New: Use your mobile device to reserve a room!

Beginning this fall, you can now use NUSSO (Northeastern Space Scheduling Online) on the go!  When you go to the NUSSO site or the library homepage and click on “Reserve a Room” from your phone, you will be redirected to the mobile version.  It is simple and easy to use.  To reserve a room, click on the home icon and then “New Booking.” And did you know… you can also use NUSSO to reserve a workstation on the second floor of Snell Library! The mobile site will only show you bookings for the current day.  If you would like to view, edit, or cancel future reservations, you will have use the full site. Thanks to our partners, the Center for Student Involvement and Information Technology Services, for helping to enable this new mobile functionality! NUSSO Room Booking screenshot Also new this semester: Individual rooms on level 3 are now available to graduate students for flexible, short term booking using NUSSO. These rooms can be reserved for up to 6-hour blocks of time for writing a dissertation or thesis, or to study for an exam.  This is a great option for graduate students who only need to use a study room occasionally. If you have any questions or comments about these changes, please fill out the library’s Contact Us form, or visit the Help & Information Desk on the first floor of the library.  

Take Your Favorite Journals on the Go with Browzine

Prepare yourself. Your research is about to become easier and more convenient… Members of the Northeastern community now have access to BrowZine; a new app that allows you to browse, read, and monitor many of the library’s scholarly journals in a format optimized for your iOS or Android device. Built to accommodate all of your searching needs, items found in BrowZine can easily be exported up to RefWorks and Dropbox or several other services to help keep all of your information together in one place. Simply download the free app, select Northeastern University as your institution, and log in using your myNEU credentials! With BrowZine, you can:
  • Browse and read journals by subject, easily review tables of contents, and download full-text articles. 

  • Create a bookshelf of your favorite journals and be notified when new articles are published. 
  • Save articles for off-line reading or export to services such as DropBox, RefWorks, and more. 

Getting started is easy. From your device, search for BrowZine in the App Store, Google Play or Amazon App store and download it for free. When initially launching BrowZine, select Northeastern University from the drop down list, enter your MyNEU credentials, and start exploring!

Click on the buttons below to download BrowZine today, or here for BrowZine help and FAQ’s.

Download BrowZine on iTunes App Store Download BrowZine on Google Play Store Download BrowZine on Amazon App Store
All iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches with iOS v7.x+ Android Tablets with OS v4.0+ Kindle Fire HD Tablets

Snell Library introduces a new ebrary Reader from ProQuest on August 7!

This summer, a number of Northeastern undergraduate and graduate students volunteered their time to work with Snell Library and ProQuest as beta testers, to enhance the ebrary Reader and the user experience. We are hoping you will try out the new reader and enjoy the improved user experience! • The interface is more simple and intuitive. • Taking notes, printing sections of a book, sharing, zooming, searching within a book, and creating a citation have all been improved. • Text quality is improved for better readability. • Page numbers correspond with printed book. • The side panel is easily removed for full screen reading.                     If you already have an ebrary account, your reader will be updated automatically! A few more things: Ebrary will be retiring their dedicated mobile app on August 4th. The new Reader was designed with mobile devices in mind. When you want to download a book, (to your laptop or tablet) you will be prompted to complete an easy three-step process. The last step is to install the free Adobe Digital Editions software for downloading whole e-books. The Bluefire app will be used for maximizing the experience of offline reading on iOS (iPad and iPhone), Android, and Windows 8 devices. To download the Bluefire app use the App Store or Google Play. Also, ebrary is promising “enhanced support for accessibility needs” toward the end of 2014. Webinars are being offered on the new ebrary Reader, if you would like to learn more. We suggest the webinars on the new Reader, and on downloading if you need assistance. If you need further assistance with ebrary and the Reader, please contact Julie Jersyk, Research and Instruction Librarian at j.jersyk@neu.edu or 617-373- 2458. You may also use our Ask A Librarian service.

New: Free Access to 400,000 Digital Images from Metropolitan Museum of Art

Exciting news! New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art announced recently that “more than 400,000 high-resolution digital images of public domain works in the Museum’s world-renowned collection may be downloaded directly from the Museum’s website for non-commercial use—including in scholarly publications in any media—without permission from the Museum and without a fee. The number of available images will increase as new digital files are added on a regular basis.” The Met calls this initiative Open Access for Scholarly Content (OASC). When searching their online image collection, look for the OASC icon, which designates images that are part of this initiative. These images may be used for non-commercial purposes, including school assignments, presentations, scholarly publishing, or personal projects. (Read more about the OASC policy in the FAQ.) This decision by the Met follows a very welcome recent movement among galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (the so-called GLAM organizations) to make more of their digital image content freely available when possible. This benefits the organizations by increasing public awareness of and generating publicity for their collections. And of course it benefits all of us to have greater access to cultural content worldwide! Here are some links to more such programs: The initiative known as OpenGLAM, which is helping many museums to open up more of their content, has a longer list of these types of efforts on their website. You can learn more about OpenGLAM from their FAQ. And be sure to check out the amazing image collections listed above. Happy exploring!

New History of the South End Highlights Northeastern Archives’ Latino History Collections

In her new book Legendary Locals of Boston’s South End, historian Hope J. Shannon highlights the role of community group Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción (Puerto Rican Tenants in Action) in securing affordable housing for the South End’s Puerto Rican community in the late 1960s. Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción (IBA) began in 1967 as a grassroots movement against the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s urban renewal plan, which would have torn down affordable housing units in the South End, replacing them with new housing unaffordable to the existing residents. IBA incorporated in 1968 as the Emergency Tenants Council of Parcel 19, Inc. (ETC) and successfully designed its own housing development plan for a parcel of land in the South End (known as Parcel 19). In 1969, the Boston Housing Authority named ETC sponsor-developer of Parcel 19, and the resulting Villa Victoria housing development would become a model of citizen participation in urban renewal for housing developments across the country. The records of Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción can be found in the Archives and Special Collections Department at Snell Library, just one of a number of collections documenting the history of Boston’s Latino community. The Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción collection’s photographs have been digitized and are available online as part of the Boston’s Latino Community History exhibit on the Archives and Special Collections website.

Residents of Villa Victoria gather together