BLAIS: Barnard Library and Information Services 2013

Ten Representative Research Consultation Topics

1. Gendered public service messages in 19th century NYC2. Comparing Zora Neale Hurston and Diana Ross: biography and text/lyrics3. What did women in Chaucer's England want?4. Information about 1945 glass menagerie production, creative team and finances 5. Preschoolers agency in gendered/gender neutral classrooms6. Punk Jews in zines7. Originally: finding a journal. Really: research help on Ruth Orkin American Girl photograph thesis8. Do you have materials about Jean Frances Blackwell Hutson (Barnard '35, curator/chief of the Schomburg

Center)?9. Political imaginings in text and performance for exilic Palestinian and Cuban activist/writers10. "I'm investigating the female body as an instrument of limitation to women and as an apparatus for gender

inequality. I will be looking at the role of the body as a burden due to the associated pain, stress, and required energies of pregnancy. Some of my research questions include: What sort of understanding of biology would the authors have had access to (Eliza Haywood, Milton, Bronte, Virginia Woolf) What were the relevant arguments of biology in relation to gender theory What sort of social codes existed for social relations What was the understanding of pregnancy? What forms of birth control were available? To what extent was biology a part of feminist theory? How would Haywood have viewed the scene from Genesis? What were feminist theories/criticisms/reactions to Genesis? Are there any medical text books that outline the care of the pregnant body from the 18th century?" (this was for First Year English!)

Instruction

• 3 Guest lectures for Library and Information Science classes– NYU, Institutional Archives and Electronic Records

Management: Shannon O'Neill– Pratt Institute, Knowledge Organization: Jenna Freedman– University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Digital Public

History: Jenna Freedman

• 7 ERL staff trainings

• 7 Bamboo DiRT staff peer education workshops

• 174 classes taught by Barnard librarians, archivists, Empirical Reasoning Lab staff and media specialists taught in 2013– 3 classes on zines for students from other institutions

(Calhoun, CUNY, U. Saskatchewan) – 12 by archivists 12– 46 by the ERL Associate Director (and 2 by her staff)– 111 by librarians (not including archivists)

• 2,442 students reached, which per the Barnard At-a-Glance page is the entire student population or more, though we don't know how many of the students we taught were unique visitors vs. were lucky enough to see BLAIS staff more than once during the calendar year

Wikimedia Commons photo, cropped

Staff news

• Chris Day, hired as Instructional Media & Technology Services AV Technician

• Alexis Seeley, Manager of Instructional Media & Technology Services promoted to Associate Dean of Teaching, Research and Technology

• Martha Tenney hired as Digital Archivist

ThatCamp Feminisms – collaboration between BCRW (Anne Jonas) & the library (Megan Wacha)

Collections: books, audio, video, etc.

• 72: LGBTQ YA items added• 78: Lesbian fiction items added• 261: Alumnae collection items

added• 735: Zines added• 5,562: total items added

Biggest borrowing day of the year: January 22 with 435 items, nearly one every two minutes the library was open.

Biggest check-in day of the year: May 17 with 635 items returned over graduation weekend.

Rhizomatic Growth: Peer Learning with BambooDiRT at Barnard LibraryVani Natarajan and Heather Lember (poster at ACRL-NY)

What happens when we turn a library computer lab into an adventurous test space for digital pedagogy? A group of Barnard Library and Academic Information Services staff participated in a peer education initiative last summer, in an attempt to find answers to this and other questions. In weekly workshops, staff guided each other through digital tools featured in the Bamboo DiRT repository. The Bamboo DiRT workshops functioned not only as spaces to learn about digital tools, but to learn about pedagogy itself. Rather than fetishize tools, we engaged critically. Teams developed rich learning materials, like a map on the geography of James Baldwin’s fiction. Participants will be writing tool reviews to help developers devise “recipes” grouping tools in thematic workflows. From this project, a larger community of digital humanists may glean a lively, multimodal understanding of the roles and possibilities of digital research tools in libraries, archives, classrooms, and beyond.

This is what a need for empirical research support being satisfied looks like!

All questions asked during an ERL visit are categorized based on the content. Often the questions asked during a single visit will include multiple categories. The bolder lines show a larger number of instances that categories were paired.

IMATS superlatives• Most Popular: Canon DSLR camera, over 2500 pieces of equipment loaned• Mostly Likely to be recorded: Public Speaking, over 200 classes and events

recorded, edited• Most Dramatic: German Telanovellas inspired by Ugly Betty written,

directed, and performed in German– Over 100 student videos created by the "Mayor" of Barnard - Ken Kim – Over 1400 events supported by AV Services

• Best Make Over - James Room, 8 other classrooms and events spaces upgraded.

• Most common place to make a request – imats.barnard.edu/requests, new website launched

Selected Archives Acquisitions

• Kitty Kolbert's Casey vs. Planned Parenthood CollectionThe Kitty Kolbert collection covers the fight for reproductive rights in the 1990s and includes Kitty's correspondence, memoranda, transcripts, files related to the court case Planned Parenthood vs. Casey from 1990-1995.

• Transfer of Physical Education Department that included a large amount of Dance Uptown historyThe Physical Education came to us when Lisa Northrop needed to clean out a closet and discovered file cabinets full of records. The Archives staff came to retrieve them and discovered a number of significant records documenting Dance Uptown.

• Archives collections grew by 186.72% over last yearOur major growth can largely be attributed to the shift in our mission and vision for the Archives which now collects special collections materials that touch on women's & gender studies and dance.

Selected Zines Acquisitions & News

• About 400 zines from zine maker and collector Keight Bergmann

• Donation from zine maker, collector and women's and Asian-American studies scholar Mimi Thi Nguyen and the People of Color Zine Project

• First riot grrrl ephemera collection from zine maker, collector and Sociology scholar Lauren Jade Martin (also largest donor of zines)

Profiled in Kate Eichhorn’s book The Archival Turn in Feminism: Outrage in Order. Published by Temple University Press in July.

Ten Representative New-to-Us Library of Congress Subject Headings Used to Describe Zines

1. Androgyny (Psychology). 2. Christian lesbians.3. Espionage--Handbooks, manuals, etc.4. Labor unions--Songs and music.5. Menstrual regulation. 6. Ovid

--43 B.C.-17 A.D. or 18 A.D.--Metamorphoses--Adaptations--Comic books, strips, etc.7. Parents of autistic children.8. Smugglers--West Bank--Interviews.9. Softies (Musical group).10. Workaholics.

Exhibits

• Archives: staff & student worker picks– Exams from the 1890s– Courses you could have taken– Clubs 1900-1910– Student publications 1977-2000

• Zines: graduate student intern installations– Marissa Falco retrospective– Revision: Collage in Zines

Photo from Barnard Archives blog

Staff Presentations

• Drabinski, Emily, Jenna Freedman, and Lia Friedman. Questioning Authority: Standard Three and the Critical Classroom. (Indianapolis: Association of College and Research Libraries biannual conference, 2013).

• Freedman, Jenna. "Archivo-Punk: on the Politics of Preserving Riot Grrrl Music, Texts, and Material Culture." (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University colloquium, 2013).

• Freedman, Jenna. "Pinko Vs. Punk: a Generational Comparison of Alternative Press Publications and Zines." (Chicago: Caxton Club annual symposium, 2013).

• Haitian Women 4 Haitian Refugees (Miriam Neptune), "Birthright Crisis 2013." (New York: African Diaspora Film Festival screening, 2013).

• Kennison, Rebecca and Lisa Norberg. "Sustainability and Open Access: A Discussion at the New York Academy of Medicine." (New York: METRO panel, New York Academy of Medicine, 2013).

• Kennison, Rebecca and Lisa Norberg. "Toward A Sustainable Approach to Open Access Publishing and Archiving." (Washington, DC: Coalition for Networked Information Fall Briefing, 2013)

• Natarajan, Vani and Maggie Schreiner. "Librarians and Archivists in Palestine!" (New York: WBAI/Asia Pacific Forum radio interview, 2013).

• Natarajan, Vani. "Decolonizing Documentation: Librarians and Archivists to Palestine." (New Orleans: Middle East Librarians Association Conference, 2013).

Staff Presentations

• Natarajan, Vani and Heather Lember. "Rhizomatic Growth: Peer Learning with BambooDiRT at Barnard Library." (New York: ACRL-NY Annual Symposium, 2013.)

• Neptune, Miriam. "(Un)Making a Dominican: The Context for Denationalization." (New York: CUNY Graduate Center, Center for the Humanities panel, 2013)

• Rodriguez, Derek and Lisa Norberg. "Assessing library impact on student learning outcomes: a case study using the Understanding Library Impacts protocol." (Rome: 5th International Conference on Quantitative and Qualitative Methods in Libraries, 2013).

• Wacha, Megan and Alexis Seeley. "Wikipedia as a Site to Publish and Promote Patrons." (Louisville, KY: Library Information Technology Association Forum , 2013).

• Tebbe, Felice, Jenna Freedman, Ari Yana Misfeldt, and Eleanor Whitney. "Art by and for Change." (New Haven: Book Art Association Annual Meeting panel, 2013).

• Wacha, Megan. "Demystifying the Working Life of a New Academic Librarian - What to Expect in the First Days, Weeks, Months & Years." (New York: METRO & ACRL/NY Present panel, 2013.)

• Wacha, Megan. “Make Something New. Now.” NYLA@BEA, New York Library Association, New York, NY. May 29, 2013. Invited Panelist.

• Wacha, Megan and Alexis Seeley (2013). WikiWomen’s History Month Project. Presented at the Wikipedia Day Conference at New York University, New York, NY, February 23, 2013. Invited Presentation.

Staff publications

• Edwards, Chloë, Amy F. Brown, Meg Eastwood, Martha Tenney and Kevin O’Donnell "Processing Internal Hard Drives" / by Practical Technology for Archives, no.1 (2013).

• Freedman, Jenna, Hannah Mermelstein and Vani Natarajan, eds. Librarians and archivists to Palestine. (Brooklyn: self-published by the delegation, 2013).

• Kennison, Rebecca and Lisa Norberg. Toward a Sustainable Approach to Open Access Publishing and Archiving: a Green Paper. (New York: self-published, 2013).

Selected Events

• February: Archives Open House• March: Maps & Messages workshop

with Marissa Falco• July: International Zine Library Day

• Six Stressbusters events throughout the academic year. Approximate number of backs & necks rubbed: 180.

Professional Participation & Contributions

• Vani Natarajan helped organize and participated in a Librarians & Archivists delegation to Palestine.

• Shannon O'Neill chaired "Breaking into the Field," panel at the New York Archives Conference

• Heather Van Volkinburg was elected to National Numeracy Network (NNN) Board of Directors and shortly thereafter appointed Vice-President of the board.

• Megan Wacha served on the ACRL/NY Symposium Planning Committee for the 2013 ACRL/NY Symposium.