Earth and Mineral Sciences Library

Holiday Hours
During the week of Christmas, the library will only be open Thursday and Friday from Noon-5 p.m.

MRS Symposia Proceedings papers online - We have purchased access to the fulltext of the MRS symposia papers primarily from 2000 onwards. We will no longer purchase the MRS symposia proceedings in print format.

November 2007 News

Thanksgiving Hours
During the week of Thanksgiving the library will only be open Monday-Wednesday from 7:45 a.m. to 5 p.m. Please plan accordingly.

ICOLC Statement to AAAS re Science dropping out of JSTOR
On October 30, ICOLC (the International Coalition of Library Consortia) sent this letter to AAAS. It was signed by 72 consortia, including Palinet and the CIC. Essentially, it is a response to the decision by the AAAS to withhold future issues of the publication, Science, from the JSTOR archive and prohibit JSTOR from making issues of Science currently held in the archive available to new JSTOR participants. Penn State continues to lack access to the online issues of Science since we have been unable to reach an agreement with the AAAS on pricing that isn't three to five times more than the price paid by our CIC counterparts. The library continues to purchase print copies of Science; individuals and students can purchase personal access to the online version for $99 and $75 respectively.

Penn State is an active participant in various consortia such as PALCI (the Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium, Inc.). One of the most valuable aspects of being a consortia member is the ability to quickly borrow materials from consortium members (see E-ZBorrow). Within PALCI, Penn State is a net lender of materials to other libraries, lending nearly twice as many titles as we borrow. When we look at all the lending requests we receive (from PALCI and beyond), the EMS Library has two of the top ten most requested journals at Penn State - Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology and the Journal of Risk Research. Other heavily requested titles include Transactions of the Nonferrous Metals Society of China, Key Engineering Materials, and Journal of Materials Science and Technology.

October 2007 News

Goldsmiths'-Kress library of economic literature, Segment I (records to 1800) records added to The CAT
Over 29,000 records for individual titles in Segment I of the microfilm collection Goldsmiths'-Kress library of economic literature have been added to The CAT. Considered by some to be the definitive research collection in economic history, Goldsmiths'-Kress library of economic literature brings together the holdings of two libraries at the University of London (Goldsmiths’) and Kress Library Graduate School of Business Administration at Harvard University. The complete collection exhaustively documents the fundamentals of Western economic philosophy and business theory from the last half of the 15th century to 1850. Comprising material in more than 10 European languages, this collection of "economic" literature in fact covers political and social history as well. The subjects represented include commerce, slavery, social conditions, colonialism, Chartism, technological advances, demography, political theory, and Irish-English relations. A browse search by series or title with the string "Goldsmiths'-Kress library of economic literature" will retrieve the records.

American Broadsides and Ephemera records added to The CAT
Over 29,000 records for items in the collection American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series I, have been added to The CAT. Based on the American Antiquarian Society’s collection of American broadsides and ephemera, this resource offers fully searchable facsimile images of broadsides printed between 1820 and 1900 and ephemera printed between 1760 and 1900. The remarkably diverse subjects of broadsides range from contemporary accounts of the Civil War, unusual occurrences and natural disasters to official government proclamations, tax bills and town meeting reports. The collection also includes autobiographies and dying confessions of convicted criminals, theater playbills, sheet almanacs, publishers’ prospectuses, advertisements, newspaper carriers’ addresses, patriotic and popular songs and poems, and items illustrating political party organizations and controversies. A search by series or title with the string "American broadsides and ephemera, Series 1" will retrieve the records.

The Libraries has begun a test of Springer e-books. We now have access to the fulltext of 2005-2007 imprints in the Springer Engineering E-book Collection. Please let us know if you find these e-books useful. Catalog records for the titles in the collection are being added to The Cat. If you would like to browse the collection, go to www.springerlink.com and select the subject collection "Engineering" then limit to books.

Peace Research Abstracts is the latest database aquired by the Libraries. It contains references to materials related to peace research, including conflict resolution, international affairs, peace psychology, and other areas of key relevance to the discipline. Most content is from 1990 onward.

The EMS Library's reference area has been revamped to improve accessability and work space.

September 2007 News

The University Libraries are having an Open House on September 18-19. It is a wonderful opportunity for our patrons to become better acquainted with the resources and staff available to serve them. The event features lots of prize drawings and a festive pirate theme. Please be sure to check it out!

The library has purchased the backfiles for the Journal of the American Ceramic Society. It is now available online from vol.1 1918 to date.

The backfile of the Journal of Geology will shortly be available via the JSTOR archive.

The Libraries has purchased two journal backfile collections from Springer - the Engineering Collection and the Chemistry and Material Science Collection. These two backfiles include over 100 titles in science and engineering and improve our users' access to the fulltext of many important journals.

August 2007 News

The American Association for the Advancement of Science, publisher of Science , announced the termination of their agreement with JSTOR, although JSTOR will continue to provide access to 1880-2002 issues of Science . In addition, the AAAS is withdrawing fulltext access to Science from other venders. Since the Penn State Libraries has been unable to reach an agreement with AAAS on licensing access to Science, users will need to use the print copies in the Libraries or purchase Science directly using a personal account ($99; $75 for students).

Two new publication archives are available from the Libraries  - The WEPAN (Women in Engineering Programs and Advocates Network) Conference Proceedings and the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography .

Penn State will participate in the Google/CIC project to digitize up to ten million volumes of library collections.  Collections from the Earth and Mineral Sciences will be included with emphasis on our mining, meteorology, and materials science titles.

Beth Roberts, Earth sciences librarian, has accepted a position at the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress.

July 2007 News

The E&MS Library will be showing a series of films about Dale Chihuly, the extraordinary glass artist for ArtsFest on Saturday, July 14th starting at noon and running until about 4pm. So, if you'd like to beat the heat and relax for awhile in the cool air conditioning and watch some fantastic films, please stop by! For more about Dale Chihuly, please see his web site: http://www.chihuly.com/

The libraries now have access to the following new resources available from our A-Z list http://www.lias.psu.edu/alall.html:

• Praeger Security International Online (PSIO) Interdisciplinary and diverse in political perspective, Praeger Security International Online publishes material on international security, including defense and foreign policy, strategy, regional security, military history, and terrorism. Contains information on oil and mining and other topics related to security and policy.
  
  
• OxResearch
  Provides articles analyzing economic and political developments worldwide, and evaluates issues within a coherent political, social, and economic framework. The objective, multi-disciplinary articles are compiled by an international network of over 1000 faculty members at Oxford and other leading universities, as well as think tanks and other institutions of international standing.

• UNComtrade
  Comtrade provides commodity trade data for all available countries and areas since 1962. Currently, it contains almost 700 millions records. Download functions are UNLIMITED for Penn State Users.  NOTE: this use to be limited access.
  
• Yearbook of International Organizations Online This guide to global civil society networks provides extensive coverage of non-profit international organizations available today whether governmental or non-governmental. More then just a directory, the yearbook provides: organization descriptions; international organization participation; global action networks; a bibliography of resources; and statistics.
  

June 2007 News

The Lyell Collection is currently available for a free trial at Lyell Collection [http://www.lyellcollection.org/]. After June 18, access will be for subscribers only. The Lyell Collection has been launched to mark the 200th Anniversary of the Geological Society of London in 2007. This completely new service will feature both Journal of the Geological Society and Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology, each journal title having been captured back to its launch issue. Journal of the Geological Society has been digitized back to 1845 and some 6000 peer reviewed articles on 100 000 pages will be available. Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology will be available from its launch year in 1967, and feature some 1200 peer-reviewed articles over 15,000 pages.

May 2007 News

The libraries now have access to Knovel (Engineering and Science Handbooks) through our A to Z List. Knovel contains over 800 engineering and science handbooks, and related databases. The system has interactive capabilities that provide analytical tools to analyze the data they contain and produce tables and graphs.

On May 17th, The Geological Society of London is launching the Lyell Collection. The Lyell Collection is not an open-access collection, but the Geological Society has tried to make key elements as accessible as possible. Key online functionality, including article browsing, quick and advanced searching, eToc and research alerts, and GoogleScholar links are all available for free. In addition, all abstracts and chapter extracts, as well as the introductory article of each Special Publication are freely available to the public, as is the first chapter in key book titles. The full text of all articles cited in subscribed-to content, and articles which are hosted by HighWire Press (including GeoScienceWorld), are also available to subscribers."

April 2007 News

The Earth and Mineral Sciences Library will be hosting a film as part of the First Thursday Celebration. We will be showing Proteus: A Nineteenth Century Vision. "Through the works of biologist and philosopher Ernst Haeckel, the role of the sea as the "outer space" of his time is explored. Based almost entirely on 19th-century scientific illustrations, paintings, and photographs brought to life through innovative animation, Proteus explores the undersea world through a complex tapestry of biology, oceanography, scientific history, poetry and myth." We will be showing this film on Thursday, April 5th at 7pm. The film has a 59 minute running time. Please join us!

For information about Copyright, the Know Your Copy Rights brochure is now available online. The link below will take you to a short brochure on your copy rights.  Color versions are available at the same site < http://www.knowyourcopyrights.org/resourcesfac/kycrbrochure.shtml > along with a chart titled "What You Can Do". Print copies will be available from the EMS Library in the near future.
http://www.knowyourcopyrights.org/bm~doc/kycrbrochurebw.pdf

March 2007 News

We now have access to GeoscienceWorld database while we wait for our license agreement to be finalized. Once our license is finalized we will have "permanent" access to this database. You can access this database at: http://www.geoscienceworld.org . Here is a list of journals we now have online access to: http://www.geoscienceworld.org/lists/allsites.dtl .
The library has recently subscribed to Oxford Reference Online [ http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/GLOBAL.html ], a collection of ready-reference encyclopedias and dictionaries from Oxford University Press.  This resource offers searching for entries on maps and illustrations as well as earth and environmental science in addition to many other subject areas. You can search by keyword through a number of different reference works or choose to search only one reference work at a time such as A Dictionary of Earth Sciences.

Consumer Health Complete is a new resource available to all Pennsylvania libraries and their readers. Individuals can search Consumer Health Complete from the Access PA website ( http://www.accesspa.state.pa.us) and the POWER Library website ( http://www.powerlibrary.net) , from libraries and from home. Consumer Health Complete is a comprehensive resource for consumer-oriented health content.  It is designed to support patients' information needs and foster an overall understanding of health-related topics.  It includes the full text for 176 health reference books and encyclopedias.

February 2007 News

The Earth and Mineral Sciences library will have exciting tornado movies running all during EMEX on February 24th. We will also have a coloring station for kids and a book display. Please stop by and visit us!

The libraries now have access to several new items. One is the China Academic Journals database via the A-Z list.  These are full-text Chinese journal articles with a number of items that may be of interest to researchers in science and technology. This database offers access to over 1 million full-text articles from more than 300 journals published in China. Articles can be downloaded and viewed as Adobe Acrobat .pdf files. Input in Chinese characters is recommended for better search results.

The libraries also have access to a new newspaper electronic image newspaper database called PressDisplay (also listed on the A-Z E-Resources List). It provides 60 day archive of newspapers from around the U.S, and world. A couple of important benefits of this database are that it provides visual content in newspapers--photographs, advertising, etc. for study and research. In addition, PressDisplay provides a 60 day archive of stories, some of which will not appear in LexisNexis due to its "selected content policy" for many newspapers.

January 2007 News

The libraries now have access to all titles from Oxford University Press that we have subscriptions to in print. New online titles of particular interest to the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences include the Journal of Electron Microscopy, the Journal of Petrology and the Journal of Economic Geography.

The Penn State University Libraries' home page has been redesigned to provide improved access to the most commonly used library resources. Old favorites like The CAT and the E-Resources A-Z list have not changed, although they may have moved slightly. The URL for the libraries home page is: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/