PolyThinkers Pad » Humanities & Social Sci http://www.poly.edu/library/blog fueling polythinking with library news, tips and more Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:26:12 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2.1 en Start your research with our new library guides http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/09/29/start-your-research-with-our-new-library-guides/ http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/09/29/start-your-research-with-our-new-library-guides/#comments Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:29:09 +0000 Ingrid researchweb resources http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/09/29/start-your-research-with-our-new-library-guides/ Have you checked out our new multimedia library guides?  We currently have 18 guides on an array of topics from chemical engineering to copyright law.  These guides are the best starting points for finding articles, books, video, news, and more in your areas of interest.  Scroll through the sample guides below or browse the complete list.

You can access these guides directly from the library home page using the “Subject Guides” tab on the search box.  More guides are being added on a regular basis. If you’d like to see a guide for a particular area, let us know!

]]> http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/09/29/start-your-research-with-our-new-library-guides/feed/ Free e-book model: Is it working? http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/08/10/free-e-book-model-is-it-working/ http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/08/10/free-e-book-model-is-it-working/#comments Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:24:04 +0000 Gavin web resources http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/08/10/free-e-book-model-is-it-working/ In an effort to entice readers to purchase new books by an author, writers, publishers and e-book sellers like Amazon are offering some of an author’s older books as a free download.

The hope is that if a reader likes one book by an author, he may be willing to purchase others. There is some evidence that this is working. Many readers have written that they would not even have known of an author if his work had not been released as a free download.  As we learn in, The latest craze: Free e-books offerings, Some readers have even been known to purchase additional books by an author just to support them.

However, publishers and authors are worried about the same thing. Will users become so accustomed to downloading free books that they are no longer willing to purchase a book? After finishing a book by an author, will that reader continue on by making a purchase of another work by the same author, or just move on to another free title? One author laments that there are so many free books that a reader can fill his Kindle with them and not ever have to pay for reading material.

See, Travel light, read e-books,  for Dibner Library links to free e-books available online.

]]> http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/08/10/free-e-book-model-is-it-working/feed/ The Race to save ancient texts http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/05/08/the-race-to-save-ancient-texts/ http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/05/08/the-race-to-save-ancient-texts/#comments Fri, 08 May 2009 15:59:57 +0000 Gavin http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/05/08/the-race-to-save-ancient-texts/ Great collections have always been vulnerable, but recent disasters are fueling a race to digitize and preserve cultural relics.  It is well known that in ancient times, the famous library in Alexandria burned down resulting in the loss of its irreplaceable collection. But cultural relics are just as vulnerable today, perhaps more so in an age of explosives, bulldozers, and large scale demolitions. Artifacts in manuscript rich Afghanistan and Iraq have been put at risk. But even in modern developed countries, archives are not safe. Recently an earthquake in Italy and a collapse in Cologne damaged European collections.

Narrative artifacts exist not just in paper or parchment, but many other forms such as oracle bones from ancient China, an eight thousand year old rock painting from Africa, and papyrus fragments that were stuffed inside a mummified crocodile. Many items were once unreadable — charred by fire, damaged by chemicals, perhaps too fragile to unroll. New technologies now make it possible to decipher them. (more…)

]]> http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/05/08/the-race-to-save-ancient-texts/feed/ Coming soon to a campus near you, Kindle for textbooks! http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/05/05/coming-soon-to-a-campus-near-you-kindle-for-textbooks/ http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/05/05/coming-soon-to-a-campus-near-you-kindle-for-textbooks/#comments Tue, 05 May 2009 16:00:20 +0000 Gavin http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/05/05/coming-soon-to-a-campus-near-you-kindle-for-textbooks/ For those of you who are tired of having to lug heavy  textbooks around, and also happen to be gadget oriented,  reprieve may be just around the corner.

Amazon plans to unveil on Wednesday a new  Kindle designed  especially for textbooks. The current Kindle e-reader has a  screen that is too small to display the photographs, charts  and graphs that are a prominent feature of many textbooks.  The new device should be more suitable for that, but how much more suitable is still under investigation.  In an  effort to determine how useful it might be as a textbook reader students at Case Western  University will be getting the new model with some textbooks  and course material pre-installed.

Members of the Poly community who have no interest in a portable  electronic reader, but would still like to occasionally check references online instead of heading to the shelves and thumbing through the table of contents, there are several outstanding reference resources available to you through our online databases. Books24×7, Knovel, and SpringerLink  feature thousands of full text books you can read via any web browser.

]]> http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/05/05/coming-soon-to-a-campus-near-you-kindle-for-textbooks/feed/ Amazon strengthens its hand in the e-book market http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/04/28/amazon-strengthens-its-hand-in-the-e-book-market/ http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/04/28/amazon-strengthens-its-hand-in-the-e-book-market/#comments Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:45:47 +0000 Gavin http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/04/28/amazon-strengthens-its-hand-in-the-e-book-market/ With its purchase of Lexcycle, announced today, Amazon now controls three of the most popular e-reading apps:  Stanza, Mobipocket, and Kindle.  Stanza is a popular app for the Iphone and Ipod touch that is produced by Lexcycle.  Mobipocket is a multi-platform reader which works on the Palm, Symbian, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry platforms,  and also on several dedicated e-book readers. Amazon purchased the company about four years ago.   And of course, Amazon’s Kindle software works on the Kindle reader, and also on the Iphone and Ipod Touch.

E-reading software for handheld devices has been around for a while, and e-texts have been around since the early days of the PC, but Amazon gave the format a shot in the arm with the release of it’s Kindle reader, which made it easy to download e-texts via free broadband wireless throughout much of the US.  Although questions about the viability of e-books and dedicated e-book readers have dogged the industry for years, Amazon’s big bets on, and strong support of, the market is certainly a reassuring sign for those who appreciate e-books.

Each of these readers have their own online stores from which you can easily purchase and download texts.  However,  you can use the Mobipocket and the Stanza software to convert and read books from many different sources.  Check out Dibner Library’s guide to free online books  and delicious books tag for e-books you can download and read for free.

]]> http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/04/28/amazon-strengthens-its-hand-in-the-e-book-market/feed/ World Digital Library http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/04/22/world-digital-library/ http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/04/22/world-digital-library/#comments Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:09:59 +0000 Gavin historyreferenceweb resources http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/04/22/world-digital-library/ For those of us interested in digital archives of world cultural treasures, there is new reason to rejoice: a new entry has appeared in the growing list of online sites available to view such material.  The World Digital Library, a website in seven languages featuring works from a dozen countries, was launched at UNESCO’s headquarters on Tuesday.   The library hosts digital reproductions of many rare and unique kind works.  Its main purpose is to spotlight hard to reach, fragile written works, but it also includes early multimedia from the electronic age: film, audio and photographs.

One of the major advantages of the online archive is that it groups  together copies of items that are on the same subjects but whose originals may be in widely different locations.  As with many other digital archives, for now the collection is relatively small, but it is expected to greatly expand as more organizations from different countries come on board.  Read the full story from the Associated Press in Humanity’s Earliest Written Works Go Online by AP.  For more posts on digital archives click the Humanities and Social Sciences category on PolyThinkers Pad.  Also, don’t forget to take advantage of the vast collection of archival material available  to the NYU Poly community via the library’s online databases in the Subject Guides: Humanities and Social Science section.

]]> http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/04/22/world-digital-library/feed/ Europeana http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/02/24/europeana/ http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/02/24/europeana/#comments Tue, 24 Feb 2009 14:28:44 +0000 Gavin historyreferenceweb resources http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2008/11/21/europeana/ Europeana, a digital archive combining the collections of libraries and museums, officially went online November 20, 2008, then crashed the next day due to its popularity.  It has been back online in beta form for quite some time now, but it is still not in optimal shape to efficiently serve all the people who wish to use it.   What makes it so popular? It is  a digital collection of European culture. Audio, video, text and image files, including famous paintings and significant documents, can all be found in this multimedia gallery. All works will be copyright free and available for download. The European commission has set a goal of putting ten million items online by 2010.

Europeana is  meant to be a pan-European depository, though the collection is currently dominated by works of French origin.  A similar offering of US cultural works is housed in the Library of Congress’ American Memory.

For links to other free archives of classic texts  and cultural treasures, see Dibner Library’s web resource page on the Humanities and Social Sciences.  Also see Dibner Library’s Humanities bundle on Delicious.

]]> http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/02/24/europeana/feed/ Featured Resource: OED http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/02/12/featured-resource-oed/ http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/02/12/featured-resource-oed/#comments Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:36:33 +0000 Gavin http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/02/12/featured-resource-oed/ oed.jpg A recent article about people using online scanned books to trace the historical usage of words made me remember an incident from my undergrad days. (Don’t ask me what the article was; I cannot remember any citation details, nor can I locate it online.  If I did not remember clearly and distinctly reading the article, I would think I imagined the whole thing).  An English professor once said in class something to the effect that the OED (Oxford English Dictionary)  was the single greatest product of collaboration and dedicated scholarship ever completed by humankind. He made sure to inform us that he said this without apology, and continued by  affirming that, logistically speaking, putting a man on the moon was a piece of cake in comparison. (more…)

]]> http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/02/12/featured-resource-oed/feed/ Libraries and digital images http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/01/21/libraries-and-digital-images/ http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/01/21/libraries-and-digital-images/#comments Wed, 21 Jan 2009 19:10:02 +0000 Gavin referenceweb resources http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/01/21/libraries-and-digital-images/ In the pre-World Wide Web days, I once believed that  the only way to see prints, maps, photographs and other archival image collections in libraries was to make an appointment, sign in, move to a seldom visited room and wait for the material to be brought. I cannot say for sure if that is exactly what happened in most places, but I suspect that it is not far from the truth.

Things have changed  considerably.  I have long thought that libraries  made very Icaruseffective use of the Web from the earliest days. (see Google settlement re-maps online book world.) One of the most valuable services of libraries when the web was young was to begin the process of digitizing and bringing these heretofore hard to reach collections online. The availability of material has grown by leaps and bounds with many well known historical documents now accessible in high resolution digital form.   Prestigious online galleries include the Library of Congress Digital Collections and the New York Public Library Digital Gallery. (more…)

]]> http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2009/01/21/libraries-and-digital-images/feed/ Web of Science: Social Sciences Citation Index and Humanities Citation Index http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2008/12/22/web-of-science-social-sciences-citation-index-and-humanities-citation-index/ http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2008/12/22/web-of-science-social-sciences-citation-index-and-humanities-citation-index/#comments Mon, 22 Dec 2008 19:44:20 +0000 Gavin historyresearch http://www.poly.edu/library/blog/2008/12/22/web-of-science-social-sciences-citation-index-and-humanities-citation-index/ You may be familiar with the Web of Science database and its flagship service, the Science Citation Index.  Commencing in 1960 as a series of print volumes, the Science Citation Index is a unique reference tool that has been invaluable to users, especially those in the academic community, allowing them to  see  which articles have cited an earlier article or an author.   However the Web of Science offers much more than science citations.  It also provides access to the Social Sciences Citation Index and the Humanities Citation Index.  So, say for example, you are reading a great article on the last sonnets of Shakespeare, and you are interested in finding similar articles. A great way of continuing your research is by viewing the bibliography to see what prior articles were cited by the author, then by using the Humanities Citation Index to see what later articles cited the article you are reading. (more…)

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