Online Learning

Beyond the Reading Room: Access the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections Online

It’s easy to think of an archives as being bound to one space: a reading room. However the organizational, descriptive, and educational work of the archivists at the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections goes well beyond the reading room. There are many resources available so that your archival goals can be met no matter where you are.

Even though we cannot take you through a physical tour of the Archives, we have a series of webinars that introduce you to the Archives and how to work with us, highlight our Asian American and African American digital collections, and teach you how to navigate a finding aid. Find our recorded webinars here and watch the library calendar for more webinars coming this summer!

Experiential learning with the Archives and Special Collections doesn’t stop when you can’t visit the reading room. Instead it shifts to engaged digital pedagogy with our over 64,000 digitized archival records. We are able to hold remote class sessions introducing you to Latinx history in Boston, using archival visual resources, telling stories informed by archival material, and more. Learn how to schedule a class session or workshop and view some of our class examples on our newly published Teaching with Archives Program page.

Want to learn more about our variety of digitized collections? Visit some of our CERES exhibit portals where you can view online exhibits and browse collections’ records in context. Find our collection sites with exhibits and contextual resources below: 

Have a question about Boston history or using Archives? Our reference services are still open and available by contacting archives@northeastern.edu or filling out this form to contact us here.

We look forward to working with you beyond the reading room to continue activating the history of Greater Boston and Northeastern through the use of our records. 

 

Important Temporary Access to Digitized Versions of the Library’s Print Collections Available

The Northeastern University Library is a member of the HathiTrust Digital Library, a major international repository for the digital preservation of digitized versions of print library materials. Normally, there is no access to content which is still under copyright. During the current crisis, as many libraries have closed, HathiTrust took an important step and temporarily opened up copyrighted material in their digital library to member institutions with copies of those items in their physical collections. This means that any books available through HathiTrust which are also in Northeastern’s collections will be available to you while the library is closed. HathiTrust’s online collection contains approximately half of the Northeastern Library’s book collections.

We are working to add this temporary access to Scholar OneSearch. In the meantime, to take advantage of this resource:

  • Visit ​hathitrust.org​ and click the yellow “LOG IN” button.
  • Select “Northeastern University” and log in using your NU credentials.
  • Use the site to locate the item you wish to view.
  • Click on the Temporary Access link at the bottom of the record, if present, to Check Out the item through the Emergency Temporary Access Service.
  • You will have 60 minutes of access to the book during any session. If you remain active in the book at the end of the session, access time will automatically be extended, unless someone else has requested to read the book.
  • You will not be able to download the whole book, although you can download individual pages. You are mainly able to read it online in an active session while using HathiTrust. This is to protect the author’s rights.
  • You will be able to search within the full text of the book.

If you have questions about using this temporary service, please contact help@northeastern.libanswers.com.

Expanding Services to Supporting Online Learning

In the past few months, the Online Learning team has been hard at work to expand library services to our global community. We’ve worked with various departments across the university and the library to offer robust and dynamic online programs. Here are a few of the ways we’ve expanded over the year. We are constantly looking for new ways to innovate, improve our services and offer even more programs and online opportunities for our students, faculty and staff. We welcome comments, questions, or ideas for new online initiatives. Please feel free to reach out to Lindley (l.homol@northeastern.edu) or Dina (d.meky@northeastern.edu) at any time.

—Lindley Homol and Dina Meky

New Year’s Resolution to Improve Your Citation Management Skills? We’ve Got You Covered

Start your 2019 research off on the right foot with our January series of workshops and webinars! Learn the basics or focus on specific tools to help you manage citations for yourself or your research group.

Registration is now open for ten different workshops. Choose from EndNote, RefWorks, Zotero, or Mendeley, or a session that introduces all of them to help you choose one.

What exactly is citation management? you may be asking.   

Summed up, it’s a clever way to create an automatic list of references (aka bibliography). Instead of spending hours typing and arranging your reference list, you can export book and article information into a program that will autoformat it. You’ll decide on your citation style, decide on placement of your in-text references in the text, and then proofread and edit. It’s generally much quicker than entering all the information by hand into your document.

Building a shared citation library for a group project or with research collaborators? Online citation management tools can help you do that, too.

Librarians at Snell Library are available—by phone, email, in person, and by video chat—to help you use these tools. Sign up for a workshop today!