Library News

MLA PR Awards

The Massachusetts Library Association (MLA) presented the 19th Biennial Public Relations Awards to the winning applicants at the Association’s Annual Conference at the MassMutual Center in Springfield, Massachusetts.  Winners were chosen by a panel of independent judges from the public relations, press, and library fields.  Evaluation criteria included graphic design, originality, and presentation.  Over 100 entries were submitted. 

Northeastern University Libraries  received First Prize for two entries, the Libraries’ 2008 Annual Report and a poster for the Meet the Author program, “My African Horse Problem,” featuring Northeastern University Professor William Miles.  Maria Carpenter, Director of Advancement and Marketing, and Emily Sabo, Advancement and Marketing Assistant, were presented with a certificate by MLA Public Relations Committee Co-Chairs at the Public Relations Awards Ceremony.  Carpenter said “It is an honor to receive recognition for the collective efforts by many,” upon learning about the award. The annual report was created by Heather Stirling, Rebecca Merz, Emily Sabo, Michael Silva, Maria Carpenter, with assistance from Bruce Ployer and Denis Skarep.  Photos were by Tom Kates, Craig Bailey, and members of the Libraries’ Programming and Communications Committee.  The poster was designed by Heather Stirling, who is a undergraduate student at Northeastern and was a recent graphic design co-op at Northeastern University Libraries.  

50 Books for Our Times

Debbie Pennino directed me towards another book list, by Newsweek on “50 Books for Our Times.”  It certainly gave me a few more ideas for books to pick up.  I was a bit disappointed by how few female authors they included; it looked like less than 15%.  But on the list was Snell Library favorite Geraldine Brooks and Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy, which I’m currently finishing up, and would strongly suggest.  You can pick up all three volumes at Snell!

Book Burning

I saw this article on book burning that I thought might be of interest (“A teen book burns at the stake”).  A group of citizens in West Bend, Wisconsin has been trying to remove Baby Be-Bop from the shelves of their public library.  When the Library Board decided not to comply with their request, it looks like several members of the board were ousted.  Another group, the Christian Civil Liberties Union, has filed a lawsuit against the town and library, and have called for the book to be publically burned. The author in question, Francesca Lia Block, is actually one Natalie had mentioned earlier.

Five Greek epigraphs

My husband recently finished writing a book about foreign policy.  Just as it was about to go to press, he hit a snag: he had started each chapter with an epigraph, a short quotation, from the ancient Greek historian Thucydides.  Now, you would think that anyone who wrote 2,500 years ago would be out of copyright and could be quoted freely, and you would be right, BUT…the owner of the English translation that my husband was using wanted $150 for each quotation, or 750 clams total.  My husband could translate Thucydides himself but doesn’t feel terribly confident of his own ancient Greek skills, although he knows Greek “a little.” Luckily, there is a translation that’s in the public domain, which means it can be freely copied and quoted.  It’s in the Perseus Digital Library, a web site with a wealth of primary and secondary source information on the ancient world.   So this is a grateful shoutout to the people behind Perseus: Greg Crane and Tufts University.   I’m in awe of this amazing example of scholarly publishing at its best! Are you looking for advice about using someone else’s work in your own scholarship?  Ask your subject librarian at the NU Libraries for assistance.  Maybe there’s a resource like Perseus for you, too!

From the Where Are They Now department: Lawrence Lessig

Lessig One of our most successful panels here at the NU Libraries was the Free Culture Forum in March 2006, sparked by student interest, and featuring Lawrence Lessig of Creative Commons fame. He’s now left Creative Commons to work in DC on a campaign for congressional reform (called Change Congress). The Nation recently published an article on Lessig and this act of his career. However on his web site he claims the work he was planning for “Change Congress” turned out to be beyond what a single academic could do, so he will be moving from Stanford, his previous academic base, to the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, where he will apparently be pursuing a five year initiative on understanding the role of money in corrupting the public trust. So maybe we’ll have more chances to hear him speak again, now that he’s local!