Special Collections Room Open House and Colloquium in June
The HKUST Library has developed two special collections in the past ten years: The History of Science Collection comprised of about 100 first editions of landmarks in science and technology dating back over five hundred years; and The Antique Maps of China Collection consisting of over 100 European-made maps and atlases of China and Asia from the 16th to 19th centuries. Until now, these two precious collections have been stored on compact shelves with the University Archives.
Copernicus, Astronomia Instaurata, 1617
Needing a permanent home for these materials, we have been, in recent months, converting a meeting room into a place which is befitting of the intrinsic value and beauty of these items. The new Special Collections Room (特藏室) will provide appropriate physical and environmental security for these works. Scholars will also have adequate space to view and use the collections. The room will be available for use in June.
Entering the Room, users will immediately notice the elegant bookcases and cabinets lining the walls. The Ming-style furniture was made by an expert furniture maker in Dongguan. For a modest cost, he has custom designed and installed handmade shelving for our rare books and maps, along with furniture for researchers and staff.
China Regnum, 1593
The Library has scheduled several events to celebrate the completion of the Special Collections Room: An open house of the Special Collections Room, an Antique Map exhibition and a Colloquium on Antique Maps and History of Science Special Collections. Watch for the Library’s announcements of these events.
You can view many of the items on our Web site at http://library.hkust.edu.hk/info/exhibit/.
COLLECTION SPOTLIGHT: Springer Verlag’s E-Journals
Hong Kong academic libraries have joined together to negotiate more advantageous cost and licensing agreements. This practice has enabled the Library to shift our Springer journal subscriptions from print to electronic format.
Springer-Verlag’s LINK consortium allows participating institutions to access over 400 important journal titles in mathematics, physics, engineering, life sciences as well as business and social sciences. The complete Springer e-journal list can be found at http://library.hkust.edu.hk/cgi/db/springer.scr?999. Active links to these full text titles are also being added to many of the citation databases the Library currently subscribes to; including MathSciNet, Web of Science, Ovidand Cambridge Scientific Abstracts. When you use these databases, you can immediately connect to the full-text for many documents.
INTERNET: Finding Theses
Thousands of full-text theses are accessible from the Web. Some are free, others are not.
The most notable free source is MIT Theses Online (http://theses.mit.edu/) which offers access to many MIT doctoral and master’s theses. For example, using its Advanced Search for e-commerce will find 6 theses.
In Hong Kong, most academic libraries have made their theses citations accessible online. Since 1998, the HKUST Library has developed the HKUST Electronic Theses database (http://library.hkust.edu.hk/cgi/db/thesis.pl), which contains the full text of the doctoral and master’s theses of our students. [see also Our Web: The New Theses Database on page 3]
In the HKUST Library Catalog (http://ustlib.ust.hk/), you can search effectively for UST as well as Non-UST theses by keyword. For example, a truncated keyword search for chinese culture with material type set to Thesis/Manuscript will find 18 theses on Chinese culture. Nine are from UST; the rest are from other universities including Harvard, UC Berkeley and the University of Washington.
You can also use “combined search” for theses in the catalogs of all Hong Kong Universities with a subject search for dissertations academic. This search will find theses-related information from China, Taiwan, and some other parts of the world.
Elsewhere in the region, the full image of Australian theses is available from the Australian Digital Theses Program (http://adt.caul.edu.au/).
For more freely accessible theses, explore the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations at http://www.ndltd.org/
Dissertation Abstracts (http://library.hkust.edu.hk/cgi/db/fs.pl?Diss) provides citations and abstracts to doctoral and master’s theses completed at accredited American institutions. It also contains theses from selective non-American universities. If you need the full text version, the same database is available at ProQuest Digital Dissertations (http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/), where viewing the first 24 pages of these theses is free.
MEDIA: Music in Media Resources
Music plays an important role in higher education and has done so from earliest times. From the late Roman Empire up to the modern era, music was part of advanced studies in the Liberal arts, the Quadrivium: Arithmetic, Music, Geometry and Astronomy. In China it was among the “Six Arts” to be studied by a Confucian gentleman: Rites, Music, Archery, Chariot Driving, Writing, and Mathematics.
Listening and studying music can enrich the mind and heart at any stage of one’s education and life. Thus, HKUST Library has built a music collection both to serve the faculty and students and HKUST community members. The main emphases of the collection are Western art music (what is often referred to as “Classical Music”): symphonies, choral works, etudes, cantatas, etc.; Jazz; and Chinese art music. This music can be appreciated in all formats: in audio CD, LD, DVD, VHS and VCD.
Media Resources has many Chinese operas, some originally recorded over 40 years ago. For example, you can view the legendary opera star, 梅蘭芳 on VCD in 貴妃醉酒 (Media Resources PN2874 .X5632 1999 v. 6) and on VHS in 遊園驚夢 (Media Resources PN2875 .K5 Y89 1980). The Chinese operas are not just limited to Beijing Opera; Cantonese opera can be found if you go to the Call Number PN2875.K8… in VHS or LD.
The Jazz collection is also extensive, containing works of some of the great vocalists like Billie Holiday, The Quintessential Billie Holiday (Media Resources M1366 .H65 CK40646 v. 1-9); or a film of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival,Jazz on a Summer Day, in VHS (Media Resources ML3506 .J39 1987)
Multimedia works are also being created to aid in the study and enjoyment of music. Two examples are Handel’s Messiah: a New Interactive Edition (Media Resources ML410 .H13 H36 1997) and Total Joplin: The Complete Works of Scott Joplin (Media Resources ML410 .J75 T68 1996). These CD-ROMs provide reviews of the composers lives, sheet music and performances.
To find precisely the music you want, do an “author” search for the composer (e.g. Johann Sebastian Bach) or performer (e.g. Yo-yo Ma) that you want. You can even perform a search for one, then limit the search by author for the other to find (for example) all the J. S. Bach works in the Library performed by Yo-yo Ma. Or, you can search for an author and then limit for video or sound recording only.
Science and Nature Online
Responding to continuing demands from our faculty and students, the Library has recently acquired access to the online versions of Science and Nature.
OUR WEB: The New Theses Database
http://library.hkust.edu.hk/cgi/db/thesis.pl
The Library has recently migrated our 3-year-old database of HKUST doctoral and master’s Theses into a new XML-based environment, with enhanced features and a more effective user interface.
In September 1998, after a year of scanning and database implementation work, the HKUST Theses Database was launched on the BASIS server platform (http://library.hkust.edu.hk/info/notes/notes29.html). It was a great success, but some found it difficult to use, and were frustrated at not being able to access any of the information from off-campus.
Library Systems staff have recently finished migrating the entire database to the newer native-XML TAMINO database. This has provided several advantages:
- Theses can be loaded more rapidly, due to the easier to use architecture and the automated extraction of bibliographic information from the Library Online Catalog.
- The entire database, except for the actual theses files in PDF format, can now be searched by anyone using an Internet terminal worldwide. This includes the complete abstracts.
- The theses PDF files can be accessed by any HKUST user from anywhere in the world – whether they are at a conference, doing research overseas, or just wanting to use their local ISP account instead of dialing into the campus network.
- The database records are stored in Unicode, which greatly improves the ability to display mathematical symbols and other non-ASCII information.
The Theses database permits keyword searching of the title, author, subject, and abstract. You can also limit the search by department, year and type of degree. You can even sort the results in a variety of ways.
So log on and take a look – we think you will like it. If you have any questions, be sure to read the help file at http://lbxml.ust.hk/th/th_help.html or contact the Reference department at lbref@ust.hk.
INFORMATION SERVICES: Study Room Bookings
In view of the popularity of the study room reservation system introduced last year (50.6% of Library opening hours in September, 70.7% in October, 66.9% in November and 59.4% in December), the Library opened up all of the remaining study rooms and seminar rooms for reservation this semester. Seven study rooms (Rm1352, LG315, LG316, LG317, LG414, LG415, LG416) and one seminar room (LG310) are now available for reservation by all students. The remaining seminar room (LG410) can also be booked for group use by faculty, staff or postgraduates.
As study space is always in high demand, users should observe the following policies to ensure fair access to all:
- Study/seminar rooms are for group use only.
- Each group can reserve a room for up to 3 hours per session and 2 sessions per week.
- Reservation can be made on the same day or up to one month in advance at the Information Counter upon presentation of a university ID card.
- Only part-time postgraduate students can make telephone/email bookings.
Reservation schedules and room capacities can be found at http://library.hkust.edu.hk/serv/rsrv.html
When not reserved, all rooms are available on a first-come-first-served basis.
To maintain a good environment for research and study, users are also reminded to keep their noise down and to leave the rooms clean and tidy.
SYSTEMS UPDATE: Excessive Downloading
Recently there have been several occasions where someone on campus activated a robot program to automatically download articles from some of the databases and e-journals the Library subscribes to, including JSTOR, IEEE Xplore, the American Institute of Physics and others. This is a serious violation of the licensing agreements between the publishers and the University.
Publishers very quickly notice this behavior and cut off access to that resource for our entire campus! They then send a notice to the Library requiring that we make sure the person doing it is made aware that their actions are illegal and asking for assurance that they will not do it again.
DO NOT use such tools on our subscription resources. This includes the “subscription” option built into the Internet Explorer browser. Such behavior reflects badly on the University, and is absolutely inconsiderate.
last modified 23 April 2002