Freedom House Collections featured in The Scout Report

Established in 1949 by two African American social workers, Muriel S. and Otto P. Snowden, Freedom House was created to centralize community activism in Roxbury, MA, a middle-class, racially mixed neighborhood. The hope of its founders was to link community members to existing services and to create new services in areas that were lacking by focusing on neighborhood improvement, good schools, and harmony among racial, ethnic, and religious groups. Eventually, archives from the Freedom House came to Northeastern University and were digitized creating the Northeastern University Libraries’ Freedom House Collection consisting of 2,265 photographs, negatives, and slides. These images document a variety of topics including the organization’s early activities to create an integrated Roxbury, to initiate citizen participation in the urban renewal of Roxbury, and the early oversight of Boston Public Schools desegregation.  The images also include representations of well-known figures like Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Senator John F. Kennedy. More recently, on March 18, 2011, the The Scout Report listed NU Libraries’ Freedom House Collection as a featured research and education source. The article can be found here. The The Scout Report is a weekly publication that provides information on new or newly discovered online resources of interest to researchers and educators. To sign up to receive the The Scout Report in text or HTML format go to: http://scout.wisc.edu/About/subscribe.php To find out more about Northeastern University’s Digital Collections go to http://www.lib.neu.edu/archives/digital_collections/

LibX Plug-in Updated for Firefox 4

Everybody’s favorite browser plug-in, LibX @ NU, (version 1.5.6) has been updated to be compatible with Firefox 4! If you’re already using LibX, you may be prompted to update the plug-in sometime in the next few hours. This version also works in Internet Explorer. If you use Chrome, there’s now a Chrome version too! LibX for the NU Libraries offers: • An optional search bar at the top of the browser window for NuCat, Nexpress, and WorldCat Local • The ability to highlight any text in a web page and drag it to the search bar (see video) • Right-click highlighted browser text and search in NuCat, Nexpress, WorldCat or Google Scholar (see video) • Click the embedded N in Amazon, WorldCat, Google, and more, and search in NuCat or Tour (see video) • Right-click a web page or URL, including Google Scholar, and log in from home with Library/myNeu login (see video) • Click any isbn, issn, doi, or PMID on the web, and link to NuCat or full text (see video). • Get links to COINs, a standard for creating citations (see a video of how it works in Wikipedia) The plug-in helps you avoid frustration and save time, and brings you access to the library’s content where you are on the web. Try it out! Download LibX for NU Libraries here

Happy Birthday Houdini

Many of you may have noticed today that Google is honoring the 137th birthday of Harry Houdini! So, in the spirit of the great illusionist, I thought I would see what we could uncover on the subject. Here’s what I discovered: Born as Erik Weisz, Houdini immigrated from Hungary when he was four years old. His most famous tricks involved making mind-boggling escapes from potato sacks dangling from bridges or glass cases filled with water. One of his most famous tricks is known as Metamorphosis. Houdini would be tied into a sack and locked into a trunk, a curtain would close and when it would reopen, Houdini would be on the stage and his assistant would be in the trunk. All of these facts, and many more can be found by searching “Harry Houdini” in the journal/article discovery search on the library’s website. Or search NuCat for books and resources on Houdini.

Did You Know Snell Has Laptop Locks?

Laptop locks are now available for use on ten of the group study tables outside of the InfoCommons on the first floor of Snell Library. Hooks are located on the corner edge of each table and locks can be signed out at the Circulation Desk for up to three hours (one renewal allowed per usage). For more information please contact the Circulation Desk on the 1st floor of Snell Library at 617.373.8778.

How Has the NIH Public Access Policy Affected You?

Heather Joseph at SPARC writes, “It’s hard to believe, but April 7, 2011 will mark the 3rd Anniversary of the implementation of the policy opening up access to articles reporting on the results of NIH-funded research.” (Read more about the NIH Public Access Policy here.) SPARC is gathering stories from authors as well as readers about how having wider access to taxpayer-funded research has affected them. Joseph continues:
The policy has shown tremendous signs of success. PubMed Central now contains more than 2 million full text articles reporting on the latest NIH-funded research, and nearly a half million individuals access these articles each day. With this new wealth of information now available, we’d like to know what your experience has been with it. Specifically, we’d like to hear: 1. How have you been using the database? 2. Have you used the articles to help inform yourself about new developments in a specific area? 3. Has the availability of these articles through PubMed Central helped you advance your research in ways that would not have occurred if they were not available? 4. Have articles that you have authored appeared in PubMed Central as a result of the policy? 5. Have you been contacted by other researchers who have found your work in the database, or vice versa? 6. Have you taken any of the articles to your doctor or other health care provider? 7. Has your healthcare provider used this database as a resource? (if you don’t know, please ask her/him!) 8. Has the availability of the articles in PMC had an impact on how you (or anyone in your community) manage your health care? We’ve heard from people who have used the latest research in various ways, and the stories are extremely powerful. If you have one, please share it! It will help us to not only ensure that PubMed Central remains open as an important public resource, but also to make the case to open up additional publicly funded databases from HHS and other federal agencies as well.
If you’d like to contribute your story about PubMed Central and the NIH Public Access Policy, you can e-mail Heather Joseph directly at heather@arl.org. (Source: http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/issues/nih/nih_action/callforstories.shtml)