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NEWS FROM THE FIELD
C&RL News, February 2007
Vol. 68, No. 2
by Stephanie Orphan
Instruction Section announces “A Bibliography of Research Methods Texts”
The ACRL Instruction Section’s Research and Scholarship Committee is pleased to announce its latest publication, “A Bibliography of Research Methods Texts.” The bibliography is available at www.ala.org/ala/acrlbucket/is/publicationsacrl/researchmethods.htm. The bibliography includes nearly 50 reviews written by committee members. Each entry also includes citations to other published reviews. The bibliography was designed to complement the “Research Agenda for Library Instruction and Information Literacy” by providing librarians with an annotated list of texts that will help guide them throughout the research process. It includes several entries for introductory research textbooks for the beginner, as well as books on specific research methods, such as quantitative analysis and focus groups.
The project involved a great deal of work on the part of the 2005–2006 Research and Scholarship Committee: Alison Armstrong (Intern), Polly Boruff-Jones, Christen Cardina, Nancy Dewald, Wendy Holliday, Christopher Hollister, Merinda McLure, Anna Pilston (Chair), Mark Spasser, Terry Taylor, and Robert Withers.
NEH and IMLS seek “Advancing Knowledge” applications
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) are accepting applications to a new digital humanities grant competition sponsored by the two federal agencies. The new grant program, “Advancing Knowledge: The IMLS/NEH Digital Partnership,” seeks applications for innovative, collaborative humanities projects using the latest digital technologies for the benefit of the American public, humanities scholarship, and the nation’s cultural community. Successful projects funded through the partnership will explore new ways to share, examine, and interpret humanities collections in a digital environment and develop new uses and audiences for existing digital resources. Grants awarded through Advancing Knowledge will bring together museum, library, archives, and IT professionals with humanities scholars to use innovative approaches in digital technology to provide new perspectives on humanities collections, offer new interpretive contexts, and allow existing resources to be widely shared. Nonprofit institutions interested in applying can find guidelines online at www.neh.gov. The deadline for applications to the Advancing Knowledge grant program is March 27, 2007, and applications must be submitted through Grants.gov. The first awards will be announced in early summer.
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Register for the ACRL/Harvard Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians
Registration is now open for the ACRL/Harvard Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians. The institute will be held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 5–10, 2007. Registration materials are online at www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlevents/leadershipinstitute.htm, and registrations will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.
ACRL is collaborating with the Harvard Institutes for Higher Education to present the Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians. The goal of this innovative program is to increase your capacity to lead and to manage. Throughout the institute, you will be challenged to define management problems and identify and offer solutions. The institute is designed for individuals with significant administrative responsibility in an institution of higher education, and who show high promise for making a significant contribution in the future, such as library directors, university librarians, and their associates and direct reports.
Two scholarships are available for the 2007 ACRL/Harvard Leadership Institute. The purpose of these scholarships is to support the participation of academic and research librarians working at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges or Universities, or those employed at Hispanic Serving Institutions. The scholarship covers the cost of tuition to the institute (value $1,975). Complete details are online at www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlevents/leadershipinstitute.htm.
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SUNY Librarians Association working towards equity
The State University of New York Librarians Association (SUNYLA), a nonprofit organization of SUNY librarians, has begun a drive to achieve greater equity with classroom faculty. SUNY librarians were granted faculty status in 1968, but the overwhelming majority still work calendar year contracts at below-peer wages. The group authored a report, “Equity: A Call to Action” and unanimously passed “A Resolution in Support of Equity” at its annual conference in June 2006. The resolution “declares equality to be [our] goal, including equal contract year obligations, equal compensation, and the option of equal professorial titles . . . .” More information about SUNYLA’s work in this arena is available on its equity blog at sunyequity.blogspot.com.
NetLibrary adding eAudiobooks from Random House and Blackstone
NetLibrary is now offering eAudiobook titles form Random House Audio Group and Blackstone Audio. Through its agreement with Random House, NetLibrary will distribute Books on Tape, Listening Library, and Living Language titles. Books on Tape includes adult unabridged fiction and nonfiction, Listening Library contains children’s audio books, and Living Language offers self-study foreign language programs. eAudiobooks from Blackstone include more than 1,600 classic, best-selling, and award- winning tiles. Library users will be able to search for, preview, download, and listen to audio titles through the NetLibrary platform on the Internet. NetLibrary, a division of OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc., will waive access fees on the purchase of titles from both collections made before March 31, 2007.
Library of Congress selects films for 2006 National Film Registry
The Library of Congress has selected 25 films, dating from 1913 to 1996, to add to the National Film Registry, bringing the total number of films on the registry to 450. The films on the registry represent a range of American filmmaking, including Hollywood features, documentaries, avant-garde and amateur productions, films of ethnic and regional interest, and animated and short film subjects. Librarian of Congress James H. Billington chose the 2006 selections after evaluating nearly 1,000 titles nominated by the public and conducting intensive discussions with the library’s motion picture division staff. Among the 25 recent additions are Applause (1929), Blazing Saddles (1974), Groundhog Day (1993), Rocky (1976), and a Time of War (1954). The complete list and additional information about the program are available at www.loc.gov/film.
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Ode to an Associate Professor in the Library on the Occasion of Her Promotion
(with apologies to John Keats)
I
Thou still unburnt-out paragon of librarians,
Thou teacher of descriptors and thesauri,
Digital Huntress! Diana among Marions!
Who makest instructors wonder, quake and worry:
What honor lifts thy name above the throng
Of pedants, bureaucrats, and all the nation?
On campus, and in the halls of Time?
What laurels grace thy brow? What celebration?
What recognition? Loud and cheerful song?
What pipes and timbrels? What ecstatic rhyme?
II
Ah, happy, happy rank! That lifts thy name,
No longer to assist the professoriate,
But to associate with those of Fame –
The full professors and the poet laureate.
Fair youth, with lowly status, leave behind.
Thy song for evermore must be sedate,
Sensible shoes, and somber be thy gown
When, to all who wait, thou deem to say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth—The system’s down!”
Judith Stokes, Rhode Island College
JStokes@RIC.edu
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Dialog announces Engineering Index Backfile
Dialog has announced that it has added the Engineering Index backfile to the Dialog platform. The new archival backfile from Engineering Information adds more than 1.7 million records going back to 1884. The archival backfile is available as part of the Ei Compendex database, which now contains data from 1884 to the present. It is also available as a separate database containing just the historical data from 1884 to 1969. Using the Engineering Index Backfile, searchers can find reference to some of the most important innovations of the late-19th century and most of the 20th century.
ABC-CLIO launches Issues database
Reference publisher ABC-CLIO has launched a new database, Issues: Understanding Controversy and Society. The database combines authoritative research sources, inquiry-based teaching and study tools, and integrated current events aligned to social studies standards and curriculum. Researchers will find information on 150 current political, social, environmental, and criminal justice topics and can approach their research by broad reference category, subject, or single issue. More than 9,000 reference pieces are provided in the form of historical and interpretive essays, brief factual entries, statistical data, and primary sources (photos, audiovisual files, and documents).
Nature Education announced
Nature Publishing Group (NPG) has launched Nature Education, a new venture to develop innovative educational resources and tools for science students and their professors. Nature Education will take a nontraditional approach to the rapidly evolving college education market, focusing primarily on creating leading-edge learning solutions in biology, chemistry, and physics. Vikram Savkar has been appointed publishing director of the venture, which will be based in NPG’s Cambridge Massachusetts office. Most recently Savkar has been director of new ventures at Pearson Custom Publishing.
Columbia launches Carnegie Corporation oral history Web site
Columbia University’s Oral History Research Office (OHRO), in partnership with the libraries’ Digital Program Division and Digital Knowledge Ventures, has launched a new multimedia oral history Web site focusing on the oral history of Carnegie Corporation conducted by OHRO. The site features interviews with Carnegie staff, trustees, and grant recipients. Visitors to the site can explore the interviews in three forms: streaming video, audio, and written transcripts. Nearly 40 hours of interviews with 21 different people are accessible on the site. A central focus of the Web site is the corporation’s work in South Africa, where it funded legal reform and research into black poverty during the decades of apartheid. Grant recipients who carried out the research and fought apartheid in the courts detail their experiences and the importance of the corporation’s contributions. The oral histories and Web site were funded by a series of grants from Carnegie Corporation. The site is available at www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/oral_hist/carnegie/.
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I can't live without . . .
I love lii.org. The quality of all the selected Web sites is excellent and it impresses upon the students that it is important to be selective when doing college research. It also teaches students that people are behind the directories, and in this case, professional librarians. The way in which the categories are arrayed also helps students who haven’t decided on a topic.—Susan Rosenberg, Brookdale Community College
. . .Librarian’s Internet Index
lii.org
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NYPL provides browsing, checkout through mobile devices
The New York Public Library’s (NYPL) mobile version of eNYPL allows library users to browse and check out electronic materials using a wide variety of mobile devices, including Blackberries, Web enabled Palms, Windows Mobile, and Smartphones. Patrons can navigate through the designed-to-fit Web site that eliminates the need for excessive scrolling often required to steer through sites not built for smaller screens. Among the materials in the eNYPL digital collection are more than 2,500 Mobipocket eBooks, which can be downloaded directly onto handheld devices. Also available for borrowing are more than 3,000 audiobook titles, 400 music titles, and 500 video titles. Titles circulate for 21 days (eNYPL video circulates for seven days), after which they expire and are no longer accessible. The eNYPL collection is licensed through OverDrive, Inc., a Cleveland-based company that specializes in managing distribution of digitized content utilizing digital rights management (DRM) technology to publishers, retailers, and libraries.
Wayne State LIS program assumes responsibility for archival administration curriculum
The Wayne State University Library and Information Science (LIS) Program has assumed direction of the archival administration graduate certificate program, which had formerly been part of the Walter P. Reuther Library and Archives. The LIS Program is now recruiting for a new faculty position with responsibility for the archival administration courses. The curriculum in archival administration leads to a graduate certificate in archival administration and was established for individuals entering the archival profession as well as those with experience in the field. Students working concurrently on the master’s of library and information science (MLIS) degree may also earn the certificate in archival administration but are required to complete an additional six credits beyond the 36 required for the MLIS degree. Currently there are approximately 40 students enrolled in the archival administration certificate program.
Thomson Scientific to provide key science data to NSF study
Thomson Scientific has announced that it is supplying key journal literature information to the Patent Board for a study of scientific research trends. The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently awarded a contract to the Patent Board to develop key science metrics, and the Patent Board is using journal literature information from Thomson Scientific, in the form of Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index, in compiling its study. The two databases form part of ISI Web of Knowledge, Thomson’s research platform for the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. NSF contracted the Patent Board to analyze the strength of both U.S. and international science and engineering output. The Patent Board will be analyzing vast amounts of scientific data to develop indicators that measure trends in worldwide scientific research. The results will be published in NSF’s biennial Science and Engineering Indicators, beginning in 2008.
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Correction
In the November issue of C&RL News, credit given to Jason Griffey for photos used in the article “Experience ACRL’s Immersion Program” (p. 631) inadvertently gave his institution as University of Texas-Chattanooga. Griffey is actually reference and instructional technology librarian at University of Tennessee-Chattanooga. The editors regret the error.
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