Month: February 2016

Roundtable: The Historical Background of the New Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

Posted on by Lee Anne Titangos

Please join us for the first Bancroft Library Roundtable of the spring semester! It will take place in the Lewis-Latimer Room of The Faculty Club at noon on Thursday, February 18. Ann Harlow, an independent scholar, will present “The Historical Background of the New Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.”

Ann Harlow will speak about the rocky road the University of California has been on in developing art museums from the 1870s to today. She will show images of the various buildings where art has been exhibited, as well as others that were imagined on paper but never built. Ms. Harlow is the former director of the art museum at Saint Mary?s College, author of an article on the beginnings of San Francisco?s art museums, and curator of the current exhibition at the Berkeley Historical Society, ?Art Capital of the West?: Real and Imagined Art Museums and Galleries in Berkeley. She has used Bancroft resources for all of these projects as well as her book-in-progress, a dual biography of art patron Albert Bender and artist Anne Bremer.

We hope to see you there. The talks are free and open to the public.

TRIAL: Primary Sources: Foreign Office Files for the Middle East

Posted on by dorner

The Library currently has a trial for Adam Matthew Digital’s collection of FOREIGN OFFICE FILES FOR THE MIDDLE EAST, 1971-1981.

This currently includes only Module 1, 1971-1974: The 1973 Arab-Israel War and the Oil Crisis, which was released in January.

The trial ends February 29. The resource can be accessed at www.archivesdirect.amdigital.co.uk/FO_MiddleEast. With trial access it is not possible to download documents in the collection.

“Digitising full runs of Foreign Office files from The National Archives, this collection provides invaluable insight into events in the Middle East during the 1970s. Covering events such as the Arab-Israeli War, the Lebanese civil war and the Iranian Revolution, Foreign Office Files for the Middle East, 1971-1981 is an essential resource to help students and researchers understand the modern Middle East. This collection documents UK interests in the internal activities and political relationships of countries such as Egypt, Israel, Syria, Iran, Libya and Lebanon, the oil affairs of nations like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Algeria and Iraq, as well as participating in military intervention and peace negotiations during key conflicts, and monitoring the UK’s commercial interests. Split chronologically into three modules, Foreign Office Files for the Middle East, 1971-1981 tackles these events using a variety of material, from correspondence between civil servants and embassies, reports and memorandums, to political summaries and personality profiles.”

Two more modules will be published in the future:
 • Module 2, 1975-1978: The Lebanese Civil War and the Camp David Accords (Nov 2016)
 • Module 3, 1979-1981: The Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War (Jan 2017)

Please contact me with your thoughts about the usefulness of this resource.

Digital Humanities: Mapping Occupation

Posted on by dorner

Quoted from the project website:

“Mapping Occupation, by Gregory P. Downs and Scott Nesbit, captures the regions where the United States Army could effectively act as an occupying force in the Reconstruction South. For the first time, it presents the basic nuts-and-bolts facts about the Army’s presence, movements that are central to understanding the occupation of the South. That data in turn reorients our understanding of the Reconstruction that followed Confederate surrender. Viewers can use these maps as a guide through a complex period, a massive data source, and a first step in capturing the federal government’s new reach into the countryside.

“From the start of the Civil War and through the 1870s, the U.S. Army remained the key institution that newly freed people in the South could access as they tried to defend their rights. While slaves took the crucial steps to seize their chance at freedom, soldiers helped convince planters that slavery was dead, overturned local laws and court cases, and in other ways worked with freed people to construct a new form of federal power on the ground.

“The army was central to the story of Reconstruction, yet basic information about where the Army was, in what numbers, and with what types of troops, has been difficult to find. Downs gathered this information from manuscript sources in the National Archives and other repositories in preparation for his book, After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2015). Mapping Occupation presents an expanded version of this information in an online interface and as a downloadable data. Downs and Nesbit then used these locations to create rough estimates of the Army’s reach and, importantly, the places from which freedpeople and others could reach the Army in order to bring complaints about outrages and other forms of injustice. The methods by which we created these estimates are discussed here.

“Mapping Occupation presents this history and geography in two ways: as a spatial narrative, guiding the user through key stages in the spatial history of the army in Reconstruction; and as an exploratory map, in which users are free to build their own narratives out of the data that we have curated here. Both afford visitors to the site important tools for mapping the Army’s reach in the Reconstruction South.”

Story Hour: Anthony Marra, Feb 11

Posted on by UC Berkeley Library

Anthony Marra

Story Hour will feature author, Anthony Marra, on Thursday, February 11th at 5:00pm.

Story Hour in the Library is a monthly prose reading series held in UC Berkeley’s Morrison Library.

Anthony Marra has won a Whiting Award, Pushcart Prize, and the Narrative Prize.

His first novel, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, won the National Book Critics Circle’s inaugural John Leonard Prize and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in fiction, as well as the inaugural Carla Furstenberg Cohen Fiction Award. Marra’s novel was a National Book Award longlist selection as well as a shortlist selection for the Flaherty-Dunnan first novel prize. In addition, his work has been anthologized in The Best American Non-Required Reading 2012.

He received an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop and was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, where he currently teaches as the Jones Lecturer in Fiction. He has lived and studied in Eastern Europe, and now resides in Oakland, CA.

When: Thursday, February 11, 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

Where: Morrison Library

Admission: Free and open to the public

E-mail: storyhour@berkeley.edu

Contributed by Gigi Gillard, Donor Stewardship & Events Coordinator

UC Berkeley | The University Library

Improve your search for biomedical and health resources, Feb 11

Posted on by UC Berkeley Library

magnifying glass

The Public Health Library is offering a hands-on practical workshop to help improve your searches for biomedical and health resources.

To attend, go to the Bioscience Library Training Room in the Valley Life Sciences Building on Thursday, February 11, at 10 am. The workshop will be an hour long and you are welcome to practice for another 30 minutes afterwards.

No need to register in advance. Students, faculty, staff, and researchers are all welcome.

For more details, see the recent blog post describing the workshop.

Love Your Data Week, Feb 8th – 12th

Posted on by Anna Sackmann

Love Your Data Week is a nationwide campaign designed to raise awareness about research data management, sharing, and preservation. Activities and events will be held from February 8th – 12th to promote data management awareness.

Follow the conversation at #LYD16.

Two data management events will be held in the library during this week.

1. Love Your Data Pop Up in BIDS (Doe 190) Tuesday, February 9th from 1-3 pm

Stop by the Pop Up to learn how to create a data portfolio to showcase your skills, get free access to unlimited cloud storage, or play a round of Data Bingo – you might win a prize! Also available at the Pop Up: one-on-one data advisory services, help finding data for your next project, recommendations for analysis and tools, and much more!

2. Out of the Archives, Into your Laptop Workshop (Doe 308A) Friday, February 12th from 2-3:30 pm

This workshop will focus on capturing visual and manuscript materials, but will be useful for any researcher collecting research materials from archives. Topics will include smart capture workflows, preserving and moving metadata, copyright, and platforms for managing and organizing your research data, The workshop will be co-presented by Mary Elings (Bancroft Library), Lynn Cunningham and Jason Hosford (Art History Visual Resources Center), and Jamie Wittenberg and Camille Villa (Research IT).

This campaign is a partnership between the Library, Research Data Management, Research IT, bConnected, Bancroft, Digital Humanities, ETS, and BIDS.

Posted by Anna Sackmann, Science Data & Engineering Librarian; content by Jamie Wittenberg, Research Data Management Service Design Analyst

Access one of the richest US government collections in the world #lovemyFDL

Posted on by UC Berkeley Library

Have you ever used US Census statistics to support your research? What about quotes from a presidential speech, a Supreme Court opinion or congressional hearing?

Maybe a USGS map, government dataset or report has bolstered the argument of your research paper, book, or article.

Data from the US government can be incredibly helpful.  If you agree, show us some love on social media this month.

Use #lovemyFDL to tweet about your experience, and mention the library, @ucberkeleylib

As a Federal Depository Library (FDL), the Library has received materials from the Government Publishing Office for the past 130 years. Now, the Library has one of the richest US government information collections in the world.

Stop by a reference desk or send us an email if you need help finding information from the US government.

Post contributed by Jesse Silva, Government Documents Librarian

Embase Workshop: Improve your biomedical/health searches! Feb. 11, 10am

Posted on by UC Berkeley Library

Embase Workshop: Improve your searches!

Thursday February 11 | 10-11:30 a.m. | Valley Life Sciences Building, Bioscience Library Training Room

No pre-registration required; all are welcome: students, faculty, staff, researchers.

Please join us for a 60 minute workshop* (*with optional 30 minute question/practice time afterwards) incorporating hands-on examples to more effectively search Embase.

You will learn:

  • How the Embase database differs from PubMed in content, scope and functionality
  • How to do a quick search and use search history to design more effective searches
  • How to use Emtree to find the best term and synonyms for searching
  • Where to go for help and support for your Embase searching needs.

Derrick Umali (Elsevier Life Science Customer Consultant) will be on hand to deliver the session and answer additional questions or provide additional workflows after the workshop.
Use one of the PCs in the Training Room, or bring your laptop!

Finding all relevant information from the biomedical literature is key to creating high-quality reviews that accelerate evidence-based clinical decisions and improve patient outcomes.
Unique coverage of the most important types of evidence and search tools specifically designed to pinpoint relevant biomedical literature ensures that Embase enables all researchers to generate the most impactful reviews in support of Evidence-Based Medicine and Evidence-Based Public Health.

Embase features:

  • More than 30 million records from over 8,500 journals and ‘grey literature’ from over 1.9 million conference abstracts
  • Coverage of the most important types of evidence, including randomized controlled trials, controlled clinical trials, Cochrane reviews and meta-analyses
  • Deep indexing using the Emtree life science thesaurus, which includes over 70,000 preferred terms and 290,000 synonyms, as well as trial and study types, reviews and meta-analysis
  • Unique non-English content, along with detailed indexing of study types, trial phases, patient populations etc.

The Cochrane Collaboration recommends searching in Embase

Embase Fact Sheet (PDF),
Embase Systematic Review Guide (PDF)

Love Your Data Week Events

Posted on by UC Berkeley Library

Love Your Data Week is a nationwide campaign designed to raise awareness about research data management, sharing, and preservation. Activities and events will be held from February 8th-12th to promote data management awareness.

Follow the conversation at #LYD16.

Two data management events will be held in the library during this week.

  • Love Your Data Pop Up in BIDS (Doe 190)
    Tuesday, February 9th from 1-3pm
    Stop by the Pop Up to learn how to create a data portfolio to showcase your skills, get free access to unlimited cloud storage, or play a round of Data Bingo – you might win a prize! Also available at the Pop Up: one-on-one data advisory services, help finding data for your next project, recommendations for analysis and tools, and much more!
  • Out of the Archives, Into Your Laptop Workshop (Doe 308A)
    Friday, February 12th from 2-3:30pm
    This workshop will focus on capturing visual and manuscript materials, but will be useful for any researcher collecting research materials from archives. Topics will include smart capture workflows, preserving and moving metadata, copyright, and platforms for managing and organizing your research data. The workshop will be co-presented by Mary Elings (Bancroft Library), Lynn Cunningham and Jason Hosford (Art History Visual Resources Center), and Jamie Wittenberg and Camille Villa (Research IT).

This campaign is a partnership between the Library, Research Data Management, Research IT, bConnected, Bancroft, Digital Humanities, ETS, and BIDS.

Post contributed by Jamie Wittenberg, Research Data Management Service Design Analyst

Citation Management Workshops

Posted on by UC Berkeley Library

Man at computer

Need help using a bioinformatics tool like PubMed, Gene, Protein, Nucleotide, or BLAST?

Want to learn more about navigating biomedical literature?

Or maybe you’re looking to organize your research citations on any topic?

The Library is pleased to offer several workshops on NCBI, Mendeley and Embase.

All sessions will take place in the Bioscience Library Training Room (VLSB 2189). No need to register in advance.

* Zotero is another tool for managing citations. Attend a workshop at the Environmental Design Library.

  • Monday, February 8th from 1-2pm
  • 305 Wuster Hall, Library Training Room.