Author: Wanett Clyde

To celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month, Professor Inés Corujo Martín of the Humanities department and City Tech’s Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) Committee, mounted an exhibit in the library’s display cases.

Trajes Típicos honors the diversity of tradiional dress from Mexico, Spain, Spanish Philippines, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala (and its regions Nejab and Santa Catarina Palopó), Perú, Chile, and Argentina. In addition to the riot of color on display, information about the origin and importance of the garments featured communicate just a small part of the vibrancy and distinctiveness of Hispanic cultural textiles.

“City Tech is a federally designated Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI).  As an HSI that is “committed to providing broad access to high quality technological and professional education for a diverse urban population,”^[2] and in anticipation of the expected growth in its Hispanic* population, City Tech must reflect on its current policies and the culture of the institution to ensure an atmosphere of inclusion and respect, and meet the needs of Hispanic students.”
– NYCCT HSI Committee via OpenLab

Here at City Tech, 35% of the student population identifies as Hispanic or Latinx/o/a. In accordance with Hispanic Heritage Month, this display seeks to celebrate and give visibility to this community while reflecting on the importance of Hispanic/Latinx cultural roots and traditions.*

A selection of textile related titles from our collection:

Textiles from Mexico

Looking at textiles : a guide to technical terms

5000 years of textiles

The worldwide history of dress

The historical encyclopedia of costume

World textiles : a concise history

Click here to join on February 15th and 16th at 7pm

Welcome to a new semester! We have a lot of great new things happening at the library and wanted to share some updates.

The library is open and all of our in person services are up and running. Come visit us on the 4th floor of the Library Building 9:00am-8:00pm Monday-Thursday, 9:00am-7:00pm Friday, 10:00am-5:00pm Saturday. We also have virtual reference support available 24×7 through our chat service: Ask us!

Books and More

As of January 18th, 2024, books can be borrowed from any CUNY library for 16 weeks plus 2 renewals (totaling 48 weeks each). The new loan time reflects the CUNY SUNY borrowing and lending partnership.  You can search SUNY’s library collection in OneSearch and borrow books like you borrow CUNY books using CLICS.

Need something we don’t have? Interlibrary Loan(ILL) has expanded its services! Faculty, staff, and students can all request books not available at CUNY through ILL—this includes textbooks. We also fill article and individual book chapter requests and deliver them electronically. ILL is great for scholarly research and course assignments.

You may place textbooks, required readings, and films 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. Email us questions or your department textbook list of required textbooks: NYCCTCirculation@citytech.cuny.edu

Did you know that City Tech Library subscribes to current magazines? These are available for use during library open hours; read more on the library blog about what’s available and how to access these at our Periodicals Desk.

#CityTechSoundsGood #CityTechSuenaBien is here! We’re shopping for records and we want to hear your suggestions – let us know here. The library will soon be lending portable turntables and podcasting kits. Check LibraryBuzz to learn more.

New Electronic Resources

The library is thrilled to provide access to Fashion and Race, a database that provides access to an incredible collection of resources curated by Kimberly M. Jenkins, an expert in the fashion world who is known for her diversity and equity work. Access the database onsite or offsite at http://cityte.ch/fashion. You’ll be prompted to set up your own login the first time you sign in, and then you can use that any time you return to the database.

Don’t forget to use your City Tech email to sign up for (or renew) your free access to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Access expires after a period of time for both students and faculty, but you can always renew it by heading back to the links shared here for free access to the CUNY community.

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.

Are you 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 automatically embedded in Blackboard courses and you can add library widgets to your OpenLab site. Contact your library subject specialist to find out more about subject-specific resources and support for your asynchronous class. For general questions about library instruction, contact Prof. Rachel Jones, library instruction coordinator.

Workshops and Events

The Library offers workshops for faculty, students, and other members of the City Tech community. Our workshops cover a wide range of topics, including basic research skills, finding articles in databases, using other libraries, open access journals, and evaluating websites.

Workshops are open to all City Tech faculty and staff! For a list of current offerings, and to RSVP, please check here.

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 assigning OER and other zero-cost resources, creating, and sharing your OER with a wider audience? Contact Cailean Cooney at ccooney@citytech.cuny.edu. You can also request a tailored workshop by filling out this form.

Support for Scholarly Publishing 

The library can support your research and scholarship—we regularly offer a publishing workshop series. This semester, learn: how to get evidence for your PARSE and CV to document the impact of your work; how to use Zotero, a free citation management tool that has many cool features; how to set up your ORCID author ID which helps funders and others easily find your scholarship and separates you from others who share your name. Our final workshop, part of the college’s Publication Support series, is on open publishing resources from CUNY and City Tech library that facilitate authoring preprints, open access monographs and journals, open textbooks, OER, 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 Monica Berger at monica.berger11@citytech.cuny.edu. Learn more about how the library supports scholarly publishing.

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 Library Buzz blog to get the latest in your inbox or follow us on Twitter and Instagram @citytechlibrary.

The New York City College of Technology (City Tech) Interdisciplinary Studies Committee will host a full-day conference, Common Ground: Making Connections in Interdisciplinary Place-Based Learning, on Friday, October 18, 2024. This conference invites individual presentations, panel presentations, short talks, and workshop proposals that include, but are not limited to, the following topics as they relate to interdisciplinary exploration of the latest educational strategies, innovations, and practices.

Innovative approaches to learning and learning environments (e.g., advanced technologies for education, augmented reality, game-based learning, simulations for learning, place-based and virtual place-based learning, virtual reality learning environments, etc.)

Collaborative learning (co-teaching, team teaching, project-based learning, place-based learning, problem-based learning, etc.)

Communities of practice and socially responsive learning (diversity, equity, and inclusion; digital divide issues, initiatives, and cases; education for sustainable development; climate change, sustainability, conservation; food security/urban agriculture/local food system; civic engagement)

Best practices in assessment and implementation

Educational policy and innovation

To submit a proposal, please complete the following form:
https://forms.gle/7Tb9vK4NqKG5iCK47

Please note that the proposal submission deadline is February 1, 2024.

Email us at ids@citytech.cuny.edu if you have any questions.

The City Tech Library organized a faculty tour of the PVH Heritage Brands archives, home to the design history of premier fashion labels Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger. The PVH Archives provides an example of collections that are deeply engaged with their user community, who are primarily the designers who rely on this material for research and creative inspiration. Everything about how the archive is set up and how collections are arranged and stored is geared towards the type of access their users need: for product development research and more.

The Business and Technology of Fashion program at City Tech does not, strictly speaking, teach fashion design. However, it is the goal of the program to prepare students for careers in fashion and to that end, every effort is made to provide them with a well-rounded baseline which includes knowledge of art history, design & textiles taken alongside courses in Fashion Forecasting, Social Media & International Retailing.

To support these goals, the BOF program recently opened a Textile Lab which provides an opportunity to incorporate hand skill learning in a classroom setting. The library supports teaching and learning goals through acquisition of print materials and databases like Fashion & Race, and now through connecting faculty with fashion institutions like PVH. Listening to the Tommy Hilfiger archivist explain how specific materials are arranged in order to support research and help current designers understand the history of the company illustrated how much can be learned by interacting directly with archival collections.

The archivists and historians there were so encouraging and welcoming as they shared information not only about the archive and holdings, but also about their career paths and work with fashion history.

We ended our time there with offers to arrange class visits to the archives for our students as well as for the archivists to visit us on campus to impart their knowledge on how one might land one of these coveted career opportunities. These connections will be invaluable as we shepherd our students through the transition from student life to work life.