Library News

In May, Snell Library welcomed our first-ever First Year Experience and Undergraduate Engagement Librarian, Evie Cordell. Evie works with the First Year Writing Program, General Studies Program, Explore Northeastern, and many other programs that support first year students at Northeastern. Over the course of the summer and these first weeks of fall, Evie has organized library tours, welcome sessions, and scavenger hunts. If you’re a new student in the College of Engineering, you’ve probably met Evie as part of your library research workshop. Evie is a graduate of the University of Virginia (BA, Religious Studies), and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (MA in Library and Information Science). She’s mom to five kids, author of the children’s book Two Girls Want a Puppy, and speaks German pretty fluently. Say hello to Evie at the Research Help desk in the lobby of Snell Library–if you haven’t already met her at a library orientation! You can follow Evie on Twitter at eviedc or email her at e.cordell@northeastern.edu. Why did you decide to become a librarian? I became a librarian because I like helping people find information. I believe that everyone has the right to access information reguardless of race, religion, or economic standing. I believe that libraries and librarians hold unique positions in our society to not only ensure that people have access to information but to also level the playing field. Plus librarians are the coolest. Seriously, I get to wear funky outfits and I get to teach students about the library and how to use its resources. Librarians don’t know everything but we can find almost everything. What’s been the most fun for you as you get to know Snell Library and Northeastern’s undergraduates? I have really enjoyed getting to work with not only the first years in the various programs I work with but also getting to know the professors, instructors, and TAs. I’ve also had many second years that have done the library orientation, whether they were in person or scavenger hunts, tell me that they didn’t know about half the services Snell Library offers. I’m glad that I get to teach them something new. What’s the most important thing new students need to know about the library? Come talk to the librarians. Visit us at the Research Help Desk. Make appointments with us. We’re here to help you. You’re probably already in the library why not use the services we have. Bonus if you come talk to me I always have candy at my desk also those elusive Snell Library Husky stickers.

Exciting news! We’ve been working with GWISE to bring the 3 Minute Thesis competition to Snell Library this year.

 

3MT challenges graduate students to distill their work for a non-technical audience, using just 3 minutes and a single PowerPoint slide. 

Check out this video of competitor Maria Gibbs from Notre Dame to see an example of a winning 3MT talk.

Prizes this year include gift cards, a guest appearance on the What’s New podcast, and credit in the 3D Printing Studio – not to mention bragging rights!

The deadline to present has passed, but you can still attend and cheer on the presenters.  More details in the graphic above and at the RSVP link.

Materials from the Northeastern University Libraries Archives and Special Collections are featured in an exhibit at the Harvard Graduate School of Design’s Druker Design Gallery that is a culmination of a four-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon foundation: “Urban Intermedia: City, Archive, and Narrative.” The exhibit, entitled “Race and Space in Boston Archives” runs until October 14th and features items from the records of Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción as well as materials from other Boston area archives and special collections.          The Northeastern University Libraries Archives and Special Collections approached contributing to the call of materials related to “race and space” by curating materials that provided evidence of successful community action against urban renewal in Boston. Our selections emphasized the work of Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción (IBA, Puerto Rican Tenants in Action) of the South End. They created their own neighborhood renewal plan to avoid developments which would have would have displaced current residents. IBA’s records tell the long story of activism to shift the outcome of urban renewal from displacement to community-based development.   Visitors looking to view Boston archival material featured in the exhibit can find a long tabletop where the archival images are projected. The table is intended for both display and impromptu conversations and engagement. Stools surround the table for seated discussions, and visitors are invited to bring their own laptop to contribute their own material for projected display. For more information on the exhibit visit: https://www.gsd.harvard.edu/exhibition/urban-intermedia-city-archive-narrative/ To read more about the records of Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción visit: https://latinohistory.library.northeastern.edu/

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.