Almost everything we do online leaves a trail of digital breadcrumbs: our data. A lot of us don’t think twice about sharing our data with companies like Google, Amazon, or Facebook or realize how much data the United States Government collects.
While sharing data can improve our online experience–we are often delivered information and products that coincide with our interests–we often compromise our privacy for the privilege of personalization. Privacy is a political issue but it is also an important issue that can effect our personal autonomy and civil liberty. This week it’s Choose Privacy Week and the library invites you to join a national conversation about surveillance and privacy. Get informed and get involved! #chooseprivacy
Research got you stumped?
Does research have you confused? Do you not know where to start? Let the library help!
We have video tutorials for everything from renewing a book to choosing a database to supercharging your research. We also have guides to help you with citing sources and avoiding plagiarism.
Check out the library’s list of tutorials at
http://library.citytech.cuny.edu/instruction/tutorials/
If you need more in-depth assistance, you can book a research appointment with a librarian to get one-on-one help with your assignment.
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Image courtesy of I Can Has Cheezburger?
Choose Privacy Week begins today!
This week is Choose Privacy Week, an event sponsored by the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom and designed to raise awareness about privacy and our freedom to read, search, and learn.
Here at the City Tech Library we’ll be blogging all week about all kinds of privacy-related topics: how to protect our privacy, strategies for making sure we only reveal the information we want to reveal, and lots of other privacy issues we face today.
To kick things off, here’s a list of organizations and people who are participating in the conversation around privacy, as well as videos of folks like authors Cory Doctorow and Clay Shirky and organizations like Google and the ALA discussing various privacy concerns.
Feel free to add your favorite privacy-related links in our comments, below.
Faculty Workshop: Good Googling
Faculty, come to a workshop in the City Tech Library and learn about encouraging your students to practice good Googling. There are millions of websites out there on the internet. How can we help students learn to distinguish the good from the bad (or the ugly)? In this workshop we’ll discuss strategies to boost students’ evaluation skills and help them find credible information on the internet.
Date: Wednesday, March 9th
Time: 1 – 2 pm
Workshops are open to all City Tech faculty and staff. All workshops are held in our small classroom (Rm A441) on the 4th Fl. of the City Tech Library, Atrium, unless otherwise noted. RSVP is strongly suggested to Prof. Maura Smale, msmale@citytech.cuny.edu or 718-260-5748.
For more information, view our full list of faculty workshops.
Students and Wikipedia
Today in the Chronicle, a piece on how researchers found that students still don’t understand how Wikipedia works: http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/wikipedias-editing-process-still-a-mystery-to-students/29669
Fister on Undergraduates in the Library, Trying Not to Drown
A must-read! Barbara Fister responds to the findings of the new Project Information Literacy report. Here is her posting in its entirety from Inside Higher Ed.:
Project Information Literacy has a new report out based on surveys of over 8,000 undergraduate students at 25 campuses, as well as some follow-up interviews. The findings are both cheering and sobering. Continue reading “Fister on Undergraduates in the Library, Trying Not to Drown”
