J. R. Van Pelt and Opie Library Blogs

The Library will be open Monday through Wednesday, Nov. 23, 24, 25 from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.   Schedule variations for some services:

Archives: 10 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Digital Studio open by appointment; contact ds@mtu.edu

Interlibrary loan/ Document Delivery: 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Research Help Desk: 10 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.; 1:00 p.m.– 5:00 p.m.

No extended study hours in the Library Reading Room during the break. Regular hours resume 7:45 a.m., Monday, November 30.

Join us for a reading and book signing with Poppy King!

November 18th

12:30 - 1:30 p.m.

East Side Reading Room

“Lessons of a Lipstick Queen” follows Poppy King’s extraordinary journey through the world of business and teaches you how to be more entrepreneurial in your own life.

In “Lessons of a Lipstick Queen”, Poppy reveals how she managed to launch a multimillion-dollar business, extracting valuable lessons from the experience as she goes along.  Through King’s example, you can learn how to become a real entrepreneur - from recognizing a good idea and finding financing, to marketing yourself and your brand, to approaching the media and avoiding common pitfalls.  In a world where everyone is looking to get ahead, it’s essential to think like an entrepreneur.  Much more than just a guide to success, “Lessons of a Lipstick Queen” is a candid adventure story designed to take you on a journey of self-discovery.

Sponsored by the Michigan Tech School of Business and Economics

“In ‘Lessons of a Lipstick Queen’, Poppy King tells the story of how she became a cosmetics maven with a cult following around the globe. Ms. King started her first company in Australia at the age of 18. She quickly went on to create a cosmetics empire, only to lose it, then regain her position as the Lipstick Queen with an enormously successful new line of lip products. Ms. King’s engaging story is interspersed with practical advice for anyone who wants to succeed as an entrepreneur. This inspiring book resonated so much with me that I’ve asked all the students in my Entrepreneurship course to read it. If you have a great idea that you want to launch into the world, you will learn a lot from ‘Lessons of a Lipstick Queen.’”

Dr. David Orozco is an assistant professor of business law in School of Business and Economics. His teaching interests include business law, intellectual property, entrepreneurship and innovation. And his research interests include law and management, intellectual property, trademarks, patents and innovation policy. The copy of the book “Lessons of a Lipstick Queen: Finding and Developing the Great Idea that can Change Your Life” will be on display in the new-book area of the library and will be available to check out beginning Dec. 14.

The World Usability Day-UP (WUD-UP) is being celebrated on campus Thursday, Nov. 12. Beginning at 9 a.m., the Michigan Tech Library’s Information Wall in the lobby will feature a revolving display of digital photos entitled Picturing Sustainability. The exhibit will also be displayed on the library website, http://www.lib.mtu.edu/infowall/

Events on campus include:

* 9:30 a.m. to noon–Paper Prototyping, Fisher Hall lobby near the Aftermath Cafe. Students in computer science and humanities will participate in a usable design competition using simple paper materials. Passersby can help by testing their designs. Paper prototyping is fun (and effective).

* 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.–Poster session and other exhibits, Memorial Union Ballroom B, will describe promising designs of products and ideas. Viewers’ Choice award(s) with $100 in prizes will be announced by the humanities department at 1:15 p.m.

* Noon to 1:15 p.m–Brown bag luncheon, Memorial Union Ballroom B. “Sense-Able Sustainability: Three Perspectives,” [working title] with speakers Rick Donovan, Rick Loduha and Christopher Plummer. Cookies and drinks will be provided. Bring your lunch.

• Rick Donovan is the Operations Manager, Senior Engineer and Research Scientist at Sustainable Futures Institute. Dr. Donovan’s research interests include high performance computing, artificial intelligence computing, computational materials science, and systems modeling for sustainability.
• Rick Loduha is an Associate Professor of Art and Design (Interdisciplinary Design) at Finlandia University in Hancock. For him, every problem in life is a design problem. He believes design is like a dance and its most powerful skill is creative problem-solving.
• Christopher Plummer, Associate Professor of Theater in the Visual and Performing Arts Department at Michigan Tech will speak about sustainability in sound design and soundscapes, discussing aural pollution and carelessness that can impact people’s ability to sustain conversation, focus, and health.

WUD-UP updates will be posted at http://www.mtu.edu/usability/. Full story about this year’s WUD-UP activities is in the November 5, 2009 issue of TechToday.

Genealogical holdings of the Michigan Tech Archives were highlighted in a feature article in the November 7, 2009 issue of Houghton’s Daily Mining Gazette.  Here is the article:

Genealogy resources abound in Copper Country
By Garrett Neese, DMG Writer

HOUGHTON - Every year, thousands of people come to the Copper Country to research their heritage.

Fortunately for them, there are many resources available locally to help them with their quest.

Many of the records for which people are looking may be found in county courthouses. Houghton County’s clerk’s office has vital records dating back more than 150 years: births and deaths since 1867 (indexes starting 1893 and 1911, respectively), marriages since 1855 and naturalization records starting in 1848.

Some records are restricted, said Mary Sivonen, senior accounts processor with the county clerk’s office: Only family members may see birth records, while military discharge records may be seen by that person and a spouse.

Because of space and staffing constraints, Sivonen said people should call ahead and set aside a time to come.

“We limit it to just a couple at a time,” she said. “We don’t allow groups to come up because we only have a limited amount of space. The books are very large.”

Coming in to look at open records is free. There are small fees for services beyond that, including $2 for copies and $10 for any records that need to be typed.

The Michigan Technological University Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections has a wealth of sources, including Upper Peninsula census reports, local newspapers, tax and immigration records, and tract books showing purchases of land from the government.

Assistant archivist Julia Blair didn’t have total visitor numbers, but said hundreds of people come per month to do research.

There are microfilm archives from about 70 local papers, which can include pertinent information such as obituaries. Copies of the Daily Mining Gazette and its predecessor, the Portage Lake Mining Gazette, date back to 1862. There are other papers both major and minor, including three months of 1908 copies of the Hancock newspaper Wage Slave.

Other information includes census records, mine inspector reports of mining accidents, and Calumet & Hecla Mining Co. records, “probably the resource that is most valuable to people who come from outside the area,” Blair said.

The archives have telephone directories from Houghton and Keweenaw counties and Chassell, as well as their forerunner, the Polk directories, which included a list of residents with their job and address (for example, the 1898 Houghton County edition includes Dagenain Frederick, a laborer who lived at 129 Hecla St. in Laurium).

Many people also use Sanborn insurance maps, which shows the layout of streets in the town, as well as the businesses there at that point in time.

“It’s possible to trace a particular family dwelling and see if that home is still there,” she said.

Recently, Blair had a woman call who was interested in what business used to be in a particular building in South Range.

But as with any kind of historical research, Blair said, people should be prepared to put a little time into it.

“We can’t just type in a name, and say ‘Oh, we have this,’” she said.

In the event there’s nothing at the archives, they will also connect them to other resources, Blair said.

“It’s rare that we can’t connect somebody to some records in the past, but it has happened,” she said.

http://www.mininggazette.com/page/content.detail/id/507342.html?nav=5003

William Kennedy, director of the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Faculty Development and University Ombuds Officer, recommends
The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology to the Michigan Tech community. The book is currently on display in the new books area and will be available to check out beginning Nov. 16.

“About a hundred pages into Kurzweil’s book, I began to appreciate the likely synergy between neuroscience and artificial intelligence research.  Kurzweil is one of those amazing people whose breadth of understanding is, well, humbling. He suggests that within a decade or two, most of the work that humans presently do will be routinely performed by fast, cheap machines. What will the future hold for all of us in terms of work and play?  Kurzweil provides a glimpse into the future by extrapolating a trajectory from the past and present of rapidly changing complementary technologies. ”

Infowall display

October 29th

4 p.m. (Presentation will begin after a short business meeting of The Friends of the Van Pelt Library)

This presentation is open to the public

Please join us in the J.R. Van Pelt and Opie Library

East Side Reading Room

Ulla Aatsinki, visiting Fulbright Scholar in the Social Sciences Department, will be giving a presentation on October 29, 2009, titled “Research, Resource and Remembrance - How to Study Schooling of Finnish-American Children in Upper Peninsula in the 1920’s”.

Dr. Aatsinki is a graduate from University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland.  Her dissertation was about the labor movement in Northern Finland right before and after the Finnish Civil War in 1918.

The Fulbright Program is an international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to “increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.”  With this goal as a starting point, the Fulbright Program has provided almost 300,000 participants - chosen for their academic merit and leadership potential - with the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas, and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.

SPARC celebrates Open Access Week 2009.  Open Access is truly an international movement which sees the Internet as a way to expan access to knowledge.

“It encourages the unrestricted sharing of research results with everyone, everywhere, for the advancement and enjoyment of science and society.  Open Access is the principle that all research should be freely accessible online, immediately after publication, and it’s gaining ever more momentum around the world as research funders and policy makers throw their weight behind it.”  more

SPARC’s Heather Joseph and Jennifer McLennam welcome participants and supporters of Open Access 2009 in a new video letter.  This brief, 6-minute clip helps to set the stage for Open Access Week 2009.  It notes the important opportunity to raise awareness, celebrate progress made in advancing Open Access to date, and to inspire the community to find new ways to continue the momentum.

Also, in partnership with student advocates, who are increasingly active around Open Access issues, SPARC has developed a new, animated Open Access 101 video. This 3-minute clip highlights the widespread concern among students for the cost of access, the dynamics of the scholarly publishing process, how Open Access is made possible, and the opportunities created by the open accessibility and reuse of research results.  Open Access 101 is available to view or download free at http://vimeo.com/6973160.

Learn more about Open Access by visiting SPARC’s Open Access Week page.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry awards Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz and Ada E. Yonath for having showed what the ribosome looks like and how it functions at the atomic level. All three have used a method called X-ray crystallography to map the position for each and every one of the hundreds of thousands of atoms that make up the ribosome.

To learn more about X-ray crystallography, ribosomes and/or this years recipients please visit the American Chemical Society.  You can also contact your reference librarian or visit us at the Library’s Research Help Desk.

THE 2009 NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS WILL BE AWARDED TO Charles K. Kao (Standard Telecommunication Laboratories, Harlow, UK, and Chinese University of Hong Kong), and Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith (both of whom worked chiefly at Bell Laboratories, in Murray Hill, NJ, USA) for their work leading to modern telecommunications. Kao will receive half the prize money for helping to invent modern optical fiber, allowing signals to travel flawlessly thousands of miles. Boyle and Smith will split the other half of the prize for their development of charge coupled devices (CCDs).

• To learn more about this years recipients and read some of their original ground breaking research please visit the American Institute of Physics 2009 Physics Nobel Prize Resources page.
• For more information about these and other 2009 Noble Prize Winners please see your Reference Librarian or visit us at the Library’s Research Help Desk.