Stanford Libraries Blog

Billie Bousman is retiring

June 6, 2017
by Regina Lee Roberts
News

Over the past 35 years, Billie Bousman has served the Stanford community well, as a Library Assistant working for many curators and bibliographers in the social sciences. In this capacity, she worked on a wide range of projects and collection development tasks. For many years, Billie worked at the Green Library Information Center responding to research questions and has always split her time working between Green Library and Cubberley Library at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Her commitment to Stanford and her work is deeply appreciated. We wish her well in her next endeavors.

Columbia Glacier retreat

Geospatial information and the 2018 Federal budget

June 2, 2017
by Julie Sweetkind-Singer
Geospatial
Government information
Maps

President Trump released the proposed 2018 Federal budget, A New Foundation for American Greatness, on May 23, 2017.  The budget request for the Department of Interior is $11.7 billion, 12 percent ($1.6 billion) below the Continuting Resolution baseline level.  The proposed cuts to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) are 13% or $137.8 million below the 2017 Continuing Resolution baseline level.

Ishiuchi Miyako, "Hiroshima #71," 2007

New exhibit at the East Asia Library - In/Visible: Nuclear Representation in Japan from Hiroshima to Fukushima

May 25, 2017
by Joshua Capitanio
Exhibits

The East Asia Library is pleased to announce the installation of a new exhibit in its entrance hall display cases entitled "In/Visible: Nuclear Representation in Japan from Hiroshima to Fukushima."  The exhibit was curated by Dr. Kyoko Sato, Associate Director of Stanford's Program in Science, Technology, and Society (STS), with the help of Joshua Capitanio, Public Services Librarian, and Regan Murphy Kao, Japanese Studies Librarian.  

Chris DeBoever and Mary-Ellen Petrich at Carpentries Instructor Training

Software and Data Carpentries: Building Campus Capacity

May 23, 2017
by Amy E. Hodge
Science
One thing Stanford Libraries knows about running Software Carpentry and Data Carpentry workshops on Stanford’s campus is that workshop demand is high. Case in point: when we invited post-docs for a Data Carpentry workshop on an upcoming weekend this June, we had 120 people interested in the 40 available seats. 
 
That’s some serious demand. 
 
Software and Data Carpentry are sister organizations focused on teaching computing best practices to scientists. The idea is to make research faster, more efficient, and more reproducible by teaching scientists the basics of version control (usually Git), task automation (using the shell), and modular programming (typically in Python, but sometimes R). The two-day, hands-on workshops are taught by volunteer instructors, but workshop hosts are responsible for other costs, like instructor travel and food.
Henry Cowell, The Harp of Life (detail showing tone clusters)

Henry Cowell's tone clusters and The Harp of Life

May 23, 2017
by Ray Heigemeir
Manuscripts
Music

The maverick composer Henry Cowell wrote the solo piano work, The Harp of Life, in Menlo Park in 1925; it was later incorporated into the suite, Four Irish Tales, for piano and orchestra (1940). The original holograph score is held in the Memorial Library of Music in Stanford’s Department of Special Collections (MLM 232C). Accompanying correspondence from Cowell’s widow, Sydney, notes that only a few of Cowell’s 25 or so manuscripts employing tone clusters have survived, this being one. The Harp of Life refers to a great cosmic harp, upon which a plucked string announces the birth of a new being. Cowell’s tone clusters create an aural celestial environment within which the harp is played.

Pages