Books

On This Day: January 21

On this day in history, the great author George Orwell died in London. Perhaps best known for his dystopian novel 1984, George Orwell was a proponent of social justice in his time. Today we read his books and take from them the lessons of equality, freedom, and justice that were being expressed in the 1940s. The library has a great collection of books, videos, e-books, and more that you can find here, or by searching for George Orwell on NUCat. Take some time out to read or re-read some of the 20th century’s finest literary works!

Kaplan Providing Free E-book Downloads through January 17

Want free test prep books for your e-reader? Head over to Kaplan to download your choice from 130 e-books from now through January 17th. They are yours to keep and will not expire! E-readers supported include Kindle, Nook, iPad, iTouch, iPhone, and Sony eReader.

On This Day: December 2nd

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). On December 2nd, 1970 (40 years ago!) the EPA began daily operations under Richard Nixon (one of few things he got right). This organization is responsible for researching and educating the public on environmental issues, as well as setting and enforcing environment-related legislation. Key programs you may be familiar with are vehicle emission standards, Clean Water Acts, and the Endangered Species Acts. As a part of NU Libraries’ Federal Depository program, we have government-issued reports available in print and online that explore various EPA related topics in detail. You can take out a print article from our government stacks on the oversight of recent EPA decisions, or you can read an online article on the EPA lifecycle analysis of greenhouse gas emissions. There is much to choose from, so celebrate 40 years by taking a look at these resources. To view the library’s entire EPA collection, keyword search “EPA” in NUCat.

Springer Books Go "E"

First, I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Amira Aaron and I am the new Associate Dean of the Northeastern University Libraries for Scholarly Resources (books, journals, and Library information in all formats). Today I’m very pleased to announce the availability of the 2010 full collection of eBooks from Springer Publishing, one of the top international publishers of scientific, technical, and medical titles. Our set also includes 2005–2009 volumes from the Computer Collection, including the prestigious Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. Over 4,000 new eBooks are added to the Springer collections each year. The eBooks can be downloaded by chapter and are fully searchable, even on the book chapter level, and they can be printed out and bookmarked online. The Springer eBooks primarily cover the disciplines of science, engineering, and medicine, but there are also titles in business & economics, humanities, social sciences, law, and mathematics. Individual titles can be found in NuCat. There’s one additional feature of the Springer eBook collection that I wanted to mention. The “MyCopy (Buy a Print Copy)” service allows you to easily order your own personal soft cover edition of Springer eBooks purchased by the Library (back to 2005); they will be immediately printed on demand and shipped to you within a few days. Note that sometimes the “Buy a Print Copy” link doesn’t appear right away for the newest eBooks. So why eBooks? Many of you are no doubt avid consumers of eBooks for your personal reading. Academic libraries are also undergoing a huge transformation to eBooks in many disciplines. We are now able to offer 24/7 access to these books from multiple locations for multiple users. With growing numbers of distance education and online classes, many students no longer come to campus on a regular basis, so electronic books and journals are critical to support teaching and research. Searching across the content of many of these eBook collections is powerful and will help you to discover hidden information on a particular topic. In the Library, we also need to deal with space limitations for print materials and an increased need for study space. Finally, we don’t have to deal with lost or damaged books and you don’t have to worry about fines for late returns. Don’t forget to search the Internet Archive and Google Books for the full text of older books online. In the Internet Archive you’ll find over 1100 pre-1923 Northeastern books that we’ve digitized through the Boston Library Consortium. We hope you enjoy exploring the new Springer collection and we’d love to hear from you about your use of eBooks offered by the libraries. Join us for a Faculty workshop on using Springer eBooks this Friday, October 29th, from 10-11 in Room 90, Snell Library. If you have questions, please feel free to contact me at a.aaron@neu.edu or 617-373-4961. For more information visit our Press Release

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.