Author: Nora Almeida

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!

Ashley joined the library as a tenure-track faculty member this past August, just as the busy Fall 2025 semester was getting underway. As a new member of the City Tech community and recent addition to the vast CUNYverse, we thought we’d ask Ashley a few questions to get to know her a little better and to learn more about her role and her research interests. A very belated welcome to Ashley!

Can you share a little about your academic and library background?

Sure! I hold a PhD in African History from the University of Michigan and an MLIS from UNC-Chapel Hill. I initially pursued the PhD believing I wanted to be a professor of history, but a number of experiences led me to libraries. As a doctoral student, I had the opportunity to work with undergraduates as a TA for global history courses; I also had a chance to work on several archives projects in Uganda, where I helped inventory, arrange, and describe a number of government repositories across the country. Both of these experiences–working with undergraduates in the US and archivists in Uganda–really appealed to me, and they helped me recognize new ways to use my training in history to support new scholarship. After grad school, I went on to teach at Bard High School Early College-Manhattan for five years, where I got to design courses in African studies, global history, and world literature. I also spent a year in India where I helped set up a new liberal arts BA program at Munjal University outside Delhi. All of these experiences helped me identify things I really cared about: supporting undergraduates, especially first-gen students; information literacy; collection development and bibliodiversity; and global scholarly communications.

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

Being a librarian at CUNY allows me to wear many hats. I can teach and provide reference support; I can work on policy and troubleshoot service delivery; and I can conduct research. Moreover, I get to work with a team, which I find more energizing and interesting than working solo all the time. In my past work experience, I’ve been a full-time teacher, a full-time archival assistant, and a full-time researcher, but librarianship gives me a balance of all three.

In terms of who influenced me: As a researcher, I have visited libraries and archives all across the US, Europe, and East Africa. In every instance, I have had to get support from librarians and archivists who knew their collections and knew how to guide me through them. That certainly shaped my interest in LIS. But I’ve also worked closely with scholars in East Africa and India, and I’ve seen the ways in which global scholarly communications works to marginalize and alienate academics outside North America and western Europe. My interest in LIS as a field of study is really grounded in this recognition.

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

I am the access services librarian. In this role, I oversee everything that happens behind the Borrow and Return desk. I work with a team that manages course reserves, inter-library loan, CLICS, and regular circulation; we also make sure the stacks are in order. Beyond this, I will soon take on liaison roles and reference service shifts.

What are your research interests? Are you working on something now? Or excited to start something new?

I’m interested in global scholarly communications, broadly. With my background in African history, I’m especially concerned with questions about the production and circulation of knowledge about Africa. My current project focuses on the role that North American academic libraries have played in shaping this circulation. I’m currently writing about an audit I designed and conducted with the African studies librarian at UNC-Chapel Hill, in which we collected data on the nationality of authors and the places of publication for a large sample of the African studies print book collection. Our aim was to gather better data about the collection and to understand whose work has been privileged over time; we are also analyzing circulation data to better understand user demand (perhaps unsurprisingly, we see users tend to choose books from well-known publishers in the global North). One possible application of our research will be to design critical citation workshops and libguides.

Beyond this, I’m very interested in the history of libraries, archives, and publishing in Africa, current opportunities and challenges of OA in the global South, and what AI might mean for all of this.

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

As a librarian, I feel a lot of pressure to say I’m doing some impressive reading challenge (!), but honestly the world is so nuts right now that I’ve given myself permission to read all the murder mysteries I want. The last one I enjoyed was God of the Woods by Liz Moore, and I’m halfway through Broadchurch. 

And no librarian intro would be complete without a cute cat portrait. 

During Hispanic Heritage Month, Sept 15-Oct 15 Migdalia Pérez (Maggie)–a graphic designer, peace activist, and graduate of City Tech– designed a beautiful exhibit and hand drawn poster to honor Rita Moreno. Her exhibit titled, “Siéntete Orgulloso de Quien Eres” (Be Proud of Who You Are) is currently on display in the City Tech Library.

Primero fue dibujado a mano a lápiz por Migdalia Pérez (Maggie) y luego retocado digitalmente para crear un póster ampliado en blanco y negro de 61 x 91 cm para exhibir a estudiantes, profesores, personal e invitados. En honor a Rita Moreno en este Mes de la Herencia Hispana.

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Migdalia Pérez is a Puerto Rican American born in East New York, Brooklyn. She is a professional multi-faceted Graphic Designer and Artist. She graudated from City Tech’s COMD Department with her AA in Advertising Design and her BA in Communication Design in 2005, Majoring in Graphic Design, Web Design, and Desktop Publishing. She is a peace activist and advocate of the people.

She chose to work on Rita Moreno for the whole entirety of Hispanic Heritage month in honor of Rita’s activism, representation for the people, pride for her nationality, and her great success in her acting career–being the first woman to win an Oscar and only the 3rd person to win an EGOT.

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Migdalia Pérez es una puertorriqueña estadounidense nacida en East New York, Brooklyn. Es una diseñadora gráfica y artista profesional multifacética. Se graduó del Departamento de Diseño de Comunicación y Diseño de Publicidad de City Tech en 2005, con especialización en Diseño Gráfico, Diseño Web y Autoedición. Es activista por la paz y defensora de los derechos de los ciudadanos.

Eligió trabajar en Rita Moreno durante todo el Mes de la Herencia Hispana en honor a su activismo, su representación social, su orgullo por su nacionalidad y su gran éxito en su carrera actoral, siendo la primera mujer en ganar un Óscar y la tercera persona en ganar un EGOT.

Los invito a visitarnos y echar un vistazo. Si admiran mi trabajo y desean seguirme para futuras exposiciones o saber más sobre él, No duden en enviarme un mensaje a través de Facebook donde publicaré más o LinkedIn. Soy una persona ocupada, pero haré todo lo posible por volver.

Conozca más sobre de Maggie en Linkedin y Facebook.

Learn more about Maggie’s work on Linkedin and Facebook.

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We asked Maggie to share a little more about the inspiration for her project and she told us:

I committed to work on the project everyday of Hispanic Heritage Month and to have it finished to show by the last day. During Hispanic Heritage month there was a lot of bad mouthing of the performer Bad Bunny singing at the Super Bowl only in Spanish, along with the issues going on with being an immigrant in this country dealing with fears of being detained by ICE agents and dealing with discrimination. I wanted to present some sort of beacon of strength, pride and hope and to educate people of our past accomplishments and what they still can become now and, in the future, if we hold fast to our pride and work together and support one another through trying times.

Le pregutamos a Maggie sobre la inspiración para su proyecto y ella nos dijo:

El plan para mi proyecto era comprometerme a trabajar en él todos los días del Mes de la Herencia Hispana y tenerlo terminado para el último día. Durante este mes, se habló mucho de Bad Bunny, quien vas a cantar solo en español en el Super Bowl, además de los problemas que enfrenta un inmigrante en este país, con el miedo a ser detenido por agentes de ICE y la discriminación. Quería presentar una especie de faro de fortaleza, orgullo y esperanza, y educar a la gente sobre nuestros logros pasados ​​y lo que aún pueden llegar a ser ahora y en el futuro, si nos aferramos a nuestro orgullo, trabajamos juntos y nos apoyamos mutuamente en tiempos difíciles.

 

 

How bleak, unlivable, insufferable existence becomes when we are deprived of artwork. –Toni Morrison, Peril (2008)

Yesterday was the start of Banned Books Week. First launched in 1982 in response to a rise in book bans in libraries and schools, Banned Books Week is a collectively observed barometer that measures the social tolerance for the circulation of divergent thoughts. It is a small chalkboard on which we “draw national attention to the harms of censorship” and celebrate our freedom to speak and read.

Our current media landscape looks a lot different than it did in 1980s when Banned Books Week began (though this year’s theme for Banned Books Week is “Censorship is so 1984″ in reference to the dystopian–and frequently banned–Orwell novel).

But books are still getting banned from schools and libraries in large numbers. Pen America reported on Oct 1st that more than 6,800 books were banned in public schools this year–check out their report that also includes more context on which and where materials are being banned. Imagine how many more books could be banned if libraries and public schools didn’t suffer the general censorial erosion of austerity.

It’s impossible to write about book bans without also addressing the broader censorship landscape / abyss and the general squishy reality that we all are suspended in. We used to talk about the right to speak (and speak out) or circulate information that is critical of dominant political ideologies. Increasingly, we talk less about our rights and more about the danger of saying or writing anything public and critical–if we’re privileged enough to do so.

These days you might lose a finger just for pointing at the abyss.

During Banned Book Week, librarians and educators across America typically write and speak out about censorship. But more and more of them cannot take that risk because they could be fired or even arrested.

The targeting of librarians, especially public and school librarians in Republican controlled states, has become so pervasive that there’s a new film about it. Having worked in libraries for 15 years, I am still caught off guard by the vast gulf that separates the subversive and abstractly grandiose idea of THE LIBRARY and the actual activities that regularly take place in most libraries (hanging out, studying, video games, naps between classes, refilling printer toner, trying to get on the wifi, advocating for new lightbulbs).

What am I risking by writing this? Will anyone even read it?

How about this:  Four CUNY faculty members from Brooklyn College have already been fired for their speech in support of Palestine.  Six others are under investigation.

It’s not all speech, some people say. Just speech about Palestine. Just speech about speech about Palestine. Just speech about the dead journalists in Palestine. Just speech about the University crack down on speech about Palestine.

And it’s not all books. Just books about “transgender people and diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The bans are implemented in the national(ist) interest. They prevent public schools from “promoting un-American ideas” to children.

It’s getting bigger, the gulf where speech was. The categories of things that are unspeakable grow apace with the potential harms that might befall someone who speaks.

I take my time. I cite my sources.

If information is a reflection of reality, than our reality is chaotic. Fragmented. Irreconcilably dissonant. Maybe that’s the project of fascism–extreme simplification, the distillation of a mess into a pile of books collected and arranged into a pyre and set on fire in 1933 in Berlin by the Nazis.

Whether or not you think that the current political landscape in the United States is fascist or on the brink of fascist depends on what you read.

Maybe I should write about future of censorship and float somewhat beyond the orbit of the dangerous present. As a public employee it might be safer if I swim into the speculative sea. We’re just glimpsing the new dystopian possibilities for future censorship introduced by AI, according to a think piece in Time Magazine. (“Imagine a world where your word processor prevents you from analyzing, criticizing, lauding, or reporting on a topic deemed “harmful” by an AI programmed to only process ideas that are “respectful and appropriate for all.”)

Imagine this blog post was AI generated. Am I protected when I invoke the algorithm? What if these words were just an amalgamation of other words that already were written? The distillation of a mess.

Or maybe I should dig into the archive; librarians are always doing that. Historic sources are safer, tested. Censorship and fascism from the past are already neatly woven into the dominant ideological fabric.

Here’s a “novel theory”: what if censorship isn’t fascist but necessary to prevent fascism? …an argument made by a Russian Delegate to a U.N. subcommission on the Freedom of Information and the Press in 1947.

It’s nice to look back and know that in 1947 we were on the right side of the international consensus that “censorship destroys freedom.”

But then, in the same list of search results delivered from the New York Times Historical (available for free through the City Tech Library) when I type in “fascism and censorship,” I find another article from 1947. Academics and activists and writers were being blacklisted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The New York Times published an article about the dangers of targeting individuals rather than published works–a different and “fatal” form of censorship that prevents people from speaking.

And almost 80 years later we’re being “Un-American” again unless we ban some of these dangerous books. Unless subversive librarians and educators are expelled from the system. Unless we shut up.

Last week, a photographer who documented a protest that took place in July 2025 outside of the New York Times headquarters in Manhattan was charged with “aggravated harassment in the second degree as a hate crime” for taking this picture:

The protest was in response to censorship and repression of information about the famine in Gaza after the Times amended an article following an editorial request from the Israeli Consulate General.

The photographer took a picture. Shared it.

Where does the censorship start? Who reads the newspaper with power and a red pen? Who requests the editorial amendment and who delivers it? Who at the Times receives it? Who implements the editorial change? Who posts about it on the platform owned by the technocratic billionaire and former head of the Department of Government Efficiency? Which news outlets do and which don’t cover the protest organized by Pro-Palestinian activists / militant vandals (depending on your preferred source)? Which publish the photograph?

Who finds and arrests the photographer?

What would we do if people stopped writing? Stopped taking pictures?

In 2008, Toni Morrison (famous author of banned books like Beloved and activist) wrote an essay called Peril, about the entanglements of colonialism, racialized oppression, capitalism, and censorship. The risks of speaking up. The terrifying specter of a world without art.

Authoritarian regimes, dictators, despots are often, but not always, fools. But none is foolish enough to give perceptive, dissident writers free range to publish their judgments or follow their creative instincts. They know they do so at their own peril. They are not stupid enough to abandon control (overt or insidious) over media. Their methods include surveillance, censorship, arrest, even slaughter of those writers informing and disturbing the public. Writers who are unsettling, calling into question, taking another, deeper look. Writers — journalists, essayists, bloggers, poets, playwrights — can disturb the social oppression that functions like a coma on the population, a coma despots call peace, and they stanch the blood flow of war that hawks and profiteers thrill to. 

That is their peril. 

 

Welcome to a new semester! And welcome new students, staff, 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-8pm, 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. Delivery times take anywhere from 3 to 15 business days. 

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 in-person or online synchronous class. We also offer tutorials and 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 resources and support for your asynchronous class.

For general questions about library instruction, contact Prof. Anne Leonard, library instruction coordinator.

We’re thinking about Wikipedia!

The library is organizing a series of events related to Wikipedia, Wikidata, and other Wikiprojects over the coming year, through support from the Wikimedia Foundation. Visit cityte.ch/wiki to check out what we’ve planned. Up next on our calendars in November 2025: we’re excited to host Wikicurious about NYC.

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 fall, learn how Academic Works can make your publications more visible, increasing readership and citation, at our Academic Works Demystified (November 6) workshop. Want to save time and energy on your literature review? Come to our Get Organized: Zotero Basics (December 4). Zotero is software that helps you manage your citations and more.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.

Open Educational Resources

Funding Opportunity: 2025-2026 OER Fellowship

The Library seeks applicants for the 2025-26 OER Fellowship program. Begun in 2015, this funded program runs in conjunction with the CUNY-wide initiative funded by New York state to “engage faculty in the redesign of courses through the replacement of proprietary textbooks with open educational resources to reduce costs for students, accelerate their progress, and better connect curriculum and pedagogy to student learning outcomes.” Review full details and apply online by Thurs. September 18th. 

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

Workshop: Introduction OER

Date and Time: Wednesday October 8, 11AM – 12PM 

Register online!

This workshop will provide an introduction to Open Educational Resources (OER) and related topics such copyright, Creative Commons licensing, Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC), and where to find free and open materials in your discipline.

Participants are encouraged to bring questions to the sessions; no level of familiarity with OER is required. Part-time faculty who participate will be compensated at their hourly non-teaching adjunct rate for attending. 

Dedicated 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.

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

Check out our exhibition in front of the library and borrow books from our curated display (or browse our collection to find the authors you like most).

This year we’re also celebrating Stephanie Pacheco, a BMCC student and the 2024-2025 National Youth Poet Laureate, whose poem “Dear CUNY” we’re feeling especially inspired by. Read her poem below or see her read it on youtube. Happy reading!

 

Dear CUNY

By Stephanie Pacheco

Dear community college,
I can’t talk about you
Without a train rattling the earth in the background.
Without the post-class hangout spot coming into the conversation
I can’t paint your graceful portrait
Without the mention of
The campus lawns we lay on
That hold us warm in our presence,
And write of us in our absence

I can’t talk about you
Without mentioning our mascot
I met him in the gym once
At a club fair.
And it was insane.
A larger-than-life panther,
A body composed of the spirit of all of our beating hearts.
Our mascot the breakdancer,
the once in a blue moon guest star appearance.

Dear community college,
You taught me the art of learning how to fall asleep anywhere
In lounge chairs
On the 2 train
On my homework.
You taught me the art of making any place
My home.

Dear community college,
I want to tell you about my mom
Who dreamt of attending a college like mine
Who told me when I walked on my campus,
to whisper to the hallways and ask if they remembered her.
Who told me if the bathroom tiles forget her name,
If the chalkboards told me they cannot pronounce the syllables of her body,
Then I must be the one to carry her memory like lecture.
My school,
Of impossible nostalgia

Dear community college,
You taught me about how beautiful the city is when it sleeps
The brightest galaxies in the sky are our city lights
When they replace the sun,
Nothing is between us and the future,
No plane of existence can swallow me here.

This is for the professors who taught me how to laugh in a classroom
Who in me saw a dream.
Who said don’t nobody got anything on us.
Said envision the world I want and be bold enough to write it.
Who gave me printed versions of their syllabus
to write my poems on the back of

Dear CUNY,
I don’t know of any other school that runs its city like you
That paints its town with its face
like you
Everywhere I turn, every building is a student
Every train car is a classroom
CUNY students are the real mayor of New York
Every leader I need already lives in me
Every philosopher I know wears a tote bag and hangs out at my library
My favorite scriptures are those I have to reserve
Using my school library’s website.

This is for my librarians
You know, sometimes I ignore the emails
about my overdue books
They tell me I renew too often.
They actually tell me I haven’t renewed my loan at all.

But at least the only loan I’ve acquired
Is at my school library
The only debt I owe is to them.
To you all, the magnificent holders of knowledge
You all, who remind me to dream like our city lights.
To be that kind of impossible.

To the impeccable cleaning staff and cafeteria chefs,
The people who built pyramids in Egypt,
Modeled their precision after you.
I thank you for your hands.
I thank you for what they have created for me to live in.
You know, I remember
When it would be 11pm and the only thing between me and my sleep
Was an essay that I knew I wouldn’t do if I went home.
It would just be us on the entire campus.
Just me and these folks who made everything they touched shine,
Who are responsible for the creation of stars.

This poem is for everything that keeps a boat floating
For the makers and shakers
For the thinkers,
The dreamers,
For those of us who dare.

For everyone whose parents bet their life on the ocean between their homelands and here,
And prayed for children on the way
For those who live by train tracks,
In the spaces below coming and going,
Who bet their lives on possible destinations
For those of us who are determined
To create a colosseum in the collective
For those of us who write, and sing, and study, dance, build, teach, care, and love Like our breath depend on it
Because they do
We are no one’s lower class
We are nobody’s other

Come join me in the sanctuary we’ve got for now
In our classroom turned temple
We’ve got work to do.

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).

The City Tech Library’s Scholarly Communication Committee and Faculty Commons are excited to host an interdisciplinary panel discussion about Art and Alternative Scholarship with panelists: Prof. Robin Michals (Communication Design), Prof. Kel Karpinski (Library), and Prof. Javiela Evangelista (African American Studies). Prof. Nora Almeida from the Library will Moderate.

• • When: Friday, April 4th from 12:45-2pm
  • Where: Faculty Commons N-227 and on zoom
    • RSVP

The Panel

Scholars, publishers, and institutions are increasingly embracing experimental, autoethnographic, hybrid, and interdisciplinary approaches to research and art. This shift reflects a larger cultural recognition of the limits of traditional publishing, exhibition, and professional forums to capture the shifting landscapes of socially engaged, embodied, and publicly situated art and research practices. In this panel, we’ve invited scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds to discuss their creative and scholarly work and to begin an important dialogue about the potential for art and alternative research to transform institutional paradigms around “what counts.”

The Panelists

Javiela Evangelista is an Assistant Professor in the African American Studies Department A public anthropologist, she engages in participatory research on citizenship and racialization in the African Diaspora. Evangelista’s book manuscript is an ethnographic analysis of the largest case of mass statelessness in the western hemisphere, the contemporary denationalization of Dominicans of Haitian descent in Dominican Republic. Her work has been featured at the Venice Biennale and in the Publication of Afro-Latin/American Research Association (PALARA), National Political Science Review and Interdisciplinary Team Teaching (Palgrave). She is a founding member of We Are All Dominican a collective against statelessness.

Learn about statelessness in Dominican Republic from Reconoci.do  an independent  civic network, made up mainly of Dominicans of Haitian descent, which promotes human rights.

Robin Michals is a photographer whose focus is dance and performance. Current clients include Artichoke Dance, the Center for Performance Research, Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, Earth Celebration, the International Human Rights Arts Festival, the Isadora Duncan Dance Foundation, and the Queensboro Dance Festival among others. From 2010-2022, she documented environmental issues. This work was exhibited at St. Francis University, the Marshall J. Gardener Center for the Art and in THE FENCE in 2019-2020. Her work was selected for Critical Mass Top 50 in 2019 and in 2020, it was one of eight winners of the 7th Tokyo International Photography Competition.

Kel R. Karpinski (he/they) is an Associate Professor and the Information Technology & Interlibrary Loan Librarian at the New York City College of Technology, CUNY. Their research focuses on mid-century queer films and novels as they relate to sailors and hustlers in Times Square and how these texts map queer desire onto the city. Kel is a zine maker and a NY Queer Zine Fair organizer. Their zines bridge their work between academia and libraries with the greater queer community.

Kel also works with The Queer Zine Archive Project.

Welcome to a new semester! And welcome new students, staff, 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 and Fridays from 9-7pm.  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!

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. Delivery times take anywhere from 3 to 15 business days.

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.

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 Tours

Library tours are for anyone–students, staff, and faculty–wanting an orientation to the physical library and overview of in-person and online library services and resources. Tours meet just outside the library entrance and last about 30 minutes.

Upcoming tours:

• • Tuesday, February 25, 5pm
  • Thursday, February 28, 1pm

Library Research Workshops

Research workshops are for any students who want to learn more about conducting academic research and using the library’s electronic and print resources. Workshops take place during club hour in L540, start at 1pm sharp, last 1 hour.

Research Workshops this Spring:

• • Thursday, March 6
  • Thursday, March 13
  • Thursday, March 20
  • Thursday, April 3
  • Thursday, April 10

Library Instruction Offerings 

Are you assigning papers or projects that require library research? You can request a library instruction session for your in-person or online synchronous class.

Teaching asynchronously or want your students to learn research skills at their own pace? Share the library’s tutorials and research guides with your students. The library is also automatically embedded in Brightspace courses (under “Tools”) and you can add library widgets to your OpenLab site.

Contact your library subject specialist with questions or for support for your asynchronous class.

For general questions about library instruction, contact Prof. Anne Leonard, library instruction coordinator.

Support for Scholarly Publishing 

The library can support your research!

We offer a workshop series every spring including: Get Evidence (April 8), a PARSE-related workshop on how you can find quantitative and qualitative data to document the impact of your work and Get Organized: Zotero Basics (May 5).

This semester the library will host a panel discussion on Art and Alternative Scholarship (April 4). The panel will explore the shifting landscapes of socially engaged and experimental art and research practices and how these shifts have the potential to transform institutional paradigms around scholarly impact. 

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.

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.

We also offer workshops on zoom. Upcoming workshops include:

• • Intro to Open Educational Resources, Wednesday, February 19 from 11-noon (register in advance)

• • Accessibility Tune-up, Wednesday, March 5 from 11-noon (register in advance)

Questions about assigning OER and other zero-cost resources, creating, and sharing your OER with a wider audience? Contact Prof. Anne Leonard, interim OER coordinator.

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.

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 Twitter and Instagram @citytechlibrary