Daily News

posted on Oct. 4: Museum of Art reopens in November

There'll be fresh paint on the walls, new labels on the paintings and a new exhibit to see when the McMaster Museum of Art reopens its doors on Sunday, Nov. 18. Museum staff have used the past several months while the facility has been closed to spruce up the art gallery and catch up on projects they couldn't do on a daily basis. It's the first major opportunity they've had to renovate since the new museum in the Alvin A. Lee Building opened its doors in 1994. They're focusing on the positive after having unexpectedly closed their doors in mid-May due to a mysterious smell that left some staff feeling ill. "This closing has given us an opportunity to refresh the facility and make it practically brand new again. The galleries will have a new polish and sparkle to them and we're excited about that," says Christine Butterfield, new assistant curator.

posted on Oct. 4: Astronomer Beckwith brings the universe to McMaster

A painting, a poem and the universe: that's what American astronomer Steven Beckwith brought to an overflow audience in the Health Sciences Centre last evening during the first of this year's two Whidden Lectures, given under the whimsical title Rocket Science and Little Green Men: The Universe from Orbit. Last night's talk by Beckwith, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute and professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., was called Where Did We Come From? Where Are We Going? In his second lecture tonight, called Looking for Life in the Galaxy, he will discuss new space technologies that will allow us to search for signs of life on planets orbiting other stars. The lecture will take place in HSC-1A1 at 8 p.m. Last night, Beckwith discussed how scientists from Galileo to American astronomer Edwin Hubble to modern researchers have observed the night sky and developed ideas to explain an enduring mystery: the origins and continued unfolding of our universe. Against an opening slide backdrop of Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night, he said, "Asking where we came from and where we're going is a deep-rooted notion in people." It was Hubble who first got an inkling not just of the size of the universe but of its continual expansion, an observation that underpins the Big Bang theory of the universe's origins. "This was a really remarkable discovery," Beckwith said, pointing out that Hubble's work in the 1920s still guides much of modern astronomy. Perhaps no more visible proof of that lies in the Hubble space telescope. Launched in 1990, the telescope orbits above the earth's atmosphere to provide a clear-eyed view of the universe in greater detail than ever. Beckwith said the school-bus-sized instrument allows us to "look at a time when stars and galaxies were first being created. That's what Hubble has done."

posted on Oct. 4: McMaster Library offers 24/7 access to academic electronic books

McMaster and other member libraries of the Ontario Council of University Libraries have purchased a shared collection of about 2,000 scholarly electronic books, known as eBooks, from netLibrary. eBooks are full-text electronic versions of published books that current McMaster students and employees can search, browse, borrow and return over the internet. eBooks are accessible from a library, lab, office or home at any time of the day or night and are available for online browsing or checkout. To check out an eBook, authorized McMaster users must first create an account in netLibrary and obtain a proxy ID. eBooks are automatically checked back into the library collection when the checkout period (24 hours) expires. For information or assistance, ask reference staff at any campus library, or visit netLibrary and netLibrary FAQ. The university libraries' electronic book collection ranges in scope from core academic areas of science, social sciences and the humanities to collections of specialized study in areas such as business, computer science and engineering. Individual electronic book titles are listed and available to authorized McMaster users through MORRIS, the online library catalogue, or through the netLibrary site. More than 4,000 public domain electronic books are also available at the netLibrary site, including political texts and literary and historical classics. As an added feature, the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language is embedded into netLibrary eBooks and has been enhanced technologically to include graphics and audio pronunciation. (End of story)