the public online. The proposed bill, if it were to pass, would roll back the National Institute of Health’s Public Access Policy, which was introduced in 2008 and which makes NIH-funded research publicly available within 12 months via PubMed Central (many scholars object even to this 12-month delay before posting on this free online repository).

Free Access to Theses and Dissertations

A new web property called OpenThesis (www.openthesis.org) has been launched. It exposes theses and dissertations, making them highly accessible, useful, and shareable-at absolutely no cost. OpenThesis.org will allow authors to upload their theses/dissertations, and the documents will then be vaulted for posterity and made searchable anywhere in the world. If an author (or an author's family) has only a paper copy of a thesis/dissertation, the site will give guidance on how to get it scanned into computer-readable form for subsequent uploading.

Death Comes to Pemberley

For those of you who have read Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and wonder what happened to Elizabeth and Darcy, P.D. James has written a murder mystery about just that subject--Death Comes to Pemberley: A Novel. James is a famous British writer of mysteries. The book is now available in the library.

New Subscription: Lapham's Quarterly

The library now subscribes to Lapham's Quarterly published four times annually. The current issue focuses on Family. In the introductory essay, Lewis Lapham tell us that "families grow as do the flowers and the weeds, of their own accord and as they will. Sometimes they lay waste to empires; sometimes they achieve the dignity of a dress label, but always they furnish a society with its living tissue and its intimations of immortaily, impart to the individual a sense of self if not a criminal record or a noble name."

Each issue of Lapham’s Quarterly adopts and explores a single theme. A typical issue features an introductory Preamble from Editor Lewis H. Lapham; approximately 100 “Voices in Time” — that is, appropriately themed selections drawn from the annals and archives of the past — and newly commissioned commentary and criticism from today’s preeminent scholars and writers. Myriad photographs, paintings, charts, graphs, and maps round out each issue.The current issue, Winter 2012, is dynamite! Last year's issues, which will be available, focused on Lines of work (Spring), Food (Summer), The Future (Fall), and Celebrity (Winter).

JSTOR Tests Free, Read-Only Access to Some Articles

Now you may have some access to JSTOR articles!
"It’s about to get a little easier—emphasis on “a little”—for users without subscriptions to tap JSTOR’s enormous digital archive of journal articles. In the coming weeks, JSTOR will make available the beta version of a new program, Register & Read, which will give researchers read-only access to some journal articles, no payment required. All users have to do is to sign up for a free “MyJSTOR” account, which will create a virtual shelf on which to store the desired articles.

But there are limits. Users won’t be able to download the articles; they will be able to access only three at a time, and there will be a minimum viewing time frame of 14 days per article, which means that a user can’t consume lots of content in a short period. For more information, contact the librarian.

Source: Chronicle of Higher Education January 16

LIBRARY HOURS 2012

LIBRARY HOURS FOR SPRING SEMESTER:

Monday-Friday 7am-9pm
Saturday 9am-2:30pm
Sunday 11am-4pm

The library will have extended hours on the week before final exams. That will be posted.

Internet Resources: Childhood Obesity

A Google search on the topic of "childhood obesity" turns up millions of hits--one of the problesm with Google searches. Here are some websites that provide relevant information on recognizing and addressing childhood obesity.

American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP); Prevention and Treatment of Childhood Overweight and Obesity:
www.aap.org/obesity

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): Adolescent and School Health: Childhood Obesity Facts
www.cdc.gov/HealthyYouth/obesity/facts.htm

Let's Move: America's Move to Raise a Healthier Generation of Kids
www.letsmove.gov

Mayo Clinic: Childhood Obesity
www.mayoclinic.com/health/childhood-obesity/DS00698

MedlinePlus: Obesity in Children
www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/obesityinchildren.html

National Initiative for Children's Healthcare Quality (NICHQ): Childhood Obesity
www.nichq.org/childhood_obesity/

Free Music Download

Every two weeks, Alexander Street and Smithsonian Folkways Recordings offer a free music download from the popular online collection Smithsonian Global Sound® for Libraries. This download is freely available. This week it is "Sao Chegados Os Trez Reis (The Three Kings Have Arrived)" by Various Artists from the album "Christmas Songs of Portugal"(FW0684)

When this album was recorded in the 1950s, Estrella Church in Lisbon celebrated Christmas with a choir, a bagpiper and an elephant. Hear some of the sacred favorites of the season, generally sung unaccompanied. (On this recording, elephant not included.)

Download the MP3.

Source: Alexander Street Press;
Illustration: Christmas Songs of Portugal FW06845

Murakami Fans: What is he Doing Next?

Haruki Murakami's latest novel, Haruki,1Q84, has been on many Best Books of 2011 lists. What is he doing next? I am a fan and am thrilled to hear that he is writing a new book, Absolutely on Music: The Conversation with Seiji Ozawa. According to the Library Journal, it will be out in Japan next October and later in the United States.

1Q84 is in the Goodwin Library. We also have other works by Murakami:
The Elephant Vanishes (1993)
Dance Dance Dance (1994)
Norwegian Wood (2000)
Kafka on the Shore (2005)
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: Twenty Four Stories (2005)
After Dark (2007)

Best Dataases of 2011

Best Overall: Credo Reference
Best Original Content Runner-Up CQ Researcher/CQ Global Researcher
Most Ambitious in Scope and Content: Gale's Virtual Reference Library

THE HOFFMAN LIBRARY HAS THESE!

EXTENDED LIBRARY HOURS

EXTENDED LIBRARY HOURS BEFORE FINALS!
DEC. 5-9 (7 am TO 11 pm)
DEC. 10 (9 am TO 5 pm)
DEC. 11 10 am TO 6 pm)

Tip of the Day

True perfectionists get a bad rap for being time-wasting sticklers who demoralize those around them. But it isn't all bad. In fact, being a stickler has some valuable attributes. The key is to separate healthy perfectionist behaviors, such as striving for high but achievable standards or devoting time to things you care about, from the damaging ones, such as feeling that every mistake is catastrophic. Focus on the positives of being a perfectionist while keeping an eye out for the harmful tendencies.
Source: Harvard Business Review

Best Web Site of the Month for Kids

What really happened at the First Thanksgiving in 1691? Be a history detective and discover for yourself, as you learn more about the lives of the English colonists and the Wampanoag people: Plimoth Plantation

National Book Award for Nonfiction: "The Swerve"

Stephen Greenblatt won for The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, a “rumination on the pleasure of knowledge and on the agony of its loss,” the judges’ citation said. It was published by W.W. Norton & Company.

“My book is about the power of books to cross boundaries, to speak to you impossibly across space and time and distance, to have someone long dead seem to be in the room with you,” Mr. Greenblatt said in his acceptance speech. “My book is about what the magic of the written word is.” Last year's winner was Patti Smith for Just Kids.

National Book Award for Fiction: "Salvage the Bones"

Jesmyn Ward won the National Book Award for fiction last night for Salvage the Bones, a haunting tale of the struggles of a 15-year-old pregnant girl as a hurricane bears down on her fictional Gulf Coast town of Bois Sauvage, Miss. Accepting the award, Ms. Ward said she had begun writing stories to honor her younger brother after his death.

“I understood that I wanted to write about the experiences of the poor, and the black and the rural people of the South,” Ms. Ward said, “so that the culture that marginalized us for so long would see that our stories were as universal, our lives as fraught and lovely and important, as theirs.”

“Salvage the Bones” was published by Bloomsbury USA, a division of Bloomsbury Publishing. Ms. Ward, a former writer in residence at the University of Mississippi, has also written the novel Where the Line Bleeds. Last year's winner was Jaimy Gordon for Lord of Misrule . To be eligible,a book must have been written by a United States citizen. Winners receive $10,000 and a bronze statue. Each of the other awards will receive a separate posting on this blog.

Veteran's Day

In November 1919, President Wilson proclaimed November 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day with the following words: "To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations…"

The original concept for the celebration was for a day observed with parades and public meetings and a brief suspension of business beginning at 11:00 a.m.

Goodwin Library makes the American Archives List

October was American Archives Month—an opportunity to raise awareness about the value of archives and archivists. There is strength in numbers, and our collective voice can be more powerful than individual voices when we set aside time each year to celebrate our collections. Goodwin Library is on the list, "See How Your Colleagues Celebrated American Archives Month."

Library Science Exhibit at Artspace

Artspace in New Haven will have an exhibition, "Library Science", opening Saturday in New Haven beginning at 5 p.m. Conceived of by New York based curator Rachel Gugelberger, the exhibition will feature 22 contemporary artists, both emerging and established, who are inspired by libraries in their drawing, photography, sculpture, installation, painting or web-based projects. The exhibtion runs through January 28.

The exhibition title references Eleanor Antin's artwork "Library Science" (1971), which appropriated libraries' classification methods to represent the identities of living women. The title also refers to Library and Information Science, a field that studies library resource usage, human interaction with library systems, and information organization. The show will investigate how our physical, intellectual and personal relationships with the library and its materials are changing as libraries adapt to the digital world. If the book dies, might the library survive? How can libraries evolve to keep pace with the 21st century?

How cool is this? Artspace is located at 50 Orange St. in New Haven

New Titles in Credo Reference

Credo's General Reference collection now has over 560 titles. The following well-regarded titles were recently added:
•The 2011 Annual Register: World Events 2010, ProQuest
•Animals: A Visual Encyclopedia, Dorling Kindersley Publishing Inc.
•Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, Cambridge University Press
•Cambridge Introductions to Philosophy: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Language, Cambridge University Press
•Collins English-Greek Dictionary, Collins
•Collins Greek-English Dictionary, Collins
•Cultural Geography: A Critical Dictionary of Key Concepts, I.B. Tauris
•Dictionary of Trade Policy Terms, Cambridge University Press
•Eastern Europe: An Introduction to the People, Lands, and Culture, ABC-CLIO
•Encyclopedia of New Jersey, Rutgers University Press
•Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History, ABC-CLIO
•Environmental Debate: A Documentary History, Grey House Publishing
•Exemplary Economists: Europe, Asia and Australasia, Edward Elgar
•Exemplary Economists: North America, Edward Elgar
•Globalization: Encyclopedia of Trade, Labor, and Politics, ABC-CLIO
•Handbook of Political Sociology: States, Civil Societies, and Globalization, Cambridge University Press
•History of Feminist Literary Criticism, Cambridge University Press
•History of South African Literature, Cambridge University Press
•Key Concepts in Anti-Discriminatory Social Work, Sage UK
•Key Concepts in Education, Sage UK
•Key Concepts in Governance, Sage UK
•Key Concepts in Nursing, Sage UK
•Key Concepts in Public Health, Sage UK
•Key Concepts in Social Research, Sage UK
•National Gallery Companion Guide, The National Gallery
•Pocket Guides: Myths & Legends, The National Gallery
•Pocket Guides: Narrative, The National Gallery
•Poverty and the Government in America: A Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO
•Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO