Library News Blog

The Library was happy to host two of Lloyd Sealy’s great-grandchildren, Rochelle, 17, and Aaron (AJ), 15, when they toured the Library this summer. It was the high school students’ first trip to New York City from their home in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. During their visit, they were introduced to news of their great-grandfather, shared stories not previously documented, and reviewed photos from Lloyd Sealy’s life, some of which also hang on walls at home. Rochelle and AJ said their Sealy Library visit was the best part of their trip East.

Janice Dunham

Some article links may require a John Jay login to view.

Ellen Belcher presented “Breaking the String: Losing Beads in Tight Places” at the North American Theoretical Archaeology Group Annual Conference at New York University in May. This paper featured an ongoing contemporary archaeology research project she has undertaken called “Lost Ornaments of New York,” which can be viewed on the web at lostornaments.tumblr.com.

Marta Bladek’s article, “Mapping Grief and Memory in Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking,” was published in Biography (37.4). She also reviewed Elena Gorokhova’s Russian Tattoo and Christina Nichol’s Waiting for Electricity (“Staying Home or Leaving It,” Women’s Review of Books, 32.4) and Seth Bruggeman’s Born in the U.S.A. in South Atlantic Review (78.3/4). In addition to her scholarly productivity, Prof. Bladek has contributed a new person to the world: Baby Conrad was born on September 27.

Kathleen Collins published “Food TV” in The Sage Encyclopedia of Food Issues (2015), a review of Su Holmes’ The BBC and Popular Television Culture in the 1950s in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly (92.2) and presented “Lending Our Ears: The Evolution of Vicarious Therapy from Radio to Podcasting” at the Northeast Popular Culture Association Conference at Colby-Sawyer College in October.

Robin Davis published two columns in Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian ("Teaching the Network: A Brief Demonstration of the Internet's Structure for Information Literacy Instruction," 34.2 and "Git and GitHub for Librarians," 34.3) and co-presented “The Library Outpost: Modules, Templates, and Outreach in Blackboard” at the Northeast Connect Conference with Helen Keier.

Jeffrey Kroessler presented on the panel, “A People’s History of Resiliency,” at the Future of Affordable Homeownership in NYC, a conference sponsored by the Center for NYC Neighborhoods. He was also on the panel, “Preserving our Architectural History: The Business Case for Landmarks Preservation,” sponsored by the Landmarks50 Alliance.

Finally, we are happy to welcome Daisy Dominguez, Stefka Tzanova, and Zuwang Shen as adjunct librarians this semester.

The Library homepage has been slightly updated for the Fall semester. You'll notice that we've made OneSearch easier to access from the Articles, Books, and Media tabs. Moreover, Books and Media are now separate tabs — much more intuitive!

Except for media search, the normal functionality in each tab should remain the same. OneSearch is an added option.

(Still want to search for media in CUNY+? You can do this by selecting "Classic CUNY+ Catalog" in the Media tab box, but be aware that not all videos available in OneSearch are included in CUNY+.)

What's OneSearch? OneSearch helps you find print books, ebooks, articles, videos, reference works, and more resources available through the John Jay Library or CUNY. It all starts with one search!

OneSearch is a great place to turn to when you need the fastest, simplest way to get library resources on a topic. (However, OneSearch is not comprehensive. You'll find many, but not all, of the articles you have access to through John Jay's library databases.) OneSearch is especially useful for finding an item by title.

More information:

• When should I use OneSearch?
• How do I use OneSearch? (video tutorial)
• Brief technical details & history

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September 3, 2015

… wherein faculty share a favorite book with the rest of us.

Bonus material from the Spring 2015 Newsletter

Hannah Howell is the author of fifteen Highland.... romance novels about the Murray clan, published 1988-2015 by various publishers. 

An eminent full professor at John Jay, who prefers anonymity, relaxes from the rigors of scholarly work with Hannah Howell’s novels, reading and re-reading them. Our professor recommends them to you, especially Howell’s fifteen titles about the Murrays in 15th century Scotland. The latest is Highland Guard (2015) which falls into the usual format: noble warrior who’s a wonderful, thoughtful lover, an independent, intelligent, beautiful princess, hot explicit sex, loyal servants, a demesne managed with kind care for all inhabitants, a dire threat to the good guys, and the threat overcome.

Howell is wonderful at creating likable characters and odious villains with a few deft descriptions, and then working it all out in action. These knights can cut off a head with a flick of the wrist. In Highland Warrior, there’s comic relief in personality traits, in children, and in unlikely animal behavior. Religion and the local priest are present only when there’s going to be a marriage, usually when the hot knight gets the hot lady and they fall in love. One obstacle to their love, in addition to armies at the gate, is always the question Does he really love me or is it just great sex? Sound familiar? Though Howell’s Highland settings are medieval, the characters and their concerns are contemporary. Our informant advises men to read these novels for their how-to content.

Comments solicited by Janice Dunham

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From the Spring 2015 Newsletter

Faculty and content creators often have questions about using copyrighted text in their work. The use of visual images in teaching or writing about art raises a particular set of fair use and copyright issues that need to be considered. The College Art Association recently addressed these issues with the February 2015 release of the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts. The code includes questions and guidelines about invoking fair use in analytic writing, teaching about art, making art and providing access to archival collections. This up-to-date code, authored by lead investigators Peter Jaszi and Patricia Aufderheide, professors of Law and Communication Studies respectively at American University, in consultation with practitioners in the field, joins a growing list of best practices in various fields including documentary film, poetry, dance, online video, journalism and academic and research libraries. The codes help guide users of copyrighted material to make their own well-informed decisions about how and what they can use based on the Fair Use section of U.S. copyright law. They also help inform judges – in the case of a legal action – about common practice within a given discipline. The visual arts code as well many others can be found online at the Center for Media and Social Impact (cmsimpact.org).

Kathleen Collins

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A new report from Project Information Literacy

From the Spring 2015 Newsletter

Initiated in 2008, the large-scale national study Project Information Literacy (PIL) has been looking at the research practices of “early adults,” or college students and recent graduates. PIL is affiliated with the University of Washington’s iSchool, and in an attempt to cast light on how early adults search and use information in their daily lives, including coursework, PIL researchers have surveyed over 13,000 students and graduates from more than 60 American public, private, and community colleges.

In February, PIL released yet another of its many reports (as all previous summaries, it is available through their portal at projectinfolit.org/publications). Lifelong Learning Study, phase two, offers a glimpse into recent graduates’ lifelong learning habits and strategies. Surveying 2007–2012 graduates from 10 colleges and universities, PIL researchers looked to find out which information use habits and critical thinking skills acquired in college continue to play a crucial role in graduates’ private, civic, and professional lives. Other questions encouraged survey respondents to reflect on their best practices for finding information and meeting the needs for lifelong learning.

Recent graduates do rely on the critical skills learned in college. Almost half of the respondents trusted their ability to find and extract the information they needed. Similarly, evaluating information and presenting it effectively did not present a challenge for 49% of recent graduates. They were also confident in their ability to learn, their understanding deepened by the questions they knew to ask about newly encountered information.

As for best practices, PIL researchers confirmed the habits we are all familiar with: recent graduates heavily rely on search engines, in all aspects of their post-college lives. Not surprisingly, they also partake in a variety of social media and network sites. In the professional context, the reliance on established sources (professional conferences, open access databases, workplace information centers) was comparably high.

Contrary to popular misconception, recent graduates did not exclusively rely on social media, networking sites, and established sources. Almost all of them reported deferring to people in their immediate surroundings—supervisors, co-workers, and friends—to seek help with obtaining needed, often contextual, information. PIL researchers observed a similar preference for direct interaction in recent grads’ favoring of on-the job training (68%) and face-to-face instruction (57%) over individualized online teaching sessions (31%).

PIL researchers are quick to note that this recent study was not extensive enough to be generalizable. The findings are merely informative and offer a quick—albeit incomplete—glimpse at some of the prevalent information practices that recent graduates engage in. PIL is currently conducting further research on this topic, and the more complete findings will become available in the Fall of 2015. For now, this report encourages educators, including classroom instructors and librarians, to consider ways in which course assignments and research activities may be developed to foster students’ lifelong need to navigate the increasingly complex information landscape.

To learn more about PIL, including the full text of the report summarized above, please visit projectinfolit.org.

Marta Bladek

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From the Spring 2015 Newsletter

The Library’s instructional services include the possibility for classroom faculty to bring their students to the Library for a session with a librarian. What that session entails is up to the librarian in consultation with the course instructor with regard to the current assignment. There is no standard script or protocol; each librarian has his or her own technique for library instruction.

For my first six years at John Jay, I generally taught these classes this way: I provided a brief overview of using the Library catalog; then I spent the majority of the time explaining and demonstrating search examples using databases and key terms related to the course assignment or theme; then I left about 15 minutes at the end of the session for students to put what I had shown them into practice on the classroom computers. As far as I could tell, students seemed to be paying attention and hopefully absorbing the information.

Recently, I decided to shake things up to see if I could get a better indication of where students really need help with their searching. I know some of my other colleagues conduct more free-form, active sessions, and while I long thought I should experiment with that approach, it didn’t fit comfortably with my strong desire to control a classroom, dispensing what I believed to be essential information. I couldn’t imagine being able to share all that I wanted to if students were merely casting about with disparate searches all around the room. Having grown bored and frustrated with my earnest but staid attempts thus far, at the start of the Spring semester, I took the leap. After the very first session, I viscerally recognized the value of an almost completely student-driven instruction, and I have no desire to revert to my previous methods.

Now I start the class with a very quick “contest,” to see if students know how to find a book using the catalog. Many classroom faculty assume that students are familiar with this basic skill, but it is far from the actual case, even in 300- or 400-level classes. Then I show a brief video tutorial on “Talking to Databases” (thanks to my colleague, Professor Julie Turley, who introduced me to SchoolTube.com and who is a champion of the interactive class method) which gets across the fundamental principles of database searching much less discursively than I normally do. Then, the students are set free to work on their research questions using databases that I have suggested. For the remaining hour, I move around the room and work with them on their particular problems and answer questions (I also encourage them to ask each other for advice). I can see where the trouble spots are and help them tackle them in the moment. Occasionally, I interrupt the group with a tip when I see common pitfalls. In my previous sessions, students would sometimes have the tendency to wait out the 15 minute working period and not bother trying to engage in the activity. Now they see it as valuable time to get some of their work done.

Another related element that I have emphasized this semester is collaboration with the classroom faculty. While I always encourage the instructor to participate, now I frame the session as one based on co-teaching. So far, this has been highly effective. When the students see their professor taking part in the library instruction – they, too, move around the room with me answering questions and providing suggestions – they recognize the session’s importance to their assignment and in their learning in general.

The faculty I have worked with this Spring have been ideal collaborators. English professor Tara Pauliny says, “I have brought classes to the library for research instruction before, and I found those sessions extremely useful to students. But I think the collaborative workshop strategy worked even better,” she said. “My students all left the session with at least one useable source and they were able to continue the research process on their own.” After reviewing the first draft of her students’ annotated bibliographies, Pauliny says, “The sources they used were appropriate, scholarly, and directly related to their paper topics. Not only was the session a success for my students, but as a bonus, it was fun for me as well!” Likewise, Law and Society professor Michael Yarbrough found the session structure valuable. “Working in teams, students helped each other think of different ways to say what they were searching for until they hit on the right term,” he says. “Searching for secondary sources is a trial-and-error process, so there’s no better way to learn than by doing.”

While I wish I had taken the step to approach sessions in this “lab” format years ago, I am glad I finally broke free of my old habits. Far from feeling a loss of control, I find this method far more engaging and useful for me and the students.

Kathleen Collins

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From the Spring 2015 Newsletter

Open Access and the new institutional repository

This spring, CUNY announced the opening of an open-access institutional repository to serve the self-archiving needs of University faculty. This new project provides a web platform where faculty can post, and the public can read, free of charge, works and dissertations authored by CUNY faculty and graduate students. The CUNY Office of Library Services has hired Scholarly Communications Librarian Megan Wacha to steer the repository development. John Jay College faculty interested in making use of the repository are encouraged to contact Megan directly or Ellen Sexton. Appropriate content would include conference proceedings, published journal articles (copyright permitting; see below), reports, etc. As the project develops, we will be drawing up formal guidelines; for now, we encourage interested faculty to visit the site, send us an email, and/or submit material directly through the author corner of CUNY Academic Works.

The Graduate Center opened its own institutional repository a year ago. It hosts a series of technical reports from their computer science program, faculty authored articles and conference proceedings, and CUNY doctoral dissertations from 1965 to the present. The older doctoral dissertations were digitized by Proquest, with the resulting files loaded into Academic Works and enriched with metadata. Access to the older dissertations is currently restricted to users at the Graduate Center. When/if the authors grant permission, access to the full text will be made available to the broader public. The Graduate Center repository is moving its content over, to be the first CUNY college to populate the new Academic Works. It will continue as one instance of the new CUNY wide project, to be joined by John Jay and other CUNY colleges.

The software for our institutional repository is called Digital Commons, from the Bepress company. This platform is currently used by over 150 institutions, including many law schools, to house institutional repositories and open access journals. Search engine optimization is actively pursued by Bepress, ensuring content is discoverable. Another nice feature is that users can search across all 150 repositories. Most file types may be posted on Academic Works, including conventional data file formats. (See an example of a submission.)

Many grants now come with a requirement that resulting peer-reviewed published articles be made freely available to the public; CUNY Academic Works will help CUNY authors do so easily. If the author-publisher contractual agreement permits, we may be able to post the publisher’s final PDF immediately, or the publisher may stipulate an embargo period of some months or years. Some publishers permit the final post-refereeing draft to be posted; others permit only a pre-refereeing print. Details of each journal’s self-archiving policies may be found on the SHERPA-RoMEO site maintained by the University of Nottingham.

The majority of peer-reviewed published articles are currently locked behind pay walls. Open Access advocates seek to remove financial and technical restrictions on research dissemination. The library alliance SPARC defines open access as “the free, immediate, online availability of research articles, coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment.” Public and private grant funding organizations are increasingly embracing open access policies. Before the World Wide Web, research reports from Federal agencies were made available to the public in free government depository libraries, such as the one at City College. The challenge since has been to extend that openness to the online environment. The National Institutes of Health requires its funded researchers to deposit final, peer-reviewed manuscripts in the PubMed Central repository. The National Science Foundation and Department of Energy mandate depositing in the online DOE PAGES repository. In February 2013 a White House memo directed the heads of each federal agency to come up with a plan to provide online public access to federally funded research; this may lead to the development of other agency-specific repositories (this March the HHS released a report detailing its plans). The NIJ have been posting sponsored research reports on its website for years. Private organizations are also influencing open-access: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation requires authors to deposit funded works in any appropriate open access repository.

Open-access policies at journals vary tremendously. Some journals have gone fully open-access for readers; author fees are common. For example, Elsevier has many open access titles, mostly biomedical, funded by author fees. Journal publishing is evolving, with some very interesting innovations being explored. In January Elsevier announced a new open-access publishing project: a non-discipline restricted open access peer reviewed journal funded by author fees, to be called Heliyon, closely integrated with its SCOPUS discovery tool and the Mendeley bibliographic management and networking platform. Another wide-scope online journal, Nature Communications announced it would become completely open access by 2016, with its access-by-subscription model replaced by funding from author fees.

Clearly authors have options for fulfilling open access mandates from funders, and satisfying their own personal goals of maximizing the reach and impact of their research. We suggest the CUNY Academic Repository is an excellent choice in this regard. We hope the CUNY Academic Works becomes a stable, long-lasting show-case for CUNY faculty and graduate student achievements, and a reliable tool for disseminating current research directly to the public.

Ellen Sexton

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From the Spring 2015 Newsletter

The Library supports online teaching and learning! Incorporate Library resources into your online course and provide your students with engaging, high-quality information.

Our brand-new Faculty Toolbox includes:

• Blackboard goodies
• Librarian chat widget
• Article & book search modules Reserves module
• Embedding videos how-to
• Proxied link generator
• Library links and blurbs ready to copy/paste

Meet your Distance Services Librarian

I’m the online learning librarian (Robin Davis, Emerging Technologies & Distance Services Librarian). You can reach me at (212) 237-8261 or robdavis@jjay.cuny.edu. I can answer questions about using Library resources in online courses, providing students with access, teaching Library skills in online contexts, and more. And if you teach an online-only course, I could be your “embedded librarian” for a week! Collaborating with you, I’ll provide your students with curated resource lists, custom tutorials, and even a “librarian office hours” chat room. Interested? Please email me at least two weeks before the desired start time.

More from the Spring 2015 Newsletter »