University of Michigan Library News

Jidong Yang to head Asia Library

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:40:14 EDT

Jidong Yang joined the University Library on July 1, 2008 as Head of the Asia Library. He comes to U-M from the University of Pennsylvania Library where he served as Penn's first Chinese Studies Librarian. Among his many accomplishments at Penn, Jidong significantly increased collection holdings, managed a major retrospective conversion project, created a web gateway to Chinese collections, and greatly expanded the Library's instruction program in support of East Asian studies.

Jidong completed his B.A. in History and M.A. in Chinese History at Beijing University. He received his M.S. in Library and Information Science from Rutgers University and Ph.D. in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. An active scholar and teacher, Jidong's publications and presentations span a range of topics in Chinese history and literature, including particular focus on the application of technology and digital content to research in Asian Studies. His professional affiliations include the Council on East Asian Libraries, the Association for Asian Studies, the American Historical Association, and the American Library Association.

Arrival of Espresso Book Machine

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:37:24 EDT

In the past few days you may have noticed some unusual activity behind the circulation desk on the first floor of the Shapiro Library. You are seeing the installation and preliminary testing of the Library's new Espresso Book Machine, an exciting new addition to our suite of services.

The EBM is a book-making machine that automatically prints, binds, and trims--on demand--library-quality paperback books with 4-color covers indistinguishable from their factory made versions. The EBM will print, bind and trim a 300 page book in about 7 minutes - a little more than the amount of time it takes to get a cappuccino across the way at Bert's Cafe.

As you all know, The University of Michigan Library has invested significantly, through its partnership with Google and through its own efforts, in the digitization of its print collection. With so much effort going into getting our print books into digital form, you might well ask why we're investing in a machine that gets digital books into print form.

Rather than a one-size-fits-all solution, we believe that the best book format varies in relationship to its uses and its users. Some of the time, an electronic book -- that can be accessed any time, anywhere, and quickly searched - is exactly what we need. At other times, the ideal form of the book is a nicely bound copy that helps with sustained reading, that serves as a physical reminder of a reading experience or that can easily be passed from hand to hand. High-quality, cost-effective print is an important part of the digital future, and the Espresso Book Machine helps make it possible to connect our users with the information they need, when they need it and in the form they want it.

There are many possible services that we can provide through the EBM.
Initially, we'll be able to begin to provide affordable reprints of out-of-copyright books from the Library's collection and from resources like the Internet Archive. Over time, we anticipate offering other services such as:

* Small runs of printed books produced by classes, such as anthologies of creative writing
* Printed copies of proceedings of University conferences and events
* Printing and binding course materials
* Self-publishing for Ann Arbor authors

Library staff will be testing the EBM through the early part of the summer and learning more about both its capabilities and maintenance. We hope to have the EBM ready for demonstrations sometime in July and in full production mode by the end of the summer.

Enhancements to Mirlyn

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:33:31 EDT

MLibrary is pleased to announce a number of enhancements to the functionality of Mirlyn, the Library's catalog.
Changes include:

The content of an MBook (one of the MLibrary's digitized holdings) are searchable from its Mirlyn record. This functionality will not be available for digitized journals.

Cover images or title page images from Google are included when available.

Rights (access) information for our digital books, both Mbooks and Google Books is more clearly displayed.

Direct links to Mbooks from the Mirlyn results page are provided.

There are improvements to the speed of display for holdings pages.

Links to digitized works available at Google Books are available even if they have not yet been scanned from our own collections.

Links to digitized materials that did not originate at the University of Michigan will continue to be made available through Mirlyn

See http://mirlyn.lib.umich.edu/F/?func=direct&doc_number=005417795&local_base=AA_PUB for an example of many of these enhancements in action.

Library Welcomes Michigan Debaters

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:34:48 EDT

Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase alternative energy incentives in the United States.

The annual University of Michigan Debate Institute www.michigandebate.com is taking place from June 22 � August 9, 2008. This nationally recognized experience provides students with an excellent opportunity to develop critical thinking and persuasive communication skills. Debate Institute participants are instructed by the nation's most accomplished and experienced workshop faculty; comprised of national champion high school and college coaches and outstanding intercollegiate debaters who are committed to providing a constructive and stimulating educational environment for students. Workshop faculty have coached fifteen college and high school national championship teams over the past decade.

Each year, the University Library plays an integral role in the success of the Michigan Debate institutes. Besides providing the wealth of resources available to the debaters, library staff create customized web sites to help participants in conduct thorough research related to the designated topic (e.g., http:// www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/debate08.html) and assist the students with many day to day questions.

Debaters will primarily be using the libraries as follows:
Undergrad library every day from 1pm to 5pm.
Graduate library Sunday 2pm to 5pm, Monday-Saturday 1pm to 5pm.
Science library every day 1pm to 5pm.
AAEL library every day 1pm to 5pm.

We welcome the 2008 Debate Institute and the opportunity to demonstrate the Michigan Difference! The library�s contact with the Debate Institute is Brenda Fischer from the Undergraduate Library � please contact her with any questions that arise.

Don't miss your chance to see John U. Bacon at Hatcher Library, Nov. 6 at 7pm

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 09:56:11 EST

John Bacon, co-author with Bo Schembechler of Bo's Lasting Lessons, will discuss some of the principles that made Bo such a lasting influence and successful leader. The event will be held in room 100 at the University of Michigan Hatcher Graduate Library. Light refreshments and an opportunity to talk with the author will follow.

This is a very special opportunity to hear Bacon talk about how Bo achieved his great success both on and off the football field. In the book, Bo describes the timeless values that led him to become not only the winningest football coach at the most successful program in the nation, but also a beloved leader far beyond the gridiron.

The public is welcome. Light refreshments and an opportunity to talk with the author will follow.

Trial Access to eBooks on Science Direct

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 09:36:02 EDT

Now through July 31, all three campuses of the University of Michigan have access to eBooks on ScienceDirect. During this trial period we'll have access to more than 500 titles, mainly in the areas of science, technology, and medicine with a little psychology thrown in for good measure. Please take a look and email your comments to Kathleen Folger. There is a link to the trial in SearchTools or, if you're on campus, you can access it directly from this address.

A complete list of the titles available during the trial is available on the ScienceDirect website: http://info.sciencedirect.com/content/books/docs/ebooks_triallistSD.xls

Revised Copyright Website

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 09:22:18 EDT

The University of Michigan Library's Intellectual Property Specialists are pleased to announce the launch of a completely overhauled U-M Copyright website. This new site will better serve the U-M community by providing basic and practical information on copyright, and by directing users to trustworthy resources both on the web and at the Library.

The revised site is full of new content, and has been redesigned to improve accessibility and help users understand the increasingly complex world of intellectual property. The goal of the site is to provide straightforward information and clarification on the issues most relevant to scholars, researchers, staff, and students. It offers guidance on questions such as: What works are protected by copyright and which ones are not? How do you request permission to use a resource? What are the current legal battles about file sharing about, and how do they affect U-M users? What are our rights and responsibilities regarding copyright?

The site provides useful links to other U-M offices that handle copyright issues, copyright information from other universities, and the United States Copyright Office's website. Links to sites that promote online intellectual freedom are also featured.

Feedback and questions are always welcome. If you have any questions, please contact an Intellectual Property Specialist from this page: http://copyright.umich.edu./contact.html

U-M Library online collections among largest worldwide

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 09:27:16 EDT

The University of Michigan Library's digitization partnership with Google may garner most of the attention, but for many years the Library on its own has been a pioneer in providing online digital content. Confirming the U-M Library's leadership position, a recent ranking of scholarly resources on the internet has placed U-M Library initiatives high in the rankings worldwide in two major categories.

The University of Michigan's Institutional Repository, Deep Blue, was listed as the eleventh largest repository of university content by the Registry of Open Access Repositories, an organization that tracks open access archives worldwide. No other U.S. based repository was listed higher in this category. This is especially significant given that Deep Blue has only been online for a little over a year.

With over 35,000 titles Deep Blue is one of the fastest-growing and most robust online institutional archives anywhere. Deep Blue's mission is to preserve and make easily accessible online the work of U-M faculty, which in many cases is difficult to find, out of print, or only available through expensive subscriptions to journals or other databases. Jim Ottaviani, Deep Blue's Coordinator, prefers not to overplay the ranking's importance as the sole indicator of Deep Blue's impact, focusing instead on the quality of its service: "We've had hundreds of active users and over a million downloads in our first year, so we're pleased Deep Blue has such strong campus support. We're excited that we are able to attract very high quality work and enable the greatest possible access to U-M research."

In the larger category of digital collections, the University of Michigan Library's online collections ranked fourth. Above the U-M on the list are the renowned collections PubMed Central and arXiv, covering biomedical and physics literature, respectively. PubMed is run by the federal government, and arXiv has had broad disciplinary support for more than fifteen years, so it is especially significant that a university library ranks favorably alongside them.

U-M Library online collections are managed by the Digital Library Production Service (DLPS) and the Scholarly Publishing Office; examples of materials they make available include the books in the Making of America collection and contemporary journals such as Philosopher's Imprint. While PubMed and arXiv cater to highly specialized fields, U-M collections exhibit incredible breadth, ranging from the humanities to the sciences.

The U-M Library's numbers in this ranking do not include the hundreds of thousands of items that have already been digitized as part of the ongoing MBooks project, the U-M Library's partnership with Google to digitize its entire print collection. When the MBooks titles that are currently digitized are included in future rankings, the U-M Library could move up one or perhaps two spots.

As Associate University Librarian John Wilkin argues, rankings such as these provide evidence of the significant impact that the U-M Library has made in contributing to and shaping scholarly content on the Internet: "Over the years, we have worked to open our collections to the world and to create significant public goods. These rankings demonstrate the way that a university library can shape the nature of online research and access to scholarship."