Northeastern

Before There Was Snell

In the spirit of celebrating our beloved Snell Library and its 20 years on campus, I thought it might be interesting to see just what our college did without this iconic study center. Believe it or not, all of the books and print resources Northeastern had prior to Snell’s creation (think late 1980’s) were stored in the basement of Dodge Hall! (and you thought things got crowded during finals week here…) Given the less than workable conditions in Dodge and the growing student body, the University contracted a design for a new library to be built through The Architect’s Collaborative. The building was opened in 1990, and cost $35 million dollars to create. The library was named after George and Lorraine Snell, for their philanthropic leadership and contributions to the Northeastern learning community. George Snell graduated from Northeastern in 1941 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering, and became a supporter of the University in 1970. He passed away in December of 1997, and his wife Lorraine continues to stay involved with the Northeastern University Libraries. On Monday we will gather to celebrate the birthday of Snell Library, and honor the two decades of its service to the students of Northeastern. I encourage you all to join us in celebration with birthday cake and refreshments!

Happy Birthday Snell!

The 20th anniversary celebration of Snell Library is fast approaching, and we couldn’t be more excited! We hope that you will join us on April 25th at 2pm as we gather to celebrate and learn about the outstanding impact Snell Library has made in our community and our vision for its future. We will start our celebration with a talk from Dean of Libraries, Will Wakeling, who will then be followed by our featured speaker David S. Ferriero, the 10th Archivist of the United States. Following the speakers, a VIP reception will be held on the second floor for our RSVP’d guests. Meanwhile, students can take a study break and enjoy  cake served in the Cyber Cafe and also de-stress with soft tissue mobilization sessions (massages) offered in the library lobby. These techniques are provided by the Physical Therapy Club who are trained experts! To attend the afternoon’s events please RSVP to Nina Shah at nin.shah@neu.edu. We hope to see you there!

Honoring Janet Morrow

Last Friday, April 8th the New England Technical Services Librarians group held its Spring Conference in Worcester, MA. Snell Library’s own Janet Morrow was honored with the NETSL Award for Excellence in Technical Services, and for her 28 years of service, accomplishments, and important contributions to the profession. Congratulations Janet for a well deserved honor!

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)

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/