Faculty Members: We Need Your Help

The library’s Web Steering committee is looking for faculty members from all disciplines to help us improve our website. Over the next month or so we would ask you to come to the library, or we could come to your office, and have you perform a series of tasks via our website, so we can see how easy or difficult they are to perform. This is a test of the site’s ease-of-use, and in no way a test of your abilities! If you’ve always wished you could show us how you interact with our site, this is a great opportunity. We would need 20-30 minutes of your time, and we are offering a $20 gift card to your choice of the NU Bookstore (Barnes and Noble) or Starbucks as compensation. We appreciate those of you who have helped us with similar testing in the past! We are currently seeking new volunteers who have not done this before with the library. If the month of April is not a good time for you, we anticipate that there will be more opportunities for testing later in the year. Please contact Karen Merguerian at g.merguerian@neu.edu or x2747 if you are interested in participating in this project now or in the future. And please forward this appeal to others you think may want to help. Thank you so much for your consideration!

Meet Your New GIS Expert!

Kevan Grimaldi

Kevan Grimaldi

College of Professional Studies graduate Kevan Grimaldi has returned to Northeastern as a new GIS assistant. She followed a lifelong interest in maps and geoscience into an undergraduate program in Earth science at Dartmouth College, where she got her first taste of geographic information systems (GIS). After finishing at Dartmouth, she became a full-time GIS user for a private navigations company, and later entered Northeastern’s own masters program in geographic information technology. Kevan’s new role at Snell will be to support faculty, staff, and students in their respective GIS-based endeavors. She plans to offer both one-on-one consultations for specific projects and workshops and training on general GIS use, and will be available by email and appointment. Ask at the Digital Media Commons Information desk on the second floor of Snell to get connected with Kevan. When not immersing herself in geospatial data, Kevan enjoys orienteering, reading, and various pursuits through involvement in the Society for Creative Anachronism, including calligraphy and illumination, archery, and homebrewing. She looks forward to meeting and working with her fellow Huskies on their geospatial projects. Welcome, Kevan!  

Codebreakers: Makers of Modern Genetics

Heredity charts I-VI: published for the Eugenics Society by George Philip & Son Ltd.

Image courtesy the Wellcome Library

Codebreakers:  Makers of Modern Genetics is a newly-launched treasure trove for fans of science, history, and of course, the history of science! The Wellcome Library has digitized the papers of key players in genetics from the last century and made them freely available online. Works of Crick, Watson, Franklin, Wilkins, and Haldane are all represented, to name a few. The papers include lab notebooks, sketches, articles, drafts and general correspondence. The site also contains items from the archive of the Eugenics Society, including the heredity chart shown above. In addition to these digitized artifacts, the site features digitized books and a great interactive timeline on the history of genetics.