LibraryBuzz

City Tech has been made aware of phishing tactics to deceive students for the multi-factor authentication (MFA) codes.

Attackers will attempt to trick users into revealing their login credentials or authentication codes, through emails, text messages, or websites that mimic legitimate services.

Be aware that no one at CUNY will ask for your MFA code and no one should ever approve a MFA prompt they did not initiate.

If you have been contacted to reveal your MFA code or login credentials, please report these to the Office of Computer Information Services.

STUDENT IT HELP DESK
StudentHelpdesk@citytech.cuny.edu
718-260-4900
Library Building (L-114)

FACULTY/STAFF HELP DESK
Helpdesk@aleonard718-260-5626
NAMM Building (N-901)

You can recognize MFA phishing attempts by looking out for:

• Unexpected requests
• Poor grammar and spelling
• Suspicious links
• Urgent language
• Unfamiliar senders

The library’s new series of faculty workshops on information literacy continues this month. If you heard about last month’s workshop (or even if you didn’t) but were unable to participate, please consider registering for either or both of the March workshops. Here are the details:

Revising your (low-stakes) assignment | register

March 18, 1pm-2pm | Participants are encouraged to bring a research-based assignment or class activity that they wish to revise to get more consistent results with students’ research efforts. The goal will be to update an assignment or classroom activity to clarify expectations about its research component and improve research results. Please register by March 17 on Zoom. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. Participants are encouraged to bring questions and examples to the workshop. Part-time faculty who participate will be compensated at their hourly non-teaching adjunct rate for attending.

Strategies for countering misinformation and disinformation | register

March 24, 3pm-4pm | We routinely encounter misinformation and disinformation when we’re online, and even if we identify it, we don’t always have the capacity to find credible sources of information. Participants will learn and practice the techniques that professional fact-checkers use to evaluate information and find reliable sources. Together we will generate ideas about using these strategies in class or in written assignments. Please register on Zoom by March 23. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. Participants are encouraged to bring questions and examples to the workshop. Part-time faculty who participate will be compensated at their hourly non-teaching adjunct rate for attending.  

Call for Applicants

Application Form: Applications open March 19^th and close at noon on April 7^th 2026. Before March 19th, the submission form will not accept submissions, but this is a pdf of the application questions for your reference.

Info Session Registration: There will be four info sessions on March 10th, 12th, 16th and 18th, 2026. We strongly encourage applicants to attend one or more of these sessions to learn more about this opportunity. We will post recordings of these sessions on this page.

Facilitators

• Natalie Milbrodt, CUNY University Archivist
• Bridget Day, CUNY Digital Archivist
• Regina Carra, CUNY Outreach and Processing Archivist
• Richard Knipel, CUNY Wikimedian-in-Residence

Overview

The 2026 Summer Archives and Open Knowledge Faculty Fellowship aims to support 14 full-time teaching faculty members with $5000 of summer salary to expand the use of CUNY archival collections and Wikimedia platforms in the Fall 2026 semester. Fellows are required to participate in three day-long workshops at the Office of Library Services 57^th Street offices and to use the remaining weeks before the start of the Fall 2026 semester to produce either of the following:

• Lesson plans, openly licensed and delivered in a reusable format, for a course they teach in the Fall 2026 semester using CUNY archival collections and/or integrating Wikimedia platforms

• Public programming that centers CUNY archival collections or Wikimedia related topics. This could be a speaker series, hands-on workshops, walking tours, interactive exhibitions, or other projects that present archival collections and wiki content and practices in meaningful and engaging ways in public environments.

OLS staff will document and disseminate all fellowship projects with funders and the public. The fellowship deliverables (whether lesson plans, recordings of public events, or guides) will be collected in CUNY Academic Works and displayed as part of the CUNY Central Archives website. We also ask Fellows to produce a brief (400 word) blogpost with reflections on their experiences developing their projects and their learning outcomes. Please contact archives@cuny.edu if you would like to discuss proposing a project that could only be produced after the Fall 2026 semester. We understand that some courses, for example, are not offered every semester, and want to work with you if possible.

Suggestions as you formulate your project proposal

You are welcome to develop your proposed project using CUNY archival collections and/or Wiki applications of your own choosing. CUNY archives are a rich and diverse collection of primary source materials that can inspire thousands of courses and public programs. If you would like to use CUNY archival collections in your project, please reach out to the campus contact person listed on our site of CUNY archives to discuss your proposal. That archivist must complete this approval form to let us know they support your project.

Your project may include:

• Using reproductions of primary source materials (photos, correspondence, etc.) in class that you find through research in a CUNY archival collection

• Hosting a Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon on a theme connected to your scholarship

• Collaborating with a CUNY archivist to host classroom session(s) where students interact with primary sources through document analysis or other hands-on activities

• Developing a publication or speaker series based on historical records you have researched in a CUNY archives

• Conducting a data analysis project with students using Wikidata

• Using archival collections as creative prompts for writing or artworks by students

• Exploring contemporary activism through comparisons to historical activist movements documented in CUNY archival collections

• Teaching research skills and primary source literacy using CUNY archival collections

• Developing department or campuswide event or activity that uses Wiki platforms or CUNY archives

Please note that you must also discuss your proposal with your department chair and ask them to complete this approval form to let us know they support your project.

Application

Applications for Archives and Open Knowledge Faculty Fellowship open on March 19^th and close at 12:00pm (noon), Tuesday, April 7, 2026. Selection decisions will be made by April 21, 2026, and notifications will be sent to applicants.

Online Info Sessions are available to familiarize you with CUNY’s archival collections and answer your questions as you generate your proposal. Each of the four sessions (held on March 10th, 12th, 16th and 18th) will feature guest archivists from across CUNY who will share information about their collections and answer your questions.

Selection criteria will include the feasibility of project completion and potential for greater impact, along with considerations such as the diversity of CUNY institutions, discipline areas, and faculty rank. See the rubric below for application criteria.

Continue reading “Summer 2026 Archives & Open Knowledge Faculty Fellowship”

This year, the African American Studies department will celebrate Black History Month with a focus on Food and the African Diaspora.
They will host a food tasting in partnership with the Hospitality Department.

This month, in the spirit of celebrating Black History Month and supporting the theme of  Food and the African Diaspora, the library’s window display features selections from our extensive menu collection alongside a portion of food and food history related books from the library’s collection.

Students examined how recipes and farming are central to Black foodways throughout the African Diaspora in Dr. Effinger-Crichlow’s AFR 3000ID: Black New York sections in Fall 2025. For part of an assignment, students were instructed to “reflect upon how a specific foodway is part of your life in New York City… Is this foodway a culinary tradition like a recipe within or outside your family, and is it a brief excerpt from your memoir?”

The menu collection, a donation from “Arthur Schwartz…restaurant critic and executive food editor of the New York Daily News for 18 years” resides in both the library stacks and archives. In addition to menus from around the world, we have a selection of personal papers and ephemera from his long career.

Join us at City Tech to explore Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and more during the Spring 2026 semester.

Coming up on March 13th: a 30-minute online Introduction to Wikimedia Commons. We’ll explore how images from Wikimedia Commons can be used for teaching or in student assignments, as well as how individuals can contribute to Wikimedia Commons. Read more and register at this link.

Join City Tech Library and the Pride Club for an LGBTQIA+ Wikipedia Editathon on March 19th from 12:45-2:15pm. After a short training session we’ll work on Wikipedia articles about LGBTQIA+ topics related to CUNY, New York City, and beyond. Food will be served! Read more and register at this link. 

Do you love CUNY history? Join us on April 16th at City Tech Library for Archives+CUNY+Wikipedia. We’ll use CUNY’s rich archival resources for editing Wikipedia. Learn more and register to attend at this link.

Update: The library will also be closed on Tuesday, February 24th.

Due to the blizzard, the college and library will be closed on Monday, February 23rd.

Welcome to a (still) rather new semester. And welcome to all of our new students and faculty.

Need a book, a quiet place to study or work on a project, or research help?  Come visit us on the 4th floor of the Library building Mondays-Thursdays from 9am-9pm, Fridays from 9am-7pm, and Saturdays 10am-3pm. 

Learning or teaching online? We’ve still got you covered.

Get virtual help 24X7

If you’re off campus or up late working on a project and need help Just Ask us! 

You can chat with (real human!) CUNY Librarians on weekdays and librarians from other institutions on evenings and weekends. 

Access Library Resources from Off-Campus

Use your CUNY login to access library databases, research articles, movies, and ebooks from off campus. Login to “My Library Account” on the library website to see your loans, renew books, and check on requests for books from other CUNY campuses. 

If your preferred name isn’t associated with your library account, you can change that! 

Maybe you didn’t already know…

City Tech students, faculty, and staff have free access to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal! Use your City Tech email to sign up (or renew your subscription). 

The library lends podcasting equipment! Check out a podcasting kit from our multimedia lab. And while you’re at it…check out one of our portable turntables and our extensive vinyl record collection.

Course Reserves

You can place textbooks and required readings for your courses in the Library’s Reserve Collection for your students to use in the library. Please place your requests as soon as possible as we purchase on a first-come, first-served basis. Request materials to be placed on reserve using this form. 

Questions?  Email us: NYCCTCirculation@citytech.cuny.edu 

Need Something We Don’t Have?

CUNY students, faculty, and staff can request books from other CUNY AND State University of New York (SUNY) Libraries! Through this partnership with SUNY, the CUNY community has access to over 12 million items from 52 campuses. Deliveries take 3 to 15 business days. 

Ask a City Tech librarian or chat with us if you need help requesting something from another library.

Faculty, staff, and students can also request physical books not available at CUNY or SUNY through Interlibrary loan (ILL). We are also continuing to fill article and individual book chapter requests and deliver them electronically. ILL is great for scholarly research and course assignments. We can also request multimedia materials and have a new reader for research on microfilm!

Your CUNY login is connected to your ILL account, so you’ll have one less password to remember! Questions? Email us: interlibraryloan@citytech.cuny.edu

Library Instruction Offerings 

Are you assigning papers or projects that require library research? You can request a library instruction session for your class. We also offer research guides to support asynchronous courses and for students who want to learn at their own pace.

Contact your library subject specialist to find out more about support for your asynchronous class. For general questions about library instruction, contact Prof. Anne Leonard, library instruction coordinator.

We’re editing Wikipedia!

Did you know that CUNY has a Wikimedian in Residence? City Tech Library is so excited to use this support for wiki work on campus. We’re organizing a series of events related to Wikipedia, Wikidata, and other Wikiprojects this year, through support from the Wikimedia Foundation. Visit cityte.ch/wiki to check out what we’ve planned. Up next on our calendars: NYC’s Wikipedia Day is at City Tech in March, and an Archives+CUNY+Wikipedia editathon in April!

Open Educational Resources

Identify open and free resources to support teaching, browse your colleagues’ contributions, and much more via the OER at City Tech site. Follow our blog for New & Noteworthy OER available in your discipline.

Questions about seeking funding to create OER, assigning OER and other zero-cost resources? Contact Prof. Cailean Cooney, OER coordinator.

Faculty Workshop: Information Literacy in your discipline

• Date and Time: Tuesday, February 24, 3PM – 4PM
• Register online! by February 23 to participate

Workshop participants will brainstorm and draft a brief information literacy manifesto that articulates the priorities for ethical information use, essential research skills, and information discovery in their field. This working document will guide curriculum development and help students understand discipline-specific expectations for information literacy.

Participants are encouraged to bring questions to the workshop. Part-time faculty who participate will be compensated at their hourly non-teaching adjunct rate for attending.

Questions? Please contact Anne Leonard, Information Literacy Coordinator.

Support for Scholarly Publishing 

The library can support your research and help you throughout the publication lifecycle! 

We offer a workshop series every semester. This spring, we’ll offer our usual workshop to help you find data and other evidence for your PARSE, Get Evidence! on March 31, 1:00-2:00 PM. Registration. Want to save time and energy on your literature review? Come to our Get Organized: Zotero Basics (May 6, 12-1:30 PM). Zotero is software that helps you manage your citations and more. Registration.

In addition to our Scholarly Publishing Clinic, a monthly office hour for virtual consultations on the first Tuesday of the month at 3 PM, consultations are available on demand Contact Prof. Monica Berger to set up a consultation and learn more about how the library supports scholarly publishing.

Showcasing Student Work 

Calling all student artists and makers!

The library is creating more spaces to showcase student creative work and projects with visual components. We have several vertical display cases near our entrance as well as a flat glass-top display case, poster stands, a digital monitor for still images, and an active social media presence. We are also open to creatively repurposing other underutilized spaces in the library for larger scale projects. Projects in all disciplines are welcome. 

Students and faculty with ideas for showcasing student work or for collaborative programming can reach out to Prof. Nora Almeida, Outreach Librarian. 

Don’t Be a Stranger

Have questions about library resources and services but not sure how to reach us? Want to make sure you get the latest updates about changing policies, new resources, and digital tools available through the library? 

Subscribe to the LibraryBuzz blog to get the latest in your inbox or follow us on Bluesky and Instagram @citytechlibrary

Join student activists and educators for Higher Education Action Day on February 25th. This is an opportunity to directly talk to state legislators about the need for more affordable tuition and more funding to support your educational experience. NYPIRG (local organizers with an office on campus) will provide free buses up to Albany for a 1 day trip.

Here is more information about the event and registration details.

Every voice matters!