2011

Blue and Green Line Passengers: Can You Hear Me Now? Good!

It has happened to all of us: you’re talking on the phone when you go underground to the Copley T station and the call gets dropped, or you’re trying to send a friend a very important text message while on the Green Line when you realize you don’t have any service. Those few moments when you’re disconnected and isolated from civilization are excruciatingly frustrating. But there’s good news! The Boston Globe has just reported that by the end of the year, the MBTA’s Green and Blue lines will feature cell phone service. Underground cell service is already available on the entire Orange line and part of the Red line, so it was only natural that passengers on the Blue and Green lines would someday be able to gab on the phone while riding the T too. Unfortunately, the Prudential and Symphony stations on the Green line’s E branch will not be getting cell reception until the end of 2012, along with the still unserviced areas of the Red line. However, installation of cell reception on the rest of the Green line and all of the Blue line should be completed by the end of 2011. All of the MBTA’s 35 underground stations and 19 miles of tunnels are expected to feature cell phone service by the end of 2012. So Blue and Green line riders, get ready to talk, text, and check email while riding the T. You can even use the new cell service to Text a Librarian and get help from a librarian at Snell! But please, be courteous while talking on your cell phones. Just because nothing will be stopping you from chatting obnoxiously loud to your friend on your phone about what you did last weekend doesn’t mean you should do it. If you are respectful of others around you while using your phone, riding the T can be a pleasant experience for all. To find out more read the Boston Globe article and for research and books about the history of the MBTA, search NUCat, Northeastern’s library catalog.

Open Access Week: October 24-30, 2011

Open Access Week, a global event now entering its fifth year, is an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research. Open access to information – the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as you need – has the power to transform the way research and scientific inquiry are conducted. It has direct and widespread implications for academia, medicine, science, industry, and for society as a whole. During the week of October 24-30, the Northeastern University Libraries will host a series of events to celebrate Open Access. The events will cover a range of topics:
  • open collaboration in the sciences
  • the effects of Wikipedia and social networking on student research
  • open access works by Northeastern faculty
  • free and open college textbooks
  • data gathering and storage needs of grad students
⇒ Click here to view the full schedule of events for Open Access Week. The Library has supported Open Access in the Northeastern community since 2006 in the form of the University’s digital archive, IRis. The goal of IRis is to collect, manage, preserve, and share the intellectual output and historical record of Northeastern University. IRis provides open access to NU researchers who want to promote and preserve their materials, to NU students who require digital storage and promotion of their dissertations and theses, to NU administrators who need to save important university records, and to anyone who is seeking information on the intellectual productivity of the Northeastern community. Since its start, IRis has expanded to hold 531 faculty publications and approximately 600 dissertations and master’s theses. And since January 1, 2010, there have been over 230,000 downloads of full-text items from IRis, which include scholarly content as well as university archival content. Building upon the success of IRis, the Library will soon offer a robust digital repository and preservation service to the campus for digital collections, images, media, and data, as well as accompanying metadata and consulting help.

Nicholas Sparks has numerous new projects!

Despite what critics may say, Nicholas Sparks has written some of the best love stories of our time.  He is personally one of my favorite authors and, lately, he has kept me very busy with his books, films, and television productions. His newest book, The Best of Me, is set to release October 11th, 2011.  It is about two small-town former high school sweethearts from opposite sides of the tracks. Now middle-aged, they’ve taken wildly divergent paths, but neither has lived the life they imagined . . . and neither can forget the passionate first love that forever altered their world. When they are both called back to their hometown for the funeral of the mentor who once gave them shelter, they will be forced to confront the choices each has made, and ask whether love can truly rewrite the past. Warner Brothers has also already purchased film rights for The Best of Me and will begin production on that sometime next year. In addition to this novel, Warner Brothers has adapted Sparks’ novel, The Lucky One, into a film to be released on April 20, 2012 and his recent book, Safe Haven, has already undergone production by Relativity Media. One would think that all of this would be enough excitement for one author, but Sparks does not stop there.  Sparks teamed up with Kristin Hahn, co-producer of The Time Traveler’s Wife, to create the script for a fantasy television show called The Watchers.  Temple Hill Entertainment bought rights to the television series and it will be broadcast on ABC.  The drama is about a fallen angel coming down to Earth to find love.  This is different then most of Sparks’ novels but if the show is anything like his books then I’m positive I will find it endearing and captivating…maybe you will too! To see what Nicholas Sparks material Snell Library has in our stacks search myneu. To read more about Nicholas Sparks visit his website.

Snell Library welcomes new staff members!

Snell Library now has three new staff members on its team: Erin Beach, Jennifer Ferguson, and Greg McClellan. Erin Beach, in her new role at NU Libraries, will be a full-time Circulation Supervisor for Consortial Borrowing & Lending.  In addition to staffing and supervising the circulation desk, Erin will coordinate the NExpress and WorldCat Navigator materials processing.  Erin has worked in the Resource Sharing unit as a student and part-time employee for the past two years.  She is a 2009 graduate of Brown University where she majored in English Literature,  and a 2011 graduate of Northeastern University where she also majored in English.  Erin is interested in pursuing a professional career as a library archivist. Jennifer Ferguson joined us this September as a Data Services Librarian, a newly created position within the Research and Instruction Services department.  A major responsibility of the Data Services Librarian will be to focus on data management and curation, and on data resources that faculty and students can utilize in their research and publishing activities.  Jen will also be the group leader of the new Science, Engineering and Math Liaison Group and play a key role in developing an even stronger liaison program.  Jennifer comes to us from Brandeis University, where she was a Research and Instruction Librarian.  She also serves on the New England E-Science Portal Virtual Community and contributes to the Bioinformatics Core project at the HarvardSchool of Public Health. Last but certainly not least, Greg McClellan joined us this August in the role of Senior Digital Library Developer, adding important new capacities to our technology portfolio. Greg comes to us from the Brandeis library staff where he served as Senior Systems Librarian. Prior to his time at Brandeis, Greg worked in library technology positions at Lesley University, MIT and Cornell, and he has worked with many open source projects, including VuFind and dSpace. Greg joins the Library Technology Services staff and will work with his tech colleagues on a variety of programming projects including the digital repository, as well as various work flow automation ideas. The Library welcomes each of you and wishes you the best in your new positions!

@ClubSnell is #4! #thanks@HerCampusNU

Are you following @ClubSnell on Twitter? If not, then you should be! HerCampus Northeastern listed Snell Library’s Twitter account as the 4th top Twitter handle that Northeastern students should be following. And with good reason! @ClubSnell sends out informative Tweets about library news and events and lets followers know about new developments and updates at the Library. So what are you waiting for? Stay in the know at Northeastern and follow @ClubSnell! Read the full HerCampusNU article for more information about our ranking and to see who the other 19 top Twitter accounts are.