Fall 2018
Library news in brief
Season 2 of Indoor Voices, podcast hosted by two CUNY librarians
Indoor Voices, the podcast co-hosted by Kathleen Collins (John Jay) and Steve Ovadia (LaGuardia) is going strong in its second season, thanks to support from the Office for the Advancement of Research and a wealth of interesting work done by people all around CUNY. Visit the blog at indoorvoicespodcast.com to peruse past episodes and subscribe to keep up with new ones. Follow them on Twitter @indoorvoicespod.
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Barcode logins for John Jay Online students
We’ve made a change to how students in John Jay Online fully-online degree programs get their barcode number, which is used to log into OneSearch to unlock extra features (like requesting books from other CUNY libraries) and view more search results. Barcodes are now issued by email to JJO degree students on request via a request form. (All online students already have access to full-text articles with their usual login.)
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Escape the Library!
The Lloyd Sealy Library and Student Academic Success Programs (SASP) partnered up to coordinate the “Escape the Library!” challenge. This hands-on learning activity introduced first-year and transfer students to basic library research skills and study spaces available to them. SASP Peer Success Coaches attended each day of the game to help guide participants toward solving the puzzles. Over the summer, 137 students participated in the game, and four dozen more did in the fall semester. In total, over 700 students have participated in the game since its inception in 2013. Overall, this semester’s “Escape the Library!” event was a success: students rated the activity highly and met the library’s learning objectives.
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Betsy Crenshaw joins the Library
We welcomed Betsy Crenshaw as an adjunct assistant professor in the library. She will bring her extensive experience from multiple CUNY libraries to the Reference Desk at Lloyd Sealy Library. Welcome, Betsy!
Faculty notes
Kathleen Collins published “Comedian Hosts and the Demotic Turn” in Llinares, Fox, and Berry, eds. Podcasting: New Aural Cultures and Digital Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), available to read on CUNY Academic Works.
Robin Davis gave a presentation, “Keep it secret, keep it safe! Preserving anonymity by subverting stylometry” in October at PyGotham, an annual conference for Python programmers in New York City. With Mark Eaton, a librarian at KBCC, she led “Python for Beginners: A Gentle and Fun Introduction,” a LITA Pre-Conference Institute at the ALA Annual Conference, which took place in New Orleans in June 2018.
Maria Kiriakova published “Combatting Corruption in the USA: State, Dynamics, and Tendencies,” co-written with Y. Truntsevsky, in Public International and Private International Law: Science-Practice and Information Journal, vol. 100, no. 3.
Jeffrey Kroessler appeared in the PBS documentary “The Woman in the Iron Coffin” in the series “Secrets of the Dead,” about the remains of an unidentified African-American woman found in Queens in 2011. His report, prepared for the City Club of New York, “Losing Its Way: The Landmarks Preservation Commission in Eclipse,” was reprinted in Environmental Law in New York (vol. 29, no. 8 and 9, Aug. and Sept. 2018) and is accessible through CUNY Academic Works. In October, he presented his research on terrorism in New York City to the Seminar on the City at Columbia University.
Maureen Richards presented at the ExLibris Northeast User Group 2018 conference in October on what we are learning from the use of the library’s web-scale discovery tool, OneSearch.
Ellen Sexton and Vee Herrington presented “Using LibGuides and Eportfolio as hosting platforms for ZTC [Zero Textbook Cost] courses” at Open Ed 2018 in October in Niagara Falls.
Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion by Michelle Dean (2018) is not a collection of truncated biographies of celebrated writers Dorothy Parker, Rebecca West, Hannah Arendt, Zora Neale Hurston, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, Pauline Kael, Joan Didion, Nora Ephron, Lillian Hellman, Renata Adler, and Janet Malcolm. It’s a skillful and compulsively readable narrative of these women in relief, set against the often bumpy terrain of their time and their relationship to feminism and to each other. Dean observes elements of and relates deep-dive tales of these writers’ careers that are not written about elsewhere, at least not with such rich context. These are not odes or hagiographies, but honest portraits that cleverly reveal the breadth of the iconoclasm and humanity of the women. Rather than deliver a discrete set of linear narratives, Dean discovers surprising and telling ways their paths parallel and cross. Kathleen Collins
Tara Westover’s Educated (2018) and Apricot Irving’s The Gospel of Trees (2018) are two recent coming of age memoirs that have received a lot of critical praise. Set worlds apart—in the mountains of Idaho and in Haiti, respectively—they both feature strong-minded young women who grow up in the shadow of their charismatic fathers’ beliefs. Although Westover’s and Irving’s narratives are about leaving the father behind, they also touch on the complexity of familial love and the many transgressions it withstands. Westover’s trajectory from a scrap metal junkyard to a Cambridge Ph.D. illustrates the power of education, or learning how—not what—to think, as she puts it. Irving’s nuanced reflection on her family’s missionary tenure in Haiti, on the other hand, confronts the enduring effects of colonization, as well as the power and race inequalities that persist in its aftermath. Marta Bladek
KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor Jr., The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America’s Universities (2017) [Stacks LB2345.3 .R37 J65 2017]. This book is filled with horror stories of male college students falsely accused of sexual assault and how campus disciplinary procedures condemned them despite inadequate or even exculpatory evidence. The authors trace the history of how Title IX came to be weaponized in the area of sexual relations between students, and offer many examples of how the process went awry. At the same time, they do not in any way minimize the reality of the crimes of rape and sexual assault. Jeffrey Kroessler
Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (2018) [Stacks S521.5 .A67 K56 2008]. Most of us can’t lead lives that allow us to commit to eating only locally-sourced food for a year as this family did. This book presents a new perspective on where our food comes from and offers small practical changes we can make to our diets and food shopping for a healthier planet and body. I particularly recommend the recipes for strawberry & rhubarb crisp and asparagus & mushroom bread pudding, both of which use ingredients that grow on the East Coast in April. All of the recipes and updates on the family are also available on the 
Although reading The Odyssey might be a well-worn path for many, I nonetheless suggest reading Emily Wilson’s lively new translation (2017). What is so impressive about Wilson’s translation is her ability to use contemporary language in a way that is not distracting. The prose flows seamlessly, and Wilson’s skill as a translator shines clear. Highly recommended! Matt Murphy
I have been reading Tell Me a Mitzi by Lore Segal to my daughter for at least 8 years. Three stories about a family with two kids, their daily routines, illnesses, seeing a President, visiting the grandmother across town. That’s all but is unbelievably charming. Very New York stories that bring you comfort and never get boring. If it is all imagination or reality, you can decide by yourself. Or just look at Harriet Pincus illustrations and create your own mitzi. Maria Kiriakova
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid (2017) is the most moving novel I’ve read this year. A meditation on immigration and human relationships, the story considers the forces that push people to leave their homes—and the hardships and pleasures they endure in new lands. Hamid portrays his characters with great tenderness as they make difficult decisions. A wonderful, touching read. Call number: Stacks PS3558.A42169 E95 2017. Robin Davis