Library News

RILM adds to humanities offerings

RILM Abstracts of Music Literature from Ebscohost is the NU Libraries’ latest web resource in the humanities. Musicologists, ethnomusicologists, educators, psychologists, and anyone else interested in music research will enjoy using RILM to search for journal articles, dissertations, books, and much more on music topics. RILM makes a nice pairing with some of our new music streaming services like the Jazz Music Library and Database of Recorded American Music. Doing research on the flugelhorn? Listen to it in Jazz Music Library and learn more about it in RILM. Need recently published research on a DRAM recording of the music of Ruth Crawford Seeger? Find journal articles about her in RILM. Like our other abstract databases, RILM is connected to the library’s full text journal subscriptions, and to our interlibrary loan system, ILLiad, for ordering items not available in our print or online collections. RSS feeds and alerts are also available. Find RILM through the library’s “Articles” database list, or right-click (Mac:control-click) and bookmark this URL: http://0-search.ebscohost.com.ilsprod.lib.neu.edu/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&profile=ehost&defaultdb=rih

IRis Highlight: Studies in American Fiction

Founded by the Northeastern University English Department and published for over three decades, Studies in American Fiction is a well-regarded, peer-reviewed journal that covers both “emergent writers and canons, as well as American literary classics.” IRis has a small selection of recent articles, and will hopefully include more backfiles in the future. In Studies in American Fiction you can find articles on authors as diverse as John Cheever, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Sarah Orne Jewett, and on topics as diverse as missionary literature, Orientalism, and temperance. IRis also includes additional contributions from the Northeastern English Department, and you can even browse in IRis for more exposure to the fascinating array of subjects being studied by Northeastern’s other departments and research centers.

Earth Week means parting with old electronics

To celebrate Earth Week, Snell Library is participating in a campus-wide electronics waste collection effort. If you have old chargers, hair dryers, lamps, plugs, cords or other electronics (not phones) please bring them to the collection box on the Circulation Desk in the lobby of Snell Library. For questions about what items are eligible, contact Carol Rosskam, NU Sustainability Program Manager, at 617.373.8730, 617.828.2505 (cell) or c.rosskam@neu.edu. Find out more about e-waste collection on the Sustainability@NU web site.

Top Ten list of most frequently challenged books for 2009

Last July we had a lively and thought provoking discussion about Censorship and the Library as a follow up to that discussion I thought I would post a link to the ALA Top Ten list of most frequently challenged books for 2009. What I find interesting is that the popular Twilight series of books has been added to the list. It seems that the challenges are theme based rather then content based for this series of books. The majority of these books are works of fiction which are challenged because they offend values of the complaining individuals. So the question that all this raises (again) is: should offended individuals prevent others from having general access to works of literature, art, music or film because they may have controversial themes or content? In my opinion taking the time to attempt to censor a particular work just calls attention to it and rather then removing the offending work from general circulation it just promotes that work to those who may indeed find it to be influential. Which is contrary the intent of the censors.

New Photo Exhibit in the DMDS

Laughing--December 2007

The Library’s Digital Media Design Studio is hosting a new exhibit in their 200 Snell Library space, highlighting student work, and starting with the photography of student Sierra Smith. If you’re interested in displaying your work, please contact Thomas Bary (t.bary@neu.edu) or Debra Mandel (d.mandel@neu.edu). Here is a following statement from the photographer: “I don’t know if I’ve been working long enough to develop a style, but my work does tend toward the artistic, rather than the journalistic. It’s often fairly colorful, too. Though I would say I’m pleased with my portfolio, it’s been mostly limited by my camera; I’ve been using the same one for years, and it’s not exactly something a photographer would flaunt. Because of its quality, my work is often narrowed into a single style. However, it also forces me to compensate by looking for things that another photographer with better equipment may not see. While he’s letting the camera dictate his photograph, I’m letting my artistic vision do the honor.” -Sierra Smith Journalism, Class of 2014 Sierra is also the Library’s event photographer and you can see many of her pictures on Snippets as well!