2018

The Library’s Video Workshop Series Starts Soon. Sign Up Today!

Video is an essential communication tool in today’s world.  Attend Snell Library’s Recording Studio’s upcoming Video Workshop series to learn the basics in a small group setting. No experience is necessary. Over the course of the four-weeks, beginning on March 14th I will teach you creative marketable skills—everything from setting up a shot with professionals cameras and lights to editing with Adobe Premiere and polishing with After Effects. I will make video production feel as fascinating to you as it is to me. I am the Recording Studio’s co-op, a fourth year Media and Screen Studies student, a Boston life-long Boston resident.  Video production is my specialty. Outside of my classes, I direct, edit, act in and write other short films and other forms of media.  You could say that all types of media creation are a passion of mine.  I look forward to meeting you and teaching you in in this upcoming series of workshops. The workshops meet from 12-1pm and 6-7pm. You may register here: http://northeastern.libcal.com
  1. Lights, Cameras, Green Screen Action! March 14, 2018
  2. Edit Your Video Projects with Adobe Premiere Basics. March 21, 2018
  3. Refine Your Project with Adobe Premiere Advanced Level. March 28, 2018
  4. Rock Your Video Project with Adobe After Effects. April 4, 2018
See you soon!  Antonio Banrey If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at a.banrey@northeastern.edu Visit our website at: http://library.northeastern.edu/services/recording-studios    

Boston DH Week at the DSG and NULab

During the week of March 12-16, Northeastern University will join with other local universities to participate in Boston Digital Humanities Week, bringing an array of programming about and for the digital humanities to the greater Boston area. Check out our upcoming on-campus events hosted by the Digital Scholarship Group and the NULab for Texts, Maps and Networks.  

Scott Weingart: “Geometries of Thought: What the history of network visualizations reveals about how we think”

Monday, March 12 | 1–2:30 pm | 346 Curry Student Center More information Join us for a talk by visiting speaker Scott Weingart of Carnegie Mellon University: “Everything is connected”, a generation of magazine covers shouted, proclaiming the dawn of an age of cybernetics, of information, of big data. The history of that connectivity reflects deep-seated philosophical positions which influence what and how we think. Trees and networks offer particularly compelling models through which to organize the world, and looking at their illustrations over the last thousand years provides a unique purchase into Western Europe’s changing philosophical landscape. Through these illustrations, we can trace everything from the changing role of God, to the underpinning of early gravitational theories, to the values implicit in force-directed network layouts. This talk is free and open to the public, but guests external to Northeastern University should RSVP to Sarah Connell in advance at sa.connell@northeastern.edu.  

Intro to GIS Workshop

Wednesday, March 14 | 9:00 am – 12:00 pm | Snell Library 422 RSVP required as space is limited Learn the basics of GIS in this workshop led by Bahare Sanaie-Movahed, Geographic Information Systems Specialist. Attendees will gain an understanding of GIS tools and how to use them, and by the end of the session will have familiarity and basic fluency with ArcGIS.  

Introduction to D3.js, with LEGOs

Wednesday, March 14 | 9:00 am – 12:00 pm | Snell Library Colab D RSVP required as space is limited This small workshop will give participants a hands-on introduction to creating basic charts using D3.js, a popular JavaScript library for creating static and interactive data visualizations on the web. Participants are required to bring their own laptop, but no special software is needed. A basic understanding of JavaScript syntax as well as HTML and CSS is extremely helpful, but participants need not be experts. RSVP required as space is extremely limited.  

DH Open Office Hours: Digital Pedagogy Research, Work-In-Progress

Wednesday, March 14 | 12–1 pm | Snell Library Digital Scholarship Commons RSVP DH Open Office Hours are an informal weekly gathering of faculty, students, staff and others interested in coming together to discuss methods, practices and projects in the digital humanities. At this session, Cara Messina, English Department doctoral student and First Year Writing instructor, will present a work-in-progress. Messina is currently collecting data for a digital pedagogy research project in her First Year Writing course on the use of XML to foster transformative reading practices. This presentation will look at some of the preliminary data collected.  

NULab Spring Conference: “Fake News/Real Knowledge: Histories, Structures, Futures” with keynote by Yochai Benkler

Friday, March 16 | 9:30am–5 pm | Raytheon Amphitheater More information On March 16, 2018, the NULab will be hosting its second annual conference, showcasing the work of faculty, fellows, alumni, and research collaborators. Yochai Benkler, Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, and faculty co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, will deliver a keynote speech, “The Architecture of Disinformation in the American Public Sphere.” This event is free and lunch will be provided but registration is required. Please RSVP!

Hub Book Displays

If you’ve passed by The Hub in the recent weeks, you might have noticed something a little different has come to Snell: book displays! Twice a month, Snell will have a small book display that highlights our Hub materials. The Hub is home to our magazines, newspapers, Writing Center materials, and so much more. The Hub is where a lot of our new releases or popular works are, including many newly released movie titles. If you’re looking for a fun read or a new movie to watch, The Hub is the place to look. We began in January by picking fun or interesting topics to highlight our wide range of materials. In February we displayed works by or about black authors to celebrate Black History Month. In March, we’re showcasing women of color. Such works will include The Veil by Rafia Zakaria, Narrative of Sojourner Truth by Sojourner Truth, and Everything Everything by Nicola Yoon. We will have books, e-books, and movies so there’s a something for everyone’s taste. So please come on by and check out these amazing works by women of color!  

Celebrating Frederick Douglass’ Birthday With a Transcribe-a-Thon

On February 14, the NULab for Texts, Maps and Networks, the Women Writers Project, the Digital Scholarship Group and Snell Library’s Open Access programming teamed up for a special Valentine’s Day celebration—a transcribe-a-thon and birthday party for Frederick Douglass. Faculty, staff and students from various disciplines across Northeastern gathered in the Digital Media Commons to help transcribe documents from the Freedmen’s Bureau Papers. Fueled by pizza, snacks and a birthday cake with Douglass’ photo on it, the transcribers assisted each other with difficult-to-read script and unknown abbreviations. The transcribe-a-thon was part of a national celebration for Douglass’ birthday, organized by the Colored Conventions Project in association with the Smithsonian Transcription Center and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Northeastern participated in the inaugural transcribe-a-thon last year as one of nine institutions hosting local events — this year, the Northeastern group joined 64 other campuses and organizations for the event. We live-streamed the program from the Colored Conventions Project, connecting with others across the nation working on transcribing these important documents. Thanks to everyone who came out to celebrate and help transcribe. Hope to see you for next year’s celebration!  

Neighborhood Matters, Spring 2018

Neighborhood Matters’ Spring 2018 will focus on transportation in Boston. We will discuss how transportation has changed the fabric of the city by focusing on several key flashpoints: “I-695,” a highway rejected by community activists in the 1970s; the “Big Dig”, one of the nation’s largest infrastructure projects ever completed (1980s-1990s); and the “Silver Line,” (Phase 1 2000s) including current plans for expansion and improvement.
All events are free and open to the public, lunch will be served.  

2/3: Equal or Better: The Story of The Silver Line

12 PM, Snell Library, Room 90 (Film runtime 53 minutes) Featuring Special Guests Kris Carter and Scott Hamwey In 1987 the Washington Street Elevated train was torn down and the Washington Street corridor to Dudley Square was left without rapid transit for the first time since 1901. Equal or Better follows the story of a misstated promise to three Boston communities and the issues of equality still present in our country’s transportation priorities. Scott Hamwey leads the Massachusetts Department of Transportation’s Transit Planning team and oversaw the planning phase of the Silver Line Gateway Project. The Silver Line Gateway Project encompasses four new bus stations and connects Chelsea and East Boston (via the Blue Line’s Airport Station) with the Red Line’s South Station and the Seaport District. Kris Carter is the Co-Chair of the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics. He is a non-practicing engineer, an optimistic urban planner, and a self-taught filmmaker. He has a not so secret love for Boston (his adopted home) and working through challenging human-centered urban problems. Kris has been nationally recognized by the APA for his blending of storytelling and urban planning and the Federal Labs Consortium for his innovation in transportation work.

3/15: People before Highways: Boston Activists, Urban Planners, and a New Movement for City Making

12PM Snell Library, Room 422 (Book talk) A book talk featuring special guest Karilyn Crockett, who is the author of People Before Highways: Boston Activists, Urban Planners, and a New Movement for City Making. Dr. Crockett is director of Economic Policy & Research for the City of Boston. She holds a Ph.D. in American studies from Yale University. Linking archival research, (including in Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections), ethnographic fieldwork, and oral history, Karilyn Crockett in People before Highways offers ground-level analysis of the social, political, and environmental significance of a local anti-highway protest and its lasting national implications. The story of how an unlikely multiracial coalition of urban and suburban residents, planners, and activists emerged to stop an interstate highway is one full of suspenseful twists and surprises, including for the actors themselves.

4/3: Great Projects: The Building of America ‘The Big Dig’” (WGBH, 2003)

12PM Snell Library, Room 90 (Film runtime 56 minutes) Featuring Special Guest Fred Salvucci, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former Massachusetts Secretary of Transportation. In the post World War II years, urban highways divided neighborhoods; nothing stood in the way of their construction. In Boston, the Central Artery cut through downtown Boston and the city was left with an ugly green monster, an elevated highway in the heart of its historic and business districts. By the 1970s, city planners wanted to tear it down but the existing highway was so vital to the city’s transportation that closing it down for any length of time was unfeasible. The solution to this dilemma became known as the Big Dig. A local engineer named Fred Salvucci, (whose own grandmother had been displaced by the Mass Pike years earlier), championed a complex plan that resulted in a transportation renaissance in Boston and a renewal of much of the city’s infrastructure.

 About Neighborhood Matters

Neighborhood Matters is a lunchtime series that celebrates the ways in which community groups have shaped the neighborhoods surrounding the Northeastern campus. This series is curated by Northeastern University Library Archives and Special Collections with the assistance of Library Communications and Events. Neighborhood Matters is co-sponsored by Northeastern University City and Community Affairs and Northeastern University Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion. Archives and Special Collections at Northeastern University Libraries The Archives and Special Collections at Northeastern University Libraries houses and carefully curates a diverse collection of historical records relating to Boston’s fight for social justice; preserving the history of Boston’s social movements, including civil & political rights, immigrants rights, homelessness and urban and environmental justice. They focus on the history of Boston’s African American, Asian American, LGBTQ, Latino and other communities, as well as Boston’s public infrastructure, neighborhoods, and natural environments. The primary source materials they collect and make available are used by the community members, students, faculty, scholars, journalists, and others from across the world as evidence on which histories are built. An understanding of the past can help inspire the next generation of leaders to fight for economic, political, and social rights.