library events

Learn to Write a Data Management Plan, Find Out What Social Media Knows About You, and More

"You Are Here" artwork by Mario Klingemann

How does your commute make you feel? Map it! What does Facebook know about you? Download your data! What do you need to say about your data in a grant proposal? Learn about data management plans!

We’re hosting a few events this month to coincide with Love Data Week and Endangered Data Week, and you’re invited to:

Check out the full lineup and register for your spot: bit.ly/snelldata19

“You Are Here” by Mario Klingemann on Flickr, CC BY 2.0

Fair Use and the Arts: Collage-Making at Snell Library

ARL-FairUseWeek-White-Logo February 20-24 is Fair Use Week, and this year Snell Library is focusing on the arts. Come and make a collage with us…details below! What is fair use? It’s a right granted to us that allows us to use copyrighted materials without permission from the copyright holder, under certain circumstances. The central purpose of the doctrine of fair use is to encourage creative expression and innovation through the transformative use of intellectual property. It is part of U.S. copyright law. People often ask, “how much of someone else’s work can I use without asking permission and have it be considered fair use?” The answer is “it depends.” Fairness is something that needs to be assessed for each potential usage, against four factors:
  1. The intended purpose and character of the use, such as whether it’s for commercial or noncommercial, educational use.
  2. The nature of the copyrighted work – is it factual or creative?
  3. The amount of the portion to be used in relation to the entire work.
  4. The effect of the use on the potential market for the original work.
There’s also a concept of “transformativeness,” which, while not specifically codified in copyright law, has been shown to be a favored use. Transformativeness has to do with the creation of a new work through the use of others’ work. Recording artists and visual artists use remixing, mashups, and sampling in this way. Sometimes they need to ask permission, but sometimes appropriation of others’ work is considered fair use, and the courts agree: Make a Collage and Learn More About Fair Use! Creativity can be a great way to think about how fair use can apply in your research output and other work. Our Art and Architecture librarian, Regina Pagani, and I will be hosting a collage table in the lobby of Snell Library on Thursday and Friday this week (2/23 and 2/24), from 2:00 to 4:00. Stop by and find out more about fair use, and make your own collage to take with you or contribute to a larger collaborative effort! Further Reading:

Northeastern Celebrates Open Access Week: October 21-27, 2013

The seventh annual International Open Access Week is upon us! What is Open Access?
“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. Open Access (OA) has the potential to maximize research investments, increase the exposure and use of published research, facilitate the ability to conduct research across available literature, and enhance the overall advancement of scholarship. Research funding agencies, academic institutions, researchers and scientists, teachers, students, and members of the general public are supporting a move towards Open Access in increasing numbers every year.” — SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition
Snell Library has several events planned to celebrate: Monday, October 21 3:00-4:30 DMC Circle 2 (blue) SPARC/World Bank Webcast Panelists representing a diverse set of stakeholders – scientific researchers, publishers, technologists and policy makers – will examine the potential positive impacts that can result when research results are shared freely in the digital environment. The panel, moderated by SPARC Executive Director Heather Joseph, will feature:
  • Stefano Bertuzzi, Executive Director of the American Society for Cell Biology
  • Brett Bobley, Chief Information Ocer for the National Endowment for the Humanities
  • Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Director of Scholarly Communication of the Modern Language Association
  • Michael Stebbins, Assistant Director for Biotechnology in the Science Division of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy
  • Cameron Neylon, Advocacy Director for Public Library of Science
Tuesday, October 22 3:00-4:00 421 SL Panel Discussion: Open Access in the Digital Humanities Faculty members Ryan Cordell, Ben Schmidt, and Julia Flanders will lead a discussion on the impact of open access on humanities research and publishing, leading off with some examples from their own work in digital humanities:
Ryan Cordell will talk about “Building With/Building On” and his use of open-access data from the Newberry Library’s Atlas of Historical County Boundaries, William G. Thomas’s “Railroads and the Making of Modern America,” and David Rumsey’s celebrated map collection. Ben Schmidt will talk about the process of working in public through open-access research methods and publications like the Journal of Digital Humanities, and will also offer perspectives on open-source and open-access approaches to code and software development that might provide models for the humanities. Julia Flanders will talk about the tools and methods that underlie Digital Humanities Quarterly, an open-access digital journal now housed at Northeastern University.
Wednesday, October 23 12:00-5:00 90 SL Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon Join us to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of under-represented groups in local Boston history. This hack-a-thon style drop-in session will focus on editing and updating Wikipedia pages in a group setting. Bring a laptop and a power supply, and go on a tour of Northeastern’s archives and special collections. More information available here.
And on Friday, October 25, Snell Library will be playing host to several of the DPLAfest’s open workshops – see the full schedule here. All Open Access Week events are open to the public (photo ID required to enter Snell Library) and refreshments will be served.

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.

The Alumni Reading Room Opens!

It’s here! Today was the official opening of the Anna & Eugene M. Reppucci Alumni Reading Room. The room was a generous gift of Eugene M. Reppucci, Jr., an alumnus of Northeastern, donated in memory of his parents. The Reading Room will serve as a space for alumni to conduct personal research, relax, and experience the Library outside the bustle of the University. This room can also be reserved for alumni-related activities sponsored by student groups. There will be a reception in the Reading Room following the author talk scheduled for Parents’ Weekend, October 23, 2012. If you are interested in reserving the room for group functions, you can click here or contact the Office of the Dean of Libraries. To give the room a memorable opening, Paul Harding, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Tinkers, treated the Library to a reading from his novel as well as a revelatory discussion about the process of his work and his experiences as a child that led him to the creation of Tinkers.