Library Stuff

Harvard News – “University’s content will showcase research, educational material”

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Press Release – “A new firearms research database launched by the Harvard School of Public Health makes scholarly articles more accessible to reporters, law enforcement, public health officials, policymakers, and the general public. The Firearms Research Digest (www.firearmsresearch.org) provides summaries of articles gathered from social science, criminology, medical and public health journals and is written in clear, accessible language for use by those outside academia. The website currently covers six years of research published between 2003 and 2008. The digest will be expanded over time to include articles from 1988 to the present.”

Harvard Library Newsh – “What do John Keats’s Shakespeare, Wordsworth’s library catalog, and Victor Hugo’s commonplace book have in common with primers and spellers and other historical materials on learning to read? Each item is among the 1,200 books and manuscripts—comprising more than 250,000 web-accessible pages—now discoverable online in Reading: Harvard Views of Readers, Readership, and Reading History. Developed by Harvard’s Open Collections Program with generous support from the Arcadia Fund, Reading is an online exploration of the intellectual, cultural, and political history of reading as reflected in the historical holdings of the Harvard Libraries. Visit the collection at http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/reading.

Harvard University Library – “The first snow of the year lingers on the steps of Widener Library as Helen Shenton and Robert Darnton make their way back to the University Library Office in Wadsworth House. It’s a short three days since Shenton, the head of collection care for the British Library, was named the deputy director of the Harvard University Library. Already, she and Darnton are immersed in issues of library finance, space, organization, consolidation.”

John Palfrey – “Over the past nine months or so, a group of us have worked on a Harvard-wide Task Force to consider our library systems. The report is being issued today by Harvard’s Provost, Steven E. Hyman, who chaired our Task Force. Over the next year-plus, we will be working to implement changes in five key areas of the Harvard University library system.”

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Harvard University Library News – “Overall, the papers document the business transactions and family history of members of the Dunster and Glover families during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, while others offer insight into the legal system in colonial America.”

Direct to the collection

Harvard Crimson – “Seven months after its creation, a task force chaired by University Provost Steven E. Hyman is poised to recommend fundamental changes to Harvard’s library system this semester, with an eye toward cutting costs and centralizing its administrative structure.”

ResearchBuzz – “The Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication has launched its public beta site for its open access repository, DASH (Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard).”

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Harvard Business School Working Knowledge: “HBS professor Andy McAfee had his doubts about Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia created and maintained by volunteers. “I just didn’t think it could yield a good outcome or a good encyclopedia. But I started consulting it and reading the entries, and I said, ‘This is amazing.’ ”

(Thanks Edana!)