Library News

Are you one of the thousands of Northeastern students and researchers who borrow books using interlibrary loan through the BLC (Boston Library Consortium) partnership program? If so, this is a heads up that beginning June 1, BLC books are subject to overdue fines. These books and DVD’s are the ones with the white bands wrapped around the cover saying “Boston Library Consortium.”

  This means books, CDs, and DVDs that you borrow from our partner libraries in the BLC will now be subject to the same fines as Northeastern books.  (You can look up the fine information on our web site.) Why are we doing this?  Because it’s important for us to maintain good relationships with our partner libraries.  If we do not return books to them, they can’t serve their own populations of students and researchers.  And it can be hard for us to return items in a timely manner when we do not charge fines. The good news is that it’s easy for you to avoid fines!   All you need to do is note on your calendar when your books are due, and always read your email reminders from the library.  We notify you 3 days before fines begin, and we follow up with another email on the day the book is due. You may also check your library account at any time to see what you currently have checked out and the due dates.  

Congratulations to our #SnellStudyTip challenge winners: Hannah (@hannahlorick), Nyera (@nyny_93), Eric (@iEricYun), Emily (@EmzWeis), and Adam (@adam_mccook) 

Check out the tips that won these students a $10.00 gift card to the Northeastern Barnes & Noble!

    Congratulations winners! We’ll direct message you on Twitter and let you know when and where to pick up your gift cards.   They may not be winners, but these #SnellStudyTips deserve an honorable mention:

 

  And although these aren’t exactly study tips, they made some good points:

  Thank you to everyone who participated in this challenge. Follow these #SnellStudyTips and ace those finals!  

After this long apocalyptic winter that buried Boston under an endless amount of snow Since, you know, Boston relocated to north of the wall   I think we’re all kind of glad that it’s finally finals. Well, some of us are   Sure, you have to get through a couple of research papers, lab reports, final projects, and exams…   But in just two short weeks it’ll be summer! No more coats = No more responsibilities   And to help you get there, Snell Library has quite a few de-stressors planned for you so look forward to study breaks with goodies and giveaways and a special finals-themed twitter challenge! Goodies…?   Speaking of the challenge… it’s not really a challenge. It’s actually really simple: Starting on Tuesday (4/21), you can share your best study tip with @ClubSnell and use #SnellStudyTips on Twitter for a chance to win a $10.00 gift card to the Northeastern Bookstore! Five randomly selected study tips will be chosen and announced next Tuesday (4/28) afternoon and we’ll reach out to those lucky winners on more information about how to receive their gift card. If you haven’t already, start following @ClubSnell on Twitter to keep an eye out for impromptu study breaks and to submit your #SnellStudyTip.   Happy Finals!  

The ink has just dried on our license to 1,700 scholarly e-journals from Taylor and Francis! This means more full text PDFs available when you’re linking from Scholar OneSearch, PubMed, Google Scholar, or whatever your favorite research starting point might be. It means less ordering from Interlibrary Loan for you, the researcher. And more space for student work and study, as we can remove print volumes of bound journals from the Snell Library stacks to make room for new tables and chairs. The collection includes publications from Taylor and Francis, Routledge, and Psychology Press. Older issues are available going back to 1997 (if the journal is that old). Other features:

• Search by keyword or use the advanced search fields.
• Select and save favorite Taylor & Francis Online resources by adding them to a marked list.
• Receive RSS feeds and email alerts in areas of interest.
• Download articles in PDF or HTML format.
• Import citations into common reference software.

View a list of e-journals here.

Looking to learn a new language, or brush up on one you are already familiar with? Snell Library has trials to two language learning programs: Mango Languages and Pronunciator. (Log-in information below.) Mango’s trial ends on April 16 and Pronunciator’s ends on April 10. Try them out while you can! Both programs offer similar features such as:

• Key phrases and expressions in the target language

• Narration by native speakers to show you how to pronounce each word

• Cultural bits of information which help you get a sense of proper etiquette in the country where the language you are learning is spoken

• Media in the form of radio broadcasts and films with subtitles to help you with your listening comprehension

• Media can be played back at varying speeds to suit your level of comprehension

• Exercises and quizzes to see what you have learned

• Mango offers 63 languages, Prounciator offers 80

Now for the differences:

• Pronunciator allows you to select any language as your source language and any language as your target language. If you choose German as your source language and Thai as your target language, you would be learning Thai with instruction in German.

• Mango does not have mix and match capabilities, but it does offer English courses for non-English speakers of Polish, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Turkish, Greek, Russian, Armenian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

• Pronunciator will match the pitches of different vowels of words to music notes so you can hear the differing tones of different vowel sounds.

• Pronunciator gives you the option of playing only the voice, the notes, or both the voice and notes.

  Screenshot from Pronunciator’s Vietnamese course.  

• With Pronunciator’s writing tool, the narrator speaks a word or phrase in the target language, and you can write the word and insert vowels with diacritics using the virtual keyboard.

• Pronunciator takes accurate diacritic marks into account. Red letters indicate that the diacritics are either incorrect or missing.

  Screenshot of Pronunciator’s writing tool.  

• Mango color codes parts of speech in both languages to show the user which parts of speech in the language being learned correspond with those in the user’s native language.

  Screenshot from Mango matching English words to Vietnamese words.   Pronunciator and Mango have apps available for mobile devices including iOS and Android devices: Pronunciator apps | Mango apps   The URL for the free trials are: Pronunciator: learning.pronunciator.com/ne.php Log in: ne Password ne Mango:connect.mangolanguages.com/northeastern-university-trial/try/f814b6af0   Try out both and let us know what you think!