Library News Blog

Graduate Studies co-curricular workshops

Some things in graduate school are inevitable. Literature reviews, research papers, statistics...

Luckily, Graduate Studies is hosting a series of co-curricular workshops designed to help you succeed!

Workshop descriptions

How to Write a Literature Review

Discover how to choose the most relevant material, write the literature review and compile references, along with finding answers and solutions to common writing challenges.
Monday, January 29th, 5:30-7:00 PM, L2.72.03 NB

Using Library Databases for Research

This workshop will focus on the specific databases appropriate for different subjects as well as general searching techniques to help facilitate your research process.
Tuesday, January 30th, 5:30-7:00 PM, L2.72.04 NB

Writing a Research Paper

Learn how to narrow a research paper topic to a speciifc question, gather sources, organize your paper, and cite using the APA style.
Wednesday, January 31st, 5:30-7:00 PM L2.72.03 NB

Understanding Statistics

Students will examine the statistics behind everyday activities in the quantification of the social sciences in the United States. Workshops will emphasize mathematical skills and basic topics related to the understanding of probability and statistics. Students may choose the module(s) most suitable to their needs, or elect to participate in all.
Module 1: Descriptive Statistics
- Monday, January 29th, 6:00-7:30 PM, L2.72.04 NB
Module 2: Graphing Data
- Thursday, February 1st, 7:45-9:15 PM, L2.72.03 NB
Module 3: Prediction and Association
- Monday, February 5th, 6:00-7:30 PM, L2.72.03 NB
Module 4: Parametric Inferential Statistics
- Thursday, February 8th, 7:45-9:15 PM, L2.72.03 NB
Module 5: Nonparametric Inferential Statistics
- Monday, February 12th, 6:00-7:30 PM, L2.72.03 NB

Posted Fri, 01/26/2018 - 12:00

Top 10 books of 2017, as chosen by the NYT Book Review

The New York Times Book Review editors chose their top 10 books for 2017. All are available through the CUNY library system! They are listed here with their catalog/publishers' descriptions and library availability information.

If a book you're interested in reading isn't available at your home campus, you can request it online through OneSearch. The book will then be delivered to your campus library and held under your name, usually within 5 business days. (How do I request a book?)

Happy reading!

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Fiction

Exit West cover

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet — sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair, and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors — doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through. Exit West follows the couple as they emerge into an alien and uncertain future, struggling to hold on to each other, to their past, to the very sense of who they are.

Available at John Jay, Stacks PS3558.A42169 E95 2017
Also available at several other CUNY libraries (link)

Autumn by Ali Smith

Autumn. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Two old friends—Daniel, a centenarian, and Elisabeth, born in 1984—look to both the future and the past as the United Kingdom stands divided by a historic, once-in-a-generation summer. Love is won, love is lost. Hope is hand-in-hand with hopelessness. The seasons roll round, as ever. A luminous meditation on the meaning of richness and harvest and worth, Autumn is the first installment of Ali Smith’s Seasonal quartet, and it casts an eye over our own time: Who are we? What are we made of? Shakespearean jeu d’esprit, Keatsian melancholy, the sheer bright energy of 1960s pop art. Wide-ranging in time-scale and light-footed through histories, Autumn is an unforgettable story about aging and time and love—and stories themselves.

Available at several other CUNY libraries (link)

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant-and that her lover is married-she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son's powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations.

Available at several other CUNY libraries (link)

The Power by Naomi Alderman

When a new force takes hold of the world, people from different areas of life are forced to cross paths in an alternate reality that gives women and teenage girls immense physical power that can cause pain and death. A rich Nigerian boy; a foster kid whose religious parents hide their true nature; an ambitious American politician; a tough London girl from a tricky family. When a vital new force takes root and flourishes, their lives converge with devastating effect. Teenage girls and women now have immense physical power-- they can cause agonizing pain and even death. And everything changes ...

Available at several other CUNY libraries (link)

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

In Jesmyn Ward’s first novel since her National Book Award–winning Salvage the Bones, this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America. An intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle, Sing, Unburied, Sing journeys through Mississippi’s past and present, examining the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power—and limitations—of family bonds.

Jojo is thirteen years old and trying to understand what it means to be a man. He doesn’t lack in fathers to study, chief among them his Black grandfather, Pop. But there are other men who complicate his understanding: his absent White father, Michael, who is being released from prison; his absent White grandfather, Big Joseph, who won’t acknowledge his existence; and the memories of his dead uncle, Given, who died as a teenager. ... Rich with Ward’s distinctive, lyrical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a majestic new work and an unforgettable family story.

Available at several other CUNY libraries (link)

Nonfiction

Locking Up Our Own cover

Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman Jr.

An original and consequential argument about race, crime, and the law Today, Americans are debating our criminal justice system with new urgency. Mass incarceration and aggressive police tactics — and their impact on people of color — are feeding outrage and a consensus that something must be done. But what if we only know half the story? In Locking Up Our Own, the Yale legal scholar and former public defender James Forman Jr. weighs the tragic role that some African Americans themselves played in escalating the war on crime. As Forman shows, the first substantial cohort of black mayors, judges, and police chiefs took office around the country amid a surge in crime. Many came to believe that tough measures — such as stringent drug and gun laws and "pretext traffic stops" in poor African American neighborhoods — were needed to secure a stable future for black communities. Some politicians and activists saw criminals as a "cancer" that had to be cut away from the rest of black America. Others supported harsh measures more reluctantly, believing they had no other choice in the face of a public safety emergency. Drawing on his experience as a public defender and focusing on Washington, D.C., Forman writes with compassion for individuals trapped in terrible dilemmas — from the young men and women he defended to officials struggling to cope with an impossible situation. The result is an original view of our justice system as well as a moving portrait of the human beings caught in its coils.

Available at John Jay at Stacks HV9950 .F655 2017 (3 copies) and Reserve HV9950 .F655 2017
Available at several other CUNY libraries (link)

The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World — and Us by Richard O. Prum

A major reimagining of how evolutionary forces work, revealing how mating preferences—what Darwin termed “the taste for the beautiful”—create the extraordinary range of ornament in the animal world. In the great halls of science, dogma holds that Darwin’s theory of natural selection explains every branch on the tree of life: which species thrive, which wither away to extinction, and what features each evolves. But can adaptation by natural selection really account for everything we see in nature? Yale University ornithologist Richard Prum—reviving Darwin’s own views—thinks not. Deep in tropical jungles around the world are birds with a dizzying array of appearances and mating displays: Club-winged Manakins who sing with their wings, Great Argus Pheasants who dazzle prospective mates with a four-foot-wide cone of feathers covered in golden 3D spheres, Red-capped Manakins who moonwalk. In thirty years of fieldwork, Prum has seen numerous display traits that seem disconnected from, if not outright contrary to, selection for individual survival. To explain this, he dusts off Darwin’s long-neglected theory of sexual selection in which the act of choosing a mate for purely aesthetic reasons—for the mere pleasure of it—is an independent engine of evolutionary change. ... The Evolution of Beauty presents a unique scientific vision for how nature’s splendor contributes to a more complete understanding of evolution and of ourselves.

Available at several other CUNY libraries (link)

Grant by Ron Chernow

Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Chernow returns with a sweeping and dramatic portrait of one of our most compelling generals and presidents, Ulysses S. Grant. ... Grant’s life has typically been misunderstood. All too often he is caricatured as a chronic loser and an inept businessman, or as the triumphant but brutal Union general of the Civil War. But these stereotypes don’t come close to capturing him, as Chernow shows in his masterful biography, the first to provide a complete understanding of the general and president whose fortunes rose and fell with dizzying speed and frequency. ...

Available at several other CUNY libraries (link)

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser

Millions of readers of Little House on the Prairie believe they know Laura Ingalls—the pioneer girl who survived blizzards and near-starvation on the Great Plains, and the woman who wrote the famous autobiographical books. But the true saga of her life has never been fully told. Now, drawing on unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, and land and financial records, Caroline Fraser—the editor of the Library of America edition of the Little House series—masterfully fills in the gaps in Wilder’s biography. Revealing the grown-up story behind the most influential childhood epic of pioneer life, she also chronicles Wilder's tumultuous relationship with her journalist daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, setting the record straight regarding charges of ghostwriting that have swirled around the books. ...

Spanning nearly a century of epochal change, from the Indian Wars to the Dust Bowl, Wilder’s dramatic life provides a unique perspective on American history and our national mythology of self-reliance. With fresh insights and new discoveries, Prairie Fires reveals the complex woman whose classic stories grip us to this day.

Available at several other CUNY libraries (link)

Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood

From Patricia Lockwood—a writer acclaimed for her wildly original voice—a vivid, heartbreakingly funny memoir about balancing identity with family and tradition. Father Greg Lockwood is unlike any Catholic priest you have ever met—a man who lounges in boxer shorts, loves action movies, and whose constant jamming on the guitar reverberates “like a whole band dying in a plane crash in 1972.” His daughter is an irreverent poet who long ago left the Church’s country. When an unexpected crisis leads her and her husband to move back into her parents’ rectory, their two worlds collide. ...

Lockwood pivots from the raunchy to the sublime, from the comic to the deeply serious, exploring issues of belief, belonging, and personhood. Priestdaddy is an entertaining, unforgettable portrait of a deeply odd religious upbringing, and how one balances a hard-won identity with the weight of family and tradition.

Available at several other CUNY libraries (link)

Back up your work!

It's finals season, so let's review some handy tips on saving & backing up your work!

Losing a document you've spent hours on is awful — we hope you never experience data loss. You can take steps to limit the risk of losing your digital documents.

Rule of thumb: Save copies of your work periodically in multiple places. Save a copy to your device(s) and save a copy to the cloud. Here's how.

Save copies on your device...

Save multiple copies to your USB thumb drive, laptop, desktop computer, tablet, etc. — however you usually access your file. It's not a good idea to keep all your copies of your file on a USB drive, by the way, since they're easy to lose.

Occasinally, files get corrupted on your computer and can't be opened, so for big projects, it's also a good idea to have a "Backups" folder on your computer. It might look like this:

Backups folder containing five versions of a thesis

Even if you're working on a cloud-based app, like Google Docs, download a copy of your document periodically, just in case you get locked out of your Google account or something happens to the file.

... AND save a copy to the cloud

Every day you work on your project, save a copy online by...

Emailing it to yourself, or
Uploading it to your Dropbox, iCloud, or Google Drive account, or a similar free or paid service

That way, even if your computer dies or your USB drive gets lost on the C train, you'll be able to download a copy of your document from one of these online locations.

None of these services is endorsed by the Library, but they are provided as examples of services you could use. Always read the Terms of Service and make sure you're comfortable with how a company is using your data before signing up for an account.

Questions you might have

What if I want to back up ALL of my files? It's a good idea! You can set up nightly or weekly computer backups using an app like Time Machine (Mac) or Backup & Restore (Windows). This software will save all the files on your computer to an external hard drive (like a mega-USB stick that lives at home). This could be done manually as well, just by dragging and dropping files into an external hard drive. You should also consider using a paid cloud-based backup service like BackBlaze or IDrive, in case your computer and external hard drive somehow both die or disappear.

I lost a USB thumb drive — where could it be? It could be in the Library. We have a whole drawer full of lost USBs turned in by your fellow students. Ask in the Reserve Lab and at the Reference Desk, or call us at 212-237-8246. You can also check Public Safety's main Lost & Found.

What's "the cloud"? It just means a computer run by a company in a different place. By saving your document to a computer located somewhere else, you're ensuring that even if you lose your own computer, your document is retrievable from another place.

More questions? Email me and I'll be glad to advise on backup matters.

Robin Davis, updated Dec. 2018

Exhibition: "Rogues Gallery"

ROGUES GALLERY: Forty Year Retrospective of Courtroom Art from Son of Sam to El Chapo

Curated by Larry E. Sullivan (Chief Librarian), Aggie Whelan Kenny, and Elizabeth Williams

On view November 30, 2017 to February 2, 2018

Location: Shiva Gallery, located just inside the 11th Avenue entrance to John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Address: 860 11th Avenue (between 58th & 59th St), New York, NY 10019.

The Shiva Gallery is free and open to the public Monday through Friday, 10am – 6pm.

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A large portion of the items on view are from the Richard Tomlinson, the Aggie Whelan Kenny, and the Elizabeth Williams Courtroom Drawings Collections, all housed in the Lloyd Sealy Library Special Collections.

—

Press

"Courtroom Confidential," Ralph Blumenthal, New York Times, Nov. 24, 2017

For more information about the exhibition, contact the Shiva Gallery: gallery@jjay.cuny.edu or 212-237-1439.

Drawings in the promotional image are by Elizabeth Williams, Aggie Whelan Kenny, and Richard Tomlinson.

Online co-curricular workshops for graduate students

Kathleen Collins

The Graduate Studies office has long been offering workshops for graduate students on topics such as resume writing, statistics, and communication and leadership skills. Generally offered in the early evening to accommodate student schedules, these workshops are always appreciated by those who can fit them into their busy schedules, but too often they are not well attended. In an attempt to try to reach more students with the information they need to support their graduate level learning, Graduate Studies is now offering two of these workshops—Using Library Databases for Research and How to Write a Literature Review—via Blackboard. Students can register and take the workshops, which are divided into modules, at their convenience. Badges signifying skills and achievements can be earned for use in ePortfolios or to share with outside organizations.

A full complement of workshops are still offered in person at the start of each semester, and there are plans to add more online workshops in the future. You can register for these online workshops. For more information about how John Jay supports grad students, visit the Graduate Studies page.

November 2017

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150+ students “escape the library”

Robin Davis

My name is George Corcoran… I was killed May 1, 1921… Please solve my murder… You can’t leave the library until you find my killer…

Over 150 first-year and transfer students accepted the challenge to “Escape the Library” this semester, continuing the library’s annual Murder Mystery Challenge activity. Participants follow the paper trail—locating books, citing sources, and exploring the library—to solve Corcoran’s murder.

Student feedback has been highly positive. “This was waaaay too much fun,” one student noted in a survey. “Definitely don’t think I’ll ever have this much fun in a library again.” (Librarians may beg to differ.) Another student wished that they could “do it at a time the library is closed, if that is even possible. I wanted to yell!”

The case students must solve actually happened. The trial of William Grubb, convicted killer of George Corcoran, is included in the Criminal Trial Transcripts of New York County Collection (1883–1927), housed in the Special Collections and digitized for the 2007 Crime in New York 1850–1950 Digital Project.

Since 2013, the Library has partnered with Student Academic Success Programs (SASP) to coordinate the activity, targeting students who are enrolled in First-Year Seminars and Transfer Seminars. SASP Peer Success Coaches attend each day of the game to help guide participants toward finding the right clues. Over 650 students have participated in the game since its inception.

November 2017

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New librarian-hosted podcast

CUNY is teeming with people conducting interesting research and writing. Steve Ovadia, a faculty member in the library at La Guardia Community College, and Kathleen Collins, faculty in the Lloyd Sealy Library at John Jay, are ferreting out some of these creators and featuring them on a new podcast, Indoor Voices.

The format is informal conversation, with Steve or Kathleen talking with guests about their work. So far these have included Richard Ocejo and Barry Spunt from John Jay, Barbara Katz-Rothman from the Graduate Center, and Polly Thistlethwaite and Jessie Daniels of the Graduate Center and Hunter College, respectively. Each of these has centered on the books these authors have recently published, but future chats may include non-book projects and works in progress.

The podcast itself is an evolving work in progress, and thanks to funding from John Jay’s Office for the Advancement of Research, it should see improvements and expansion in the coming year. Links to the audio interviews and more about the podcast can be found at indoorvoicespodcast.com.

November 2017

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Students love Anytime Printing

Anytime Printing station

At the end of the Spring semester, our systems staff installed a new print station and computer just outside the Library’s doors. This setup now allows students to access and print their papers even when the Library is closed.

We first advertised this new service on Instagram, where students left comments like “Great idea!” and “ Three thumbs up .” Since then, the Anytime Printing station has grown in popularity, particularly in the morning before our doors open.

Our Anytime Printing station is part of the EZ Print Center initiative, launched by CLSS in 2009 to relieve long lines at labs’ print stations. Many thanks to CLSS and our systems staff for installing this new station!

RCD

November 2017

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Check it out!

Two charger cables

While staplers remain high in demand, we have been expanding the range of supplies and accessories we offer at the Reference Desk. When the Library added additional group study rooms—equipped with white boards, large monitors with multiple HDMI hookups, and outlets—we started to provide students with dry-erase markers and adapters to connect their individual devices to the room’s projector.

After many a desperate request, we have also purchased a few phone chargers that have quickly become popular. All these items can now be checked out at the Reference and Circulation Desks for 3 hours at a time.

November 2017

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The process of courtroom artists

Ellen Belcher

In preparation for our upcoming exhibit, “Rogues Gallery: Forty Year Retrospective of Courtroom Art from Son of Sam to El Chapo” (Shiva Art Gallery, November 29 through February 2), I have been spending a lot of time with the Richard Tomlinson Collection of Courtroom Drawings. It strikes me that while many of us are familiar with courtroom drawings, we don’t know much about the process of courtroom artists.

By Richard Tomlinson. An artist making a drawing in court.

As I reported previously in this newsletter (Spring 2012, p. 15), Richard Tomlinson worked as a courtroom artist for three decades. For quite a while, he worked covering New York City area trials full-time for Channel 5 WNEW news. He and other artists, working for other news outlets, would sit side by side, drawing boards in their laps at the front of the courtroom, surrounded by their art supplies, working quickly to capture all the action of the court proceedings within their allotted space on the courtroom bench. Richard Tomlinson was well known for drawing in a small, confined area with a few materials in his pocket and a pair of binoculars next to him; others spread out onto every free area on the bench and floor. At the end of the proceedings, courtroom artists ran outside to waiting news photographers and cameramen, who would immediately shoot the drawings in natural light on the sidewalk. Other times, artists lugged their drawings to Midtown newsrooms on the subway (or sometimes by a speeding cab), where editors shuffled through them looking for the best shot to illustrate breaking news stories. Now courtroom artists scan their drawings in their studios and email them to newsroom editors.

Four sketches by Richard Tomlinson

Courtroom artists employ a range of materials to capture all the color, actions, and emotions of court proceedings quickly. Sometimes the court appearance of defendants and witnesses is so brief that only a quick sketch can be accomplished, which is later colored in with details added from memory. The paper has to be the right size and texture to capture and hold the action as well as the drawing media, and it must stand up to possible rough handling. Everyone develops their own distinctive style, which could change over time, or with each trial. While pastels and charcoal can be messy and easily smudged, they are by far the most used medium because of their ease of use in rendering quick, colorful, and expressive drawings. Richard Tomlinson often did a charcoal sketch that he then filled in with colored oil crayon, pencils, or watercolor onto a thin, smooth—but very durable—vellum paper. Other artist materials include markers, pens, and gouache in any combination, all of which must correctly interface with the paper.

While courtroom artists are dwindling in number due to the widespread introduction of cameras in the courtroom, the Special Collections has a growing collection of courtroom art, launched by the Richard Tomlinson Collection and now supplemented with gifts of the Elizabeth Williams Collection and Aggie Kenny Collection. Portions of all these collections will be on exhibit in the Shiva Art Gallery exhibit, opening on November 29. Examples from these collections will also soon also appear in our Digital Collections.

A selection of resources on courtroom artists

Church, M.. (2006). The art of justice: An eyewitness view of thirty infamous trials Philadelphia, Pa.: Quirk. Reserve (3 day loan) NC953.8 .C47 A4 2006

Dengrove, I. L. (1990). My days in court: unique views of the famous and infamous by a court artist. New York: Morrow. Stacks NC 953.8 .D46 A2 1990

Hobman, P. (2015). Trial & image: Courtroom artists capture the colors and gestures of justice. ArtNews 115(2), 110-117.

Library of Congress, Washington D.C. (2017). Drawing justice: The art of courtroom drawing. Online exhibit.

Frost, Natasha. (August 2017). The dying art of courtroom illustration. Atlas Obscura Blog.

Williams, E.. (2014). The illustrated courtroom: 50 years of court art. Reserve (3 day loan) NC953.5 .U6 W54 2014

November 2017

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