Northeastern

Snell Leaders at New Orleans ALA Conference

We at Snell would like to wish our fellow staff members good luck as they head to the 2011 American Library Association Annual Conference in New Orleans this week. The conference will begin today and be held through June 28th and is one of the largest events for the library community. More than 25,000 librarians, educators, authors, publishers, literacy experts, illustrators and the leading suppliers to the market attend to discuss ways to improve the libraries. Maria Carpenter, Director of Advancement and Marketing at NU Libraries, will present on a fundraising toolkit for librarians she co-developed to help library staff and supporters understand how annual funds, special gifts (such as memorials and tributes), major gifts, and planned giving work. Maria is also an author of Diversity Standards: Cultural Competency for Academic Libraries, a standards and guidelines document for the Association of College & Research Libraries which will be introduced at the conference. Also from Snell Library, Amanda Rust and Annie DeVane will present a poster on their recent research for the Library’s new Drupal-based website. The aim of the survey was to determine what sort of staffing would be necessary for a large, heavily-customized Drupal Web site, and the results, therefore, give a brief overview of the current citizens of the Drupal library community. Karen Merguerian and Diann Smothers were also co-authors on this poster. You can view the poster and full survey results here: http://www.lib.neu.edu/ALADrupalPoster2011/ For more information on the ALA conference that will take place this coming week, check out the website http://www.alaannual.org/content/conference-overview

Introducing Mideastwire

Mideastwire provides daily English-language summaries of key political, cultural, economic, and opinion pieces produced by the media in 22 Arab countries, Iran, and the Arab Diaspora. Although this resource is particularly relevant for faculty and students in Political Science, International Affairs, Journalism, and International Business, it will be of interest to anyone following current developments in the Middle East and Arab world. Automatic delivery of a daily briefing is available through RSS feed or e-mail. To enable e-mail delivery of the daily briefing, send a blank e-mail message to info@mideastwire.com. Please note that there are currently some difficulties with delivery to Gmail accounts; Gmail users, please see the following FAQ: http://0-www.mideastwire.com.ilsprod.lib.neu.edu/faq.php. A link to RSS feeds is available on the home page of Mideastwire. Additional features include:
  • Links from each translated article to the original news piece which offers users the look and feel of the original news source. Additionally, readers fluent in the language of publication may view the original.
  • Five year archive for issue tracking.
  • Basic and advanced searching of the article archive.
  • Access to the Mideastwire blog.
  • Links to related websites.
  • Alumni access.
Mideastwire enhances international news coverage already provided through other library resources, including EIU.com, Press Display, Access World News, and Lexis/Nexis Academic.

Joan Krizack Receives Champion of Freedom Award

Joan Krizack, University Archivist and Head of Special Collections, received the Freedom House Champions of Freedom Award on April 5, 2011. The award recognized Joan for preserving the historical records of Freedom House in Northeastern University’s archives, including digitizing the Freedom House photographs and making them available online: http://www.lib.neu.edu/freedomhouse/. Freedom House was founded in 1949 by African American social workers Muriel S. and Otto P. Snowden to centralize community activism in the fight for neighborhood improvement, good schools, and harmony among racial, ethnic, and religious groups in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Freedom House Awards are given annually to outstanding individuals, non-profit organizations, and corporations in recognition of their commitment to diversity, educational achievement, and business development. To learn more Joan’s award, read this article from the Jewish Women’s Archive Blog: http://jwablog.jwa.org/Joan-Krizack-wins-Champion-of-Freedom-Award

New Scanning Stations in Snell

Snell is happy to announce that the new scanning stations are here, with five stations fully installed, one on each floor of the library. Now that they are up and running, here are some guidelines for how to get the most out of the new additions: Anyone, Northeastern University affiliated or not, can do the following: 1. Scan a document and email it to themselves 2. Scan a document and save it directly to a flash drive 3. Scan a document and upload it to a Google Docs Account (if they have one already) So don’t forget to take advantage of these new scanning stations the next time you visit Snell and stay green! For more information, please contact Lesley Milner at l.milner@neu.edu

Local Boston Designers Recognized by Smithsonian

Being a native Massachusetts girl and a graphic design student at Northeastern, I am always excited to hear about different opportunities in the design world that pop up around the historical city of Boston. Just the other day I came across an interesting article from Boston.com, which announced that the Smithsonian recently awarded three local MA designers for their recent and lifelong achievements in typography, interactive and product design. One designer, Matthew Carter, received the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt Lifetime Achievement Award, a prestigious award recognizing him for his years of work on numerous typefaces for Microsoft, Yale University, and the Boston Globe. Additionally, the Boston.com article features a short interview with designer Gianfranco Zaccai who says he believes Americans are becoming more design-savvy and excelling in the design world. He states, “We live in a much more global and connected world…. and I think a lot of it is due to some design companies communicating to people more”. Needless to say, this recent recognition of local designers certainly makes me excited to see what other opportunities lie within our beloved city!