You find a lot of unexpected things in Orbis or YuFind searches.

Sometimes they’re original printings at Beinecke. Sometimes they’re scholarly sources you never even knew about, and end up using.

Sometimes, those things are porn. Yes that’s right, porn. Since Yale’s infamous Porn in the Morn science class will no longer be taught for its convenient AM science credit, I feel the pressing need to provide you with resources in this department.

Unfortunately, you won’t be reading “Dorm Dickmaster” or “Mr. Fancy Panties” by yourself in a small, dark, hopefully sanitary corner of the stacks. It’s not because Yale wants to impede your freedom to use the collections and read as you please. These books are supervised reading because they’re actually rare gay pulp fiction that can’t easily be replaced. I promise, the very attractive librarian who will supervise your reading won’t judge you for reading Vol. 8 in the Hung Studs series, just so long as you help keep the book in good condition.

“Bad Ass Biker” might sound like an unusual holding for a research library, but in all seriousness, Yale is a great place to study gender, sexuality, and yes, the nature of pornography. If we didn’t have these primary sources no one could write about them. Think of “Soft Butt Willing” as a paean to free speech and free scholarship, conveniently accessible at Beinecke.

Your thesis is LOOMING. You probably think you're screwed. Don't worry little friend, SuperThesisMan is here! SuperThesisMan will address you Humanities Folk today. So, first of all, you haven't done any research, because you didn't actually go to that required library class your department prescribed. God will punish you later, but for now, you need JSTOR. JSTOR is a journal database that's really quite good for the humanities. I, SuperThesisMan, have a special secret fort hidden in the recesses of JSTOR. You can use a simple search to get started. Try clicking on other papers that cite that paper. Breathe deeply. You are NOT going to be screwed! You do need to remember that really recent articles are not on JSTOR yet, but then again, since you are during this literature review at the last possible minute, you probably don't care.

SuperThesisMan must admit that primary sources cannot be found on JSTOR. But that's ok, because hopefully, you already have some of those. If not, I'll throw my cape over my shoulder and help you in a coming post.

love and creampuffs,
SuperThesisMan

One more telegraph from my secret JSTOR fortress:

You can export a JSTOR directly citation to RefWorks or EndNote, which is about as sexy as my fine legs in this spandex. If you don't know how to use RefWorks by now, flesh-eating droids will immediately descend and vaporise your ignorant corpse. Just kidding. As always, you can follow SuperThesisMan rule No. 1 and ASK A LIBRARIAN ALREADY. Which you should have done a while, ago, obvs, but my cerulean ThesisMobile/Convertible Reference Spacecraft can make it alllll better. I promise, hand on my miraculous biosynthetic heart that pumps Orbis data for blood.

If you are in the 20-30ish year old age range, then you’ve probably heard the cult hit song “Stacey’s Mom.” As an undergrad, Yale’s Finding Aids probably used to be the Stacey’s Mom to your Rushmore Academy self. You mowed the lawn trying to impress her. You mustered every ounce of your maturity to get her attention. But ultimately, she wanted an AmStud grad student, and you were just too naïve and young. The Finding Aid database isn’t Stacey’s Mom anymore though. Thanks to a nifty redesign, it’s Stacey’s hot single older sister. Undergrads, people who should be using the database on a week-to-week basis for research, now have the opportunity to use a more accessible interface (no lawn-mowing required).

The new Finding Aid database starts with coherent (and elegant) design. Each collection’s entry has the same elements in the side bar, so if you want to look at the Overview or the Contents, you know where to look. Collections also link to Yale’s digital image collection online, so if a box or folder has been digitized, photos and correspondence are visible on from your home computer. Of course, you can always request to view the original material in Manuscripts & Archives—and a direct link to the Orbis request form is on the page for the collection in question. Finally, when you need to cite the information in the Finding Aid itself, there is a convenient link showing you the format (at about a month to thesis time, this does help).

So take the new Finding Aid database out for mocktails and put on your best face. Primary source materials await you, and believe me, there’s nothing like an archival letter to get Stacey’s Mom The Social Historian out on a date.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99961163

Reaction to ebooks in the twofortyfive office and elsewhere tends to differ. When I heard this NPR story about completely electronic textbooks at one Missouri college, I wanted to scream. But then again, I study manuscripts, on, you know, vellum. Even I sometimes use the digitized PDFs that Yale makes for professors of sections of course books. It does save me hundreds of dollars, although printing costs are high, since my ability to read off a screen seems under par for my generation. Yale also subscribes to many databases of ebooks—including Oxford University Press—that both my Chinese language major best friend and I manage to love. He can read about gossip in the Tang dynasty, and I can read about Carolingian book hands for free, from anywhere, on Yale’s dime.

These services ARE expensive though, so I’m wondering, do you actually use ebooks? Professors, do you assign them? Graduate students, have they cut down on the cost for your orals reading? Undergrads, are they useful in writing research papers or just for fun? Or do you hate ebooks because they are harbingers of the coming Cylon rebellion? Let us know…

Photo from Knoll

Dear Knoll Saarinen Womb Chair(s) In Haas Arts Library,

I love how you caress me and make me fall asleep instead of reading Warburg or Deleuze. I love the fact that even though you retail for more than I can possibly afford, I can fantasize about making you my own because the library pays for you. I love your maybe-paprika/maybe-custom shade that makes the minimalism of the building less oppressive. I love how, on some weird subconscious level, you remind me of the tentacled Trinitarian God in Beinecke MS 404. This manuscript is called The Rothschild Canticles, and someday you, my chair, my one of four chairs, actually, will receive The Library Womb Chair Canticles. I love the way your textured fabric has not been marred by someone’s stray Starbucks. I will defend you to the death from this affront, with a large illustrated monograph that inevitably does not circulate (NJ18.B23825 A12 2002 (LC)+ Oversize). I will curl my feet under myself and sit in you for hours and hours with just such a monograph, and let the ideas of my next paper foment with you as my muse. Given the near-future apocalypse that some of my co-workers often predict, I will in all probability spend the post-human future with you, lying quietly with my part-cyborg silicon locks cascading on your upholstery.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Womb Chair.

xxoxo,
A

Florence Wald

Florence Wald was born on April 19, 1917, and died on November 8, 2008. She was the former Dean of Yale School of Nursing, and crucial in the development of the American hospice movement. Around the twofortyfive office, and especially in the “cube” of one Katie Bauer, she has become something of a celebrity. I’ll admit it, Florence Wald was an interesting person, but I didn’t get why my boss was so obsessed with her. Then, as the story frequently goes in the library, I did some research.

If you live at Yale, and you die at Yale, chances are Yale has archived a big chunk of your life. Through Yale’s resources (and, yes, this sounds sappy, but it’s also true), I came to know Florence Wald as a person. I became personally involved.

Social history usually begins in the archives. The Florence and Henry Wald papers, 1955-2003 (inclusive) are in Manuscripts and Archives here at Sterling, but you have to take care using them because there is patient information there that can't be released until 2050. There's also a non-circulating thesis on her hospice work (Thesis +Y12N M2826), that is in the medical library, along with a DVD that actually has her speaking about end-of-life care on it: Ref R726.8 P563 2004 (DVD). Finally, there’s an oversized colloquium she edited from the Divinity School Stacks (In quest of the spiritual component of care for the terminally ill: proceedings of a colloquium, May 3-4, 1986, Yale University School of Nursing / edited by Florence S. Wald.).

Point being? Whether it’s Florence Wald or Horace Walpole, people live in the library, and they aren’t just SML employees.

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Suggestions for additions to the collection? Click here to place a purchase request.

Readers at Yale may be interested in finding some of the textual precedents for President Obama's Inaugural Address. From the text (found on Time.com)

At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people: "Let it be told to the future world ... that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive ... that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]."

The quote was written by Thomas Paine, published anonymously in "The American Crisis." A quote from the same series of pamphlets, probably more familiar to most readers:

THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

Readers can find both print and digital copies of this text at the Yale University Library. A print copy of the text can be found in the Sterling stacks, Yale Classification Call Number Cb18 169.

Several digital copies are available as well. The copy from Readex Archive of Early Americana, Early American Imprints, I., 1639-1800 preserves the look of the original printing, but is made from a microform copy and is not entirely clear or easy to read. A clearer version is available from Netlibrary.

This is the time of year when the Library gathers together data about the use of all of its resources. One resource that unifies all the library's digital service is the Library's web site, where we present ebooks, ejournals, research databases and digitized images. Some are purchased and some are created here.

Evident in the usage data is the global reach of the Library. Certainly the majority of use comes from users somewhere in the United States but in 2007-2008 the Library's web server had 906,081 visits from all over the world, from at least 219 countries. The highest number of visits came from the United Kingdom, China, Canada, India and Germany.

This Google map shows the top100 non-U.S. cities, with the associated number of visits for each location in 2007-2008.

This worldwide use comes from two types of readers: those with and those without a Yale affiliation. Those without an affiliation can still experience some parts of the Yale University Library collection, and this may be the only contact they will ever have with the Library. Those with an affiliation can access all Yale's Library resources through use of the VPN or proxy servers, giving them remote access to the entire collection wherever they are in the world. This winter the Library is stepping up efforts to ensure remote access runs smoothly, and will be looking at problems readers occasionally experience when they try to access Library resources remotely. By the Spring the Library will put in place steps to provide better support for international access to its collections.

The library had a presentation from Victor Henning, a founder of Mendeley.com, a new web site that aims to help researchers communicate with each other and discover new research. Victor described the concept of Mendeley as a Last.fm for researchers -- that is, a social network that aids in discovery of relevant material. In the case of Last.fm (as many 245 readers will know) that material is music. In the case of Mendeley, that material is scholarship -- mostly in the form of published articles.

Mendeley was launched this fall and already has over 1,000 users. Users can sign up for the free service and download the desktop software at the company's web site. Victor described the service as being in active development and is soliciting input from librarians and researchers.