Library News

Shades of Greatness: The Art of Negro League Baseball

In gallery 360, an travelling art exhibit on the Negro League baseball teams of the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s is currently on display. The display, titled “Shades of Greatness,” is a combination of oils, mixed media, photography and sculpture. The works highlight the importance of the Negro Leagues in African American culture. This exhibit may be considered a larger extension of the small display that can be seen on the first floor of the library. (See the blog post on that display here). The exhibit has been up since May 17th and will close on July 23rd. Gallery hours are Monday to Friday, 10am to 7pm. If you would like to schedule a group tour with LSCC, please contact LSCC@neu.edu or call 617-373-5845.

Get NU Library ejournals through PubMed

Are you a researcher in the Health Sciences? If so, you’re probably a fan of PubMed, the National Library of Medicine’s famous database of journal articles. A recent law requires NIH-funded researchers to deposit their full articles in PubMed, but not all medical research is funded by NIH.  So unless you’re on the NU campus network using library subscriptions, most complete articles still require a fee. To the rescue… a special PubMed @ NU URL with our NU Library links: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?otool=manoeulib Now, do a search and every article will have a little button that looks like this: "" Click the button:

If the NU Libraries subscribe to the journal, the full text will appear, or, If we don’t subscribe to the journal, you’ll get a choice of Google Scholar or ILLiad. Try Google Scholar for a free version, otherwise click “Request this article as a .pdf” from ILLiad. We’ll deliver you a free .pdf, usually in one business day!

Watch a video with examples. What if you forget Northeastern’s special URL!?! Save this blog post!  Or set up a myNCBI account (free, and with some other benefits like the ability to save your work) set your preference to “Northeastern University Libraries” as an “Outside Tool.”  This will give you the same NU Library ejournal links and Interlibrary ILLiad option. So if you’re at home, and you want access to our ejournals in PubMed, try PubMed @ NU.  You won’t believe how easy it is!

Self check out!

We are happy to announce that self check out is available at the circulation desk! We encourage all students, faculty and staff to take advantage of this facility, as it greatly speeds up the check out process. The self check out machine is easy to use and staff members are available to help! *For Reserve and Media items, please use regular checkout.

Attention: Fahrenheit 451 becomes a reality (sort of)

Today, there is an article in the Boston Globe that is implicitly about the general state of libraries. I am not sure if it appears in the newspaper itself, but here is the link to it online: http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/05/headmaster_says.html The fact that this article is titled, apparently with no sense of apocalyptic irony, “Headmaster says eliminating books in library is working fine” is both frightening and hilarious. Basically, this private high school in central Massachusetts is trying to digitize the entire library. Several of the quotes from the headmaster of this school are just appalling (even more so considering they didn’t ask for a single librarian’s opinion). Here are two questions to start with: if all library collections are digitized, is there a point to having a building that people go to? And can this digital approach even be called a library anymore? Everybody watch out, because this might be knocking on Northeastern’s door as we speak.

New Exhibit: The Negro Baseball League

Check out the exhibit of The American Negro Baseball League on the first floor. This exhibit was compiled and displayed thanks to our current co-op Krissy Lattanzio. It details the early days of baseball integration (which our home team was famously late on), in mostly color photographs and reproductions from several books. The centerpiece of the exhibit is a quote from Rube Foster, the founder of the Negro Baseball League; “We are the ship, all else the sea.” “We are the Ship” is also the title of a book by writer and painter Kadir Nelson, also quoted in the exhibit. Library goers must be urged to check out this modest but interesting exhibit; this corner of the library, at the bottom of the stairs, is all too often ignored.