Going up by Steam Power: New Gym, 1931 From the Munro Collection (see "Exhibit," below)

Newly Up: E-Journals Abound

E-journals can also be accessed from the library catalog. If you find a title in the library's web catalog, you can click on the link that says "electronic version" and be brought directly to the journal's home page. There is sometimes a third means of access. Several of the most used electronic indexes now link directly from the citation level to the article level for those journals that Tisch subscribes to electronically. These indexes include Web of Science and all the Ovid databases such as MEDLINE, Biological Abstracts, PsycINFO and ERIC. The Tisch Library is currently negotiating with the producers of all its major indexes to provide this service. The goal of Tisch bibliographers is to provide one-stop shopping for patrons, with the ability to link directly from a citation to the article itself.

The electronic journals at Tisch are provided by the major science and technology publishers in addition to key humanities and social science publishers such as Johns Hopkins University Press, MIT Press, and Oxford University Press. The current list of collections includes:

Academic Press IDEAL

ACM Digital Library

American Chemical Society

American Institute of Physics

American Mathematical Society

Annual Reviews

ASME Journals

BioMedNet

Ethnic NewsWatch

GenderWatch

IEEE Xplore

Institute of Physics

Journals@OVID

JSTOR

Project Muse

Royal Society of Chemistry

ScienceDirect (Elsevier)

Springer Verlag

Wiley InterScience

All these at your laptop, in transit or at Tisch!

Tisch reference librarians would be happy to introduce you to these resources either through a one-on-one instruction session or a class for your department and students. Call (at 7-5167) or e-mail Laurie Sabol, coordinator of library instruction, to make an appointment.

DVD Era Arrives at Tisch

A DVD (digital versatile disc or digital video disc) is essentially the size of a CD, but with a surface containing digital information in the form of microscopic pits that are interpreted by a laser pickup as a digital signal. Advancements in optical disc technology have allowed the DVD to keep the dimension of a CD but with a capacity seven times greater. Thus, a single DVD has enough storage space for 20,000 novels, 100,000 photos from a digital camera, or seven hours of CD-quality stereo music without compression. A standard single-sided, single-layered DVD-video disc can hold 4.7 gigabytes of information, allowing for two hours of video and digital surround sound.

Digital video technology offers pictures twice as sharp and clear as VHS and eliminates static and snow. Some of the other advantages of a DVD are:

• the possibility of encoding the disc with multiple picture sizes for different screen capacities,
• up to eight tracks of digital audio,
• the ability to encode thirty-two different language subtitles, each accessible at the touch of a remote control button,
• with some films, the ability to select from nine different camera angles for the same scene,
• special features such as original cinema trailers, script notes, behind-the-scenes documentaries on making the film, music video, humorous outtakes that only appear on DVD, and scenes removed from the original theatrical release,
• multiple storylines with the viewer given options, at certain points, as to how the story continues or ends, each selected by remote control,
• no physical contact between the player and disc surface to cause damage to the disc while in use, and
• instant rewind and fast forward.

For all these reasons it is easy to see why DVD is catching on so fast with the public!

Shipments of DVD players are expected to be up 48% this year and to overtake VCR sales in 2004. In fact, DVD players will boldly go where few consumer electric devices have gone before. The three astronauts on the Discovery mission will be delivering a DVD player and about fifty DVDs to the International Space Station.

This new format has been a real hit with faculty and students --

So stop by and try one!

One participant was Jeanne Marie Penvenne of the History Department. Conscious that the web and internet open numerous ways for Tufts students to explore African primary sources, newspapers, research materials and documents, she attended the workshop in preparation for her spring research seminar, "Africa: From the Outside Looking In." Although Professor Penvenne has developed electronic resources and incorporated library research orientations (led by Connie Reik) into her courses for years, Tisch electronic resources and research possibilities change so rapidly she wanted to catch up after a year's sabbatical leave. The workshop introduced new techniques for using search engines, explored the differences among them, and reviewed Tufts' impressive electronic databases and online journals. Penvenne hopes to take regular advantage of such workshops to keep pace with the digital world.

"The workshop was a rewarding experience for me," Sabol reflected, "and gave me a lot of insight as to how, if, and why instructors value the web for their courses and their own research." If you are interested in participating in the workshop the next time it is held, please contact Laurie Sabol (627-5167).

On Exhibit: "Melville S. Munro: Life and Works, 1913-1945."

Melville S. Munro standing next to tripod in the snow, n.d. From the Munro Collection

Born in 1881, Munro graduated from Tufts College with a B.S. in electrical engineering in 1904. He became an instructor in the Electrical Engineering Department in 1905 and was made a full professor by 1913. During his thirty-seven years on the faculty, Munro worked as the college's official photographer, recording an almost complete pictorial history of campus and student life until his retirement in 1941.

The Munro Collection, made up of almost 30,000 of his photographs mounted in more than 100 volumes, is part of the University's Special Collections held in the University Archives. Some of Munro's photographs are contained in the Image Database of the University Archives, searchable by photographer's name. The exhibit, on view in three installments in the library lobby from March 5 through the summer, features special selections from the collection and presents this body of work chronologically.

The College Bookstore, ca. 1930 From the Munro Collection

Eaton Library, June 6, 1931 From the Munro Collection

Instructional Partnerships

First-Year Students Get a First-Hand Introduction to Library Resources

Although these introductory library sessions go back many years, their number has been steadily increasing of late. In academic year 95/96, the librarians met with eighteen sections to reach a total of about 250 students. This year, estimates are that they will meet with seventy sections to reach over 900 of the 1200 freshman students enrolled. The percentage of increase for students is 260% and for sections approximately 290%!

Questioned about the value for their students, instructors typically respond as follows: "They seemed a lot more relaxed with the prospect of doing research and went about it more confidently," and "Their research was thorough and reflected a number of different kinds of sources." Students also evaluate the sessions favorably with such statements as, "I can now do research much more efficiently," "I have learned how to look broadly and specifically to find exactly what I am looking for," and "Now I have a command over the various resources which will be useful in completing my assignment."

Junior-Year Engineers Develop Skills in Information Retrieval

These information retrieval workshops are one outgrowth of a survey of alumni, together with other engineers from industry, that the School of Engineering recently conducted. Five professional skills were identified as being of particular benefit to graduating engineers. Besides the junior-year component, the school now offers course unit workshops in presentation and prototype skills for freshmen, teamwork skills for sophomores, and leadership skills for seniors.

Tisch librarians heartily agree that "information competence" (or "information literacy," as the skill is also known in library circles) is a prime contributor to patterns of lifelong learning, and thus an acquisition of benefit to all Tufts graduates!

What's New: Nomadic Computing and More!

Contributors to this issue:

Laura Walters

Richard Fleischer

Laurie Sabol, Jeanne Penvenne (History)

Leah Nelson

Wayne Powell, Robert Lind (Engineering)

Editor: Margaret Gooch