Library & Information Services » Brenda Ellis

Friday Links – May 17th

Brenda Ellis — Fri, 17 May 2013 14:31:53 +0000

Markham Nolan: How to separate fact and fiction online | Video on TED.com

~13 minute video talk by a journalist showing how news organizations verify information posted by users on the web (tweets, photos, videos) using technology such as Google Earth, etc.

How to Read a Book

Did you find an odd box with pieces of paper inside? It might be a book! Some of them still have real pages—and I’ll show you just how to read one.

The Business Value of Google Glass and Wearable Computing – Wearable computing is an emerging technology that’s affecting both the consumer and enterprise space.

Predatory Publishers Strike Back
Predatory publishing is what happens when open access publishing is subverted by manipulation, exploitation, and spammer mentality. Jeffery Beall is a librarian who uses his blog to expose predatory publishers, and they would rather he didn’t. Beall has written a Nature column piece about predatory publishing, and his blog is Scholarly Open Access.

Open Access Journal PeerJ Publishes First Articles

Brenda Ellis — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 01:17:18 +0000

From Library Journal / The Digital Shift:
“Multidisciplinary Open Access journal publisher PeerJ announced the publication of its first 30 peer-reviewed articles today. Co-founders Jason Hoyt, formerly chief scientist and VP for research and development for Mendeley, and Peter Binfield, formerly publisher of the Public Library Of Science (PLOS), launched PeerJ in June 2012. They quickly garnered support for the project, ultimately assembling an Editorial Board of 800 academics and an advisory board of 20—five of whom are Nobel Laureates…”
Full article.

Friday Links, Feb. 8, 2013

Brenda Ellis — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 14:09:30 +0000

Worldometers: Real Time World Indicators
Watch the numbers change. Everything from current world population, CO2 emissions, to blog posts written today (hope they caught this one). Strange, but no mention of the number of McDonald’s burgers sold?

The new library of Babel? Borges, digitisation and the myth of a universal library, by Christopher Rowe. via First Monday.

Friday Links December 14, 2012

Brenda Ellis — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 16:33:37 +0000

Marginalia, or The Roger Williams Code: How a team of scholars decrypted a secret language—and discovered the last known work of the American theologian. (via Slate)

Ithaka, the non-profit organization that brings us JSTOR, on Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Historians: This study, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, uncovers the needs of today’s historians and provides guidance for how research support providers can better serve them.

3D Printing: Wondering what this technology is all about? Read the latest CQ Researcher report “3D Printing: Will it revolutionize manufacturing?“ Trivia question: How was this technology used in the latest James Bond thriller “Skyfall”?

Some faculty and students have been reluctant to post undergraduate theses to Scholarship at Middlebury in part because they fear it could jeopardize their ability to publish the findings in journals later on. A report published in the Chronicle of Higher Education indicates there isn’t much cause for this kind of concern. (Read the comments too, where the validity of the conclusions is debated.) Putting Dissertation Online Isn’t an Obstacle to Print Publication, Surveys Find.

Stats You Can Use (Heating Oil & Propane Prices)

Brenda Ellis — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 15:45:31 +0000

Wondering about the retail prices of heating oil and propane this winter season? Check out EIA’s Heating Oil and Propane Update (updated weekly). Get prices specific to Vermont for heating oil and propane from the More Price Data section.

Bibliography of children’s and young adult books set in Vermont

Brenda Ellis — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 15:34:16 +0000

The Green Mountain Sampler,” has been updated. On this fifty-page list are all the books that the Department of Libraries owns that are set in Vermont, or about Vermont or Vermonters. This is not a selected, recommended list, but rather … Continue reading →

Several New Library Database Trials

Brenda Ellis — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 21:16:57 +0000

The Library currently has access to the following databases on a trial basis:

Scopus
E-Books: Ebrary and EBL collections
AskArt
Films on Demand
Building Green.com

Access information and details are available on the New & Trial Databases page.

Celebrate Constitution Day, September 17th

Brenda Ellis — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 15:54:19 +0000

You don’t have to be taking a class on constitutional law to reflect about the importance of the US Constitution or debate the issues. There are library databases, publisher, government, and other websites that feature articles and other content to highlight or debate aspects of our Constitution. Here are a few:

U.S. National Archives Constitution Day page
Also see their electronic version of the Constitution of the United States

NewsBank (publisher of the library database Archive of Americana) Special Reports: The U.S. Constitution page

Find addtional library databases on the library subject guides.

JSTOR Journals – 2 new collections added

Brenda Ellis — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:08:42 +0000

JSTOR – Collections V & VI added
Collection V title list. Description: “…important literary reviews and state historical journals. It will also widen the scope of core disciplines in the arts and humanities, such as philosophy, history, classics, religion, art and art history, and language and literature.”

Collection VI title list. Description: “…extends JSTOR’s coverage in disciplines across the social sciences, with clusters focused in economics, education, linguistics, political science, and area studies.”

See other library resources added recently here.

New Library Databases and Resources

Brenda Ellis — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 20:15:51 +0000

The librarians often wait to select new database purchases or subscriptions until the end of the fiscal year, when it is more clear how much money is available. So far this year, we were able to add the following databases/resources:

ProQuest Historical Newspapers – Added 3 black newspapers: Chicago Defender; Pittsburgh Courier; Atlanta Daily World . Also added Boston Globe.

Latin American Newspapers, 1805 – 1922

Readers’ Guide Retrospective, 1890 – 1982

Scientific American

Social Explorer (premium edition)

Periodicals Archive Online ( more journals added)

For full descriptions with links, see the New and Trial Databases page:

http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/lib/research/db-newtrial or http://go/trials

A few other resources will be announced, once they become available.