Erica Isaacson to Attend Berkeley

One of the grand queries of the 21st century is where will Erica Isaacson go to do her graduate work? She had a look at the Courant Institute, and was showered with praise and enticements from Princeton, but in the end, Erica announced that Berkeley is the best fit for her.

The Swain Hall Library wishes Erica all the best in the years to come; we shall miss her presence, her renowned mathematics poetry, and her wit*.

* By wit, we mean the broad sense, 5a definition from the Oxford English Dictionary 2nd edition online "5. a. Good or great mental capacity; intellectual ability; genius, talent, cleverness; mental quickness or sharpness, acumen. arch."

The Oxford English Dicitionary is brought to you online by the IU Libraries!

Taiwan's National Science Council College Student Creativity Contest

Are you sick and tired of screaming at the top of your lungs at your bike partner when you're cruising around town on your tandem? (screaming because you can't talk face-to-face). This side-by-side tandem was designed by 3 university students with interdisciplinary backgrounds in Taiwan in 2004. The theme of the contest was "Home".

It's funny, the NSC Review annual report shows the bike, but nowhere does it give the names of the students or show a picture.

[p. 96, National Science Council Review 2004]

Text Bite, Vol. 1, #2

"...scientific progress is not a free-for-all where all ideas are equally credible and all theories deserve equal weight and respect. Science is not a democratic process."

Sten Odenwald
The Astronomy Cafe, QB52 ,034 1998
p. 123

Odenwald was responding to a question about Big Bang Theory. But this idea is bigger than that.

Text Bite, Vol. 1, #1

"...leaders have allowed the university's mission to drift from education to customer satisfaction...Harvard is no longer a city upon a hill but merely a brand name...to persuade me that I should back the newly proposed, requirement-light curriculum, one professor offered that it meant we faculty members would no longer have to teach students who did not want to take our courses. But the courses from which students learn the most are often ones they would be disinclined to take without being pressed to do so."

Harry R. Lewis, Computer Science Professor, Harvard University
Chronicle of Higher Education
"Has Harvard Lost Its Way?"
March 24, 2006
pp B6-B8

I agree with this essay, and it's likely that his message applies to other high quality universities. It's adapted from Lewis' 2006 forthcoming book "Excellence Without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education"

A Warming Earth

Swain Hall Library has dubbed 2006 the "Year of Melting Ice", given what is happening globally, and given the beer brewing reference question on how to get 3 gallons of boiling water down to 158 degrees. A good web site on this is the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. There are some interesting models out there having to do with drought, famine, disease, mass migration...the one that caught my eye is the rising sea level model that shows how much of North America will be submerged. On a more optimistic note, check out Isaac Berzin's ideas to use algae to clean smoke, and to convert it back to bio-fuels. Will GreenFuel Technologies Corporation go anywhere?

Focus on SAS - Statistical Analysis for Huge datasets

Have a look at QA276.4 .O59 2005 "SAS Programming and Data Analysis", if you happen to be a heavy user of Wharton's WRDS (or even if you're not...). I spent some time this morning chatting with Zhongyan Zhu, a 2nd year PhD in the Kelley School (Finance). We have the Books 24X7 package and have had it for a few years, but I've often wondered why SAS print titles are borrowed with such frequency over here.

Zhu, whose research focus is likely going to be on stochastic applications in finance, said he used Matlab for some time, but he realized that SAS is what he needs. His datasets can be as large as 600 megabytes; while Matlab can handle this if he breaks it into several separate files, SAS has the capability to manipulate or process this amount at once, and much more efficiently.

Some other statistics related books that are getting heavy use these days include these pictured, and most are available off the 7-Day Loan shelf in the Swain Hall Library.

So what is SAS? Originally it stood for Statistical Analysis System, it's a series of statistical products put out by the SAS Institute. I won't use blog space for this because the world has wiki-ied the SAS System sufficiently. Enough is enough...if you've managed to get this far in this particular post, I suggest your appetite for statistical musings in blog form will be satisfied by looking at LiveJournal, the statistics community discussion group. (stat_geeks) moderated by sammka.

The Kent Honeycutt Symposium

Kent visited us earlier this week and wheeled a cart of his borrowed books in. Thanks Kent! We hated to hear that he is retiring, but it looks like Astronomy has organized a nice symposium in his honor for April.
http://www.astro.indiana.edu/rkhsymposium.shtml

Gallica has 300+ old journals full-text; Annalen der Physik from 1799-1930

Over 100 years of physics, and physics and chemistry through the 19th century...full-text, try Gallica. Also, you'll find primary, historical source material in Gallica, things you would have a hard time finding in print in Bloomington, Indiana.

A N N A L E N der P H Y S I K

IU Computer Scientist, Kay Connelly on NPR talking about Smart cell phones

If you click on the "Listen", Professor Connelly's part is about 3/4 of the way through the story.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5201273

Swain Hall Library Floorplan

Approximately 50% of bound journals were removed from the Swain Hall Library and added to the Auxiliary Library Facility (ALF) in 2005.

Several thousand books were also identified as low-use and sent to the ALF.

This floorplan shows only the 2nd floor of the library (Journals and Reference Room). The first floor is where the Books are shelved.

the ROMEO/SHERPA directory of publisher policies

http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php
Explore what you are able to legally post on your institutional archive.

Copyright and Fair Use - New Comic Book Talks about the Law

http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/comics/

IU's Dan Maki wins Distinguished Teaching Award

Dan Maki is this year's winner of the Indiana Section of the Mathematical Association of America Distinguished Teaching Award. This is a state-wide award (with only *one* winner each year). Dan also happens to be the co-author (with Maynard Thompson) of one of the most heavily used textbooks here in the library, Finite Mathematics. Hats off to Dan. The sciences and mathematics need more good teachers. Teaching is the essence of the university.

IU Economics Graduate student comments on the library

Jounghyeon Kim, a 2nd year PhD student in the IU Economics department, recently stopped by Swain Hall Library to give his views on the library. "The library is a great place to study. Sure, this side of campus has Starbucks, but Starbucks doesn't have two circulating copies of Hamilton's Time Series Analysis. IU needs more places like the library for people to study alone and with fellow graduate students."
Jounghyeon went on to note that the US made a rather poor showing at the World Baseball Classic in San Diego this week. None of us could get our heads around how the US could be 3-3 and out of the tournament, while Korea is 6-0. Way to go Korea!

The Mathematics of Scrabble: Bloomington's Betty Greenwell Stuns Scrabble Community

Some time shortly after 10:00 pm on March 15, 2006, Betty Greenwell (ISC handle circusmind) in a head-to-head match against bobnoel played the word "slithEry" for a double-triple-word bonus, an astounding 185 pt. play on the global Internet Scrabble Club site. You may ask why the Swain Hall Library is blogging this topic...my answer is that this blog has always been a forum for computer speed and performance, and for first time ever, I noticed a 1 second time lag between when the word was played and the total points posted (presumably due to the complex math required to tally such a monster play). Greenwell finished the game with well over 500 points and her ISC rating jumped 10 points.

arXiv Math Papers receive more citations

Our friends at Cornell have finished an interesting study; Philip Davis and Michael Fromerth looked at 2,765 articles from four math journals (1997-2005) and found that those articles deposited in the arXiv have 35% more citations to them on average than those not deposited. The four journals are London Math Society titles published by Cambridge University Press: Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, Journal of the London Mathematical Society, Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society, and Compositio Mathematica. Many interesting details, discussion, and analysis are found here in the paper itself.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/cs/papers/0603/0603056.pdf

What does Mars look like?

To see an artist's imaginary landscape painting of Mars, you might open Hutchinson's Splendour of the Heavens to page 289 (QB44 .P49), here in the Swain Hall Library. This book was printed in 1924 and has some beautiful sketches, color plates, photographs, and other enchanting diversions. Excerpts from the caption beneath the picture: "...two-fifths of the surface is occupied by dusky green regions usually believed to be vegetation...some believe...the straight dark streaks...are artificial canals, built for the purpose of making the best use of this scanty water supply". Of course mars doesn't look like this.


80 years later, several million invested in applied technology, and voila, here's Mars. Sometimes being in the dark about the frontier is more fun than knowing. This is an image from the Viking Lander. I like the artist's version better...there's a dust storm in the background, mysterious canals, possible plants of some sort...

Spotlight on a random new book: WARPED PASSAGES by Lisa Randall

Lisa Randall is a leading theoretical physicist, expert on string theory, and cosmology. Just added her new book to Swain Hall; a friend of mine had her sign the book at a recent lecture she gave in Chicago. Right now it's being cataloged, but should be in the stacks soon.

Spotlight on an Old Book: George Gamow's Atomic Energy, 1948 QC173 .G19

From the author of Mr Tomkins Explores the Atom Swain Hall Library proudly presents Atomic Energy in Cosmic and Human Life! This came out right after WWII. Gamow is known for his little cartoons and folksy presentation of difficult material. A little trivia...during the Cold War, a United Press International reporter called Gamow "the only scientist in America with a sense of humor". (it's important to laugh once and a while, particularly during the Cold War when people were drinking a lot of coffee, smoking a lot of cigarettes, and assembling a lot of intercontinental ballistic missiles).

Latent Heat and Lambic

What does brewing beer have to do with the physics library? An excellent question. The science libraries received an e-mail reference question last week; for privacy purposes, let's just say it was from an Indiana resident somehow associated with a local brewery, let's just call it the Uplend Brewery.
If you have 3 gallons of boiling water (212 F), what temperature does a 4th gallon have to be in order to bring the mixture down to 158 degrees F? I now know the answer to this question, but I didn't until I consulted a nearby physics professor, Rex Tayloe. Thanks Rex.

What do you think the answer is? So, 3 gallons boiling, you add a 4th gallon. The 4 gallons need to be 158 F. Please use the comment button to describe your work..the most elegant (and accurate) responses will receive a surprise Swain Hall Library gift. You have until the end of March 2006 to send in your response.
PS I'm curious if you consulted a book to get your answer, just used the web, or some combination...book, web, calculator, perhaps another human being. It has no bearing on the judging or outcome, just curious.

Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter

If you want to read about the Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter in the open access, general literature, try wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Reconnaissance_Orbiter or NASA's site www.nasa.gov. The satellite successfully placed itself in Mars' orbit last Friday.

Spotlight on a Random, New Book Billingsley's Probability and Measure QA273 .B575

Today's new book is one of the most heavily requested titles out there these days. This particular copy, the 1995 3rd edition, has only been cataloged for 1 year (it was added in March of 2005), yet it's been checked out 19 times and has 9 in-library uses.

Nicholas Copernicus 1543-1943, by Stephen Mizwa QB36 .C8 M6

This is a really interesting little book I recently came across in Swain. It was published in 1943, and the cover is a rather drab brown cardboard with a blank, black spine. However, the inside cover has this striking print of Copernicus. The book was published some three or four years after Germany annexed Poland, at the height of WWII, and the artist is a Polish refugee, Arthur Szyk. You can learn quite a bit about Szyk on the web and elsewhere, but the back side of the cover describes him as "perhaps the greatest living miniaturist working in the technique of illuminated medieval manuscripts."
Szyk (pronounced Shick) was best known for his political caricatures. The book itself is a short biography of Copernicus published by the Kosciuszko Foundation of New York. My hope is, as we continue to move thousands of books to the Auxiliary Library Facility, that we will hang on to a few titles like this one and not use all our shelf space for high demand titles such as Calculus for Dummies, and Your i-Pod Unleashed! I urge you to click on the image, expand to full size, and enjoy the full picture.

New Titles in our Collection

Click the following to view New Titles in Swain for January 2006

Titles for February 2006 should be available soon!

Check back here for updates.

A Comparison of Journal Shelf Space Occupancy: 2001 vs. 2005

Click on the image to open up the Word document

data compiled by Swain Hall Library SLIS GA Katie Dunn, fall 2005

Monographic Shelf Space Occupied, by Subject (in Linear Feet)

Click on the image to open up the excel spreadsheet.

Data compiled by Swain Hall Library SLIS GA Katie Dunn, fall 2005

Hello and welcome to our blogspot.

Our mission here is to promote awareness of the library's services, resources, programs and studies online with the help of blogging software. Using this site, we hope to publish and archive our some of our studies that may be of use to science departments, libraries, and neighboring institutions.

Pictured below are the members of our library team, who have contributed to the success of our blog:

The Swain Hall Library Staff:
Meredith Saba, Li Fu, Mohammad Rajaii, Bob Noel

Please feel free to comment with any insights, suggestions or questions on anything you see posted here.