Category: General News

I’m happy to announce that after a year-plus of research, discussion, interviewing, surveying, data analysis, writing, and editing, the City Tech Library has produced its 2023-2026 Strategic Plan. The plan helps us make decisions, set priorities, and ensure that the library is growing in alignment with the College’s own Strategic Plan and the CUNY Strategic Roadmap.

Many thanks to the Strategic Plan Working Group: Prof. Nanette Johnson, Prof. Kel Karpinski, Prof. Junior Tidal, Library Admin Specialist Suraya Choudhury. Special thanks to data analyst Andrea Espinoza Melillo!

Feedback or suggestions? Please comment below, or email us with a comment.

Anne Leonard, Interim Chief Librarian & Library Department Chair

City Tech students have free access to tutoring through tutor.com!

How does it work? Tutor.com can be accessed from any internet-ready device 24/7. Students can have access to a tutor when and where they need one. Students receive 3 hours of tutoring each semester and have get more upon request.

To get started: Create a free account by logging into Blackboard, Moving to Organizations at the right side of the screen, click on Here if you need tutoring, and finally move to the left side of the screen to find TUTOR.com and click on it

Who can use it? This service is automatically available to all new freshman and transfer students, students enrolled in select gateway math and English courses (ENG 1101/co/ML and MAT 1190/co, MAT 1275/co), all ASAP/ACE and CSTEP students, and students enrolled in select associate degree programs. Those associate degree programs are:

Welcome to a new semester! And welcome to everyone new to City Tech; we are so excited to see so many new faces on campus. 

Need a book, a quiet place to study or work on a project, or research help? 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 Mondays-Thursdays from 9am-8pm, Fridays from 9am-7pm, and Saturdays from 10am-5pm.

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

Get virtual help 24X7

Off campus or up late working on a project and need help? Just Ask us! 

You can chat with CUNY Librarians on weekdays and librarians from other institutions on evenings and weekends. 

Access Library Resources from Off-Campus

Use CUNY login credentials to access library databases, research articles, movies, and ebooks from off campus. 

Use these same credentials to login to “My Library Account” on the library website. If your preferred name isn’t associated with your library account, you can change that! 

Reference

This semester we are open most Saturdays (with the exception of a few holidays closings) , with a librarian available to help you at the Reference Desk. Come see us at the Reference Desk for help with your assignments.

New E-resources 

The library is thrilled to now 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.

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

Longer Book Loans and More Renewals!

As of January 31st, 2023, students can now borrow books from any CUNY library for 8 weeks plus 4 renewals (of 8 weeks each). 

All books can be returned in the library or dropped in the Library Book Drop Box located inside 300 Jay Street entrance past the turnstiles on the left side.  

Need Something We Don’t Have? 

Interlibrary Loan has expanded its services! Faculty, staff, and now students can 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. 

Your Interlibrary Loan account now uses your CUNY login, so you 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. 

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.

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.

Laptop Loans 

In coordination and with support from the ASAP program, the library is offering a limited number of PC laptops for 7 day loan to all City Tech students. Visit the Multimedia Resource Center on the 4th floor to check one out. 

Media Browsing 

The Multimedia Resource Center has a terrific collection of VHS cassettes, DVDs, Blu-Rays, and vinyl records. We also have Blu-ray players available to borrow! Visit the MRC in the library.

Support for Scholarly Publishing 

The library can support your research and scholarship–we regularly offer a publishing workshop series. This semester, learn how to leverage your literature review to identify journals and publishers, how CUNY’s institutional repository, Academic Works … works and how it benefits you as an author, how to use Zotero, a free citation management tool that has many cool features, and lastly, how to set up your Google Scholar profile which not only provides you with citation data about your publications but also helps funders and others easily find your scholarship. 

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.

Lastly, your library faculty colleagues are busy publishing as well. Read more on our blog about our recent publications and other work.

Library’s 2023-2026 Strategic Plan 

Staff and faculty in the library recently completed the 2023-26 strategic plan. The plan helps us make decisions and set priorities about library resources and services to serve the college community. If you completed a survey, participated in a focus group, or provided input or feedback in any way, many thanks! Thanks also to the dedicated library strategic planning working group and data specialists.

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. 

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.

We’re excited that friends at the CUNY Graduate Center have made the film “Making the Impossible Possible: The Story of Puerto Rican Studies in Brooklyn College” available for everyone in the CUNY community to watch!

Visit this link to watch the film; if you’re off campus, you’ll be asked to log in first with your CUNYfirst login. This film can be shared in the classroom and screened at any CUNY event that does not charge admission. The Alliance for Puerto Rican Education and Empowerment has also created a study guide for the film.

More about the film: MAKING THE IMPOSSIBLE POSSIBLE tells the story of the student-led struggle to win Puerto Rican Studies at Brooklyn College, CUNY, in the late 1960s. The documentary is a mosaic of voices, film footage, and photographs taken by student activists. This important intergenerational story highlights how students and faculty seized the moment to build upon an alliance of Puerto Rican, African American, and other progressive students forged in their communities and the civil rights movement. Together they changed the face of higher education, transforming the curriculum and expanding who gets educated. The film sheds light on the 50-year history of struggle that started with the founding of one of the first Puerto Rican Studies departments in the nation, and documents the continued movement to maintain their gains.

Directed by Pamela Sporn, Tami Gold, Produced by Gisely Colón López, Tami Gold, Pamela Sporn, Alliance for Puerto Rican Education and Empowerment (New York, NY: Third World Newsreel, 2021), 34 minutes

Special thanks to Alycia Sellie, Roxanne Shirazi, Michael Hughes, and other library workers who contributed to making this film accessible to CUNY.

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.