Joy Weese Moll
Q420
November 8, 2003
Subject Guide for Mathematics
Mathematics 101
Mathematicians, like other
scientists, perform cutting-edge research and report it in one of many
professional journals. Unlike most other scientists, mathematicians also work
with historical information, sometimes resurrecting problems from centuries
ago. The most famous of these, Fermat’s Last Theorem, was finally solved in
1993 after intriguing mathematicians for 350 years.
Since historical precedent is
vital to the practice of mathematics, the literature of the discipline is
well-organized, governed by the Mathematics Subject Classification (http://www.ams.org/msc/).While the
literature itself (written in specialized language and symbols) is impossible
for a non-mathematical librarian to read, the organization is easily
understood. This book will provide a good starting point for a mathematics
librarian:
Anderson, Nancy D. and Lois M. Pausch, ed. A Guide
to Library Service in Mathematics: The Non-Trivial Mathematics Librarian. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1993.
Much of what is written about
mathematics is about teaching the subject. The educational literature is
accessible to a librarian without any special background.
Organizations
Mathematicians have two large
professional organizations, the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the
Mathematical Association of America (MAA). The AMS is focused on scholarly
work, including multiple publications. The MAA concentrates on the teaching of
mathematics, particularly at the high school and college levels. Both groups host
helpful websites.
American Mathematical
Society: www.ams.org
Mathematical Association of America: www.maa.org
Indexes and Journals
The American Mathematical
Society maintains MathSciNet, a web-based database indexing mathematical
journals, books, and conference proceedings with coverage going back to 1940.
When full text is not available within the database, the interface integrates
seamlessly to other MU databases—clicking on a citation for an article in the American
Journal of Mathematics takes you directly to that article in the Project
Muse database.
The Science Citation Index
covers the mathematical journals.
The following table shows
several of the major academic journals in mathematics along with their access
notes for electronic and physical versions in the St. Louis area.
|
Journal Title and
Description
|
Electronic notes
|
Physical location notes
|
|
American Journal of
Mathematics
- oldest US math journal (1878)
- Katz: “one of most important titles”
|
JSTOR has this from the
first issue until 1995. Project Muse has it from 1996 on.
|
UMSL, Wash U, SLU
|
|
American Mathematical
Monthly
Mathematical Association of
America
|
JSTOR has 1894 to 1997.
Factiva has it from 1997.
|
St.
Louis Community College,
Maryville, Fontbonne, Webster, UMSL, SLU, Wash U
|
|
Notices of the American
Mathematical Society
The feature articles are
mathematical but the book reviews and news items are readable.
|
Through proxy from MU
journals site or free to all at:
http://www.ams.org/notices/
|
St.
Charles Community College, SLU, UMSL, Wash U
|
|
Bulletin of the American
Mathematical Society
Book reviews and math
articles
|
Through proxy from MU
journals site or free to all at:
http://www.ams.org/bull/
|
St.
Charles Community College, SLU, UMSL, Wash U
|
|
SIAM Review
According to Katz, this has
excellent book reviews
|
The table of contents and
abstracts are available on the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
website:
http://epubs.siam.org
Citations and abstracts for
1997 and later available through MU’s EbscoHost.
Full text in JSTOR through
1997.
|
SLU, Wash U
|
Monographs
Because of the longevity of
mathematical literature, books are the basic research tool for mathematics. On
its web site, the AMS acknowledges that “of course, libraries are the most
important resource for the literature of mathematics.”
The Library of Congress
Subject Heading “Mathematics” has many neighboring, related and narrower terms.
Universities that are famous for scientific or medical programs also have good
mathematics collections in their academic libraries. The University of Georgia at Athens has what was once the collection held by the American
Mathematical Society. Outside of academia, there are good math collections
maintained by the Argonne National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National
Laboratory, and General Dynamics.
MathSciNet, which covers
books as well as journals, is a useful resource for locating monographs.
Cornell has scanned nearly
600 copyright-expired mathematics books and put them on the web. The entire
collection is searchable. Here is that web site:
http://historical.library.cornell.edu/math/
Electronic Resources
Math Forum @ Drexel
http://mathforum.org
This is an excellent portal
with separate link pages for students, teachers, and researchers as well as the
comprehensive Internet Mathematics Library, a searchable multi-level directory
of links to math web sites.
MathSearch
http://www.maths.usyd.edu.au:8000/MathSearch.html
A search engine that searches
“a collection of over 200,000 documents on English-language mathematics and
statistics servers across the Web.” It searches mostly college-level and
research material.
Scout Report
http://www.scout.wisc.edu/
There are thousands of web
sites with teaching materials for mathematics. The Scout Report helps a little
bit in selecting them since it has reviewed about a thousand of these.
Gray Literature
The AMS maintains a Directory
of Mathematics Preprint and e-Print Servers:
http://www.ams.org/global-preprints/index.html
Bibliography
Ash, Lee. Subject Collections. New Providence, N.J.: R.R. Bowker, 1993.
Balay, Robert, ed. Guide to Reference Books. Chicago: American Library Association, 1996.
Encyclopedia of Associations. Detroit:
Gale Research Co., 2003.
Hurt, C.D. Information Sources in Science and
Technology. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1998.
Library of Congress Subject Headings, Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 2001.
Warwick, Travis D and Harley C. Brooks. “Mathematics.”
In Magazines for Libraries, edited by Cheryl LaGuardia. New Providence, NJ: R.R. Bowker, 2002. (Bill Katz and Linda Sternburg
Katz, consulting editors)