Library News

August 8th, 2018 – The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded Northeastern University Library a $500,000 Infrastructure and Capacity-Building Challenge Grant. The funded project – Research Infrastructure for Digital Scholarship – will further propel Northeastern’s commitment to digital scholarship, the synthesis of archival materials and data, and experiential education. This challenge grant will expand the Library’s technical capacity through the creation of four new staff positions to undertake technical development, data design, and semantic data integration.

Northeastern University Library also received $197,000 from the NEH’s Institutes for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities program to support “Word Vectors for the Thoughtful Humanist: Institutes on Critical Teaching and Research with Vector Space Models”, a series of four three-day institutes that will explore the use of word embedding models for textual analysis.

Formed in 2013, The Library’s Digital Scholarship Group has undertaken several important digital humanities projects, including Design for Diversity, Our Marathon, TAPAS, and the Women Writers Project. This challenge grant will continue to support these projects, as well as provide support for the recently announced Boston Research Center, which will be housed in Snell Library. The director of the Digital Scholarship Group, Julia Flanders, will provide leadership on both grants, and Sarah Connell is a co-director on the “Word Vectors” grant.

“In many ways these grants recognize and reward the great progress we’ve made over the past five years in establishing the Library as a significant research partner in the digital humanities at Northeastern, and affirm Northeastern’s status as a leader in this space” states Patrick Yott, Associate Dean for Digital Strategies and Services.

“We deeply appreciate this major support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and are truly excited about the additional projects and overall capacity this funding will underwrite in the Library and across Northeastern,” said Dan Cohen, the Dean of the Libraries.

The newly launched Holocaust Awareness Committee Archives digital repository site preserves and displays the rich history of Northeastern’s extraordinary commitment to Holocaust awareness and genocide prevention, as well as supports curriculum and research including courses in the Holocaust, Jewish and European history and public history.

Since 1977 Northeastern University has commemorated the Holocaust with a week-long series of events including lectures, performances and survivor talks to explore the history and memory of the Holocaust and to engage with students. Key elements of the Archives includes annual event programs and video recordings for: the Salomon Robert Morton lecture series with international scholars, activists and writers; the Philip N. Backstrom, Jr. Survivor Series of video recordings of 30 Holocaust survivors, [some who came multiple times to engage with members of the Northeastern community]; the Annual Commemoration/President’s Breakfast which includes lectures by Northeastern faculty and noteworthy scholars and Gideon Klein Scholar art, music and dance presentations by talented student awardees and a listing of the Bill Giessen film series titles shown since 1991. Original content for most of these resources resides in the Libraries’ Archives and Special Collections.

In addition, unique online exhibits explore the themes of religious commemoration, genocide awareness and prevention and faculty and student engagement.

This project was completed by Megan Barney, Laurel Leff, Debra Mandel, Kyra Millard and Jennifer Sartori. We are very grateful for the support of Jewish Studies: Lori Lefkovitz, Dov Waxman, and Deborah Levisohn; Northeastern University Libraries Archives and Special Collections: Giordana Mecagni and Molly Brown; the Digital Scholarship Group: Sarah Sweeney Amanda Rust and Megan Barney and The Humanities Center: Ignacio J. Chaparro.

The collection can be accessed here: https://holocaustawarenessarchives.northeastern.edu/ For more information, contact Debra Mandel at d.mandel@northeastern.edu.

After displays about spaceships and dragons, Club Snell is tackling more serious and intriguing topics. “Religion, Sex, and Politics” takes on the difficult and often taboo subjects. We have material types ranging from books, graphic novels, memoirs, movies, to ebooks. So whether you’re looking for a light read or material for a paper, we have you covered!

Subjects range from anything like LBGTQ+ rights to Native American Memoirs. There’s a little bit of everything for everyone. In particular, we are highlighting our e-book Too Hot to Handle: A global history of sex education by Jonathan Zimmerman, the movie Loving, and the book The African Union: Autocracy, Diplomacy, and Peacebuilding in Africa.

We even have the movie Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Did you know that Jedism is considered a legitimate religion by the United States? Watch the movie and look for parallels with current world religions like you can find in the e-book Exploring Spiritualties in World Religions. If there’s tough questions or topics you’ve been wanting to read about, feel free to explore them at the Hub’s new display, “Religion, Sex, and Politics”

  Summer arrives with a celebration as June is the national LBGTQ (Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, Transgender, and Queer) Pride month. Snell Library is honoring LGBTQ month with our curated Hub display of movies and books by or about an LGBTQ person. Pride month was started in 1995 to honor the 1969 Stonewall Riots in Manhattan, NYC While it originally began as a 1 day “Pride day” on the last Sunday of June, it has now evolved into a month-long celebration. Across the United States, cities and towns will host parades, bands, workshops, and speaker events focusing on creating a safe space for the LGBTQ community to connect Snell Library is taking part of that celebration by highlighting select works in our Hub collection that touch upon sexuality and gender. We have the newly released movie Carol, which focuses on two women’s affair in the background of the 1950’s where homosexuality was forbidden. Sonnets of a Dark Love by Federico García Lorca is a collection of poems and essays which centers heavily on the poet’s Spanish heritage and internal struggle with homosexuality during the early 20th century. These poems were written in the later part of his life before his untimely execution by Nationalists at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.                   We also have Moonlight, which is the first film with an all-black cast and the first LGBT film to win the Oscar for Best Picture. Lastly, the author of Young Adult novel Little & Lion discusses topics such as mental illness, bisexuality, and intersectional identity This pictures follows the main character through three main stages of his life as he comes to terms with his identity and past relationships. These are but a few of the great movies and books that we’ve put on display at the Hub, come check it out!     

May 27, 2018 Dan Cohen, Dean of Libraries, Vice Provost for Information and Collaboration, was welcomed by a dozen alumni and parents in Rome to enjoy lunch and conversation. This was the first gathering for the Northeastern University community in the area, expanding on our mission to engage globally. The unique innovative ecosystem at Northeastern University continues to be a catalyst for our global community of agile, creative thinkers. Guests enjoyed meeting Dan and each other with conversation ranging from digital media and technology to various successful initiatives and professions our alumni and parents experience. We look forward to continuing to evolve and strengthen the wonderful connections made in Italy!