Teaching and Learning

Library Welcomes New First-Year Experience Librarians

Rachel Landis and Tamara Uhaze

This spring the Library welcomed First Year Experience Librarians Rachel Landis and Tamara Uhaze. Their goal is to help new Northeastern students with their transition to college research. They also plan events for first-year students to network with one another and familiarize themselves with the library and all it has to offer. Some events they are planning for this fall include a movie screening and trivia night. Keep an eye out for them on the library calendar!

Rachel graduated with her MLIS from Drexel University and previously worked in the libraries at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Virginia. In her free time, you’ll find Rachel reading thrillers, trying new restaurants around Boston, or hanging out with her two-year-old Beagle-mix, Leo. Tamara received her MLS from Texas Woman’s University and previously worked at The College of New Jersey as a librarian.  Tamara spends her time gardening, watching the latest movies, and checking out the museums in Boston.

Be sure to find the library’s table at Fall Fest on Tuesday September 6th. Rachel and Tamara will be there to answer your questions about the library and to facilitate a fun game where you have the chance to win a gift card. During Welcome Week, the library is also offering tours on Wednesday September 7th and Thursday September 8th departing at 1 and 1:30 p.m. from the lobby of Snell Library. 

Library Adds New York Times, Financial Times to Growing Online Newspaper Collection

The Northeastern University Library is very pleased to announce that the New York Times and Financial Times are now available to the Northeastern community through their publishers’ websites.

The New York Times is America’s most influential newspaper. In addition to daily news from the city of New York, it is best known for its extensive political coverage of the United States, international news, and in-depth focus on books, arts, and culture.

Northeastern’s subscription includes all the newspaper’s journalism, from today’s breaking news to full archival coverage (with digital images of the newspaper) back to 1980. Users can read and participate in comments, view data visualizations, and access video journalism and podcasts. To read on your phone, use the New York Times app on Apple or Google Play. Up to 10 articles per month can be shared gratis with non-subscribers.

Individual registration with your Northeastern (or New College of the Humanities-London) email is required. Current Northeastern faculty, staff, and students are eligible for access. Learn more and register for the New York Times.

The Financial Times is London-based and is also international in scope. From its roots as a business newspaper, it has grown to include political, economic, and cultural news. Northeastern’s subscription includes both the International and UK editions. The Financial Times tracks global markets, offers extensive coverage of business management and marketing news and trends worldwide, and hosts subject-focused newsletters, podcasts, and live conferences.

For classroom use, instructors can easily create reading lists to share with students. In addition, up to 20 “gift articles” per month can be shared with non-subscribers. A Financial Times app is available on Apple and Google Play.

Individual registration with your Northeastern (or New College of the Humanities-London) email is required. Current Northeastern faculty, staff, and students are eligible for access. Learn more and register for the Financial Times.

These two news sites join the hundreds of daily newspapers from Access World News and PressReader, as well as the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, and more, in the library’s growing collection of news sources from around the world. These highly requested newspapers meet the information needs of an increasingly global Northeastern.

Learn more about accessing newspapers through the Northeastern University Library on our News and Newspapers Guide.

This post was written with Roxanne Palmatier, Christine Oka, and Brooke Williams.

Introducing the New Northeastern Commons

Commons Redesign
The library is happy to announce that the Northeastern Commons is relaunching with a new look. The Northeastern Commons is an online platform where Northeastern University students, faculty, staff, and the outside community can come together to share ideas, explore common interests, foster creativity, and expand interdisciplinary thinking.

Screenshot of the Northeastern Commons website

The redesign was led by Northeastern Commons Coordinator Meg McMahon, with help from Web Developer Jeanine Rodriguez and Digital Accessibility and User Experience Assistant Vanessa Lee. As a team, they re-built the platform with a user-first approach and a focus on digital accessibility of the platform.

Using a variety of methods, including stakeholder and user listening sessions, the team focused on how the current platform was functioning. They took the data gathered during those sessions and created an affinity diagram of user needs for the rebuild. From this network of user needs, they turned to considering system requirements for the platform. Rodriguez pitched the idea of using the BuddyBoss Platform as the codebase because of the overlap between user needs and the features of that specific WordPress plugin.

During the build, Lee conducted an accessibility audit of the BuddyBoss platform, including browser checking, screen reader testing, and mobile testing, which Rodriguez then used as a roadmap for changes to the initial codebase. McMahon worked on user testing and internal testing of the platform to ensure users would be able to use the platform easily. Any issues found during the testing were added to the list of changes to make to the codebase.

Currently, the Commons team is still working on accessibility updates to the platform and feature updates and will continue to do so as the work on the Commons continues.

Commons Features
The Northeastern Commons runs on profile and group-based networking. That means users will be able to post, share, and create from their own individual profiles and within groups, which are the primary method of collaboration on the Commons.

Users who set up a user profile can share their research interests, publications, projects, talks, and press. Adding this information to a Commons profile makes it easier for other users to find people with similar research interests, which can lead to greater collaboration between Commons users.

Group collaboration on the Commons is unique based on choice and the subsequent use of those features. Furthermore, there is privacy built into the group design. Visibility of the group depends on the privacy setting of the group: public, private, or hidden. Public groups can be joined or viewed by anyone, whether they are signed into the platform or not. Private groups can be seen on the platform, but members must request or be invited to join. Hidden groups are only visible to those invited to join. Every group regardless of privacy status has the same features, which are:

Feed
The feed for groups is the activity feed. Activity can be an update from the organizers of the group, a notification when someone joins the group, a document added to the document table, and any action a member does within the group. Members of the group can also comment on the activity, leading to greater collaboration within the feed.

The feed acts as a living record of the progress and conversation the group is having and is searchable by keyword, which leads to greater discoverability of previous conversations.

Members
The members tab is a list of all the members of the group. Users will be able to search for members here, message them, and request a Commons connection, which is like friending on the platform.

Documents
The documents tab is a place for the group to upload documents that are relevant to the whole group. The file structure uses folders to sort and separate out documents.

Discussions
The discussions tab is a place where group members can create discussion board topics and reply to others’ discussion board topics. These can be subscribed to for easy access through a user’s profile.

Send Messages
This tab can be used to send a message to all group members using private messaging. It can also be used to send a message to only a few group members the message creator selects.

Subgroups
This tab appears if the parent group has subgroups within it. Subgroups function the same way that a parent group does; it is just nested within the parent group and does not show up in the group search.

Zoom
This tab is used to keep a running list of Zoom meetings for the group. If the organizers of the group choose to have the meeting recorded in the cloud, the meeting itself is accessible within the group.

Calendar
The calendar is a tab where organizers can create a list of group events which can be viewable in many different calendar forms. This feature must be specifically requested for a group using the Northeastern Commons Consultation form.

Static Pages
This is where a group can request to have a static HTML page within their group tabs. Group organizers will be able to add whatever they want to that page and continually update it based on their needs. This feature must be specifically requested for a group using the Northeastern Commons Consultation form.

Next Step for the Commons
Going forward, the Northeastern Commons will continue to utilize user needs assessments to grow and build further functionalities, leaning on the collective knowledge and desires of current group organizers and users.

For more information on the Commons, visit northeasterncommons.org or contact Meg McMahon at m.mcmahon@northeastern.edu.

Library Transitions from Nexis Uni to Access World News and WestLaw Campus Research

Beginning on June 30, the Northeastern University Library is no longer subscribing to the database Nexis Uni, transitioning instead to a pair of databases – Access World News and Westlaw Campus Research – that together provide even more news and law resources through much easier user interfaces.

Why replace Nexis Uni?
Over the years, Nexis Uni has been removing much of its content while steadily increasing its prices. That combination, along with a difficult-to-use interface, has led many libraries and institutions to cancel their subscriptions and put money toward more cost-effective and user-friendly databases and resources.

Access World News database logo

What new databases should I be using instead?
For the cost of Nexis Uni, the Library was able to acquire access to two new databases that, together, provide much of the same content in a far easier-to-use format. Access World News Research Collection from Newsbank includes current and archived news content from more than 12,700 sources, spanning over 200 countries and territories and combining all formats (full-text articles, web-only content, and PDF image collections) in a single interface. You can browse Access’ full list of sources here.

Westlaw logo

For legal and business content, Westlaw Campus Research contains primary and secondary legal sources including statutes, codes, and case law, as well as the American Jurisprudence legal encyclopedia. On the business side, it contains tools like Hoover’s and the Company Investigator, which provides public and private company information and hard-to-find information on small businesses and partnerships. It also can be used to prepare company reports using visual graphics. This reference guide provides detailed information how to use Westlaw.

Other databases also provide useful news resources, including Factiva (which includes access to business news, including the Wall Street Journal and Barron’s); Pressreader (which covers daily news in more than 100 countries); and ProQuest News and Newspapers (which includes current and archival access to newspapers like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Newsday, and Los Angeles Times, as well as more than 80 local and regional titles).

In addition, Northeastern University students, faculty, and staff can access the Wall Street Journal‘s website by using their NU credentials by going to wsj.com/northeastern.

For more information on available resources, please contact your subject librarian!

Archives Research Project Included in “The Teaching with Primary Sources Cookbook”

Take 2 library professionals.
Add 25 high school students.
Mix in a specially curated collection of archival materials.
And let simmer over a 90-minute class period.

Cover image of The Teaching with Primary Sources Cookbook, edited by Julie M. Porterfield

This is the recipe Reference and Outreach Librarian Molly Brown and Arts, Humanities, and Experiential Learning Library Regina Pagani have perfected while working with students and teachers from the Boston Public Schools over the past few years and it is now included in The Teaching with Primary Sources Cookbook, a collection of first-hand accounts from librarians, archivists, and other educators who use primary sources to teach information literacy skills to various audiences.


Brown and Pagani’s project is detailed in chapter 28 and titled “A Potluck of Expertise: Inviting Boston Public Schools’ Juniors to Use Northeastern’s Archives and Special Collections’ Pantry to Build Their Recipes.” They detail an ongoing project they have developed with BPS educators Chris Madsen and Katherine Petta where students work in groups to write a biography of an activist who advocated for racial equality in Boston’s public schools, using primary sources from the Archives’ vast social justice collections.

Regina Pagani and Molly Brown teach a class of students in the Archives Reading Room
Regina Pagani and Molly Brown (standing) lead Lucy Maulsby’s architecture class on a lesson in archival research, similar to the types of classes they teach to BPS juniors. Photo courtesy of Mary Hughes.

The chapter provides a detailed account of the project, with suggestions for ways to alter it based on different archives’ collections. The 2021 edition of The Teaching with Primary Sources Cookbook, edited by Julie M. Porterfield, is available through the American Library Association.

To learn more about the different ways Brown, Pagani and other Northeastern University Library staff members have utilized the Archives’ unique collections to teach primary source research to students at Northeastern and at the Boston Public Schools, visit the Teaching with Archives page.