This etching on paper by Italian draughtsman and printmaker Stefano della Bella is likely to have been one of the works that brought the DRS to its 500,000th upload.
This milestone comes as the library celebrates a decade of supporting the DRS as a service for the university community. In those 10 years, a few files have emerged as the most popular, seeing consistent traffic year after year, including:
This “Ancient Aliens” meme from the One Marathon collection is the most viewed file in the DRS.
Internet Meme: “Ancient Aliens” meme — The most viewed file in the DRS is a variation of the Ancient Aliens meme from the Our Marathon collection, which contains crowdsourced images, documents, and audio-visual content related to the 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon. The file has been viewed 51,598 times since 2018, averaging more than 7,000 views a year.
Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity (PONS): Full Test — The most streamed audio or video file in the DRS is a test instrument that is widely used in the field of psychology. The full test video has been streamed 21,979 since 2015, averaging more than 2,000 streams a year.
In September, Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections (NUASC) hosted the staff of The Huntington News for an open house to view campus collections dating back from 1926-2009. This event was held in part to help The Huntington News staff prepare to celebrate their centennial year in February 2026 and to introduce the past news issues at their disposal for future research.
The Huntington News has recently been leveraging the archives in their reporting, with archival records featured in many stories. Their From the Archives series chronicles important events and eras in the university’s past with support from primary source materials such as documents and photographs.
Photo courtesy of Margot Murphy/Huntington News
NUASC is fortunate to steward multiple student news publications, including Northeastern News (and its predecessor, The Northeastern Tech); Panga Nyeusi, Northeastern’s first Black student newspaper; and the Black student-run Onyx Informer. Many of these materials can be accessed online through the Digital Repository Service.
While flipping through old issues of Northeastern News, Huntington News staff members were able to see the marked differences between the various eras of the News. While older issues featured more text, shifts in reporting and design led to more photographs in later editions. They were also able to compare reporting from the present to similar themes in the past, such as on-campus demonstrations and rapidly developing new technologies.
Photo courtesy of Margot Murphy/Huntington News
Staff members were welcome to use the microfilm reader that is housed in the reading room to view News issues. While there is a material difference between scrolling through microfilm and leafing through a newspaper, there are benefits to both methods of researching past issues. Microfilm provides quick access to specific issues and a compact way of storing information from print resources. Physical news issues give researchers the opportunity to engage with an item in the same way that someone would have when the issue was first printed.
Student news has been a vital part of the Northeastern campus community since its inception in the early 20th century. These publications are available in physical form and can be viewed in the NUASC reading room. If you would like to view these or any materials in the archives, please make an appointment by contacting archives@northeastern.edu.
A fundraising opportunity to digitize the news is coming soon and will be announced in the new year. NUASC is excited to collaborate with The Huntington News to expand access to these historic records.
Northeastern’s electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) provide a valuable record of the university’s scholarly contributions, capturing the evolution of research across numerous academic disciplines over the past two decades. The Digital Repository Service (DRS) preserves all ETDs from 2008 onward, along with selected earlier works, creating a collection of more than 7,500 items spanning over 30 departments and nearly 70 academic programs.
As some of the DRS’ most frequently accessed materials, ETDs offer rich insights into the university’s academic history and digital presence. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the DRS, Digital Production Services (DPS) — the department responsible for managing both the DRS and ETDs — set out to share insights into how theses and dissertations are added to the repository and how Northeastern’s ETD collections have evolved over time.
ETD Creation to DRS Ingest: Process Overview
The ETDs are initially submitted to ProQuest by graduate students as a condition of their graduation. The rules for the submission package and document organization are determined by each program. Once the submission is completed and the student fills out information about their ETD, the file and metadata are sent in via a zip file to a library server. Over the last 5+ years, a local workflow has been developed to:
Export the files and move backups to other networked drives
Record submissions in a spreadsheet to ensure file provenance
Document any additional information, such as embargo dates or original file names, in case there are issues with the submission
Review, normalize, and transform the existing ProQuest metadata to create DRS-compliant records for each file
Add degree, school, and department information to each record to support the DRS collection structure
Ingest the ETDs into their corresponding collections in the DRS
Generate digital object identifiers (DOIs) for each ETD
Conduct name authority control on all advisor and committee member names
Filtering options for ETDs in the DRS.
New ETDs are processed and ingested every 2-3 months, depending on the time of year and the volume of ETD submissions, and can involve anywhere from 30 to 100 ETDs at a time. DOIs are generated and ETD contributor names are reviewed bi-annually.
General Growth
The total number of ETDs submitted by Northeastern students has increased significantly since 2008. From 2008-2010, there was an average of around 190 documents submitted annually. As the 2010s continued, that number steadily increased from 353 in 2013 to 583 in 2019. There was a small dip in 2020, possibly due to COVID interrupting degree completions, but since then, there have been approximately 540-590 ETDs submitted each year.
Degree Distribution
Almost 90% of ETDs produced from 2008-2010 were either for Ph.D. or MS degrees, but as the School of Education started producing theses for the Ed.D. degree, those quickly became common, and represented 34% of all ETDs produced by 2020. Additional degree programs also started producing ETDs from 2010-2020, with MA, DLP, and MFA degrees representing almost 5% of ETDs during that period. In the last 4-5 years, numbers have stabilized, with Ph.D. dissertations regularly accounting for around 45% of all ETDs, Ed.D. theses around 35%, MS theses hovering around 15%, and all other degree types filling out the remaining 5%.
Data visualization showing ETD submissions by degree type from 2008-2014. Created by Claude (Antropic) based on analysis of dataset exported from the DRS and transformed by the author. Generated May 2025.
College, School, Department, and Program Representation
Data visualization showing ETD submission by college from 2008-2024. Created by Claude (Anthropic) based on analysis exported from the DRS and transformed by the author. Generated May 2025.
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (910)
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (705)
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology (316)
Department of Art + Design (271)
Computer Science Program (245)
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (242)
School of Pharmacy (212)
Department of Chemical Engineering (209)
Department of Counseling and Applied Educational Psychology (202)
Addition of Supplementary Files
The first ETD to include supplemental files, or files submitted to accompany the ETD PDF file, first appeared in 2013. The number of supplemental files grew throughout the 2010s, with supplemental material representing 4% of all ETD file submissions during that time. Since 2020, the number of supplemental files has seen a slight decline, but there are still regular submissions, with 26 provided in 2024. The college that most often submits these files is the College of Arts, Media, and Design (CAMD), with almost 1 in 4 theses including supplemental materials.
Other notable contributors include COE and the College of Social Sciences and Humanities (CSSH). The smallest contributor is CPS, which, despite being the largest contributor of ETDs overall, has only 11 total supplemental files since 2013.
Screenshot of a supplementary file page that features a photograph stored in the DRS. Original photo by Hannah M. Groudas.
New Undergraduate Theses
More recently, undergraduate programs from departments like Biology, Biochemistry, Marine and Environmental Science, and Psychology have begun to submit electronic theses directly to DPS staff. DPS offers the same level of service to the undergraduate theses as the graduate ETDs and includes the same metadata in each accompanying description to ensure these materials are as discoverable as the graduate theses and dissertations.
Maintaining ETDs is a vital part of the DRS’ mission, presenting unique challenges that library staff are well-equipped to manage. As the submission processes, file formats, academic disciplines, and research topics continue to evolve, the library remains committed to preserving and providing access to these scholarly works. Through ongoing innovation and stewardship, we ensure that the academic contributions and history of Northeastern students are securely archived and shared for generations to come.
AI acknowledgement: Claude Projects was used to generate data visualizations based on ETD metadata exported from the DRS and transformed into a spreadsheet dataset. Specific visualizations based on identified columns were requested. Project instructions, prompts, and dataset are available here.
In our series of posts highlighting 10 years of the Digital Repository Service (DRS), I wanted to shine a light on the audio and video materials we host that engage with global warming, pollution, and the climate emergency.
Student Research
The annual Research, Innovation, and Scholarship Expo (RISE) is an opportunity for students and faculty to showcase their research focused on solutions to real-life problems. In 2021, these presentations were recorded.
The debt calculator: a gratitude-based approach to environmental justice by Kira Mok and Sophie Kelly describes how Chelsea and East Boston have a higher burden of pollution and negative health consequences compared to more wealthy parts of Boston, which benefit from industry in these neighborhoods. Their project “What Does Chelsea Do for You?” led to an infographic and online quiz about the debt Boston residents owe to these areas.
Northeastern University green chemistry education symposium, a presentation by Olivia Sterns, Umin Jalloh, Christopher Mahir, Christina McConney, and Angelica Fiuza, describes a sustainable and environmentally responsible chemistry curriculum and plans for a related conference. You can also check out the organization Beyond Benign.
The impact of biological knowledge on pro-environmental behavior is a presentation by Kyleigh Watson, Kelly Marchese, Jasmine Ho, and Daniela Ras that explores the relationship between study participants’ knowledge of nature, urbanicity, and implicit and explicit connection to the natural world.
Podcast Episodes
The What’s New podcast, hosted by Dean of the Library Dan Cohen, is one of the most popular collections in the DRS. It consists of wide-ranging conversations with faculty members across the university.
How We Respond to Disaster (season 1, episode 1) — Professor of Political Science and Founding Director of the Global Resilience Institute Stephen Flynn talks about how communities come together in the wake of disasters, including increasingly common extreme weather events.
Ethics and the Environment (season 3, episode 13) — Director of the Ethics Institute Ron Sandler discusses climate change and how we can ethically respond to the moment.
The DRS team also works with professors to host student coursework in the repository.
The course Gender, Race, and Medicine (WMNS 1225), taught by Moya Bailey, included the creation of a podcast series. In the episode How Boston Institutions Impact the Health of Neighborhoods: Tufts Medical Center and Northeastern University, Celene Chen and Paulina Demirev discuss a variety of issues surrounding gentrification, including the fight against a parking garage in Chinatown that would likely have led to increased pollution. Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections holds the records of the Chinese Progressive Association, one of the groups that protested against the garage.
These selections demonstrate how the DRS documents both the climate crisis and the innovation solutions emerging from Northeastern’s academic community.
Since its initial launch in September 2022, the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive (BNDA) has established itself as one of the most comprehensive digital records of racial homicides collected to date. This blog series aims to highlight the work of the archivists on the BNDA team and their experiences preparing for the launch of BNDA Version 2.0. You can read more about the Version 2.0 update in Gathering the Red Record: A Two-Day Convening on Linking Racial Violence Archives.
Methods Overview
The first thing I have to say about the archival work methods for cataloging news articles at the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project’s BNDA is that they are a team effort. The workflow structure is maintained through shared instructions, templates, the data dictionary, and a responsive, organized supervising team.
All of the archives assistant work is digital. Archives assistants receive batches of news articles to catalog in the form of spreadsheets with links to images of the original newspaper articles stored in the Digital Repository Service. We then verify those articles against information we currently have and complete standardized fields for the information we want supplied. If we encounter a question about the records that we can’t answer with assurance, we flag it to be reviewed by either our supervisors or the legal team.
When completed, those standardized spreadsheets are reviewed by the supervising team and transformed into a format compatible for inclusion in the BNDA. Having multiple team members verify information improves the accuracy of the records and makes for sustainable collections processing practices.
Our goal is to add as much accurate and data-verified cataloged information as possible in order to provide supporting evidence of each incident, case, and victim identifier. These standardized identifiers, as well as authorized names for each unique individual, allow the team to take advantage of the relational-based search capability of the Airtable database. Not only does this system help us make better cataloged records, it allows for more retrievable information for future research.
Examples in the Records
Washington Sniper Victims One example of data verification is to identify the victim(s) present in a news article whenever possible, even when minimal information is present. Breaking news articles often lack details. Names can be absent or incorrect, or focus on the perpetrator of the crime rather than the victim. One strategy I find helpful is to work by victim-subject, going through batches of news articles that are all related to one victim or group of victims. This allows me to glean patterns of context clues that allow for victim identification even if the victim is unnamed.
I found this strategy particularly helpful when working with a case related to a serial sniper who murdered multiple victims in Washington, D.C., in 1940. Three victims identified over the months of press coverage were Hylan McClaine, Lushion Sam Banks, and Theodore I. Goffney, but the chronological order of their murders was not shared. Press coverage of the sniper continued into the 1960s, long after the trial, with inconsistent reference to the victims. At the BNDA, we can link the victim names at the forefront of these articles in our catalog, centering the narrative around the victims rather than the perpetrator.
Bryant Family Murder The research crucial work that aids in the cataloging effort is also on display in the case of the 1932 Bryant family murder. The news coverage of the tragic murder of the Bryant family was sometimes unclear about which family members survived and which were killed in the horrible robbery, torture, and death by arson. Some articles appeared sympathetic to the murderers and provided little to no details on the victims.
Our Airtable database supports a field for notes written by Project Historian Jay Driskell when they are available. Through Jay’s notes, I could confirm with certainty that the father and son, Lewis and Ozola Bryant, were murdered. The mother, Missouri Bryant, survived. The more detailed news articles corroborated these facts. The Bryant murder trial also stands out as a case that upheld the murder charges against a white killer despite appeals up to the Missouri State Supreme Court.
Given the graphic nature of the emotional events and the polarized reporting, I was grateful to have ready, retrievable access to previous work to clarify the Bryant family’s story in order to help me accurately represent the family in the cataloged work. I also benefitted from the concurrent work of another archives assistant and the support of my supervisor, Project Archivist Joy Zanghi.
These cases and many more are available in BNDA Version 2.0 and you can browse the current version now. I had the privilege of working with archival methods developed over the past 18 years of the project, taking into account the humanity of the sensitive subject matter. The final result is that the CRRJ developed an archival format with the BNDA that allows for the data within it to be scalable, buildable, and retrievable for the future.
CRRJ Archives Assistant Stephanie Bennett Rahmat (she/her/hers) has 17 years of experience working with historic and cultural heritage resources throughout the U.S. She completed her Master of Library and Information Science degree at Simmons University in 2021, with a focus on Archives Management and Cultural Heritage. She came to work in the archives and libraries after a career in North American archaeology.
