NASCAR Fans and Pinterest

I bet you, like me, have been wondering: ‘How many NASCAR fans use their tablet to follow a sport on Pinterest?’ I’m not going to tell you how many, but I will tell you this: You can find out using SBRnet. SBRnet provides market research for US sports – you can get information about fan participation, venues, teams, logo apparel, sport sponsorship, and more. This table created by SBRNet shows the percentage of fans using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Pinterest and Tumblr on their mobile devices while attending a game in 2014:   Interested in learning more? You can browse through their newsletters, or go directly to SBRnet to start exploring.  

February 23-27 Is Fair Use Week!

        What is fair use? It’s a right granted to us that allows us to use copyrighted materials without permission from the copyright holder, under certain circumstances. The central purpose of the doctrine of fair use is to encourage creative expression and innovation through the transformative use of intellectual property. Fair use is not unusual—quite the contrary: it’s applied every day, in a variety of circumstances. Have you quoted an author in a paper for class? That’s fair use! Have you watched “The Daily Show,” or “South Park”? You’ve enjoyed the humor of parody that fair use allows! Have you DVRed those shows to watch later (or do you remember the dark ages of recording TV shows on your VCR)? Even though you’re technically making a copy, that kind of copying is also fair use. But fair use is sometimes mischaracterized as being too difficult to determine and thus advised against out of fear of infringement. So, the organizers of Fair Use Week hope to increase awareness and understanding of fair use, and emphasize its importance to the creation of new knowledge. There are several online events taking place as part of Fair Use Week:
  • On Tuesday, February 24, from 2:00-3:00, Kevin Smith of Duke University will be presenting a webcast on fair use.
  • On Wednesday, February 25, from 3:00-4:00, Brandon Butler of American University will be hosting a “tweetchat” on Twitter about fair use and audiovisual materials, at the hashtag #videofairuse.
  • Several videos about fair use are scheduled to be released next week.
You can read more about Fair Use Week—why it’s important and what it all means—at this link: http://fairuseweek.org/. I also recommend checking out the Fair Use Week Tumblr, organized by Kyle Courtney at Harvard University. He and his colleagues are posting interesting stories and snippets about Fair Use Week. You can follow @FairUseWeek on Twitter.  (And, if you haven’t seen it, we have a page about fair use on our library website.) Finally, check out this great infographic that has been created about fair use! (click for full image)  

New collection: JoVE Science Education videos

Hey science students!  We’ve subscribed to a new resource to help you with your lab courses.  Check out the JoVE Science Education Database to watch experts perform lab techniques before starting your own experiments.     Northeastern affiliates now have access to these collections:
  • Essentials of Neuroscience – including videos on tissue staining, water mazes, patch clamp electrophysiology, fMRI, and neuroanatomy
  Here’s a sample of the videos the JoVE Science Education Database has to offer:  Making Solutions in the Laboratory   We hope you find these video collections useful in your work.  Let us know what you think of them!  

2015 Call for Proposals: The DRS Project Toolkit

Call for Proposals Deadline: March 30 Apply here

  The Digital Scholarship Group is now accepting proposals for pilot projects to test the DRS Project Toolkit: a new user-friendly set of tools for building digital scholarly projects and publications using the Northeastern University Libraries Digital Repository Service. With the DRS Project Toolkit, Northeastern University members can use Omeka and WordPress to create projects that draw digital materials such as images, texts, and video dynamically from the DRS. Through the development of the DRS Project Toolkit we hope to establish a simple process to serve project materials using various web publishing tools. During this pilot phase we focus on establishing a base set of features supported by the Toolkit, and we will also work with each individual project to discover unique Toolkit features could be developed and shared with other projects, like interactive maps or timelines. The inaugural round of development for DRS Project Toolkit will be a collaborative endeavor and a great opportunity to experiment with publishing your project’s materials. If you have a project idea, we’d love to hear from you! Just answer a few questions about your project to apply.       To see an example of the Toolkit elements in practice, check out the Terp Talks video series portal from the National Consortium of Interpreter Education Centers. The site itself is built using WordPress, but the video content and metadata are stored in the DRS.   For more information about the DRS Project Toolkit, view the Call for Proposals, or contact us at DSG@neu.edu to set up a meeting.   Written by Sarah Sweeney, Digital Repository Manager, Digital Scholarship Group.  

American Composers Forum New England Records Now Available for Research

The records of the New England chapter of the American Composers Forum (ACFNE) are now available for research in the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections. The collection documents the role of ACFNE in promoting local composers and their music, and includes administrative records for the organization, as well as scores and recordings of original compositions. The collection also provides some interesting intersections with the Archives’ existing social justice collections. During the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, ACFNE’s Community Partners Program provided funding to place composers in diverse non-musical community settings in the Boston area, with the goal of integrating community participants in the making, playing and enjoyment of new music. Program participants in the Boston area included City Year, Casa Myrna Vasquez, and Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción.                 A flier for “Know the Ledge: An Expression of Afro-Caribbean Culture Through Hip-Hop,” sponsored by Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción and ACFNE.