Author Archives: Arabella Holzapfel

More streaming video – trials and new access!

You asked for it, we’re getting it! Many students, faculty, and staff members are asking for access to more streaming video, so the Middlebury Libraries are providing more and more of these options.

New for the sciences, from the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE), we now have subscribed access to:

  • Science Education – 1 : a database of video instructions on General Laboratory Techniques, including the centrifuge, spectrophotometers, various aspects of microscopy, and more.
  • Science Education – 2 : video instructions focused on Basic Methods in Cellular and Molecular Biology, including gel electrophoresis, polymerase chain reaction, the Western Blot, and more.
  • JoVE Biology : a peer-reviewed journal of video protocols, procedures and methods.

For History, a trial through November 29th of American History in Video

Of general academic interest:

For the next thirty days, we can do a side-by-side comparison of the Criterion Collection from two different streaming platforms:

Please let us know your preference between these two options by emailing eaccess-admin@middlebury.edu or contacting your library liaison.

In addition, we are now set up for “a la carte” purchasing of any of the films Kanopy has at www.kanopystreaming.com. If you see a film there that you think would be interesting to all campus users, suggest a purchase by email.  Films we have purchased (or have trial access to) can be viewed at Middlebury’s own Kanopy site – http://middlebury.kanopystreaming.com

And don’t forget – Digitalia Film Library has films from around the world, as announced a couple of weeks ago.

Do you have other library recommendations? Let us know! or contact your liaison.

National Anti-Slavery Standard (Trial ends October 31 2014)

The Middlebury College community has free access until the end of October to the full text of the National Anti-Slavery Standard, a newspaper that was published between 1840 and 1870.

NASS

Let us know what you think! Email eaccess-admin@middlebury.edu or contact your library liaison.

Now! Here! Digitalia Film Library streaming films from around the world

The Middlebury College community now has access to all the films of the DigFilmLibFilms in many languages from around the world. Collections include:

Nature and WildlifePeninsulaValdesEuropean CinemaGypsySpiritLatin American selectionArrierosAnd more!

Do you have a library recommendation? Let us know! or contact your liaison.

Oxford Arabic Dictionary – new! – and six others, too

As announced in this recent post, the Middlebury College Libraries recently subscribed to the six Oxford Language Dictionaries on the Oxford Language Dictionaries Online (OLDO) platform – Chinese, French, German, Italian, Russian, and Spanish.

About a week later, Oxford announced the release of their new Oxford Arabic Dictionary

OADon the Oxford Dictionaries platform. We now have subscribed access to this brand new online dictionary also! (In case you’re wondering, the dictionaries currently on OLDO will be migrated to the new Oxford Dictionaries platform in the near future.)

Not interested in this, but there is something else you wish we had? Let us know!

 

New stuff for the New Year! Recently added to the Libraries’ collections

The libraries have purchased or subscribed to a bunch of new and wonderful resources over the summer (and late last academic year). Here are some of the highlights:

And these resources will be available very soon!

  • Digitalia Film Library (on order)
  • Chinese Cultural Relics – English translation of Wen Wu (we’ve subscribed and are awaiting publication of the first issue)

Trials expected during Fall Term:

  • Journal of Visual Experiments (JoVE) – streaming video science experiments
  • National Anti-Slavery Standard – primary source material
  • Alexander Street’s Criterion Collection – streaming video of classic movies

We are always adding new resources – make your wishes known here!

London Review of Books (trial ends September 13, 2014)

Middlebury College has free trial access to the online version of the London Review of Books until September 13th.LRB

Since 1979, the London Review of Books has stood up for the tradition of the literary and intellectual essay in English. Each issue contains up to 15 long reviews and essays by academics, writers and journalists. There are also shorter art and film reviews, as well as poems and a lively letters page.

Explore and let us know what you think – send an email or contact your liaison.

Friday Links – August 15

How Successful People Stay Calm (from LinkedIn)

  • Article explains optimal stress and includes 10 best strategies for managing stress (and emotions).

Churnalism: When Press Releases Masquerade as News Stories

  • British YouTube video illustrating “churnalism” (media articles based on press releases) with examples of how some fake press releases made it into mainstream media.  By Churnalism.com (promotes their churnalism detection extension for Chrome and Firefox). (Shared on the ili-l listserv by Maryke Barber).

Demand Media Infographic

  • Infographic illustrating how “content mills” work based on one example.  Shows how content (matching web search terms) is written for the internet to generate ad sales. (Also shared on the ili-l listserv by Maryke Barber).

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) seeks to weed out ‘predatory’ OA journals.

… following criticism of [DOAJ’s] quality-control checks, the website is asking all of the journals in its directory to reapply on the basis of stricter criteria. It hopes the move will weed out ‘predatory journals’: those that profess to publish research openly, often charging fees, but that are either outright scams or do not provide the services a scientist would expect, such as a minimal standard of peer review or permanent archiving …

More background and perspective from Rick Anderson via the Scholarly Kitchen.

 

Pending print subscription cancellations

Between September 2012 and June 2014,  Lisa McLaughlin, our über Collections Associate, tallied uses of all of our print journals. That is, Lisa counted magazines dutifully left by readers who followed the directions on our “Please-Do-Not-Reshelve-Your-Magazines” signs in the Current Periodicals section of the Davis Family Library.

191 of the titles we currently subscribe to were reshelved only one time or not at all during that 22-month period.

We are proposing canceling the Libraries’ subscriptions to these 191 print titles, but before we do, we would like to hear from you.

This spreadsheet includes the journals we think we should cancel. If you have used any of these, and reshelved them yourself (so they weren’t counted), or for any reason, you think the Libraries should continue one or more of these subscriptions, please send me an email by the end of August.

*The fine print:

  • We currently have online access to many of these titles through databases such as LexisNexis or ProQuest. Unfortunately, the title lists of these databases can change at any time and we cannot guarantee long-term access.
  • For titles with the comment “no online access post-subscription” (21 titles), this means that if we cancel the print subscription, we lose all access to publisher-hosted online content – the print remains our only access to content that we paid for.
  • Funds currently spent on these little-used or unused print subscriptions can be re-directed to gain access to more relevant library resources.
  • As faculty identify titles that we should continue subscribing to, the spreadsheet will be updated in green with the note “to be retained”.