Announcing: The Hub

The Hub is a new fab space for everyone to come hang out in, meet friends, and browse stuff deemed cool and noteworthy by our unbeatable library staff. Starting Spring 2010 semester, as soon as you walk through the front doors of Snell Library you’ll find a new, better-than-ever browsing collection with selected bestsellers, literary fiction, graphic novels, DVDs, and prize-winning non-fiction all in one central place. We hope this new area becomes your first stop when you need a change of pace or are searching for that special book to challenge you, expand your horizons, or simply entertain you. The name of this new area was chosen from a pool of over 100 student entries, and the winner, Corina Medley, received a $100 gift certificate donated by the NU Bookstore. While The Hub will include a selection of the most interesting new books, you can see a full list of every new book coming into the library via our online New Titles lists. Come visit us soon!

Media Class Assignment Planning

The Digital Media Design Studio works collaboratively with faculty and the Ed Tech Center to effectively design and plan media assignments for non-media majors. A helpful planning guideline and worksheet are now available on the DMDS website and “Services for Faculty” link on the Libraries website. http://www.lib.neu.edu/about_us/digital_media/planning assignments/

Work on the First Floor of Snell Library

Work has begun on the first floor with an eye to removing the old reference desk to make way for a new area with seating that focuses on leisure reading, with bestsellers, literary fiction, graphic novels, DVDs, and prize-winning non-fiction all in the same place. (Research assistance is still available, but is now accessible on the second floor of the Library.) We hope that work will be finished by the time spring semester classes start.

What to Read and Logicomix

Laura Miller is a great book reviewer for Salon.com, so I was excited to read her thoughts on the changing (and disappearing) landscape of book reviews, and the creation of a new feature: What to Read. It’s aim is to showcase a recently published book that the writer can genuinely gush over and recommend each week.  I am particularly looking forward to her promise to publicise different genres. So I was doubly excited that her first profiled book was Logicomix! Author Christos Papadimitriou spoke at the Library in October. It’s a beautiful book (and one that’s available at Snell). You can also watch his talk here:

Happy Birthday Beethoven!

Today’s Beethoven’s birthday, and a great opportunity to forget about the daily grind and be mindful of incredible and beautiful and passionate music that’s resonated for generations–and the person who created it. NAXOS has some nice recordings, if you want to listen to Beethoven online.  I’ve been foisting the famous Furtwangler/Berlin Philharmonic wartime recording of the 9th Symphony on my colleagues today (yes, I’m in a cubicle), plus some Kreisler recordings of the Violin Sonatas, Brendel playing the Piano Concertos, and the soundtrack to Immortal Beloved, (available to borrow from our collection in VHS if you still have one of those), the film about his life starring Gary Oldman. Other videos in our collection include Clockwork Orange which makes famous use of the 9th Symphony, and the DVD of Daniel Barenboim leading the 5th Symphony at the Ramallah Concert in the West Bank–a very moving event.  For pure listening, on the second floor you can find a lot of CDs too. I guess I know all the things everyone knows about Beethoven: his brilliant pianism, his moods and passions, the fact that he became deaf, which we always learn about as children and then kind of take for granted, but on serious reflection is almost incomprehensible considering he was a musician and composer. Anyway, aside from those cliché things, I don’t know that much about him.  Fortunately, there’s a biography and analysis in Oxford Music Online (formerly Grove).  I’m thinking about borrowing Maynard Solomon’s biography from the library, although at 500 pages, it’s kind of a big commitment–luckily there’s a long winter break coming up!