General

Professor Patrick Rael talks about the Library’s support of his new teaching initiative for his Fall ’17 history class.

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Join us on Thursday, September 7th, 3-4:30 pm, for a campus-wide event to celebrate the opening of the H-L Research Lab and the new home of Academic Technology & Consulting on the first floor of the library.

The Research Lab is an active and flexible space for formal and informal learning interactions among students, faculty, and research librarians.  By reducing the barriers between scholars and librarians, the Research Lab provides enhanced opportunities for collaboration, consultation, support, and guidance throughout the research cycle.  This re-envisioned and renovated space is adjacent to the research librarians’ offices so that scholars can easily move among independent, group, and consultative work environments.

In addition to facilitating enhanced research support, the Research Lab is also home to flexible furnishings for individual or group work, a small-group multimedia workstation, and comfortable reading chairs.

The relocation of Academic Technology & Consulting to a central location in H-L Library support’s the team’s efforts to engage actively with faculty and students. Their new “Innovation Lab” includes a common area for consultations, group discussions, hands-on workshops, and sharing innovative technologies to support teaching, learning, and research.

Librarian Liaisons work closely with students throughout the year, supporting both their coursework and research, including providing in-depth assistance with honors projects. Among the over 100 seniors who engaged in writing honors projects this year are Adam Glynn and William Doak, both students in the department of Romance Languages and Literatures. Carmen Greenlee, Humanities and Media Librarian, along with a number of her colleagues, supported Adam’s and Will’s projects by identifying and acquiring specialized material essential to their areas of study, providing assistance throughout all phases of the research and writing process, and offering instruction in the use of citation management software.

Adam Glynn’s project, Nessuna buona punizione resta indescritta: Il contrapasso dantesco nel cinema dell’orrore italiano ed americano / No good punishment goes undescribed: Dante’scontrapasso in Italian and American horror cinema, examines how the inventive sin/punishment structure shown in great detail in Dante’s Divine Comedy appears in modern horror films. In French and Italian Café Spaces and the Third Places They Create, Will Doak employs semiotic analysis to argue that café spaces in France and Italy create a sense of an important third place (home and work being the first two) through an examination of their historical development.

Adam and Will utilized a variety of primary sources in their work including films, digitized historical materials in the target languages of French and Italian, and print texts. The library’s existing collections were supplemented with new items that were purchased specifically to support their research. In addition, staff of the Interlibrary Loan Department fulfilled many requests for obscure and unusual resources held by other libraries that they needed to consult. Both students identified essential secondary materials using Hawthorne-Longfellow’s specialized bibliographies and the many online discovery tools and full-text databases licensed by the library for use by the Bowdoin community.

The great pleasure in our work is contributing to the development of our students’ research skills and witnessing their excitement as they make new discoveries. We look forward to adding Will’s and Adam’s honors projects to the library collections at the conclusion of the semester. Congratulations to these two fine Bowdoin scholars!

Over the past few years due to changes to library systems, the number of NExpress partners has dwindled. CBB and our two remaining partners, Middlebury and Wellesley, have jointly decided to retire the service.

What does this means for Bowdoin users?

• CBB and MaineCat self-requesting are unchanged.
• Requesting of materials beyond CBB and MaineCat will be streamlined through Interlibrary Loan.
• Benefits for Bowdoin users include:
  • A single interface and login to request items, view in-process requests, renew checked-out items, and view electronically-delivered articles.
  • No need to search for libraries that own items you need. We will locate the item and select the best lender from among our expanding group of partners that provide expedited service, including Middlebury and Wellesley.
  • View request history. This feature was not available in NExpress.

The last day to request an item through NExpress is April 30th. All materials will be due before the end of May. Due dates may vary, so please check the banner on the item. If you have any questions about due dates or renewal options, please contact our ILL staff.

If you are one of our users who will miss discovering materials held at Middlebury and Wellesley, try WorldCat, which provides location information for libraries worldwide.

The Library’s ILL staff will be glad to answer any questions. Feel free to contact them at infonex@bowdoin.edu, or Jaime Jones at (207) 798-4109.

MEDIA COMMONS OPEN HOUSE
Tuesday, April 4, 4-5pm

The Media Commons, located on the lower level of Hawthorne-Longfellow Library, brings together film collections, technology services and facilities to support viewing, creating and manipulating media.

Come learn about the new 25-seat Telepresence Classroom, which features four 80” screens along with a 70” interactive LCD screen. The room is available for playback of multi-region DVD/Blu-ray, video streaming, and presentation from your laptop computer as well as for direct video and audio communication with other collaborating institutions using the Cisco Telepresence system.

Library and Academic Technology & Consulting staff will be on hand to show you the Telepresence Classroom as well as the screening rooms and productions spaces, review the film collections, and reacquaint you with Media Commons services.

Light refreshments served. Please join us!

Can’t make the Open House? Visit our website for more information: library.bowdoin.edu/media-commons or contact Carmen Greenlee, cgreenle@bowdoin.edu or Elizabeth Davis, edavis@bowdoin.edu.

Library staff are getting ready to relocate and shift collections in the H-L basement in preparation for this summer’s construction of the new Telepresence Classroom. The classroom will be located in the Media Commons, enhancing and extending the functionality of this active and collaborative space. Funded through a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and equipped with flexible seating, multiple HD flat-panel monitors and a touch-screen, interactive panel, the Telepresence room will support courses in a variety of disciplines and a host of multimedia applications.

To accommodate the classroom, the government documents currently shelved in the Hubbard corridor will be relocated to the north side of the basement, where a portion of that collection is already housed.  Selected bound journal volumes will be moved temporarily to the Colby College storage facility and the remaining volumes will be compacted to make room for relocated documents. Librarian liaisons have worked closely with faculty over the past months to identify those journals to relocate. Selection criteria included titles that are 1) wholly or partly available in electronic form in one of the Library’s subscription databases, 2) primarily text-based, or 3) tangential to the curriculum. The journal volumes will be moved back to Bowdoin in the next several years, once the planned Library annex, slated for construction adjacent to campus, is completed.

Collection moves will begin on May 23. Those volumes relocating to Colby will be unavailable until June 6, after which time they will be requestable via CBBcat. In the meantime, individual articles may be requested using the Library’s ILL form. The Library is happy to return specific journal runs to H-L if needed for teaching or research. For questions about the collection moves or the status of a particular journal title, contact Joan Campbell, Collections Librarian.

This summer’s construction will necessitate the temporary closing of the Media Commons for several weeks. Staff will retrieve materials and work with students and faculty to provide access to media equipment as needed. Please contact Carmen Greenlee, Humanities and Media Librarian, for assistance.

Talking about Publishing

Tuesday, May 31, 12:00-2:00pm
Nixon Room (3^rd floor H-L Library)

Join faculty colleagues for a conversation about scholarly publishing. Panelists Aviva Briefel, Matt Klingle, Madeleine Msall, Birgit Tautz, and Nat Wheelwright will share their varied experiences with book and journal publishing. Topics will include:

• the challenges of publishing in a new field and in multiple fields
• publishing that second book
• author’s rights and negotiating contract offers with publishers
• international publishing and translation
• publishing in a peer-reviewed online-only journal
• open access publishing and creative funding opportunities
• publishing orphan articles during your career

There will be ample time for questions and discussion.

Sponsored by the Library and the Office of the Dean for Academic Affairs

Lunch available at noon; panel discussion begins at 12:30

Please RSVP to: Michelle McDonough | 207.798.7077

Technology Workshops

Take advantage of the expertise of staff from Academic Technology & Consulting to hone your skills or learn a new tool.

Jumpstart to Summer Training Series

Week of June 6

Staff from Academic Technology & Consulting will collaborate with Information Technology staff to offer this annual series, particularly helpful for students and staff engaged in summer project work.  Topics include:

• Updating content on a department or faculty website with CMS
• Creating a brochure, info-graphic, or poster using InDesign
• Sorting and filtering data, building formulas, and creating charts and graphs in Excel
• Preparing images for publications or the web using Photoshop
• Creating online surveys with Qualtrics

Details forthcoming.  For information contact Jennifer Snow | 207.725.3707

Introduction to Azure

Thursday, June 16 | 10am-noon
Location TBD

You have heard about the “Cloud” but how does it relate to your work?  In this session you will gain a deeper understanding of what the Cloud is and how you can use it for your work.  We will look at tools from the Microsoft Azure Cloud that will help you process your data more effectively.  This session will be offered at an introductory level to expose students, staff, and faculty to the power of the Cloud.  Register here.

Intermediate Data Processing on Azure

Thursday, June 16 | 1:30-3:30pm
Location TBD

You have explored the Cloud and how it can work for you.  In this session we will dive deeper into a few select offerings in the Azure Cloud that will help you process, analyze, and explore your data more effectively.  This session will be for more advanced users who might wish to create their own programs to manipulate and/or query their data.  Register here.

Introducing Video Projects in your Courses

Tuesday, June 28-Wednesday, June 29 | 10am-noon both days, with open lab times each afternoon
Media Commons and Electronic Classroom, H-L Library

Have you considered giving your students an opportunity to express themselves creatively or present their research through the narrative structure of a movie?  This two-day workshop will provide participants with a brief introduction to the process of creating an assignment, writing scripts, and storyboarding.  Additionally, it will introduce various software tools available for editing video and audio.  Each participant will create a short video and staff will be available to assist with the creation process.  Register here.

Uploading your Course Readings to Blackboard

Thursday, June 30 | 10-11am
Electronic Classroom, H-L Library

Would you like to make your course readings available to your students in Blackboard?  This session will cover scanning your articles, creating a section on the left-hand menu dedicated to the course readings, uploading your files to Blackboard, and creating links to Library-licensed e-content. Register here.

For additional information on Academic Technology & Consulting workshops, contact Jennifer Snow | 207.725.3707

The Oliver Otis Howard Papers Digitization Project’s scope has been expanded to include digitization of the manuscript collections of Howard’s younger brothers, Charles Henry Howard and Rowland Bailey Howard. Like their brother, the two graduated from Bowdoin (Rowland in 1856, Charles in 1859). Rowland, a Congregational minister, served as a member of the U.S. Christian Commission during the Civil War, and later as secretary of the American Peace Society from 1884 until his death. Charles was a bvt. brig. general who saw action at Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg and Chattanooga. He commanded the U.S.C.T. training camp at Beaufort, South Carolina. After the war, Charles served in the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, as an inspector of schools for South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, and as an assistant commissioner for the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia.

The Howard brothers’ papers deepen our understanding of O.O. Howard by showing the other side of the family conversation. When considered together, the three collections provide a more complete image of a nineteenth century family before, during, and after the Civil War. Like the O.O. Howard Papers, the Rowland and Charles Howard collections will be made available online through collection finding aids as materials are scanned.

The National Historical Publications and Records Commission generously approved the project’s scope expansion because the O. O. Howard project is ahead of schedule. Digitization has proven significantly more efficient than originally estimated. These additional collections will be digitized within the original time frame, with the entire project wrapping up in March 2017.

To learn more, please visit the project website.

The Library continues to provide access to an enormous range of print and electronic resources. New and notable resources include:

Gifts

It is a pleasure to acknowledge a second gift of children’s picture books from the collector Judy Toll. The Judith Toll Picture Book Collection now contains 512 books and is an outstanding resource for the study of visual art and literature for children as well as fairy tales. Prof. Liz Muther’s classes in these areas of study have made extensive use of the first installment. The books are easily found in the PZ’s on the fifth floor of the Hubbard stacks.

Acquisitions

Nature 1950 to present:  The Library purchased the archive of the journal Nature back to 1950, a rich resource for scientists, historians, sociologists, and researchers of all stripes. Read, for instance, about “The British North Greenland Expedition, 1952–54: Scientific Results” in the April 12, 1958 issue.

JAMA 1894 to present:  Another addition to the library’s growing e-journal collections, the archive of the Journal of the American Medical Association, provides a historical overview of major health, policy, and sociological issues. More than a century of astonishing change can be traced in JAMA’s pages, from the diagnosis of perceived women’s “disorders” to health insurance to the evolution of antibiotics.

U.S. Congressional Hearings Digital Collection:  It is now possible to search the full text of published U.S. congressional hearings, 1824-2003, recently purchased by the Library and integrated into the larger Proquest Congressional database. Incredibly rich for just about any kind of public-policy research, the hearings document testimony from an extensive cast of characters summoned to Capitol Hill.

Chinese Newspapers Collection:  No Chinese language skills necessary! The Library’s subscription to this database includes twelve English-language newspapers published in China, during the years 1832-1953. Includes the North China Herald, China Weekly Review, and the Chinese Recorder.

Piloting New Modes of Access for E-Resources

Bowdoin’s Library, along with 15 other college and university libraries, is collaborating with the University presses of Princeton, Harvard, and Columbia on an e-book access pilot. The pilot, which will run through 2016, provides access to most of the e-book content published by all three presses through an innovative pricing model. The goal of the project is to enable publishers to broaden approaches to content licensing for academic libraries. All of the e-books are available in CBBCat and OneSearch.

Science Direct Backfile Content Pay-Per-View Pilot Project:  Over the past year, the Library has been experimenting with a pay-per-view access model for the pre-1995 journal content in the Elsevier Science Direct database. Researchers now see a Purchase PDF button, which enables instant access to the needed article at the Library’s expense. Without our having publicized this new access, Bowdoin researchers have downloaded almost 1,000 articles! We will evaluate the sustainability of this access model in terms of cost in the coming months.

For further information, please contact Joan Campbell, Collections Librarian, at 725-3285 or jcampbe2@bowdoin.edu.