LibraryBuzz

The library will have limited hours during spring recess. We will be open 9AM to 5PM, April 14th through the 18th, and closed Saturday the 19th.

Enjoy the break!

Get Evidence! Scholarly Metrics for Your PARSE and CV
Tuesday, April 8, 1:00 – 2:00 PM
Covers Google Scholar Profile for citations and Google Scholar for journal rankings, Scimago for journal rankings, Altmetric Attention Scores for social media, and download reports from Academic Works (and other repositories). We’ll also touch on finding individual journal acceptance rates as well as Journal Impact Factors. The workshop will briefly address books and book chapters as well as other ways we can demonstrate the value and impact of our work.
Registration

Erin (she/her) joined the City Tech Library as an Adjunct Reference & Instruction Librarian in the spring of 2025.

What is your academic and library background?

This past December, I earned my Master’s in Library Science and Master’s in English. In graduate school, I worked as a Research Assistant, Makerspace Employee, and Assistant to the Media Studies, Gender Studies, and Philosophy Librarian. I offered one-on-one research consultations to students, helped patrons use the Makerspace (where we had 3D printers, a sewing machine, vinyl cutters, and button makers), and provided library instruction for English and Gender Studies classes. I especially enjoyed offering research assistance and learning about student projects. I also created LibGuides on a number of topics including artificial intelligence, representations in the media, and the riot grrrl movement.

What made you want to become a librarian? Was there any event or person that influenced you?

When I was in college, I thought I wanted to be a scientist. After completing a degree in Biochemistry, I worked in a Neuroscience lab in Philadelphia where I studied axonal regeneration after spinal cord injury. Though I enjoyed my time in STEM, I came to realize that I wanted to work in a more public-facing role and in a field that combines my interests in the sciences and humanities. As an undergraduate, I took a class called “The Artist in the Archives” which introduced me to the special collections at the John Hay Library. My classmates and I learned about using the archives not only as academic researchers but as artists and creative writers. I also had the opportunity to take a book arts class that got me interested in print history and bookbinding. Based on these experiences and my love of reading, librarianship felt like a perfect fit.

In a nutshell, what do you do at the City Tech Library?

I provide library reference services and offer classroom instruction. I also work on creating research guides and blog posts like this one. Come say hello to me at the reference desk!

What are some of your favorite City Tech library resources?

I really like City Tech’s graphic novel collection (which you can find on the bookshelves under the staircase). There are lots of cool materials available including one of my favorite graphic novels, On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden. Additionally, I love seeing what films we have available to stream on SWANK which provides access to some major theatrical releases.

What books, tv, films, and/or music are you currently listening to?

Right now, I am making my way through Moby Dick (in honor of the opera that just opened at the Met) and recently finished Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh, Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson, and the Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer. I love campus novels, books about walking, and environmental fiction.

Hello. I have been one of the part-time librarians here at the Ursula Schwerin Library since the Fall of 2023. You may have asked me a question at the Reference Desk or perhaps you attended one of my Information Literacy workshops in the library with your English class or Communications class. If you search for “James Wechsler” on the internet, you may get stories of how I confronted Senator Joseph McCarthy in testimony before his notorious Government Operations Committee in 1953. That James Wechsler is not me. And if you use the search terms “James Wechsler” and “CUNY,” you will likely find the following confrontation at Hunter College in 1958 between James Wechsler and the Beat Generation novelist, Jack Kerouac: 

KEROUAC:…James Wechsler…Who’s James Wechsler? Right over there. James Wechsler, you believe in the destruction of America, don’t you?

WECHSLER: No. [Laughter.]

KEROUAC: What do you believe in, come here, come here and tell me what you believe in …You told me what you don’t believe in. I want to know what you do believe in. [Cries from the audience: “That’s right.”] This is a university, we’ve got to learn . . . I believe in love, I vote for love [applause].

WECHSLER: I believe in the capacity of the human intelligence to create a world in which there is love, compassion, justice and freedom. I believe in fighting for that kind of world. I think what you are doing is to try to destroy anybody’s instinct to care about this world.

Again. Not me. To this Wechsler, that Wechsler’s articulate critique of McCarthyism epitomizes the phrases “courage of convictions” and “truth to power.” However, I don’t agree with that Wechsler’s conclusion that Jack Kerouac’s writing weakened anybody’s instinct to care about the world (and I certainly would never have suggested that caring about the world is a shared human trait, let alone instinctual.)
 

Maybe it’s best to search for “James Wechsler” and “librarian.” Then you will see that I have been a CUNY librarian for the last six years. I started at City College (CCNY), where I served as a substitute ILL (Interlibrary Loan) librarian during the pandemic. I am proud to have kept that service operating (albeit at a much-reduced capacity) while the campus was closed. Because of my efforts, library patrons’ access to information was not as limited as it could have been and a number of faculty-members even met book publication deadlines despite the pandemic. If you search for “James Wechsler” and “CCNY,” you’ll see that I joined the CUNY library team in 2020. And, hopefully, you will find my discussion of Our Constitution, a magnificent painting by Harlem Renaissance artist Charles Alston in the CCNY collection. I am the James Wechsler in both of these references. But be careful. Your search results may also include James Wechsler’s account of how 1500 CCNY students packed the Sheppard Hall auditorium in a show of sympathy with Columbia students protesting “the powers of war and fascism” and that university president’s “bitter anti-strike pronouncement.” I would not blame you for assuming it was written about current events by this James Wechsler. However, the other James Wechsler wrote it in 1935.  

Librarians at City Tech have decided to discontinue our use of X as a social media platform because its proprietary algorithm increasingly amplifies hate speech, extreme right rhetoric, and misinformation related to political conspiracies.

As informational professionals and educators committed to protecting speech, we have decided to opt out of algorithmic censorship. Our archive of tweets and X posts are still accessible because we think it prudent to maintain control over the @citytechlibrary handle but we will no longer be actively posting on that platform.

And we’re not alone. Many individuals, organizations, news outlets, and libraries have been saying goodbye and good riddance to X. Algorithmic censorship is both an ethical concern and also a legal conundrum. Extractive media conglomerates weaponize fear and contribute to political polarization and climate collapse through the curation and amplification of perspectives that advance a hyper-capitalist, technocratic agenda. In a number of high profile legislative hearings, lawmakers have upheld Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (created in 1996), which absolves social media platforms like X from liability over user generated content, even as their proprietary platforms,  content mediation, and privacy policies directly influence what content surfaces and what is buried.

Other users have left X because the Terms of Services that users must agree to were updated in November, 2024. Many have argued that the new terms compromise people’s privacy since users can no longer opt of having their posts used for training artificial intelligence platforms, including Grok, which is owned by Elon Musk, the owner of X and unelected figurehead of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Learn more about algorithmic censorship and how X’s Terms of Services impact user privacy.

Find us on Bluesky (@citytechlibrary.bsky.social) or on Instagram (@citytechlibrary).

Sara Sarmiento(she/her) is an Adjunct Reference & Instruction Librarian who joined the City Tech Library in the spring of 2025.

In a nutshell, what do you do at the City Tech Library?
Students can often find me at the reference desk, where I’m available to help with anything from short simple queries about finding a book, to a full blown research consultation. This is the most visible part of my work, and the part which most aligns with what people’s stereotypical idea of a librarian looks like.

In addition to the instruction I do at the reference desk, I lead instructional sessions with classes to orient students with the library and its resources, and how to approach research. I’ll also be helping to update and create library resources.

What is your academic and library background?
I have a BA in Latin American studies and visual arts, an MFA in cartooning, and a MS of Library and Information Science. I’m a recent graduate from library school, so this is my first position officially as a librarian, but my first job as a teenager was shelving books at my public library. I have a professional background working in nonprofits and design and am very proud of the work I’ve done to support other artists. If you look up City Artist Corps, you can even find an exhibition catalog I designed for a large public art project serving NYCHA communities in the CUNY Libraries catalog! That’s something I’ve carried forward into my library studies. I’ve done a number of projects about supporting artists and helping them understand and preserve their digital artwork, and I’m interested in visual resources and visual literacy. It’s also important to me to have an inclusive definition of “artists” that includes the so called “applied arts”, like illustration or design, as well as people who did not go through a traditional art school program.

What made you want to become a librarian? Was there any event or person that influenced you?
It’s difficult to work just as an illustrator, financially, but for me also, I like to get out and do different things and work with people, and making books is a lot of time spent intensely focused on a single project with very little company. I also have a hard time being creative when the rest of my life isn’t taken care of, so I needed a day job that was fulfilling in its own right and balanced my different professional needs. My mom is a children’s librarian, which gave me insight into the field. What I studied and what I’m interested in as a librarian are very different from her work, but through her I got to know a lot of librarians and knew that I liked the community. I’m also a very curious person, which I think is an important trait in a profession that’s all about information.

What were your first impressions of life at City Tech? Were there any surprises?
As I’ve done a lot of work supporting New York City through my work at nonprofits, I love that I’m continuing to support the city through my work at City Tech. NYC is the biggest city in the country, but it can still feel like a tight-knit community, especially when you’re working in a place like CUNY.

A surprise was learning that the library building was built without any plumbing! I completely understand why it was done, it’s very practical, but I think it’s hilarious.

What are some of your favorite City Tech library resources?
The fact that students have access to the entire CUNY and SUNY library network. There’s always interlibrary loan, but the CLICS book delivery service is far less intimidating. City Tech has finite library space, so students should know that they aren’t limited by what we have on the shelves. The Opposing Viewpoints in Context database is also a really great entry point for research. And, this may sound silly, but the librarians themselves are such a good resource! When I’m sitting at the reference desk, I WANT students to come ask me questions, that’s what we’re there for.

What books, tv, films, and/or music are you currently listening to?
I’m currently on book two of “The Hild Sequence” series (“Hild”, “Menewood”) by Nicola Griffith. It’s a historical fiction about the early life of Saint Hilda in early medieval England. It has a lot of background detail about the constant ongoing work of creating textiles, which I especially enjoy as I recently learned how to spin wool into yarn. I’d stopped listening to podcasts early in the pandemic when I needed a break from the news cycle—everything at the time was about Covid—but spinning has helped me finally get back into podcasts as I can listen to them while I spin, so that’s been a lot of the media I’ve been consuming lately. I’ve been enjoying “What The Duck?!”, a lighthearted podcast about animals by an enthusiastic Australian science journalist. “Stolen” or “Throughline” are great when I have the tolerance for more serious investigative journalism. For more fun investigative journalism, I always recommend “Wild Thing” to people—the first season honestly asks the question “could Bigfoot exist”, and the result is really charming. “Snap Judgement”, “Spooked” and “This American Life” are all great for storytelling. “99% Invisible” is an amazing design podcast, I even recommended an episode to a student the other day that was about a typeface she was researching.

What else would you like City Tech students and faculty to know about you?
Come to me with any of your questions about images. I love the technical/practical side of art, so bring me any of your questions about file types, color theory, or how to find and properly cite images in your papers. Or just come show me your doodles and I’ll tell you how awesome they are!