Author: Wanett Clyde

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.

Join City Tech’s Green Team for their first event of the 2023-2024 school year!
An Interdisciplinary Panel Discussion on Community Supported Agriculture:
“Making Responsible and Sustainable Food Choices”
When: Wednesday, September 13th, 3-4pm
Where: City Tech Academic Building, A517
REGISTER HERE

Beginning in May of 2023, the Green Team – Dr. Amanda Almond, Associate Professor of Psychology; Robert Walljasper, Associate Professor of Hospitality Management and Dr. Sean MacDonald, Professor of Economics – has brought to City Tech responsibly and sustainably sourced food from local farms in the Catskills and Hudson Valley for our community to purchase via CSA 607. During the first talk of the speaker series “Farms, Food Chains and Community Supported Agriculture”, hear each of their disciplinary perspectives on why shifting what and how you eat can have large impacts on your community, climate, and the industries of health, business, and hospitality.

SAVE THE DATES!
The “Farms, Food Chains and Community Supported Agriculture” speaker series will be held Wednesdays, 3-4pm:
October 11th – Speaker from the Catskills Agrarian Alliance
November 8th – Speaker from the New Roots Institute
November 15th – End of year re-cap with CSA607 & the Green Team

September’s book display theme, Memoir
which are narratives written from the perspective of the author
was inspired by an idyllic week spent making memories through the craft of writing.

This summer, I had the great fortune to be selected to participate in the Center for Black Literature’s Wild Seeds Retreat for Writers of Color. This year’s cohort gathered at SUNY Polytechnic in Utica, New York to immerse ourselves in instruction provided by writers in three genres – poetry with Johanna Sit, memoir with Jamiyla Chisholm and fiction with Jeffery Renard Allen.

Jamiyla Chisholm’s memoir, The Community, is riveting and the author, journalist and educator is no less than that herself. Members of the memoir group – my genre of choice- worked closely with Jamiyla and achieved a deeper understanding of our stories and the practice and craft of writing within the space of a week.

My fellows and I learned to observe and critique without conflict and to revise with feedback in mind – but with permission to accept or reject it. We wept, we laughed and whooped in the way you do when you are in a space of freedom. We walked (so  much walking) and ate and marveled at deer approaching from the nearby wood. Some of us partied while others reveled in the solitude wrought by being removed from daily life and circumstance. By week’s end we erupted in thunderous applause for one another during final readings and laughed and cried some more for words that were transformative to both author an audience.

Stop by the library to peruse a selection of memoirs from our collection, on display just inside the library’s entrance, through the end of September. For more information about Wild Seeds, visit the webpage for the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College.

You are invited to attend Connect Day Fall 2023!

Thursday August 31 from 12:45-2pm

Connect Day is a new student academic department welcome event.  It functions as an orientation to the department and an introduction to faculty, staff, and student leaders. Important information and strategies for success will be shared to ensure new students begin their educational journey at City Tech on sound footing. All first-time, first year, re-entry and transfer students are welcome to attend.

Each department is unique; new students will have the opportunity to experience a tour of their own department’s facilities, chat with current students and faculty, and learn lots of helpful “inside” information.  To find out where your department is meeting click here.

The City Tech Library is delighted to be a subscriber to the Fashion & Race Database! Founder and principal researcher, Kimberly M. Jenkins, is noted in the fashion world for her diversity and equity based coursework at institutions like Parsons and Pratt and her consulting with icons of fashion like Gucci and Tommy Hilfiger. That work continues via the Fashion and Race database which has already been integrated into the Business of Fashion pedagogy here at City Tech.

There are a number of ways to make use of the material that Kim and her co-contributors have organized into this functional and easily searchable database. In addition to the typical database functionality, members can utilize the calendar to keep up to date with fashion events and exhibits, check out the opportunities section to review calls for papers and use the list tool to share resources to revisit at a later date.

Students and faculty have access to an ideal place to start building assignments and compiling research about both historical and current perspectives on business and fashion. Viewing lectures and panels will reach beyond the classroom and provide a window into the larger fashion scholarship community and the exhibitions and archives section neatly catalogs place-based resources to foster a more intimate viewpoint on the texture and materiality of the fashion world.

Click HERE to create and account.

The 607 CSA has a new pick up location, right here at City Tech!

CSA is an acronym for Community Supported Agriculture. At the core, CSAs are one way local farmers can bring their goods directly to customers, often at a lower cost. The relationship is symbiotic, as CSAs are subscription based and typically paid for in a lump sum. This allows farmers to funnel those funds into supplying subscribers who are in turn guaranteed top quality produce, brought nearly to their doorsteps.

In Brooklyn, CSAs are still riding the wave of a recent resurgence. Driven, certainly, by the Covid-19 pandemic, but they have also historically been a way to support communities without sufficient options for fresh produce and high-quality meat and pantry staples. Many of the boroughs poorest, but most populous, neighborhoods are not on the radar of large grocery store chains and are usually far beyond the reach of farmers markets. We discussed this here in a previous blog post.

Though City Tech is located in bustling downtown Brooklyn, adjacent neighborhoods are still, technically, food deserts. The 607 CSA (and others) has been addressing this for years, with pick up locations dotted around Brooklyn’s landscape. Adding this new stop – available to our own faculty, staff and students – adds to efforts to close the fresh food gap. This model is particularly wonderful as the initial outlay of funds to join CSAs can be prohibitive for those most in need. The 607 allows you to pay per week, removing a barrier to access.

Students, staff and faculty can purchase weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly vegetable shares for pick-up on Tuesdays, 10-12:30pm. Please take a moment to complete this brief interest survey to get a better sense of our college community’s needs: https://forms.gle/1jWmfDL3hsP6Zr557

If you have questions, please contact Amanda Almond @ AAlmond@citytech.cuny.edu who will assist you on behalf of the Green Team.

The Green Team Members
Amanda Almond, Associate Professor of Psychology
Sean MacDonald, Associate Professor of Economics
Robert Walljasper, Associate Professor of Hospitality Management