Library News

What Do You Think of the Library? Tell Us and You Could Win a Kindle!

Today we launch our 2010 library quality survey, LibQual! Continuing until April 9, you have the perfect opportunity to share with us your thoughts on the Library by taking the LibQUAL+® survey.   Help us to make the library a better place, physically and online, by taking 5-10 minutes to complete the LibQual survey here. We do this survey every 3 years, and every time it helps us find out how to make our services better for you. There is a lot of information about how the survey works on our LibQual FAQ. This year we also offer great prizes: An Amazon Kindle E-book reader, four $100 gift certificates to the NU Bookstore, and thirty-five $10 gift cards to Dunkin Donuts! Year-round, we listen to your comments and suggestions and try to act on them. A high rate of participation in the LibQUAL+® survey will help us be sure that we are focusing on the concerns and suggestions of a truly representative sample of our graduate and undergraduate students,   faculty, and staff users.  The Library listened to your comments after the 2004 and 2007 survey results and made these specific improvements: extended Library hours; added more tables on the first floor and more attractive study areas like the Hub; simplified and improved the Library website; and subscribed to the Web of Science database. Shortly, we will be adding a substantial number of electrical outlets for laptop users. For more information, please contact Elizabeth Habich at e.habich@neu.edu, 617-373-4924.

Everything biology, now in Web of Science

NU researchers already know about Web of Knowledge, the mega-database from the Institute for Scientific Information that’s linked to the Journal Citation Reports. Often used for broad searching and citation tracking, Web of Knowledge through the NU Libraries now goes much deeper with the addition of BIOSIS Previews, the premier journal article database in biology. The NU Libraries have always offered BIOSIS; in fact, it was the very first online service that we ever licensed on the web, back in the palmy 1990’s when home was a haven from library research, and every other database had to be searched on a CD-ROM network on the first floor of Snell Library. Now we are shifting BIOSIS from the Ovid platform to Web of Knowledge. With this change, you can search BIOSIS with numerous other journal citation databases across and beyond the sciences. BIOSIS adds more international coverage to Web of Science, and it includes patents. We hope this will be a real boon for interdisciplinary research. Search “extraterrestrial life” and find scholarship from astronomy journals, journals in meteorology, astrobiology, medical sociology, and philosophy all in the same results set. Indexing goes back to 1969. Try BIOSIS and experience these expanded search results for yourself!

After Effects workshop at the DMDS, March 10/11, 2010

The Digital Media Design Studio is having an Introduction to After Effects Workshop. Learn how to create images through the simple tools of After Effects. Gain an understanding of moving images and learn how to bring your ideas to life. Register for the workshop here. The workshop will take place on Wednesday, March 10th at 11:45-1:25, and Thursday, March 11th from 2:50-4:30 in 200 Snell Library.

Read Across America Day

Today, March 2, is Read Across America day, organized by the National Education Association, and celebrated on Dr. Seuss’s birthday. The idea behind it is “for every child to be reading in the company of a caring adult.” Interested students at Northeastern can join organizations like Jumpstart on campus that are devoted to early childhood literacy. At the Library, we have a number of Dr. Seuss books in the Favat Children’s Collection, as well as biographies of the Massachusetts-born writer, and even a government document—a 1943 army piece illustrated by Seuss about the perils of mosquitos!