Library News

Welcome to Open Access Week!

"OA Open Access Week is a global event that highlights the movement to provide worldwide access to scholarly literature without the need for expensive journal subscriptions. You’ve probably heard of “think globally, act locally” in regard to environmentalism, but this way of thinking can also be applied to open access. By promoting a worldwide event like OA Week, we hope to inspire members of the Northeastern community to adopt an open access mindset where possible in their research, teaching, and campus activities. I’ll be writing a new blog post each day this week highlighting some of the work we’re doing here at Northeastern to support open access as well as the amazing things that are going on at other colleges and universities. I hope you’ll get inspired to learn more about how open access can dramatically improve the availability of information to everyone. IRis First, you probably know about IRis, our digital archive of scholarship, publishing, and preservation. (And if you don’t know about it, now’s the time to find out!) But did you know that IRis contains over 1,700 items, from doctoral dissertations to undergraduate capstone projects to Faculty Senate meeting minutes? It’s like a time capsule for the university that keeps getting more and more comprehensive each week. And all the materials in IRis are intended to be openly accessible to the entire world — so it’s not like one of those databases that asks you to sign in with your myNEU username and password from off-campus. That means we — well, you, since it’s your material in IRis — get visitors to IRis from all over the world. It’s a fantastic way to showcase your research to a global audience, and anyone at Northeastern can participate. Visitors to IRis in 2010 In a previous blog post, I highlighted the impact IRis can have — an article on Wired.com cited an undergraduate engineering capstone project, bringing the student group 300 downloads of their project in a single month!

Parents Weekend Author Talk Coming Up

To some, Parents’ Weekend is a drag… back to that restricted “my-parents-are-watching” mentality. To others, it’s a relief to have some quality family time again, to take away some of the homesickness. Regardless of if you’re happy about it or not, parents are coming in force this weekend and Northeastern has set up some awesome events, like Howie Mandel, to keep you entertained. If your folks can’t make it, you are in luck because you can still enjoy everything Northeastern has to offer this weekend! Snell Library will continue a Parents’ Weekend tradition on Saturday at 11am with another talk from our Meet The Author series. Northeastern Professor Roger Abrams talks about his book Sports Justice and how the law interacts with the business of professional sports. I for sure will not be missing this one, it should be a pretty active discussion. Check out the Facebook page for more info. You can check the full schedule of Parents’ Weekend events in PDF format here.

Welcome, New Cool Vending Machine!

This morning, a new vending machine showed up on the loading dock and installed itself (well, it’s almost that smart!) on the first floor of Snell Library, just outside the CyberCafe. Fall 2011 update: now on the Third Floor! This machine can do everything but solve the extra credit question on your problem set: Touch-screen display to select your junk food Animated rotating picture of your bag of chips or beef jerky Push a button for the ingredient list, or nutrition information (wait, 597 mg of sodium? Maaaybe not…) Purchase with cash, or credit card! This just might be cooler than the new printing system.  Thank you, Diji-Touch Interactive Vending, whoever you are!

New: Access Online Reference Sources from Oxford U. Press

Oxford Reference Online, a suite of over 200 important reference sources, including specialized encyclopedias and dictionaries covering many subject areas, is now available through the NU Libraries. This online collection, from the renowned Oxford University Press, further extends the Library’s research collections to anyone either studying off-campus or enrolled in distance courses.

Status Update: Printing in Snell

The new printing system is up and running in Snell Library!  If you don’t know what I’m talking about, the University has rolled out a new print management system that includes Snell Library and the Infocommons. On the public computers located on all four floors of Snell Library (five including the Archives on the lower level), you may log in to the computer using your myNEU username and password and print your work.  You may also print from the secure wireless network (connect to NUwave, not NUwave-guest). Your printout will be released from the printers inside or just outside the Infocommons, depending on which one you selected, with a swipe of your Husky card. There are eight (8) computers on the first floor that currently aren’t printing, even if you log in…those have signs on them so you are warned!  And they should be fixed by tomorrow, 10/14. If you experience any printing problems, such as your Husky card is not working, ask at the Help Desk in the Infocommons. By the way, your 400-page quota was reset in the process of changing over to the new system, a nice lagniappe!