Happy Monday!
This Wednesday is the day we go live with our new catalog WorldCat! As a reminder, please save any lists you have in SOPHIA before then, as we will not have access to that information after activating WorldCat.
Please reach out if you have any questions, and see our guide to WorldCat here!
Fair Use Week 2015 is being celebrated nationally this week through Friday, February 27. Check out this cool infographic that shows its impact:
http://fairuseweek.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/ARL-FUW-Infographic-r4.pdf
Also, remember that McCain Library maintains a LibGuide to help you navigate fair use questions in classroom settings.
Today (June 10) was another landmark day for Fair Use interpretations. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled on Authors Guild v. HathiTrust and found in favor of fair use.
The Library Copyright Alliance filed an amicus brief in the case, supporting HathiTrust’s position and the lower court’s finding of fair use. Jonathan Band, counsel for the Library Copyright Alliance, said, “The decision is a significant victory for the public.”
The HathiTrust Digital Library (HDL)—comprised of eighty college, university and nonprofit member institutions at the time of the court filings—contains digital copies of more than ten million works and engages in several projects that provide new value and use to copyrighted works. These projects include the creation of a full-text search database, facilitation of access to works for the visually impaired and print disabled, and preservation of works in its library.
The HathiTrust Digital Library offers a scholarly online archive that may be searched for full book text. The pages of an 1895 edition of Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, for example, are freely viewable with an etching by H. Macbeth-Raeburn and a map of Wessex. HDL provides long-term preservation and access services for public domain and in-copyright content (some restricted) from a variety of sources, including Google, the Internet Archive, Microsoft, and in-house partner institutions. Those partner institutions include the libraries of Harvard, Princeton, The University of California, and smaller liberal arts colleges such as Colby and Mount Holyoke.
More details: http://www.librarycopyrightalliance.org/bm~doc/pr-agvht-final-10jun2014.pdf
Within the last month, McCain Library has added two enhanced features for the Discover search option. You may be familiar with its Google-like qualities if you’ve launched a search of library resources from the center of the library’s home page. A basic keyword search returns a large number of hits because of the quantity of indexed sources. For example, “college students AND math phobia” returns 4,682 hits from academic journals (2,087), books (1,290), e-books (1,110), magazines (384) and reviews (370).
The first addition is that Discover now offers an Advanced Search option, linked below the center search box, meaning that you may set limits before running your search within McCain’s e-resources. If you have multiple search terms, there is a field in which to place each word or phrase, and you may also target a subject search (for example, environmental studies or public health). You can also check the limit box to get only full-text journal articles, excluding hits with only abstracts. Your results list will be shorter and more refined to your keywords.
Using our prior example and typing “college students” in the first search field and typing “math phobia” in the second field, with a limit (scroll down the screen for options) to full-text articles within the disciplines of Math, Social Sciences and Women’s Studies retrieves 322 hits from academic journals (131), books (92), e-books (92), magazines (32) and reviews (45).
The second added feature is the inclusion of the SOPHIA library catalog’s book and DVD records, so your research results may discover both items physically in McCain Library along with online journal articles and e-books. Once you run a search, you may also limit it to show only SOPHIA holdings or to show only one particular journal title.
Of course, you still have the option to search the SOPHIA catalog by itself, using either the link in the top left of the library’s home page or the “Find Books” tab above the Discover search box.:
We hope you will enjoy exploring and using these technological enhancements. We welcome your questions, comments or feedback!
The Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey captures a picture of faculty members’ practices, attitudes, and needs. In the fifth triennial cycle, fielded in fall 2012, the survey focused on research and teaching practices broadly, as well as the dissemination, collecting, discovery, and access of research and teaching materials.
Findings from this cycle of the Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey will provide colleges and universities, libraries, learned societies, and academic publishers with insight into the evolving attitudes and practices of faculty members in the context of substantial environmental change for higher education. The development of the 2012 questionnaire was guided by an advisory committee of librarians, publishers, policy makers, and a scholarly society executive. The overall project was supported by some 20 colleges and universities, learned societies, and publishers / vendors.
You may download the free, full report here. Sample information is below.
You’re invited to THATCamp Feminisms South: an “unconference” for scholars, students, faculty, staff, librarians and others interested in the intersection of feminism, the humanities and technology. (THATCamp stands for “The Humanities and Technology Camp.”) The goal is to bring critical conversations about gender and race into the digital humanities. There is no cost to participants, though donations are welcome.
Mark your calendar for March 15-16 at Emory University’s Woodruff Library Research Commons. To register, propose a session, view the Twitter feed or for more details, see http://feminismssouth2013.thatcamp.org/.
Co-sponsored by Agnes Scott’s McCain Library and Women’s Studies Program; we’re buying your lunch! Go play in the sand box!
Want a quick way to scan the latest higher education headlines each morning or evening? Bookmark the McCain LibGuide that pulls together news feeds from these and other sources:
There’s also second tab/page on the guide for Technology News. You’ll find it all compiled at:
Ever since the New York Times decided to limit their free access to 20 articles a month, some very sad faculty members have been showing up on our doorstep looking for full-text access. Good news! Most of the current New York Times articles online through the databases Proquest Newspapers and Lexis Nexis Academic. Unfortunately, neither of these provides access to images and pictures in the articles.
We created a quick video to help you locate today’s copy of the New York Times.
[If you are using a device that is not connected to the campus network you will need the GALILEO password to access these resources.]
Contact Casey Long at clong@agnesscott.edu or 404-471-6343 if you have any problems or want to talk about additional access options.
Just in time for the end of the semester research rush – McCain Library is very happy to announce the addition of more than 1,700 Springer electronic journals, accessible from 1997 to the present. You may access this collection under the “Find a Database” tab, letter “S” menu on the library’s home page, or through this express link. You will also find the journals included in the library’s “Find a Journal” or SFX results.
An initial search or results list may be refined by author, year, language or content type (book chapter or journal article) on the left side. On the right side, show or hide a summary. Full article text is generally available to download as a PDF or view in html beneath the citation.
SpringerLink provides full-text of most journals on the Springer journals platform. Content includes hard sciences (such as astronomy, biomedicine, or environmental studies), as well as social sciences and humanities. Something for almost all disciplines, made possible thanks to a consortial licensing deal and an alumna gift.
Ever since the New York Times decided to limit their free access to 20 articles a month, some very sad faculty members have been showing up on our doorstep looking for fulltext access. Good news! Most of the current New York Times articles online through the databases Proquest Newspapers and Lexis Nexis Academic. Unfortunately, neither of these provides access to images and pictures in the articles.
[If you are using a device that is not connected to the campus network you will need the GALILEO password to access these resources.]
Contact Casey Long at clong@agnesscott.edu or 404-471-6343 if you have any problems or want to talk about additional access options.
Agnes Scott College, McCain Library 