Tuesday 31 May 2011

Alfred Newton archives catalogued

The details of archives relating to Professor Alfred Newton, one of the founders of the Balfour & Newton Libraries, has now been catalogued by staff at the Department of Manuscripts & University Archives at Cambridge University Library.



The Balfour Library transferred all its Alfred Newton archive material (correspondence, prints, printed materials, pamphlets, photos) over to the Manuscripts Department at the UL back in 1989, mainly so it could be catalogued. I've just received a full catalogue of all the items in the collection. They've also been added to the Janus catalogue of archives held in Cambridge.

You can download the Alfred Newton Papers catalogue from the library web page for Alfred Newton at http://www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/library/newton.html Most of the archives have been fully catalogued but I have added to the end of the document a list of what hasn't yet been fully catalogued (lots more interesting items). Here is a brief contents list of all the catalogued items:

Add.9839 ALFRED NEWTON PAPERS

1. Correspondence
2. Great auk
3. Great bustard
4. Pallas's sand grouse
5. Wild bird preservation
6. Newton's revision of Yarrell's British birds
7. Papers on Gilbert White
8. St. Croix and Iceland eggs, 1857-58
9. Records of weather and birds seen at Elveden, 1850-60
10. Newton, other papers
11. Leonard Blomefield: natural history journals, 1823-46
12. George Crotch: genera of birds
13. Sir William Jardine: correspondence and papers
14. Prideaux John Selby: correspondence
15. Knoblock's egg-book
16. John Latham: Index Ornithologicus, 2nd edition
17. Martin Lichtenstein: Ornithologie
18. Sir Edward Newton: papers
19. William Proctor: Iceland journals, 1833, 1837
20. Osbert Salvin: Guatemalan papers, 1862-74
21. John Scales: correspondence and papers
22. Revett Sheppard: naturalist's calendar, 1798-1802
23. Hugh Strickland: papers for revision of Agassiz's Bibliographia, 1848-54
24. William Swainson: letter to Allan Cunningham, 1829
25. John Wolley: correspondence and papers
26. William Yarrell: letters to him
27. William Borrer: letters to him
28. Joseph Wilmot: letters to him
29. Newton: MS ornithological index to Thomas Wright, Vocabularies
30. Newton: collection of his ornithological pamphlets and printed papers
31. Photographs of skeletons of moa, dodo and solitaire, c.1867-68
32. Portrait and other photographs and prints collected by Newton

As you can see, the archives are of major importance to ornithology. Many thanks go to Peter Meadows, archivist, for all his hard work on this.

I'm really pleased that this has been done and the collections are now more accessible to us all. The archives are fully accessible over at the UL, details are given on the web page.


Inspection copy sale of books from the Cambridge Library Collection!

This will take place 1st-20th June at the Cambridge University Press bookshop - see the poster outside the library.

Books will be available at special prices from the Bookshop only, not online.

With subjects ranging from anthropology to zoology, the Cambridge Library Collection allows readers to own books they would otherwise find it hard to obtain. It the result of a collaboration between Cambridge University Library and the Cambridge University Press, each page of the book is scanned, and a new cover and blurb added.

For more information on the Cambridge Library Collection and the titles included in it, please see the poster and visit the Collection's website at: http://www.cambridge.org/features/cambridgeLibraryCollection/default.html

The books are also searchable online and can be downloaded from http://ebooks.cambridge.org/clc/home.jsfLink

Rare book on display in the library

I have put a new book from our Special Collections on display in the library:

Wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse der deutschen Tiefsee-Expedition auf dem Dampfer “Valdivia” 1898-1899, im Auftrage des Reichsamtes desInnern
, herausgegeben von Carl Chun. Fünfzehnter Band. Die Tiefsee-Fische, bearbeitet von August Brauer. 1. Systematischer Teil. Jena: Verlag von Gustav Fischer; 1908. Balfour Library class mark: Fauna 364 (19).

The book is open at: Tafel 1: Gigantura Chuni, A. Brauer; Winteria Telescopa, A. Brauer; Opisthroproctus soleatus, Vaillant. The deep-sea fish displayed here are from the Actinopterygii subclass of ray-finned fish, which includes the majority of living bony fish of sea and fresh water. The fins are composed of a membranous web of skin supported by a varying number of spines and soft rays.

The lithographic printing technique has been used to create the amazing and lifelike iridescent colouring of the fish, and manages to turn somewhat ugly creatures into almost beautiful ones!

Come and view this amazing work in the library!

Monday 16 May 2011

The Big Book visits the Big Library (19-21 May)

The Big Book, entitled Imagine, is a leather-bound wooden sculpture that invites the 'reader' to step inside and write their own individual answer to the question: "What do you imagine?".

The artist is "particularly keen for contributions from mathematicians and scientists - are we the only animal that has imagination? Why do we have imaginary numbers?".

For more information see the news item on the Cambridge University Library website at:
http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/newspublishing/detail.php?news=265

Trial access to ARTstor online resource

The trial starts May 4 and continues to June 3 to coincide with the petition and consortium proposal to fund a subscription to ARTstor (please ask your librarian for more information).
What is ARTstor? According to their website "ARTstor is a digital library of more than one million images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences with a set of tools to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes".
"The ARTstor Digital Library is used by educators, scholars, and students at a variety of institutions including universities, colleges, museums, public libraries, and K-12 schools. The Digital Library serves users both within the arts and in disciplines outside the arts", such as anthropology, and the history of medicine and natural science.
Access is available on campus at http://www.artstor.org
Access is available off campus with Raven login at http://ezproxy.lib.cam.ac.uk:2048/login?url=http://www.artstor.org
Please note it is recommended you clear your cache (even 2 or 3 times) if you accessed ArtSTOR in the 2010 trial. ArtSTOR has gone through several new "builds" of its Digital Library since that trial and clearing your cache is advised by ArtSTOR for smooth access in this 2011 trial.
Note that ARTstor works best with Internet Explorer 7.0+, Firefox 3.0+, and Safari 3.0+.

Red letter day for Darwin Correspondence Project

The project mapping Charles Darwin’s life and work in the 15,000 letters he wrote or received during his extraordinary lifetime will be completed after a £5 million funding package was announced.

See the news item on the University Library website here: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/newspublishing/detail.php?news=263

Find out more about the project here: http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/home

Online exam questions: website pilot

CARET have been working on a exploratory project to make past examination papers available online to students.

This is not yet a production service but is a work in progress. This pilot site is aimed at getting some content up quickly and provoking user reaction in the current exam period to find out how students would best like the information presented.

The content is currently 2010 examinations only and there may be missing papers as this is based on the contents of the papers printed and bound for holding in College and University libraries under open access. The initial pilot site is at http://exams.lib.cam.ac.uk/.

Please share this link with your students as we would like their feedback and reactions to the service and comments on how best to present the information. We would like students to react to it while actively thinking about exam preparation!

Feedback should be sent to the email address (examspilot@caret.cam.ac.uk) which can be found at the bottom of the FAQ/Contact Tab on the website.

ebooks : downloading copies from the MyiLibrary platform

This information has been circulated by Sarah Stamford, ebooks@cambridge Project Manager:

The ebooks team has been advised that from Tuesday 12th April MyiLibrary will enable limited downloading of ebooks from their platform to library users. Downloading will be possible to devices which read pdfs, e.g. Sony e-reader, Barnes & Noble Nook. Apps are available (e.g. Bluefire) for the iPhone and iPad ( but note, not the Kindle). Users need to create a personal MyiLibrary account and to add Adobe Digital Editions to their device.

Two concurrent downloads will be permitted and the ebook will also remain accessible online as usual. Each download will last for a defined period (understood to be 14 days); readers can place holds and form a queue if both "copies" are "on loan".

MyiLibrary are "soft-launching" this feature and trialling it for the next 3 months. Further information will follow. In the meantime if you have any questions you can contact the ebooks@cambridge team at: ucam-lib-ebooks@lists.cam.ac.uk

Find out more about ebooks@cambridge at: http://www.sel.cam.ac.uk/ebooks@cambridge/

Flickr Photostream of photos of the Zoology Library!

Rachel Marsh and Angela Pittock from libraries@cambridge visited recently to take some photos of the Balfour Library to post in a Flickr Photostream.

They are visiting as many libraries as they can and have posted some other Cambridge library Photostreams already. It was great to see them both, to have a chat about libraries@cambridge things, and to show them around our lovely library!

Rachel took some great and quirky photos, I hope you will agree. Also included are some photos that I took a while ago.

See the images here at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/libatcam/ You can also click on 'Detail' to show captions that accompany the photos. You can also click on the 'Slideshow' button to view the images as a slideshow (then click on 'Show info' to display the accompanying captions).

Tuesday 10 May 2011

New acquisitions

Book donations

A student's guide to the seashore, 3rd ed., by J. D. Fish and S. Fish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2011. Balfour Library shelfmark: GHO (53c)

Glimpses of creatures in their physical worlds, by Steven Vogel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; 2009. Balfour Library shelfmark: EA (47)

Herbivory of leaf-cutting ants: a case study on Atta columbica in the tropical rainforest of Panama, by R. Wirth ... [et al.]. Berlin: Springer-Verlag; 2010. Balfour Library shelfmark: Q.7 (59)

International Zoo Yearbook, v.45, managing editor Fiona A. Fisken. London: The Zoological Society of London; 2011. Balfour Library shelfmark: D.11 (54) (Reference shelves)

Kielland's Butterflies of Tanzania: Supplement, by Colin Congdon and Steve Collins. Nairobi: African Butterfly Research Institute; 1998. Balfour Library shelfmark: q QNB (9ii) (Quarto, Large Size shelves)

The leafcutter ants: civilization by instinct, by Bert Holldobler and Edward O. Wilson. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co.; 2011. Balfour Library shelfmark: QJD (25)

New books

The rise of fishes: 500 million years of evolution, 2nd ed., by John A. Long. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press; 2011. Balfour Library shelfmark: q V.12 (10bi-iii) (2 x Overnight Loan shelves, 1 x Open Shelves)

Theses

Aerodynamics of a hovering hummingbird wing, by Sean Ng. Cambridge; 2010. Balfour Library shelfmark: Thesis (497) (Library Office)