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Queens College, The City
University of New York
Graduate School of
Library and Information Studies
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It has been a busy semester for GSLIS at Queens College, CUNY! In summer, we were granted continued accreditation
by the American Library Association, so firstly I need to thank all the students, alumni, faculty and others who turned up for our program! We are nothing without our community, and the accreditation team were particularly impressed by the sense of community
around this program.
We were joined by four new faculty members this Fall, bringing our full time faculty to twelve. Full bios
for the new faculty are presented in this newsletter, but here I want to acknowledge the work each is doing to strengthen our program.
Prof. Emily Drabinski (current president of the American Library Association!) is our liaison to the CUNY
Council of Chief Librarians and is also contributing to our Research and Pedagogy Committee. After her term with the ALA, Emily will be helping us develop a new advanced certificate for academic librarianship.
Dr. Vikki Terrile is coordinating our Advanced Certificate in Children and Youth Services in the Public
Library and she is currently reviewing its scope and structure to ensure that it best meets employer expectations and community needs. Vikki is also chairing our Planning and Assessment Committee as we put in place new processes that will allow the department
to more accurately gauge its performance and plan strategically for better ways to achieve our program learning outcomes.
Prof. Brandon Jeffries has been appointed to the newly created role of Director of Student Affairs. In
that capacity, Brandon oversees recruitment, admissions, retention, advisement, and alumni relations. Bringing together these functions in one role will help to create a better student experience, and Brandon is already proactively developing new services
and new relationships across and beyond the Queens College campus.
Dr. Nerve Macaspac, a geographer and cartographer, is contributing to our Communications Committee, and
will be developing new classes and programs for us in geographic information systems, spatial analysis, user experience and user centered design, and topics in the digital humanities.
We’ve also been joined by some brilliant new adjuncts, practitioners drawn from New York’s rich and diverse
institutions and networks, ensuring that our students are exposed to varied expertise and perspectives. We appreciate our all of our adjuncts and in the year ahead I want to look at how to improve the adjunct experience in GSLIS. Our department also stands
by PSC-CUNY (our faculty union) as it negotiates with the university for a new contract and a better deal for adjuncts.
New course development has continued be a focus of the department, led by the Curriculum Committee. Some
of the new courses are featured in this newsletter, and many more are in the pipeline: more on that in a future newsletter!
Our Research and Pedagogy Committee continued its Research in Praxis seminar series, and ran a faculty
workshop on digital accessibility. Future workshops will continue to support and improve teaching in GSLIS, and we’re grateful to the committee members for their work on that front.
Congratulations to the students, alumni and faculty for their accomplishments outlined in this newsletter:
such important and impressive work! Students and alumni are encouraged to stay in touch through the regular student town halls, through the alumni community hub linked in this newsletter, and at our many virtual and in person events. Most recently, our dedicated
careers advisor, Kim McNeil Capers, with our Director of Student Affairs, hosted a fantastic job fair (details below) that saw students connect with employers on campus in a way that we haven’t seen since the pandemic started.
Finally, many thanks to Dr. Johnathan Thayer and Prof. Yi-Chun Wu for putting this newsletter together.
Much more to come from GSLIS!
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Dr. James Lowry,
Chair and Director, Graduate
School of Library and Information Studies
Queens College, City University
of New York
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Emily Drabinski
accepted a position as Associate Professor at GSLIS starting Fall 2023.
Academic Statement: My
research is embedded in critical librarianship, an area of research and practice that engages questions of power and the history, present, and future of libraries. I have long been interested in the intersections of critical theory and knowledge organization,
particularly in the classification and description from a queer theoretical perspective. How can we fix in classificatory space concepts that, by their nature, are shifting and contingent? In 2013, I published “Queering the Catalog: Queer Theory and the Politics
of Correction” in Library Quarterly and have continued exploring these questions into the present. My current research project, Ways of Knowing, is a partnership with librarian and sound artist Amanda Belantara. We are collecting oral histories of alternative
knowledge organization systems, with an initial set of transcripts forthcoming as a primary source collection from Library Juice Press/Litwin Books.
I am also interested in the
ways that collective power can be built and wielded on behalf of libraries and the communities we serve. In addition to my work as a librarian, I have experience in the organized labor movement, including serving as Secretary of the Long Island University
Faculty Federation in 2016 during the first lockout of higher education faculty in the history of the United States. I have written and presented widely on that experience, which then informed my decision to run for 2023-24 President of the American Library
Association. In this role, I write and speak widely on the particular issues facing American libraries in the context of anti-democratic legislation that seeks to limit access to information by, about, and intended for Black, Indigenous, and people of color
as well as the LGBTQIA+ community.
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Brandon Jeffries accepted
a position as Director of Student Affairs at GSLIS starting Fall 2023.
Academic Statement: To
bring resources, best practices and learned experiences to the students at Queens College Graduate Library Science Program. Leveraging over 17 years of experience in the nonprofit industry including but not limited to: facilitation, direct service, management
and executive management in Queens, New York. Professional development, stewardship and career guidance are aspects that I take pride in incorporating into workforce environments while implementing library resources, processes and standards that can support
both organization and community next steps. My academic approach reinforces rigor through project-based assignments and research principles.
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Dr. Nerve V. Macaspac
accepted a position as an Assistant Professor at GSLIS starting Fall 2023.
Academic Statement: I
am a political geographer and cartographer with a regional focus in Southeast Asia. My current interdisciplinary and ethnographic research contributes to our understanding of spaces of peace amid violence, indigenous peacebuilding, and spatial dimensions of
peace.
I am a Co-Investigator in three collaborative research projects. First, “Creating Safer Spaces: Strengthening
Civilian Protection Amidst Violent Conflict,” a multi-year international and interdisciplinary research project funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in the United Kingdom (UK), which investigates how violence can be deterred or prevented
by civilians without the use of force. Second, “Building the Southeast Asian Consortium at SUNY and CUNY,” a multi-year initiative to build Southeast Asian Studies within NY’s public universities and funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. Third, “Strengthening
the Capacity of Human Rights Defenders,” a multi-year research project that examines the closing of civic spaces and the consequences of online violence to digital civic spaces in collaboration with the Center for International Human Rights at John Jay College
of Criminology at CUNY. I also serve as a Graduate Faculty at the Earth and Environmental Sciences (EES) Doctoral Program and the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy (ITP) Program at the Graduate Center. Finally, I am a Faculty Fellow at the CUNY Black, Race
and Ethnic Studies (BRES) Curriculum Development, Center for Place, Culture and Politics (CPCP), and Social Practice (CP).
To learn more about Nerve
Macaspac, please visit his website.
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Dr. Vikki Terrile accepted
a position as an Assistant Professor at GSLIS starting Fall 2023.
Academic Statement: My
primary area of research is family homelessness and its intersection with libraries and education. I began this work as a public librarian doing outreach to family shelters in New York City and have continued to investigate the provision of library services
to people of all ages experiencing homelessness. My dissertation research explored how youth services librarians in the United States understand “the library” and “the homeless” as symbolic objects in the hope of explaining why targeted outreach and other
services to families that are homeless are rare in public libraries. I found that even youth services librarians understand “the homeless” primarily as adults with mental health, substance abuse, and hygiene challenges, in keeping with the broader social context
that allows child and family homelessness to be ignored. This project built on an earlier study that used interpretative phenomenological analysis to explore how librarians who work with families in homeless situations understand and experience that work.
In my interviews with participants, I learned that the librarians felt deep professional and moral responsibility for doing this work, but felt unsupported by the profession and in their individual libraries. Additionally, the librarians both understood the
causes of family homelessness in the United States and judged the families they worked with in ways consistent with prevailing cultural beliefs around homelessness and poverty. Other research I’ve conducted in this area looked at if and how homeless shelter
providers receive library services from their local public libraries, how community college faculty teach homelessness as a curricular topic, and how school district homeless liaisons support students’ transitions from high school to college.
Beyond my research work around
homelessness and poverty, I have interest in information behavior, especially embodied information practices. My first CUNY research grant explored how performers and artisan vendors at Renaissance Faires find and use information in their work. Findings from
this study revealed that the participants use embodied, self-taught information practices, and also exhibit protective behaviors around certain aspects of their work, in line with Elfreda Chatman’s theories of information poverty. These findings situated Renaissance
Faire performers and artisan vendors in the larger world of contingent workers who must navigate the conflict between their own expert power and the reward/coercive power of management, which often results in information being denied or withheld. As a lifelong
crafter and maker, I am also interested in how making is portrayed in popular culture. I recently published a book chapter on how making is used as acts of love and resistance by professional and amateur craftspeople in the Disney Star Wars universe, and am
exploring how similar themes are revealed in the animated sitcom, Bob’s Burgers.
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Natalie Milbrodt taught
LBSCI 701: Fundamentals of Library and Information Science in Fall 2023.
Academic Statement: I
believe in the power of personal narrative to tell larger human stories that connect us to one another and I always bring the lived experiences of my students, our classroom guests, and myself into dialogue with the concepts and practices in our coursework.
Stories help us learn, remember, and find meaning. The study of Library and Information Science is an excellent foundation for anyone interested in preserving and expanding knowledge to enrich the quality of our lives as individuals and societies.
I am an information professional and content developer with over two decades of experience working in
small business, academic, cultural heritage and library settings. I currently manage the Metadata Services division within the Queens Public Library’s Technical Services department. I oversee archival digitization and the creation and management of metadata
for the library's physical and digital collections. This includes the preservation of intangible cultural heritage and local history on behalf of the library's community-driven digital archives initiative, the Queens Memory Project, which I founded in 2010.
The program was recognized in 2012 by the ALA Association for Library Collections & Technical Services with an Outstanding Collaboration Citation, in 2014 by the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York with an Educational Use of Archives Award, and
in 2019 by the New York State Archives for Excellence in Documenting New York’s History. I hold an Interdisciplinary Humanities bachelor's degree from Michigan State University and a master's degree from Queens College in Library and Information Studies with
a concentration in Archives and Cultural Heritage.
I currently serve on the
Oral History Association’s Metadata Task Force, responsible for the creation of the OHA Metadata Toolkit, designed to help teams working at all scales and stages of an oral history project’s lifecycle to determine what information is important to preserve
about their collections. I proudly serve as an advisory board member for New York State Historical Records, Design Dream Lab, The Municipal Art Society of New York’s Enduring Culture Initiative, and Wikitongues.
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NEW COURSES FOR SPRING 2024
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This course examines the history, methods, tools, and scholarly practices of teaching and research in
the digital humanities (DH), including ways in which the library can engage with, enhance, and support those activities. The course will focus on digital humanities as a burgeoning field in its own right, as well as the development of digital methods in specific
disciplines within the humanities. Students will consider their role as information professionals in the creation, cleaning, storage, and dissemination of digital humanities datasets and research projects, as well as gain hands-on experience with some of the
tools and methods used in these activities.
Students in this course will
have the opportunity to both study DH as a field, as well as create their own digital projects using DH methods. They will learn techniques to identify potential datasets, collect that data, clean and prepare it for analysis, and to identify appropriate tools
and methods to answer DH research questions using data. Additionally, we will engage specifically with the role that the library and larger information professions play with regard to the collection, storage, and curation both of data with the potential for
use in DH work, as well as the broad range of deliverables and project types that can result from DH research.
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This course examines the history, methods, tools, and clinical practices of incorporating the use of literature,
poetry, and expressive writing into healing practice. The course will teach a brief history of bibliotherapy as a modality that uses literature as a tool to promote mental health and overall wellness. Students will consider their role as information professionals
in prescribing books to meet the emotional needs of patrons by assessing intersectional identity, reading style, genre preferences, and more.
Students in this course will
have the opportunity to both study bibliotherapy as a treatment modality, as well as curate their own book prescriptions for patrons based on unique case studies spanning the human life cycle stages. They will learn techniques to engage and speak with patrons
about emotional challenges, book match based on a patron’s unique needs and intersectional identity, and confidently curate a list of go to texts for different life ailments in the tradition of bibliotherapy.
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GSLIS RESEARCH IN PRAXIS DISCUSSION SERIES
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This series is brought to you by the GSLIS Research and Pedagogy Committee. Speakers for Fall 2023 included:
Dr. Leila Walker,
Digital Scholarship and Humanities Librarian at Queens College, “An Introduction to Accessible Digital Pedagogy”
Dr. Dan Woulfin,
GSLIS Alumnus and Data Librarian, “Touring the Invisible College: Using Bibliographic Networks to Measure Influence and Impact in Academic Topics”
Dr. Vikki Terrile,
Assistant Professor, GSLIS, CUNY, “More than a Problem?: A Systematic Review of the Homelessness and Libraries Literature”
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FACULTY RESEARCH & ACCOMPLISHMENTS
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Prof. Emily Drabinski
was named to
Out100
2023's Most Impactful and Influential LGBTQ+ People.
Prof. Bill Gordh’s
World Music Institute podcast “Folktales” won Gold at the 2023
Signal Awards.
Dr. S.E. Hackney
will be participating in CUNY's Faculty Fellowship Publishing Program (FFPP) in Spring 2024.
"The Faculty Fellowship Publication Program (FFPP) is sponsored by University Human Resources in order to advance CUNY’s institutional commitment to diversity. This University-wide initiative assists full-time untenured CUNY faculty (assistant professors)
in the design and execution of writing projects essential to progress toward tenure." Dr. Hackney will be using the program to work on the proposal packet for a book based on their dissertation research entitled "The Birth of Digital Text."
Prof. Jess DeCourcy Hinds published
an article in School Library Journal. Hinds, J. D. (2023). “‘That’s How I Feel!’ Visual books help teens grapple with emotions and mental health.
School Library Journal, September 7, 2023. https://www.slj.com/story/Thats-How-I-Feel-Visual-Books-Help-Teens-Grapple-with-Emotions-and-Mental-Health
Prof. Arlene Laverde published
the article in Young Adult Library Services and Knowledge Quest. Laverde, A. (2023). Librarians of New York take a stand against book banning.
Young Adult Library Services, 20(3/4).
Dr. Nerve Macaspac published
“Indigenous Geopolitics: Creating Indigenous Spaces of Community Self-Protection and Peace amid Violent Conflict” (2023), which appears in the
Journal of Pacifism and Nonviolence. He also published a book review, “Maria Ressa and the Fight for Facts” (2023), which appears in the
Human Rights Review. Prof. Macaspac and Prof. Lara Saguisag of New York University (NYU) launched
Here
Lies Love in Critical Context: A Public Syllabus. Compiled in response to the Broadway
show Here Lies Love, the syllabus delves into the complex and painful history of the Philippines under the Marcos dictatorship. Finally, Prof. Macaspac and colleagues from SUNY and CUNY received generous funding from the Henry Luce Foundation for the “Building
the Southeast Asian Consortium at SUNY and CUNY,” a multi-year initiative to build Southeast Asian Studies in New York’s public universities.
Dr. Joe Sánchez was
appointed to the Advisory
Board of the Library of Congress Literacy Awards and to the
Accreditation
Committee of the American Library Association.
Dr. Nafiz Shuva has
been elected Vice-President/President-Elect of the Canadian
Association for Information Science (CAIS), Chair of the American Library Association,
International
Relation Round Table (IRRT) Membership Committee, and a member of the International Federation
of Libraries and Information Institute (IFLA) North
American Regional Division
Dr. Vikki Terrile published
an article in The Library Quarterly. Terrile, V. C. (2023). It’s meaningful work, but it’s “Really, Really Hard”: librarians’ understanding of their work with families experiencing homelessness.
The Library Quarterly, 93(3), 333-351. https://doi.org/10.1086/725066
Dr. Shuheng Wu
published an article in
Cataloging & Classification. Wu, S. (2023). Implementing bibliographic enhancement data in academic library catalogs: An empirical study.
Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 61(3/4), 308-345. https://doi.org/10.1080/0
Prof. Simone Yearwood
has been named
2023
Academic/Special Librarian of the year by the New York Library Association.
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STUDENT AND ALUMNI ACCOMPLISHMENTS
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JOB FAIR - Unfiltered: A Career & Hiring Event
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On November 28th, The Queens College Graduate School of Library & Information Studies Program hosted an
in-person career event and networking opportunity called "Unfiltered: A Career & Hiring Event" for students and alumni.
The "Unfiltered" event was a success in connecting students with potential employers, offering them valuable
insights into career opportunities within the library and information sciences field. Impressively, over forty-two students participated in the event, and ten out of the twelve libraries and archives in attendance shared job openings.
Students expressed their gratitude and enthusiasm during the event as they engaged with HR recruiters
and library directors, delving into discussions about various career opportunities. It was heartening to witness the positive interaction between the students and the professionals present.
Both Human Resources directors and Library directors expressed their happiness in meeting the students
and participating in this career-oriented event. The success of "Unfiltered" highlights the importance of such events in bridging the gap between students and potential employers.
For more information feel
free to contact Professor Kim
McNeil-Capers
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STAY CONNECTED WITH GSLIS ALUMNI COMMUNITY HUB
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We want to know how well you are doing. Your accomplishments will encourage each other
as well as current and future GSLIS students. Please share
with us your good news.
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Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies
Rosenthal Library Room
254, Queens College, CUNY, 65-30 Kissena Blvd. Queens, NY 11367-1597
Phone: 718.997.3790
| Fax: 718.997.3797
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