Library News

Senator Ted Kennedy and Student Financial Aid @ Northeastern University

I am sorry to hear about Senator Ted Kennedy’s ill health.  He’s the subject of a new online exhibit by the NU Libraries Archives on Student Financial Aid at Northeastern University.  The exhibit recounts Kennedy’s strong support of federal financial aid for college students, and his relationship with Northeastern.  He spoke at student rallies, heard personal student testimonies, and held a press conference and a senate committee field hearing at Northeastern whenever student financial aid programs were threatened by presidential or congressional proposals.  The exhibit comprises photographs, articles from Northeastern University’s student and faculty/staff newspapers, official statements, and background information.  I wish Senator Kennedy and his family the best. 

From Homicide to Hope

Please join us for Thursday’s FOCUS (Forming Opportunities for Collaboration, Understanding, and Service) Forum-From Homicide to Hope: A Community Approach to Reducing Youth Violence.  Jack Levin, Professor and Co-Director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict, student Alex Alvanos ’09, Co-Founder of Social Change through Peace Games, and Emmanuel Tikili, Director of Programs for the Boston TenPoint coalition, will lead the discussion.  The program’s goal is to inform the Northeastern community about issues that affect our neighboring Boston community and to provide the attendees with resources that empower them to serve the community and to act. Attendees will leave the program with more information on what exactly they can do to reduce youth violence.  This forum is sponsored by Northeastern University Libraries and the Northeastern University Center of Community Service.

Thursday, May 22 @ 4:30 pm

90 Snell Library

Julie Andrews and Libraries

You may know Julie Andrews as the star of Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music and The Princess Diaries, but I was quite excited to learn that she’s also an enthusiastic supporter of public libraries! She wrote an editorial in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times, criticizing budget cuts. I’ve visited some California public libraries (and in fact have a Palos Verdes Peninsula library card) but am not that familiar with LA libraries. Have any of you visited any? And what do you think of her editorial?

New KnowledgeBase

Campus Information Systems at NU has created a knowledgeBase of all kinds of technical support information.  It’s going to be available to faculty, staff, and students through the myNEU portal.  It’s developed from third party software called “Right Answers.” The Knowledgebase has some canned information about the commercial software we have at NU, like Microsoft Office and Lotus Notes, plus some additional customized help that’s been created by our local IS people, like how to change your myNEU password.  There isn’t much there for the library yet, but we can send our own help, like how to log in to NuCat, Endnote stuff, and so on, and they will add it to the knowledgebase.  We can also supply them with links to our existing help, and then we don’t have to update information in two places when it changes.  So if a user typed in “article alerts” they would either see some instructions or a link to our page where we have instructions already (or both).   IS is still tweaking it, look for an NU announcement when it’s ready to roll out to the campus.

SL Twitter Typewriter

I just came across a blog post describing a giant typewriter in Second Life that posts to Twitter. Make of it what you will, I thought it was amusing 🙂  Happy Friday!