Students

Wednesday & Thursday: Open Educational Resources @ the EdTech Center

Faculty: Have you heard about Open Educational Resources but aren’t sure how you might integrate them into your teaching? Students: Want to find out how Open Educational Resources can help supplement your education at no cost? On Wednesday, September 14, and Thursday, September 15, the EdTech Center, located in 215 Snell Library, is hosting the two-day EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) 2011 Online Fall Focus Session on Open Educational Resources. OERs include a wide range of online content, from recorded lectures to open textbooks to shared learning objects, and much more. Here is the EdTech Center’s announcement about the event. The full program is available online as well, and individual sessions are kept short so you can stop by as your schedule permits to hear about topics of interest to you. All you need to do is register for the event at their website, take a look at the schedule, and come on over!   Coming Soon: Open Access Week! October 24-30, 2011 And, if you’re interested in issues regarding open access to information in higher education, stay tuned for details to come soon about Open Access Week 2011! We’re planning a week full of events to celebrate, investigate, and discuss open access here at Northeastern. In the meantime, check out our new guide to Open Access, which includes basic information as well as tons of suggestions for finding open journal content, open textbooks, open media resources, and more!    

Did You Know Snell Has Laptop Locks?

Laptop locks are now available for use on ten of the group study tables outside of the InfoCommons on the first floor of Snell Library. Hooks are located on the corner edge of each table and locks can be signed out at the Circulation Desk for up to three hours (one renewal allowed per usage). For more information please contact the Circulation Desk on the 1st floor of Snell Library at 617.373.8778.

March Madness at Snell!

March Madness: Helpful Hints for a Successful Semester Spring break has come and gone and now students are gearing up for their own March Madness—that final stretch of the semester when the weeks race by and then, BAM, papers are due and final exams have arrived. Ready or not, it’s time to start getting research together for whatever projects you may have and Snell Library is here to help you find what you need. Check out the hints below to learn how Snell can help you get the wheels in motion: Ask a Librarian! Seriously—they know their stuff about digging up the research you need and not to brag, but I think our staff here at Snell is pretty exceptional. And really easy to get in touch with! You can meet them at the reference desk on the library’s second floor or you can email, text, and chat with librarians online. Group projects. Love ’em or hate ’em, they’re a fact of life for many students. The first floor (especially the Cyber Café) is a great place to meet up and divvy up assignments. You can also book a group study room right on the library website. Finding Books and Articles. Sometimes that obscure book about realist perspective on the development of the dessert banana just isn’t available here on campus. Fortunately, interlibrary loan can help you get the things you need. You can also apply for a Boston Library Consortium card if you want to go raid BU’s bookshelves yourself. But remember, the card takes up to a day to process and it can take a little time for an article to be scanned and uploaded for you from another library. Start thinking about the research you need now so you can bang out that paper come April. Collecting citations. Creating a bibliography has never been easier. Northeastern provides a subscription to EndNote (ideal for grad students) and Refworks.com (perfect for undergraduates and researchers looking to share sources). Check out this post by Amanda to get started. Wireless Printing. You’ve burned the midnight oil, your paper is done, and you’re ready to print. Thanks to new software that you can download from myneu.com, you can send documents straight to the library’s printers from your own laptop. This can be especially helpful when you’re printing out a paper five minutes before it’s due. Not that any of us students do that… Phew! Well, I hope this list helps you out. Take it easy on those late night cups of coffee and stay tuned to Snippets for more hints on how to take advantage of everything our libraries have to offer. Good luck with the rest of your spring semester!

“Profiling” a Popular Honors Project in IRis

From time to time, I like to feature an object in IRis, our digital archive of research and scholarship at Northeastern, that’s been getting a lot of hits. I get a weekly report e-mailed to me of the most frequently accessed content in IRis, and there’s one honors project that’s been appearing near the top of that weekly list for quite a while now. “Profiling Pros and Cons: An Evaluation of Contemporary Criminal Profiling Methods” was submitted by Theresa M. Young in fulfillment of the Honors Program’s Junior/Senior Project requirement in 2006. In the past year, it’s been accessed 546 times, making it the second most-accessed document in IRis! We use Google Analytics to track usage of both the library website and IRis, and there’s a lot of fascinating information to be found in those metrics. For example, almost 81% of visitors found Theresa’s project through Google searches; the most commonly searched phrase that brought them to her project was “criminal profiling pros and cons,” where it’s the top result. Although the majority of visitors came from the United States, people in a total of 18 countries accessed Theresa’s project. I found it particularly noteworthy that of the 5 visits from Iraq, 3 of them came via the Department of Defense. Is Theresa’s research having an impact on criminal justice in Iraq? Regardless of how it’s being used, the popularity and relevance of her work, both in the US and around the world, is undeniable. (After graduating from Northeastern in 2006, Theresa Young went on to law school at the University of Richmond. While there, she served as Executive Editor of the Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest.)

Join Our Student Advisory Group

Last week the Library’s new Student Advisory Group met for the second time. The group’s charge is to discuss and give feedback on issues concerning Library services and facilities. Participation in this group is a way for students to voice their concerns and participate in planning for new services and programs. Every student is welcome to join the Advisory Group. If you are interested, please contact Lesley Milner at l.milner@neu.edu or by phone at 617-373-4920. The following items were discussed: • The Library is partnering with the SGA on a pilot project to provide laptop computer locks for loan from the circulation desk. The pilot project will try and determine if having locks available for laptop computers would benefit students by reducing the opportunity for theft. We will start with providing locking capabilities at 10 tables on the first floor and the service will be available later this month. The Library will send out an announcement when the locks are available to be borrowed. A follow-up survey would be conducted to poll users as to their perceived value. • Students are still having problems with the temperature in the building. We reviewed the procedures for reporting area temperatures in the building when it is too hot or too cold. Either call Building Services at X2757, or report it to the staff at the Circulation Desk on the first floor. • The need was expressed to have more hours with fresh food available for purchase in the Cyber Café. Discussions have been had with Dining Services, the department that manages the Café, and this concern will be added to our future improvement planning processes. • We need to improve our communication. Ideas for the best ways to contact students and to post information included Blackboard, Facebook, the NU student portal, and campus e-mail. • Good news! Everyone raved about how great wireless printing was in the Library and how it eliminated waiting in long lines to get your print jobs from the InfoCommons. As a result of this discussion, the Library is putting together a new publicity campaign to increase student awareness of this great new service. • Opinions were expressed to expand the number of lockers available to students and to make a group of lockers available to undergraduate students as well as graduate students. • Actively ask for student feedback. The need is there to survey students about services and proposed changes in services and facilities at the library. The group offered to facilitate surveys as the need arose.