Library News

Meet Your New GIS Expert!

Kevan Grimaldi

Kevan Grimaldi

College of Professional Studies graduate Kevan Grimaldi has returned to Northeastern as a new GIS assistant. She followed a lifelong interest in maps and geoscience into an undergraduate program in Earth science at Dartmouth College, where she got her first taste of geographic information systems (GIS). After finishing at Dartmouth, she became a full-time GIS user for a private navigations company, and later entered Northeastern’s own masters program in geographic information technology. Kevan’s new role at Snell will be to support faculty, staff, and students in their respective GIS-based endeavors. She plans to offer both one-on-one consultations for specific projects and workshops and training on general GIS use, and will be available by email and appointment. Ask at the Digital Media Commons Information desk on the second floor of Snell to get connected with Kevan. When not immersing herself in geospatial data, Kevan enjoys orienteering, reading, and various pursuits through involvement in the Society for Creative Anachronism, including calligraphy and illumination, archery, and homebrewing. She looks forward to meeting and working with her fellow Huskies on their geospatial projects. Welcome, Kevan!  

Let’s (game) jam!

The Playable Innovative Technologies Lab and Northeastern University hosted the Global Game Jam on the weekend of January 25th at the Digital Media Commons in Snell Library. The Global Game Jam, an annual game creation event that fosters the creation and development of innovative game concepts while encouraging collaboration between game makers, brought together more than 30 students to showcase their original work. With a goal of uniting game makers to create original video and non-digital games unified by a single theme, the Game Jam challenged participants to experiment and think creatively during the brief time span of 48 hours to create a game. The Global Game Jam at Northeastern was organized by Casper Harteveld, Assistant Professor of Game Design. At the opening of the event on Friday, the theme of “heartbeat” was introduced to the participants. Teams brainstormed games with PLAIT faculty on Friday evening, worked on creating the game on Saturday and Sunday, and presented their final products on Sunday evening. Created games included Jarheart, created by Noah Senzle, Chris O’Grady, Nate Hahn, Matthew Coleman, Noah Manning, Will Herbert, and Colby Dame, an action game that puts the player in control of a character with a lantern with the objective to find and eliminate enemies on the map. Although the action games with similar objectives have been created before, Jarheart’s unique twist is that the character’s lantern is the only light source for the player. Other games included Heart of the Mountain, a stealth game created by Brett Apitz, Jessie Contour, Elliot Franford, and Jesse Stern, with the objective to collect acorns before the sunrise; Thrall, in which the goal is to navigate through villages without killing the inhabitants and ultimately defeat the head monster; and The Witching Meow-er, created by Harrison Lanvin and Luke Berry, a 2D game in which the player is a cat with nine lives with the objective to rescue the witch, the cat’s owner. On Sunday evening, Game Jam presented the game makers with awards for Best Game Design and Most Innovative Game, judged by PLAIT faculty, Magy Seif El-Nasr, Anders Drachen, Alessadnro Canossa, and Gillian Smith. The Most Innovative Game Award was presented to Thrall and its creator Reed Lockwood, a junior Computer Science and Game Design student. He utilized the theme of “heartbeat” by making it a key component in the character’s life level. Lockwood also used the characters “@”, “%”, and “i” to represent the main player, the wrath, and the villagers, respectively. The jury awarded Best Game Design to DunGenerations by Brian Soulliard, a game that centers around a village terrorized by an evil monster that lives in a cave on the outskirts of the village. The player plays as a member of an old family, going through the cave to defeat the dark creature, evading monsters that attack in each of the rooms in the cave. The underlying theme of the game involved parental sacrifice and the intimidate relationship between generations, especially between a mother and child. Brian was unfazed with the process of working alone and believed that working alone allowed him to fully develop his vision. In addition to being available online, some of the games will be available to play on a computer in the Hub in Snell Library later this term, watch here for an update, and get playing some games–it’s for schoolwork!!  

Town Hall Wrap Up

The Snell Library Town Hall Meeting

Town Hall meetings are one of the best forums for a no-pressure open and honest discussion between the Northeastern administration and the student body. This week’s Snell Library Town Hall was no exception! The turnout was great and the discussion even better. Topics ranged from how comfortable the chairs are to the possibility of sound-proofing spaces, no topic was off limits. With a panel featuring Will Wakeling, the Dean of Libraries; Rehan Kahn, Vice President of Information Services; and Jim Cahill, Vice President of Facilities, answers were informative and the feedback truly taken into advisement. It really was a successful event that went off without a hitch. Be sure to keep an eye out for a full length article in Northeastern News, and we’ll keep you posted about the next meeting so you can join us next time!

New Year, New Co-ops

Hi everyone! With a new year begins a new group of fresh co-ops at Snell. We’re all excited to work here and looking forward to the semester. Here’s a little bit about each of us. — Julie   Ryan Stewart Ryan Stewart – Digital Media Commons Hi, my name is Ryan Stewart and I am currently a third year student in Northeastern’s Digital Art and Game Design program. From a very early age, I have been fascinated with video games, and have always known I would end up working with them – doing anything related to them – for the rest of my life. With this fascination, I’ve dedicated the past three years to honing my skills as an artist through the learning of animation tools and programs. I hope to use my experience at the university to build my portfolio and break my way into the professional game industry. In my spare time, I’m working on a series of animations to help build a brand for my name and work. I also am looking to get started in a career of voice over work on the side. The library and new Digital Media Commons have been instrumental in a large number of my projects, and I’m excited to use their resources for many more to come.
Katherine DoernerKatherine Doerner – Archives & Special Collections My name is Katherine Doerner, and I am a middler originally from Memphis, Tennessee. I am majoring in Cultural Anthropology with two minors in International Affairs and English. I enjoy reading, biking, sewing, writing music, and show photography.    
Peyton Gee Peyton Gee – Graphic Design I’m Peyton Gee, a 3rd year Digital Art student specializing in animation with a minor in graphic design. Predictably, my hobbies include drawing, reading comics, watching cartoons, playing video games, and practicing Kung Fu. Here at the library, I’m the graphic design co-op and will be the one taking care of the majority of the design work here. Flyers, posters, notices, and anything else that needs to be visually designed will be my work, so you know who to blame if you can’t understand the maps or the posters don’t make any sense!
Julie RyuJulie Ryu – Marketing & Events My name is Julie and I’m the new Marketing and Events co-op for Snell. I’ll be focusing on organizing library events for the spring, along with working with general marketing materials. I’m a fourth year Communications student, minoring in English Literature. I’m currently working my way through the (addicting) A Song of Ice and Fire series and I enjoy media studies, especially television, and spend a lot of my time watching shows.   Here’s to a great semester!

Congratulations to Keaton Zavis, our iPad winner!

Thanks to everyone who took the time to answer our survey about technology in Snell Library. In addition to ten lucky winners of Dunkin Donuts gift cards, we raffled a new iPad which was won by Keaton Zavis, shown at left today receiving his iPad from Dean of University Libraries Will Wakeling. Congratulations to all our winners, and to all of the over 100 people who took the time to participate in the survey, we’ll be sure to publish the results on this blog. Your feedback will help us make Snell even better in the new year!