• Radiological: original radiological images, in GE format as received from MRI and CT scanners, with text files and instructions for opening
• Fullcolor: original cryosectional images at 0.33mm XY resolution, .RAW format, with instruction
• 70mm: cryosection images at .17mm XY resolution, derived from scanning the original 70 mm film, in .RGB format, with instructions
• PNG: original radiological and fullcolor images formatted in .PNG format, with text files of associated MRI and CT headers

If you would like to use this data for teaching or classroom purposes, please contact the LIS liaison for your department.

The NLM asks that anyone using the data sets for their own research purposes, or who is creating new uses for the images (e.g., developing an application to manipulate or view the files, etc.) submit their own application for access, which is free-of-charge. This allows the NLM to better understand and track how the data is being used.  Please submit individual applications directly to the NLM via their website.

We hope you find this resource useful!

Terry Simpkins

Director of Research and Collection Services

Liaison Discussion Section
Thursday 11/18,  10-11 am in Lib 145
Topic:  Support for curricular technology
We will talk about the ways in which we have provided support for curricular technology on behalf of LIS. What questions have we received about Segue, WordPress, MediaWiki, etc.? How have we answered? Have we been asked to recommend one platform over another? What was the scenario and how did we respond?

Pre-assignment:  If you’re among those in LIS who have provided support for curricular technology then please be ready to share 2 questions or challenges that you’d like to discuss.

RSVP:  Liaisons have received and responded to an Outlook invite.  All others don’t need to respond.  Just come if you’re interested!

******************
What is “Liaison Discussion Section”?  It’s a revival of librarians’ “Reference Training and Review” sessions. “Liaison Discussion Section” meetings will address topics of interest to liaisons: research and/or technology. They can be conversations, or presentations, or both. They take place most often on the third Wednesday of the month.  In order to allow people who work different hours to attend, they’ll occasionally be scheduled for different days/times (for example, this one is on a Thursday!).  Anyone in LIS is welcome.

• the largest collection of circulating newspapers in North America, including international, U.S. colonial titles, U.S. ethnic titles, and Civilian Conservation Corps camp newspapers/newsletters
• 38,000 foreign journals rarely held in U.S. libraries
• 800,000 foreign dissertations
• major microform and paper collections from Africa, Latin America, Middle East, Europe, Asia, Southeast Asia, and other locations
• a total collection of almost 5,000,000 rarely held books, journals, pamphlets, newspapers, and primary source materials

Membership in CRL provides Middlebury library patrons with access to the entire CRL collection via InterLibrary Loan (ILL).  Loan periods, and the amount of material that can be borrowed at any time, are considerably more generous than traditional ILL.  Some CRL materials can be digitized on demand and can be provided via e-mail or other electronic delivery.

How do I use CRL?

CRL materials are requested the same way as any other traditional ILL request: through Middlebury’s ILL department: go\ill (on-campus) or go.middlebury.edu\ill (off-campus).   If you know ahead of time that you need to borrow a large quantity of material, or you need to borrow something for an extended period of time, please indicate this clearly in the “Notes” field when you fill in the ILL request form.

You also have the option of searching the CRL catalog directly at: http://catalog.crl.edu/ If you locate something that’s of interest, leave a note in the ILL form indicating that you found the item in the CRL catalog.  This will save time by alerting ILL staff to route these requests directly to CRL.

If you have any questions about this service, please feel free to contact one of our librarians, or contact Terry Simpkins, Director of Research and Collection Services, at 802-443-5045.  If you have questions specifically about ILL matters, you can contact Rachel Manning at 802-443-5498.

We are excited to be able to provide you with access to this extraordinary collection, and hope you find it to be a valuable resource for your teaching and research.

Terry Simpkins

Director of Research & Collection Services

The consolidation of the Music Library into Davis was proposed by the College Administration, with the stated aims of strengthening ties between the curriculum and the Middlebury Museum of Art, also located in the MCFA, and increasing the use of the MCFA building, which has declined substantially especially since the closing of the Rehearsals dining space.  The moves will also free up studio space in Johnson for the Program in Studio Art and Architectural Studies.

From the library perspective, it is my hope that incorporating the music collection into the Davis Family Library will increase the visibility of this fabulous library resource, one that has perhaps been underutilized due to its location on the periphery of the campus.  With almost 20,000 compact discs; over 18,000 scores; and 13,000 books about music, this is a tremendous resource for anyone with even a passing interest in music, encompassing everything from the latest contemporary classical and avant-garde works to jazz, blues, and popular music for study or recreational listening.  We hope that integration of the music collection into Davis will inspire the musically-curious to investigate our collection and take advantage of the riches it contains.

Moving a collection of this size entails, of course, a great deal of planning and no small amount of disruption, especially during the summer months of 2011.  LIS hopes that our constituents will bear with us through this transition period, and have patience for any temporary inconveniences you encounter.  Please feel free to contact me with any questions or comments at: Terry Simpkins (tsimpkin@middlebury.edu) 802-443-5045, Davis Family Library 202C

Here’s what Louisa, Joe and Shel told us about the iPad:

Louisa Burnham (History)

Louisa purchased her iPad mostly for travel during the summer, but she continues to use it now.  She has been pleased overall, but she still needs a regular computer, eg to prepare a manuscript.  During her presentation, Louisa highlighted the 2 apps below, but she has found many other useful research apps (dictionaries, ebook readers, etc.).

iAnnotate PDF

• Annotation of articles, grading of papers.
• Circle, highlight, write with finger or stylus, type into a post-it style box.
• For grading – students can email the paper, and when she’s done annotating she can email it back.
• Louisa also uses Dropbox, a cloud-based app (there’s also an iPad app). Put a Dropbox folder on your computer, and the contents will be synced with your Dropbox folder/s elsewhere. FYI, Dropbox folders can be shared among users.
• Louisa uses a wifi connection only (didn’t pay for 3G access).
• Purchased bluetooth keyboard but has found that touch keyboard is usable.

DocsToGo

• Import, view, edit, create: .doc, .docx, .ppt, PDF, etc.
• Can’t edit or create footnotes. Still, better than Pages (Mac word processing program, which strips footnotes and diacritics altogether).
• Also just started using 2Screens for presentations.  It allows live on-screen annotation

Joe Antonioli (LIS)

Some reasons why Joe likes the iPad:

• iPad turns on and off quickly.
• Can connect to Exchange, Google calendar.

Joe’s favs include: Stargazer, Flipboard (displays web pages differently, eg as a book).

Next iPad will have a camera

Shel Sax (CTLR)

Fav Apps: forscore (scans and displays music), eclicker.

Additional Notes

Students and others on campus will use devices other than the iPad/iPod/iPhone.  For example Android, Blackberry.  We should be thinking about all mobile devices.

The iPad is a new and emerging technology and currently, LIS and other College budgets are unable to support institutional purchases of iPads.

Question: Which format would Louisa prefer for a book (eg a novel), print or ebook? Answer: Print.

Note for projection in classrooms: It’s app-specific (ie, some apps will project and others will not).

How to find apps: Google, NITLE, iTunes store.

To Come

Another presentation in a few months? Sure.

iPad user group? Sure.

The first presenter was Paul Needham describing the progress of the PIRUS 2 project. Their mission is to establish global standards for finding article-level usage information.  (It is funded by Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in the UK and Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources (COUNTER), the group that established protocols for journal-level usage statistics, participates.)  Needham reported that PIRUS has loaded data from six publishers that includes 555,000 articles from 5500 journals, and just shy of 17 million download events.  They expect there will be upwards of 3 billion article download events to ‘count’ each year when most publishers are participating.  They are also working with institutional repositories.  More information can be found at their website: www.cranfieldlibrary.cranfield.ac.uk/pirus2/

The second presenter was Johan Bollen describing the Metrics from Scholarly Usage of Resources (MESUR) project.  http://www.mesur.org/MESUR.html   “The project’s major objective is enriching the toolkit used for the assessment of the impact of scholarly communication items, and hence of scholars, with metrics that derive from usage data.”  Bollen contends that impact factors based on citation data does not honor the full scope of scholarly activities; further citation tracking takes more than two years to develop.  In contrast, usage data is real-time and can use large scales of data.  He described MESUR as a “scientific project to study science itself from real-time indicators.”  The usage data he’s been working with includes “clickstreams” so they can follow what articles are clicked on after a given article is downloaded.  One of his articles on his research is available at http://arxiv.org/abs/0902.2183 and includes a graphic that shows how citation-based metrics do not reflect actual usage. It is fascinating in an academic scholarly kind of way.

Selecting an artist to create a small work of art that conveys specific information yet is interesting to look at, is a unique challenge.  LIS provided Pamela Fogg, Design Director in the Office of Communications, with an historical overview of the bookplates that have been used over the years and she researched potential artists.

Artist Antar Dayal was selected because he works in detailed line drawing and often uses allegorical themes that translated well to a bookplate design.   When he received the commission from Middlebury College in the Spring of 2009, Dayal was temporarily living in Hawaii because a wildfire had destroyed his studio and home in California.  His website www.dayalstudio.com features a blog and portfolio.

Library staff shared some ideas with the artist about what design elements might be included in the bookplate.  One of the library’s most distinctive architectural features is its shape, and Dayal referenced the shape of the building in the shape of the frame around the image.  One of the things people seem to enjoy most about being in the library is the view from the inside looking out to the verdant surroundings, and Dayal captured that feeling by drawing a book, as if held in one’s lap, with foliage beyond.

The new bookplate has been used in books being added to the library collections since the day of the library naming ceremony last spring.