Mellon Foundation Awards $350,000 Grant to Fund Plan for AI Book Training Commons

The Northeastern University Library and Authors Alliance have received a $350,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to plan a public-interest book training commons for artificial intelligence.

With the increasingly essential role that artificial intelligence plays in society, the importance of including information from books in AI’s large language models becomes more pivotal. The more than 129 million books written over the past 500 years are vital training data sources for AI, providing a quality, breadth, and diversity of content related to human thinking that can strengthen AI’s scope and accuracy.

The main goal of this project is to develop a plan for either establishing a new organization or identifying the relevant criteria for an existing organization (or organizations) to attempt the work of creating and stewarding a large-scale public interest training commons of books.

“We are grateful for the Mellon Foundation’s generous support for this important new project,” said Dean of the Library Dan Cohen. “We and the Authors Alliance are excited to convene writers, publishers, Librarians, technologists, and other stakeholders to explore the best way for books to be incorporated in an ethical and productive way that serves the public.”

Northeastern University Library’s role will be to support and coordinate the project and to host one of the two meetings of stakeholders.

With this work, planners hope to answer key questions, including:

  • What are the right goals and mission for such an effort, taking into account both the long and short-term;
  • What are the technical and logistical challenges that might differ from existing library-led efforts to provide access to collections as data;
  • How to develop a sufficiently large and diverse corpus to offer a reasonable alternative to existing sources;
  • What a public-interest governance structure should look like that takes into account the particular challenges of AI development;
  • How do we, as a collective of stakeholders from authors and publishers to students, scholars, and libraries, sustainably fund such a commons, including a model for long-term sustainability for maintenance, transformation, and growth of the corpus over time;
  • Which combination of legal pathways is acceptable to ensure books are lawfully acquired in a way that minimizes legal challenges;
  • How to respect the interests of authors and rightsholders by accounting for concerns about consent, credit, and compensation; and
  • How to distinguish between the different needs and responsibilities of nonprofit researchers, small market entrants, and large commercial actors.

The Authors Alliance is an organization focused on creating resources and opportunities for authors interested in sharing their work broadly, in the interest of the public good.

2024 Reading Challenge Update: November Winner and What You Read This Month

Congratulations to Manju Selvakumaran, our November winner, who won a finals week care package!

With only December left to go, the 2024 Reading Challenge is almost over! Congratulations to everyone who has participated this year. If you’d still like to join us, make sure to read a book in December and tell us about it! For more chances to win, make sure to track your reading with the Massachusetts Center for the Book, too.

The November theme was “a relaxing or soul-soothing book.” Here are some of the books you enjoyed:

What You Read in November

Cover of Anne of Green Gables

Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery
Find it at Snell Library | Find it at F.W. Olin Library

“Anne of Green Gables is one of those rare books that captures your heart from the very first page and refuses to let go. I was so engrossed in Anne’s world, her vivid imagination, and her journey in Avonlea that I couldn’t put the book down — I finished it all in a single day! This book isn’t just a story — it’s an experience that leaves you feeling uplifted and grateful for life’s simple joys. If you’re looking for a novel that’s full of charm, humor, and heart, I can’t recommend Anne of Green Gables enough. It’s a journey you won’t forget!” — Lavanya

“This was my first time reading this classic novel, and it was certainly soul-soothing. What better way to spend a weekend than in the gorgeous gardens of Anne’s friends in Avonlea?” — Bianca

Cover of Legends and Lattes


Legends & Lattes: A Novel of High Fantasy and Low Stakes, Travis Baldree
Find it at F.W. Olin Library | Read the e-book

“It was just the most charming little story about a coffee shop and friendship and coffee.” — Sahil


Cover of The Soul of an Octopus

The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness, Sy Montgomery
Find it at Snell Library

“Something I would not normally read that I picked up in Cape Cod. Did you know it is octopuses, not octopi?” — Eva


Cover of The Stranger


The Stranger, Albert Camus
Find it at Snell Library | Find it at F.W. Olin Library

“Soul soothing because this is my favorite book. I reread it every time I need to reset myself. After midterms, I was stressed and needed to calm down, so I reached back to this.” — Svetlana

And What to Read in December

December’s theme challenges readers to explore new frontiers: “read a well-reviewed book in your least favorite genre.” Is it finally time to pick up that classic fantasy or sci-fi, or find out what all those romance fans are talking about? Here are some suggestions from the library.

If your least favorite genre is…

MEMOIR

Cover of Dirtbag Massachusetts

Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional, Isaac Fitzgerald
Find it at Snell Library | Read the e-book

“An endearing and tattered catalog of one man’s transgressions and the ways in which it is our sins, far more than our virtues, that make us who we are.” — New York Times

“It takes a great deal of trust to commit one’s shames — and more than that, the shames of others — to the page with honesty. Messily, lovingly, Fitzgerald lays it bare.” — L.A. Review of Books

ROMANCE

Cover of Romantic Comedy

Romantic Comedy, Curtis Sittenfeld
Read the e-book

“While Sittenfeld knows the dramatic value of putting obstacles in the path of characters you’re rooting for, she also isn’t above giving readers what they want — and that’s exactly what she does in this affable, intelligently crafted tale of work and love.” — Guardian

“Sittenfeld deftly toggles between deconstructing a well-worn genre and leaning into its most predictable beats.” — The Atlantic

SCIENCE FICTION

Cover of the Three-Body Problem

The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu
Find it at Snell Library | Find it at F.W. Olin Library | Listen to the audiobook

“If The Three-Body Problem […] helps bridge the gap between Eastern and Western SF (science fiction), it will have performed a great duty for the literary world. But as a science-fiction epic of the most profound kind, it’s already won. — NPR

“Remarkable, revelatory and not to be missed.” — Kirkus Reviews

HISTORICAL FICTION

Cover of The Covenant of Water

The Covenant of Water, Abraham Verghese
Find it at Snell Library | Read the e-book | Listen to the audiobook

“I would happily spend months on end with [this book] and I cried when it was done. While I don’t entirely believe in Verghese’s characters, I am moved by how much he loves them and, in so doing, makes the reader love them. It is a better world for having a book in it that chronicles so many tragedies in a tone that never deviates from hope.” — New York Times

“Verghese’s compassion for his ensemble, which subtly multiplies, infuses every page. […] Writerly strokes may occasionally feel broad, but like animate oil paintings, their effect is rich and reverberant. The further into the novel readers sink, the more power it accrues.” — Washington Post

SELF HELP

Cover of Wintering

Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, Katherine May
Listen to the audiobook

“There is so much to treasure here…I love the surprises of the book. Most of all, it is about the comforts of language. Reading is like slipping into a fur coat. May could protectively convince us of anything — the pleasures of cold weather, slow days, dusty libraries. They all start to seem like prizes and her sensual connoisseurship is a joy.” — Guardian

“Wintering does us the great service of reminding us that we are not alone in feeling undone. And although May’s book doesn’t offer a neat, easy ending in which she miraculously feels better, she does offer hope, an antidote to her tendency to ‘feel like a negative presence in the world.'” — New York Times

THRILLER

Cover of Our Missing Hearts

Our Missing Hearts, Celeste Ng
Find it at Snell Library | Listen to the audiobook

“I won’t give away the splendid conclusion of Ng’s book: suffice it to say, the climax deals with the power of words, the power of stories and the persistence of memory.” — New York Times

“Our Missing Hearts is saddled by grief. But it is also propelled by hope, less a grim prognosis of the future than an impassioned call for a full reckoning with the past.” — NPR

“Taut and terrifying, Ng’s cautionary tale transports us into an American tomorrow that is all too easy to imagine — and persuasively posits that the antidotes to fear and suspicion are empathy and love.” — Kirkus Reviews

If you need more inspiration and are on the Boston campus, visit our table December 10th and 11th to check out books and get librarian recommendations.

Make sure to tell us about your book before the end of the month for a chance to win the prize drawing. For additional chances to win, log your reading with the Massachusetts Center for the Book, too!

As always, happy reading and good luck in the December Reading Challenge!

2024 Reading Challenge Update: October Winner and What You Read This Month

This month’s Reading Challenge winner is Berke Maltepe, who will be enjoying a digital gift card to Trident Booksellers & Café! Trident is an independent bookstore and a beloved institution on Newbury Street in Boston, where it’s celebrating its 40th anniversary. Congratulations, Berke!

Big congratulations, as well, to everyone who read a book this month and told us about it. There are two months left in the 2024 Reading Challenge, so keep reading! Hint: for more chances to win, make sure to track your reading with the Massachusetts Center for the Book, too.

The October theme was “a book about a time in history that you’d like to know more about.” Here are some of the history and historical fiction books that readers listed this month:

What You Read in October

Cover of I Must Betray You

I Must Betray You, Ruta Sepetys
Find it at Snell Library

“Ruta Sepetys writes historical novels that illuminate historical events that might not be so familiar to some readers. I Must Betray You is set in Romania in 1989 at the time when Communism was being overthrown in eastern Europe. A 17-year-old student named Cristian struggles to do the right thing when he is coerced into becoming an informant for the secret police just as the dictatorship that has oppressed his country for decades begins to fall. Like many of the author’s grim stories, this gripping novel ends on a hopeful note.” — Linda

Cover of Last Night at the Telegraph Club

Last Night at the Telegraph Club, Malinda Lo
Find it at Snell Library | Find it at F. W. Olin Library

“Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo is a coming-of-age story in 1950s San Francisco, set against the backdrop of the Red Scare. Lily Hu is a Chinese American girl who is starting to question her sexuality after she reads a dime-store novel. She goes to a mysterious club, based on real bars in San Francisco, called the Telegraph Club.” — Galen

Cover of Doomsday Book

Doomsday Book, Connie Willis
Find it at Snell Library | Read the e-book

“The story follows Kivrin, a history student at Oxford who travels back in time to study life in the 14th century. However, due to some miscalculation, she arrives during the time of the plague, which is a period of devastation and mayhem in European history. Willis has written the book with detailed research and emotional depth. The Doomsday Book examines the resilience of humans when we come in contact with a catastrophic event, which makes time-travel both an adventure and also a poignant reflection on how we survive.” — Navya

Cover of The Book Thief

The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
Find it at Snell Library | Find it at F. W. Olin

“What I liked most about the book is that it’s written from the perspective of Death. It gives great insight into the atmosphere in WWII, but is still heartwarming, as it mainly describes the situation of a little girl. It also highlights how people risked their lives to uphold humanity in this time of hatred and injustice. It’s a book that really goes to the heart and is so well written—it’s a bit like art.” — Mirjam

Cover of My Brilliant Friend


My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante
Find it at Snell Library | Find it at F. W. Olin

“Absolutely loved it!.” — Nicole



And What to Read in November

November is a time to relax, with “a relaxing or soul-soothing book.” Here are some soothing suggestions. Need more ideas? Check out Northeastern’s curated selections of e-books and audiobooks! And if you’re in Boston, you can stop by the Snell Library lobby in person on November 19th and 20th for Reading Challenge stickers, bookmarks, and books to check out, and friendly librarians who love talking about books!

Covers of Legends and Lattes, What You Are Looking for is in the Library, Rest is Resistance, and The Psalm of the Wild-Built

Legends & Lattes, Travis Baldree
Find it at F. W. Olin Library | Read the e-book
Legends & Lattes is a cozy fantasy novella following Viv, an orc who has decided to set aside the barbarian lifestyle in favor of opening a coffee shop in a bustling magical city.

What You Are Looking for is in the Library, Michiko Aoyama (translated by Alison Watts)
Find it at F. W. Olin | Read the e-book
Tokyo librarian Sayuri Komachi has a gift: her book recommendations are able to provide readers with exactly what they need. What You Are Looking for is in the Library is a relaxing love letter to libraries, books, and readers.

Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto, Tricia Hersey
Find it at Snell Library | Find it at F. W. Olin Library | Read the e-book
While it may not be a relaxing read, Rest is Resistance is an ode to rest and the transformative power of opting out of grind culture. Author Tricia Hersey connects our current obsession with productivity to systemized patterns of racism, misogyny, and anti-humanism.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Becky Chambers
Find it at Snell Library | Find it at F. W. Olin Library | Listen to the audiobook
A self-aware robot meets a space monk, and together they set off on a journey to answer the question: what do people need?

As always, happy reading and good luck in the November Reading Challenge! Make sure to tell us about your book before the end of the month for a chance to win the prize drawing. And for additional chances to win, log your reading with the Massachusetts Center for the Book, too!

Box by Box: Inventorying the Cambridge Women’s Center Records

Since last fall, the processing team has been focused on inventorying unprocessed collections. Inventories allow staff and researchers to learn more about what’s in a collection, help locate materials of interest, and help staff strategize further processing or digitization work, as resources allow. A previous blog post described inventorying the Stull & Lee records. Currently, processing assistants are inventorying more recent donations to the archives. Over the next few months, we will be featuring collections our staff has found particularly interesting to inventory in their own words.

Cambridge Women’s Center Records

By Aleks Renerts, Processing Assistant

I recently worked on the creation of an inventory for the Cambridge Women’s Center records. The Center was founded after a group of female protestors occupied an underutilized Harvard-owned building on International Women’s Day on March 8, 1971. They demanded affordable housing, child care, and equal access to education. The movement gained local publicity and heightened awareness, and donations in support of the sit-in allowed the group to purchase a property at 46 Pleasant Street in Cambridge, from which the Center still operates.

The Cambridge Women’s Center records offer a picture of how the policies, goals, and actions of the Center have changed over time. Volunteers at the Center established programs to address domestic violence, racism, access to healthcare, housing and job opportunities, sexual abuse, and other issues affecting women. The records include newsletters, flyers, calendars, meeting notes and memos, and planning documents for activities that demonstrate the impact the Center has had on the community, and offer valuable perspective on feminist thought and activism from the 1970s to the present.

An example I found particularly interesting were the documents pertaining to the inclusion of transgender women at the Center. A changing perspective on trans individuals can be read through meeting minutes and updated policies. At its inception, the Center was not open to transgender women who had not “completed” medical transition, fearing that the presence of non-passing trans women might negatively impact other women at the Center. As these beliefs were challenged and discussed over time, the Center adopted a trans-inclusive policy as early as the 2000s, realigning the mission of the Center to be supportive and welcoming to all women regardless of personal histories.

Below is a glimpse at some of the records.

Two scanned pages of a document
A brief history of the Cambridge Women’s Center and its relation to broader feminist mobilization, circa 1980s. It links the founding moment of the Center to social and labor movements from the 19th century to the present, and discusses early initiatives by the Center’s founders.
Two scanned pages of a document
Shift journal, 2005. Women who answered the phone for the Cambridge Women’s Center helpline would take notes here. There are many fascinating entries discussing who called and for what reason, and a general sense of the internal functioning of the Center. Although the majority of callers were recorded as anonymous, there are a few entries that include names. Those names have been redacted to protect privacy.
Two scanned pages of a document
Transgender Committee meeting notes, early 2000s. This summary discusses the evolution of a trans-inclusionary mindset at the Cambridge Women’s Center.

To find out more about accessing the Cambridge Women’s Center records, email the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections at archives@northeastern.edu.

Aleks Renert (he/him) is a graduate student at Simmons University in the dual MA degree program in History and Library and Information Science, with a concentration in Archives Management. His academic background is history, with a focus on the Hispanic world and histories of class, gender, and colonialism. He received his BA in History from McGill University.

Tastemakers Archives Provides a Glimpse into Music Format History

Cover of Tastemakers magazine, Issue 16. It pictures a woman standing on a ladder under a tree picking CDs as though they are apples. The main headline is "Music for Free: Streaming stations for your listening pleasure and spotify is coming"

One of my recent projects was to digitize the very first issues of Tastemakers, Northeastern’s student-run music magazine, which began in 2007 and is still running today. Since the 2010-11 academic year, all issues were created in a born-digital format, so they were easy to add to the Digital Repository Service earlier this year. However, the first 19 issues were not, so it was my job to scan them on our Bookeye scanner and turn them into PDFs ready to be made accessible.

Since the issues in question date from 2007 to mid-2010, they fall exactly in the transitional moment of the music industry when legal streaming was still a novel concept, but CDs had fallen largely out of fashion in favor of iPods and other portable mp3 players. Consequently, as I was going through the magazines, I found an assortment of pieces that are retrospectively funny because we, in 2024, know the outcomes of all their speculations (most of which didn’t happen).

The articles I found fell into two broad categories: devices and streaming, both of which provide an interesting (as well as amusing) look at the future we imagined music would have at that time.

Article headlined "USB Devices...The New CD?"
Tastemakers, Issue 9, page 13

Let’s start with devices. The two pieces I found are on the potentiality of USB sticks and microSD cards as the dominant form of physical media to replace CDs. The USB article discusses a few bands and artists circa 2008, including Matchbox Twenty and Jennifer Lopez, who released albums on USB sticks embedded in rubber bracelets, primarily as a marketing gimmick. The author wonders whether if the technology will catch on in earnest or remain a ploy. At the time, vinyl was already starting to make a resurgence as the go-to medium for people who want their music on a physical object, and that group is comprised primarily of people who care deeply about the auditory and visual technical details of their music. So, I think the bracelets were never really going to work, since a group of mp3 files on a rubber bracelet couldn’t match up to either the quality or experience of vinyl on a record player, and thus eliminated their theoretical primary market. (It’s also funny to imagine collectors’ storage for a bunch of rubber bracelets. Would you keep them in a basket? Individual cases? One of those divider boxes for sorting hardware? On a pegboard on your wall?)

Article headlined "Good Idea/Bad Idea: Selling Music on SD Drives"
Tastemakers, Issue 12, page 17

Meanwhile, the microSD card piece talks about an attempt in late 2008 by major record labels to supplant (or at least supplement) CDs with pre-loaded microSD cards, branding as slotMusic, that can go into any phone or mp3 player with a corresponding card slot. This one is interesting because it could have possibly been successful, but only in a universe where Apple wasn’t already the dominant force in the portable music player market. iPods were well established as everyone’s favorite internet-based mp3 player, and the iPhone was already becoming the most popular phone, which combined the two via a built-in iTunes app and completely removed the need to even have a separate device for music. Even if they had managed to carve out a market around Apple, rapid increases in storage capacity would have also rendered them useless within a handful of years. While 1GB was a significant amount of storage for the size of a microSD in 2008, 128GB microSDs were introduced in 2014, which is a 127,000% increase in about five years. They didn’t stop there. Today, microSD cards are available in sizes up to 1TB, which is big enough to fit 1,000 slotMusic cards on a single item. So, slotMusic never really stood a chance.

Now, on to streaming. Over the course of three years, Tastemakers published five different pieces about then-current and upcoming streaming services, effectively culminating (though not knowingly at the time) in a piece about the European launch of Spotify. Nearly all of the platforms mentioned are now entirely defunct, with some exceptions including Spotify and Amazon mp3 (now Amazon Music). The other remaining platforms now provide internet radio and recommendation sites, rather than streaming music, a fact that does not seem coincidental. Here’s a breakdown:

Chart titled "Streaming Service Breakdown" and contains a list of past and present streaming services and their pros and cons
Sources: Issue 3, page 8 (Ruckus); Issue 7, page 16 (FreeMusicZilla); Issue 5, page 15 (Spiralfrog, Amazon mp3, Grooveshark, The Hype Machine, Blip.fm); Issue 16, pages 20-21 (Last.fm, Songza); Issue 6, page 20 (Seeqpod)

It’s also amusing now to think of Spotify as the hip new platform from Europe. Their article quotes other American journalists who had received early-access press accounts describing Spotify as “the world’s biggest iTunes collection” and “an almost infinite jukebox.” It sounds quaint in today’s world, but then you can’t describe something with words that don’t yet exist. Reading their predictions from 2009 about whether Spotify will be successful while others failed is like listening to someone try to predict the ending of a TV show that you’ve already finished.

Two-page spread article headlined "Music for Free: Spotify is Coming"
Tastemakers, Issue 16, page 22-23

I sat for about 30 minutes trying to think of something to speculate for the future the way that these articles speculated about streaming. The conclusion I came to is that I don’t think there are any more technological advancements that music needs to make; you can get a device that fits in your pocket with up to 1TB of space and provides access to anything on Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube. Either that, or, like the writes of Tastemakers in 2007-2010, I cannot even conceive of what is yet to come, exactly because it has not come yet.