Discipline-specific research consultation and instruction

Information on topics in scholarly communication, e.g. copyright, fair use, and publisher agreements

You can identify your liaison and find contact information online, or, to identify a librarian who can help with topics or programs not covered on the existing list, contact one of the Library's disciplinary coordinators.

Faculty are encouraged to drop by the Academic Liaison Services Department, which is located on the 2nd floor, east tower of the Main Library. While only a few of the subject specialists have offices on 2East, anyone in the department will be more than happy to answer questions, or to direct you to the appropriate librarian or department.

For general information, email alsdept@northwestern.edu or call Harriet Lightman at 847-491-2920.

"A big part of my job is to increase awareness of these issues, and answer questions about them," says Mariann Burright, who joined NUL's Academic Liaison Services Department as the Scholarly Communications Librarian this past July. Previously, she was a collection management librarian for Life Sciences at the University of Maryland, and at NUL, she's also liaison for Life Sciences and Environmental Studies, and responsible for developing the research collections in those areas.

"Faculty in all the academic disciplines are affected by the mounting tension between their increasing need for access to electronically published content and the increasing legal and economic restrictions on their access to that content," she says, "but it's especially acute in the sciences. So part of this job is also to think about creative ways for scholars to publish as widely and cost-effectively as possible."

Research libraries across the country have increasingly taken on these scholarly communications issues as a logical extension of other intellectual services they provide to faculty. "As librarians, we're purveyors of knowledge, and faculty are the producers of that knowledge," Burright says. "So it makes sense for us to work in partnership to protect the content and the intellectual property rights in a constantly changing electronic publishing environment."

Mariann Burright is available to talk to academic departments, programs, and other groups about copyright and other electronic publishing issues. She can be reached at 847-467-4637 or at m-burright@northwestern.edu. You can also visit the scholarly communications webpage for information on a range of topics including copyright, open access publishing, and digital repositories.

Save time with Quicksearch, which cross-searches a pre-selected group of databases in your subject field with a minimum of set-up steps.

Customize a personal list of databases that you can cross-search simultaneously. You can store your searches and search results for future use, and arrange for automatic updates when new material appears in your selected sources.

Search for journal citations instantly by plugging them into a link that will instantly tell you whether the full text of the cited article can also be accessed online.

For more information about finding electronic resources, contact your faculty liaison or go to "Ask a Librarian" on our website.

ARTstor includes a set of tools for viewing, presenting, and managing images for research and teaching purposes. On Thursday, November 6, in conjunction with the Department of Art History, the NUL Art Collection will offer ARTstor training sessions from 10 - 4 pm. Art Collection. Elizabeth Darocha Berenz, ARTstor Public Services Librarian, will do the training. She can be reached at 888-278-0079; email userservices@artstor.org. Sessions are scheduled as follows:

10 a.m. ARTstor Introduction, 2East new Reference classroom (2699)
11 a.m. Teaching with ARTstor, Forum Room, Mitchell Multimedia Center
Noon Lunch
1 p.m. ARTstor for Graduate Students, Forum Room, Mitchell Multimedia Center
2 p.m. ARTstor for Undergraduates, Forum Room, Mitchell Multimedia Center
3 p.m. ARTstor for Administrators/open session, Forum Room, Mitchell Multimedia Center

Would you like to be notified about new e-journals, e-texts, and databases? We have a new blog devoted solely to announcing and describing e-journals, e-books, and databases as we acquire them. Resources are categorized by multiple subject (art & architecture, journalism, medicine, etc. ) and format categories and are fully searchable. The blog lists all e-resources acquired since January 2008.

To receive automatic updates when a new resource is posted, just enter your e-mail address on the blog's home page or sign up for the RSS feed.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.