Tag Archives: new acquisitions

Summer Reading!

Summer’s almost here! The library has added 30 new titles to our print browsing collection, and another 30 (including many non-English titles) to our collection of e- and audiobooks (go/overdrive/). These books are available for borrowing by the entire College community, so enjoy the copious Vermont sun with some lemonade and a new book!

Royal Society of Chemistry – journal archive

The library has recently purchased access to all issues of journals published by the Royal Society of Chemistry from 1841 through 2007. Journal titles include:

You can browse by journal title or article content from the RSC’s homepage. The journal titles can also be found in Midcat and in our A-Z list of journals, and articles with content matching your Summon search will turn up in Summon results. All this now accessible from on- or off-campus!

New to the libraries – Fall 2017

The library has acquired some new resources over the last few months:

  • Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics  a systematic and comprehensive treatment of all aspects of the history and study of the Hebrew language from its earliest attested form to the present day and features advanced search options
  • Japan Times Archive Full text of every issue of this English language newspaper based in Japan that was published from 1897 through 2015
  • Digital Loeb Classical Library  Important works of ancient Greek and Latin literature, presenting the original Greek or Latin text on each left-hand page, and a fairly literal translation on the facing page.
  • American Indian Movement and Native American Radicalism, 1968—1979This collection of FBI files from 1968 to 1979 provides detailed information on the evolution of AIM as an organization of social protest and the development of Native American radicalism.
  • Federal Response to Radicalism in the 1960s Another collection from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Library, this collection sheds light on internal organization, personnel, and activities of some of the most prominent American radical groups and their movements to change American government and society. Included are files on Cesar Chavez, the Black Panther Party, and Malcolm X, among many others.
  • FIAF international index to film periodicals This database contains the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF)’s “Treasures from Film Archives”; a detailed index of the silent-era film holdings of archives from around the world, a selection of Reference volumes and the linked full-text of over 60 journals.
  • JSTOR books  Middlebury has purchased access to nearly 800 e-books on the JSTOR platform. Subjects include books published in 2015-2017 in the broad areas of languages and literatures, sociology, political science, and climate change. (You will find relevant content from any of these books by searching the JSTOR platform. In the near future, they will also be in the library’s catalog.)

New to the libraries for the New Year!

Following up on successful trials, the library has subscribed to three new resources:

  • Ancestry, Library Edition – we got very positive feedback on this trial and we are pleased to enable faculty, students, and staff to use this fascinating resource for classes and scholarly and personal research.Ancestry
  • Human Rights Studies Online – both the Monterey and Middlebury campuses now have access to this archive of documents, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes worldwide from 1900 to 2010.HRSO
  • BrowZine – Students, faculty, and staff at both Middlebury College and the Middlebury Institute for International Studies at Monterey can get easy browsability and convenient access to most of our subscribed journals on mobile devices or through a web browser. Since our trial, the web version now has the capability to provide your own personal “bookshelf” of your favorite journals.

A “first-rate beer” voucher, 2,000 years overdue (a new, very old acquisition for Special Collections)

In special collections, visitors often ask us, “What’s your most expensive item?” Or sometimes, “What’s the oldest thing you have?”

In late November, we acquired our newest, oldest thing: a baked clay tablet that originated in ancient Mesopotamia (current-day Iraq), from roughly 2,000 BCE. This small tablet (measuring just about 1 inch x 1 inch and pictured here) is incised with cuneiform script, considered to be one of the earliest forms of writing.


With the help of Middlebury alum Seth Richardson, Class of 1990, a historian of the ancient Near East at the University of Chicago, we’re learning more about our new acquisition. Likely in British and American hands since the early 20th century, our tablet is essentially a beer coupon. That’s right. Based only on preliminary examination, Dr. Richardson translated the first line: “3 liters of first-rate beer.”

And as it turns out, the Western tradition of beer brewing began in Mesopotamia between 3500 – 3100 BCE. How do we know? Largely from cuneiform tablets like ours, which contain detailed records around beer production, the delivery of raw materials (barley, yeast, bread, flour), and the trading of beer products. Like apple cider production in colonial New England, ancient Mesopotamians lacked clean water, but had an abundance of grains and the know-how needed to ferment them. And they had the earliest known written alphabet to boot.


References

Beer in the Ancient World.” Ancient History Encyclopedia. Accessed December 3, 2015.

Damerow, Peter. “Sumerian Beer: The Origins of Brewing Technology in Ancient Mesopotamia.” Cuneiform Digital Library Journal, no. 2 (2012).

Davis Library Fall lower level exhibit: Reading Nature

Two new exhibits have cropped up in the library this week – “Old Friends and New: Writers in Nature, 1847-2000” in the atrium and “Reading Nature” in the lower level Harman Reading Room. Both feature books that explore literary and scientific human interaction with the environment to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Environmental Studies at Middlebury College.

brown pear signs less text“Reading Nature” on the lower level of the library features books by scientists, botanists, naturalists, artists, and poets from the beginning of the 18th century to the 20th century. Each captures nature in a new way, redrawing the frames through which we understand the natural world.

 

Pages from Annie M Ward's "Notes on Botany," 1850-1860
Pages from Annie M Ward’s “Notes on Botany,” 1850-1860

 

"Cloud Crystals: A Snowflake Album Collected and Edited by a Lady" by Frances Chickering, 1864
“Cloud Crystals: A Snowflake Album Collected and Edited by a Lady” by Frances Chickering, 1864
Butterfly diagram from "The Aurelian" by Moses Harris, 1840
Butterfly diagram from “The Aurelian” by Moses Harris, 1840; Recent Gift of Julia Emerson, Class of 1965

 

 

 

 

New to the Library – CRC’s Dictionary of Natural Products

Middlebury College now has subscribed access to the Dictionary of Natural Products on CRC’s CHEMnetBASE platform. The DNP is a comprehensive database of 170,000 natural products. The wealth of data provided includes:

  • names and synonyms,
  • formulae and chemical structures,
  • CAS Registry Numbers,
  • extensive source data,
  • uses and applications,
  • physical state, melting point, boiling point, pKa,
  • key literature citations.

In addition a comprehensive type of compound classification scheme brings together compounds that are biogenetically related. All this information is readily searchable by text or by substructure, using flexible and intuitive software.

Is there a resource you think the library should add? Let us know at go/requests, or contact your liaison or email eaccess-admin@middlebury.edu.