Library News

Librarians: Masters of the Info Universe

In honor of National Library Week we’d like to share some fun facts Famous Librarians J. Edgar Hoover, Casanova, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, former first lady Laura Bush, and Mao Zedong have all at one point worked as a librarian or in a library. Librarians influence our culture and society While clearing out old archives at the Palmer Theological Seminary in 2005, librarian Heather Carbo found a working manuscript of one of Beethoven’s final compositions Librarians are heroic Alia Muhammad Baker, the chief librarian of Basra, Iraq, removed 30,000 books from the city’s main library before it was destroyed during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Their numbers are many In 2009, there were 206,000 librarians, 50,000 library technicians and 96,000 other education, training and library workers Warning to readers about librarians A character in “The Callahan Touch”, one of science fiction writer Spider Robinson’s books, said, “Librarians are the secret masters of the universe. They control information. Never piss one off.” Happy National Library Week! (information for this blogpost was referenced from cnn.com)

Snell's Corbett Presents at ACRL Annual Conference

Snell Library’s Scholarly Communication Librarian, Hillary Corbett, presented a poster at the Annual Conference of the Association of College and Research Libraries in Philadelphia at the end of March. Hillary’s presentation demonstrated how the power of Google Analytics helps her to market an important library service: IRis, our institutional repository.  She has used Google Analytics to study how the research created at Northeastern is used and cited by writers and scholars around the globe.  This helps make a persuasive case for all you Northeastern researchers to archive your work in IRis! The poster is available here in IRis, along with thousands of other papers, presentations, and documents by Northeastern researchers. Ten other librarians from Snell also attended the conference, including Dean Will Wakeling, pictured above with Hillary Corbett in the exhibit hall at the Philadelphia Convention Center.

Art & Design Lab in Snell!

With finals week fast approaching and students all over campus getting ready for the end of the semester, art and design students are bound to start camping out in Ryder to work in the computer labs for their final projects. It can get pretty crowded, and difficult to work around class time blocks in the labs- so what do you do? Snell conveniently offers a full room of state of the art computers equipped with all of the software you find on the computers in Ryder. The BIG difference is that this lab, the Digital Media Design Studio on the second floor of Snell Library, comes with knowledgable staff who are there to help you with your projects and assist you with your design questions. You can also reserve a computer station by calling the studio at 617.373.2465 to ensure you have a space in the studio. Stop by and check it out!

It's National Library Workers Day!

National Library Workers Day (NLWD) is a day for library staff, users, administrators and friends to recognize the valuable contributions made by all library workers.

How will you tell your librarian how much you appreciate their work? Submit a Star by visiting http://ala-apa.org/nlwd/

Helpful Services For Finals Week

Snell Library will be offering additional services during finals week to help you get the most out of your cram session before that big exam. The first is adding extended hours of public safety escort van services. Starting at 9:30pm on Tuesday, April 19th, personal safety escort van services will run from the Library Quad to student residence halls. The service will run every half hour from 9:30pm until 3:30am each night through Thursday, April 29th at 3:30am. For more information about public safety at Northeastern visit http://www.northeastern.edu/publicsafety/ In addition to the escort services, the Cyber Cafe will have extended hours to provide fresh food and snacks throughout finals week. The new hours of operation will be: Thursday, April 21st: 7am-12am Friday, April 22nd: 7am-5pm Monday, April 25th to Thursday, April 28th: 7am-12am And of course we also have so many resources here at Snell Library to help you wrap up that final research paper or close out that group project. Read through my previous post “March Madness at Snell” for more helpful tips! Good luck with your last exams of the Spring Semester! Hope to see you around Club Snell!