Northwestern University Library & Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences
Humanities & Social Sciences Computing/ Introduction to Electronic Resources

Introduction

On September 20 and 21, 2004, WCAS and the University Library are hosting a day-and-a-half event, the Humanities and Social Sciences Computing/Introduction to Electronic Resources Training. We are looking forward to your participation in this program, which is required for all incoming doctoral students in humanities and social science disciplines.

The purpose of this event is to ensure that entering doctoral students (in the Humanities and Social Science disciplines) have a solid working overview of those electronic resources that are relevant to their research and are readily available, either generally via the web, or as proprietary databases which are restricted to members of the Northwestern community. While such sessions cannot come close to being exhaustive, they can be an extremely useful beginning. Moreover, students will learn where to go for additional information, training, and assistance.

The first part of the event is Monday, September 20, from 2:00-6:00 PM. All participants will attend an introduction to EndNote®, a bibliographic software product, recently site-licensed at Northwestern - a powerful tool not only for locating and organizing bibliographic information, but also for managing research databases containing abstracts, text excerpts, and reading notes. So that we may structure the event to match the level of computer expertise of the group, we ask that you complete the brief questionnaire enclosed. Please read through the information below and complete the questionnaire, either in hard copy or on the web site: http://www.library.northwestern.edu/collections/sept2004/. Should you have any questions, feel free to contact Kavitha Sivashanker (k-sivashanker2@northwestern.edu) or Jeeyuhn Yoon Kang (jyo806@northwestern.edu). Please submit the questionnaire by Monday, July 12. To submit by regular mail, please send the questionnaire to Ruth Reingold, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, 1922 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208.

The EndNote® session will be followed by a Faculty Forum, in which Northwestern professors will present examples of their own work in producing intricate, original scholarship using electronic media. A reception will follow.

Tuesday, September 21st will be devoted (8:30 AM - 5:00 PM) to subject-specific sessions and presentations from current graduate students. The subject-specific sessions are being developed, based on the disciplinary interests of the participants, to represent an array of subject areas/departments. You can see some examples of such sessions from previous years on the web site (http://www.library.northwestern.edu/collections/sept2003/), but please remember that these past sessions are only general examples. This year's sessions will be tailored to the broad interests of the incoming group of doctoral students. Later in the summer, we will ask you to select and rank your top choices from this year's list. The intent is to offer cross-disciplinary training with a focus on resources which are not easy to master - sessions that span the topical and disciplinary interests of the incoming students. There will be a special session, particularly aimed at the Social Sciences, on data sets and cluster computing. We are not offering any general library reference training, although we will alert you to other such opportunities.

You will receive the schedule of events and the selection forms in August. We look forward to seeing you on September 20th and 21st.

Sincerely,


Heidi Schellman
Associate Dean Assistant Dean

Ruth Reingold
Computing Technology
Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences

Harriet Lightman
Bibliographer
Northwestern University Library