Library Briefings

Library Launches Space Planning Initiative

Northwestern University Library has begun a master plan study to create an architectural program that aligns the uses and designs of library facilities with new services, collections, and strategies. What will the library system look like 20 years from now? What type of digital resources might be planned for the incoming class of 2030, how will our distinctive special collections be housed, and what must our buildings do to support both the diverse resources and the researchers using them?

Authorized by the Office of the Provost and in conjunction with Facilities Management, this comprehensive study will consider space needs the Northwestern University Library, Galter Health Sciences Library, and the Pritzker Legal Research Center, and propose a long-range plan to suggest approaches to meeting those needs. The architectural firm RMJM Hillier has been selected to conduct the master plan study and will be working with University faculty, students, and staff over the next six months to examine existing spaces and look at new ways to utilize these spaces to continue to provide essential services and perhaps new services desired by the campus community.

In the coming months, RMJM Hillier will be conducting a web-based survey of faculty and students, randomly selecting participants. This spring, if you are selected to participate, we encourage you to represent your peers and complete the survey. Northwestern University Library and Facilities Management will provide forums for general comments on the planning in summer 2008 and responses to proposals in fall 2008.

Questions, comments and feedback may be directed via email to planning@northwestern.edu or to your library liaison.

Updates to the planning process will be posted at the planning website.

Copy rights (and wrongs)

New initiatives help faculty use copyrights effectively

As the proliferation of electronic publishing media makes scholarly work more accessible for research and classroom purposes, it also raises new and critical issues of author rights and the proper use of copyrighted materials. The Library is involved in several initiatives aimed at keeping Northwestern faculty and graduate students informed about the complex legal issues now surrounding scholarly publication, and about effective strategies for maintaining their rights.

Two recent documents offer faculty and graduate students easy tools for using copyrighted materials and retaining more rights when publishing scholarly articles. First, a new web site and brochure from the Association of Research Libraries, Know Your Copy Rights, gives tips on what you can and can't do when using print, media, and web resources in class teaching, electronic reserves, and linking to web sites. We hope to distribute this brochure soon to all Northwestern faculty.

Second, the 12-university consortium CIC (Committee on Institutional Cooperation) has developed an "Author Addendum,” which is under review across CIC campus faculties, and has just been endorsed by Northwestern’s University Library committee. Author addenda are a newly emerging approach, a short legal instrument that authors may use to modify their publisher agreements, enabling them to keep selected key rights to their articles.

For more information and resources on author rights in the shifting environment of scholarly and electronic publishing, see the SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) web site, or contact Charlotte Cubbage, Bibliographer, c-cubbage@northwestern.edu, x1-2919; or Claire Stewart, Acting Head, Marjorie I. Mitchell Multimedia Center and Coordinator of Digitization Projects, claire-stewart@northwestern.edu.

The Chronicle on your desktop

Full-content Chronicle of Higher Education now available online

For the first time, The Chronicle of Higher Education is now freely available online to Northwestern users through a University Library subscription. The electronic format offers you the full content of the traditional Chronicle without the subscription expense and paper consumption, plus an array of additional features. Users can search and retrieve archived stories and job postings, play streaming audio content, and sign up for e-mail alerts including daily news updates and new job listings. The Chronicle can be accessed through any campus terminal or by any Northwestern-authenticated off-site user. The reference desks at University Library, the Galter Health Sciences Library, and the Pritzker Legal Research Center can also provide immediate assistance and help in accessing the journal.

Matters of style

The Chicago Manual of Style goes electronic

The Chicago Manual of Style, long the “Bible” for writers, publishers, and editors, is now available online to the Northwestern community. Since the publication of the first edition in 1906, the Chicago Manual has been consulted for its advice on such matters as footnoting styles, punctuation, usage, capitalization rules in a host of languages, copyright and permissions, and proofreading. Now the 15th edition, originally published in print format in 2003, can be consulted though the Library’s web site. The online manual allows the user either to browse the book systematically by chapter and section, or to search across the text to quickly locate advice on block quotations, or short titles, or guillemets. It is also possible, if desired, to search across the questions and answers posted on the Chicago Manual’s web site, where anyone can submit a question on matters of style and have the answer posted. The questions-and-answers site can be particularly useful for finding advice on dealing with the fast-changing world of electronic resources. For example, the advice to place “blog titles in roman type without quotation marks” will only be found in the questions and answers section, and not in the 15th edition itself.

William A. McHugh
Reference Collection Management Librarian

Welcomes, web pages, and workshops

How the Library can help your students find the right resources

Yes, they can Google, but a new generation of students is arriving on campus lacking more sophisticated research skills. Even graduate students are sometimes unfamiliar with key reference sources in their disciplines. Recent acquisitions by the Library have also dramatically expanded the resources available to students online. Librarians are ready to help your students understand this information landscape, so they can find what they need when they need it.

Public privileges

Evanston residents may now borrow Northwestern books

The Library now offers borrowing privileges to Evanston residents. Patrons must present a photo ID, proof of current Evanston residency (utility bill, bank statement, lease), and a valid email address to qualify, and pay a user fee of $50 per three months of privileges. They then have access to the Library during all open hours. For more information, check the Library’s web site.

As always, the Main Library is open to the general public Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to 12 noon during the fall, winter, and spring quarters. During intersessions and Summer Session, the Library is open to the general public during all the hours of access.

Can we talk?

Fill us in on podcasting

It’s the new New Thing, and possibly the most convenient audio content delivery system since the invention of the radio, but as we at the Library begin to explore the potential applications of podcasting, we’d like to know a little more about what you think. Are you considering podcasting your lectures or supplementary course materials, or does the idea horrify you? Would you like your students to be able to explore the Library at their convenience with an iPod-guided tour? To help us address your needs and concerns as effectively as we can, please spend a few moments filling out our easy online podcast survey.

Spring exhibits

African independence, and the Library’s “Admirable Nucleus”

Northwestern University Library’s current exhibit, “Fifty Years of African Independence” (now through April 26), celebrates the remarkable half-century since 1957, when the British colony then known as the Gold Coast became Ghana, the first modern African nation to achieve its independence from colonial European powers. Between that date and the day in 1994 when Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as the first president of majority-ruled South Africa, no fewer than 47 African nations emerged from various forms of colonial rule. Featuring unique documents, photographs, postcards, commemorative cloths, and biographical comic books, the exhibit also recalls the role that Melville J. Herskovits, founder of the University’s ground-breaking African Studies program and world-renowned Melville J. Herksovits Library of African Studies, played in the process.

From May 1 through June 28, the exhibit “An Admirable Nucleus” tells the story of how the extraordinary book collection of Prussian educator Johannes Schulze—friend to Goethe, Schopenhauer, and Hegel—was acquired by a shrewd Northwestern professor in 1870 and brought to Evanston, where it became the nucleus around which the Library grew. Editions in the 20,000-volume collection, now known as “The Greenleaf Library” after the University trustee who funded the acquisition, include 13 books printed before 1501 and dozens of richly produced volumes created by the famous printing dynasties of 16th and 17th century Europe, Aldus Manutius and the Elzevirs. Featured items include the first editions of Herodotus and Aristophanes printed in any language. The exhibit also explores the ways in which academic scholarship has evolved between the period in which the collection was assembled—in the heyday of German scholarship—and the current electronic age.

"Fifty Years of African Independence" poster by John Kannenberg.

“Whan that Aprill…”

William Blake’s Canterbury Pilgrims arrive in Special Collections

See larger image of William Blake’s Canterbury Pilgrims

The McCormick Library of Special Collections is excited to announce the recent acquisition of a copy of William Blake’s engraving, The Canterbury Pilgrims. This spectacular print depicts the frieze-like procession of Chaucer and his fellow travelers setting out just before dawn from the Tabarde Inn on the inaugural day of their journey. With print impression dimensions of almost exactly 3-foot-by-1-foot, this is the largest work Blake ever engraved after one of his own designs.

The first state of this print was published in 1810, but over the years Blake kept working on the plate, dramatically enriching its tonal and textural variety with additional hatching, crosshatching, and burnishing. Our print is a later re-strike from the last state of the plate, the fifth. Blake tended not to alter the engraved caption dates on his plates from those of the first printings, so though the text on our print reads “Painted in Fresco by William Blake & by him Engraved and Published October 8. 1810,” it is estimated that this fifth state was completed more than ten years later, sometime between 1820 and 1823. This later date makes stylistic sense. The superb light effects of the dawning sky, for example, bear a familial relation to the handling of light in such late masterpieces as his 1825 Illustrations to the Book of Job.

At the Archives

Settlement house records document social history of near northwest side

Like Jane Addams’s Hull House, the Northwestern University Settlement Association was founded in the late 19th century to provide social services to the largely poor and immigrant communities of Chicago—in its case, on the near northwest side. Established in 1891 by University president Henry Wade Rogers, his wife, Emma Winter Rogers, and alumnus Charles Zeublin (Class of 1887), the Settlement is independent of Northwestern University but has maintained, since its establishment to the present, ties with many NU faculty, administrators, and alumni. Evanstonians have been devoted benefactors of the Settlement for several generations.

Drama queens...and kings

Twentieth Century Drama features plays by modern playwrights

Now available to the Northwestern community, the ProQuest database Twentieth Century Drama contains more than one thousand fully-searchable published plays from throughout the English-speaking world, covering the history of modern drama from the 1890s to the present day. Texts are still being added, and when complete the database is expected to contain 2,500. The full range of dramatic styles, genres, and traditions will be represented, from widely studied and frequently performed plays to examples of radical theater, regional theater, postcolonial theater, women's theater, and popular forms such as farce and thriller that are often under-represented in surveys of the period. Representative playwrights currently include Amiri Baraka, Noel Coward, Susan Glaspell, John Godber, Beth Henley, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Eduardo Machado, Ngugi wa Thiongo, John Osborne, Sean OCasey, Terence Rattigan, Bernard Shaw, Megan Terry, Derek Walcott, Wendy Wasserstein,and August Wilson.

Sex & Sexuality, 1640 – 1940

Literary, medical, and sociological perspectives

Sexual habits, moral guidance, the sociology of sex, romantic friendships, lesbian relationships, the body, homosexuality, and erotica are among the many topical areas included in Sex & Sexuality, 1640 – 1940, a large microfilm collection of rare printed texts spanning 400 years. These and other subjects are approached in multiple ways, from literary works, medical treatises, and historical documents, to pornographic literature from the Private Case Collection (recently opened to researchers) at the British Library, London. Other works are taken from the Bodleian Library, Oxford and the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, in London. As noted by the Editor, Marie Mulvey-Roberts: "By opening up a subject that has remained largely inaccessible, this series makes available many writings that have been restricted to specialist libraries and obscure archives. It will enhance our understanding of the sexual enlightenment and the way in which individuals have negotiated their sexual practices throughout the course of history."

Women Advising Women, 1631-1837

Last two sections of historical microfilm now available

The set is now complete. The Library is pleased to announce the purchase of the last two sections (Parts 6 & 7) of the comprehensive microfilm set Women Advising Women: Advice Books, Manuals and Journals for Women, 1450-1837. With these latest additions, the Northwestern community has access to primary materials that provide a broad understanding of household management and domestic economy during the Victorian and Edwardian periods. The very last section is comprised of advice manuals, conduct books, and pamphlets for the period 1631-1837, from the Women’s Library, London, which houses the most extensive collection in the United Kingdom of materials for the study of women's history (and was previously known as the Fawcett Library).

Oxford University Press journals

Online access to complete catalog

Northwestern University Library has entered into an agreement with Oxford University Press to purchase online access to the entire catalog of Oxford University Press journals. One of the leading international publishers of academic and research journals, Oxford Journals partners with the world’s most prestigious learned societies to publish and develop journal titles in all subject areas.

The new agreement includes online access to all 184 Oxford University Press journals, establishing access to 67 titles never received before. Northwestern’s online access includes backfile coverage from 1996 to the present. Current subscriptions to the print version are not affected by the agreement.

Sustainable urban development

UN-HABITAT documents international activities

The Library has just begun a comprehensive subscription to all United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) print and electronic titles. UN-HABITAT is the official UN agency for human settlements and contributes to the UN’s overall objective to reduce poverty and promote sustainable urban development. The agency is based in Nairobi, Kenya and its partners range from governments and local authorities to a cross-section of IGOs, NGOs, and civil society groups; these partnerships are reflected in the focus of the agency’s activities as well as their publications.

Delinquency in Chicago neighborhoods

Data from new study now available

Data from a 2000-2002 large-scale, interdisciplinary study of how families, schools, and neighborhoods affect child and adolescent development, conducted by the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN), has just been released and is archived at ICPSR. The project, according to the PHDCN, “examined the causes and pathways of juvenile delinquency, adult crime, substance abuse, and violence. At the same time, the project also provides a detailed look at the environments in which these social behaviors take place by collecting substantial amounts of data about urban Chicago, including its people, institutions, and resources.

Inmate sexuality data

Study surveyed 564 prisoners

ICPSR has now made available the results of an ethnographic study of prison rape conducted between April 2004 and September 2005. The goal of the study was to understand prison rape as a cultural concept that inmates may know something about, even if they had never been raped, threatened, or physically or sexually intimidated.

The study was conducted in 30 correctional institutions in ten U.S. states. A total of 564 (409 male and 155 female) high-security inmates were interviewed, using a probability sample design. Average interview length was just under an hour. The sole mode of data collection was an open-ended, semi-structured inmate interview. Questions were asked about inmate prison history, mental health, rape, social process, domestic violence and relationships, staff, institutional factors, perception of social roles, and demographic information. Also included are lexical responses and free list questions such as, "Why do inmates have sex with other inmates?"

CQ Press integrated reference

New tool for analyzing the “permanent campaign”

The CQ Press Political Reference Suite now available online, brings together seven major political reference tools. This will be valuable for students for looking for background information and primary sources. For advanced researchers, this resource puts election data, biographical information, and other political facts a click away. Extensive analysis throughout helps contextualize the data and documents. Added features of the suite include the ability to export data into spreadsheets and to set up profiles to save and bookmark information.