Spring Research Workshops

March

Basic SPSS 

March 5, 6.30-8pm (rsvp) A general overview of the SPSS statistical package: What is it? What can it do? What do you need to know to get started? Host: GC Adjunct Librarian Margaret Smith

GC Digital Fellows Workshop: Organizing Your Research with Reference Management Software: Zotero & Mendeley

Wednesday, March 5, 6:30-8:30 pm, Room C196.03 (rsvp) This workshop introduces two popular reference and citation management systems, Zotero and Mendeley Desktop. Great for beginners who want to learn how to organize their references and automatically generate citations and bibliographies. The workshop will be hosted by Erin Glass and Keith Miyake.

WordPress

March 6, 12-1pm (full) A hands-on overview of the installation, selecting a theme, installing plug-ins, and basic functions of the popular open source WordPress blogging platform. Host: GC Digital Services Librarian Stephen Klein.

GC Digital Fellows Workshop: WordPress 2: Enhancing Your Digital Academic Identity

Tuesday, March 11th 2014, 6:30-8:30pm Room C196.03 (rsvp) This workshop will focus on improving the appearance and functionality of your existing WordPress site.  We will review some of the basic components of WordPress from our previous workshop (WordPress 1: Establishing a Digital Identity*) then move on to discuss plugins, widgets, and analytics. We will continue working with WordPress on the CUNY Academic Commons (if you do not have a CUNY Academic Commons account, sign up for one here).  The workshop will be hosted by Andrew G. McKinney and Laura Kane.

Advanced SPSS 

March 26, 6.30-8pm (rsvp) A hands-on workshop investigating SPSS in more depth: How do you enter and explore data with SPSS? How do you manage and analyze your data? Host: GC Adjunct Librarian Margaret Smith

Data for Social Justice part 1: Finding Data 

March 6, 6.30-8pm (rsvp) Introduces sources of data (demographic, economic, and social data) applied to illustrate social justice initiatives. Host: GC Adjunct Librarian Margaret Smith

Data for Social Justice part 2: Analyzing and Visualizing Data 

March 13, 6.30-8pm (rsvp) Reviews web applications and software for analyzing and visualizing demographic, economic, and social data. Host: GC Adjunct Librarian Margaret Smith

Data for Social Justice: Mapping Data 

March 27, 6.30-8pm (rsvp) Explore both free and subscription GIS resources to map social science data. Host: GC Adjunct Librarian Margaret Smith

Open Books, Not Open Wallets: How Open Educational Resources Help Students Spend Less and Learn More 

March 7, 10-12pm (no rsvp) Graduate Center Segal Theatre, 1st floor. Sponsored by the LACUNY Scholarly Communications Roundtable, the CUNY Office of Library Services, and Just Publics@365. Do your students sometimes resist buying textbooks and other course materials? Open educational resources (OERs) are free or low-cost online textbooks that save students money. Evidence suggests that OERs also facilitate deeper engagement with course material and more focused teaching and learning. Faculty across CUNY who have developed, customized, and used OERs will share experiences and strategies.

Research in Literature at the NYPL

March 21, 2-3 pm (rsvp brookewatkins@nypl.org) NYPL Main Branch at Fifth Avenue & 42nd Street. Librarians from NYPL’s Berg Collection of English and American Literature and the Humanities & LGBT Collections explain how to locate items across the NYPL’s special collections. The class will highlight the NYPL library catalog and full-text databases not otherwise available at CUNY.

April

Research in Art and Art History at the NYPL

April 2, 6-7 pm (rsvp brookewatkins@nypl.org) NYPL Main Branch, Fifth Avenue & 42nd Street. NYPL’s Art & Architecture, Photography, and Prints divisions librarians explain how to search for what you want and to find what might surprise you. The class will also highlight use of the NYPL library catalog and full-text databases not otherwise available at CUNY.

Measuring and Increasing Your Scholarly Impact

April 9, 6.30-8pm (rsvp) Introducing metrics academic currently use to evaluate scholarly journals, authors, and articles, with discussion about the impact open access makes as measured by these tools. Host: GC Adjunct Librarian Margaret Smith

Research in History at the NYPL

April 9, 6-7 pm (rsvp brookewatkins@nypl.org) NYPL Main Branch, Fifth Avenue & 42nd Street. Librarians from NYPL’s Manuscripts and Archives and Rare Book Division explain how to locate items across the NYPL’s special collections. The class will also highlight use of the NYPL library catalog and full-text databases not otherwise available at CUNY.

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Loan Periods

Faculty & Grad Library Loans Undecided

 

The February 10 CUNY Council of Chief Librarians meeting featured this presentation following the November 2013 CUNY Libraries Circulation Committee endorsement of 120-day library loan periods for faculty, PhD, and Master’s students, and 42-day loan periods for undergraduates. The CUNY Doctoral Students’ Council, the CUNY Graduate Council Library Committee, and the Graduate Center MALS faculty and students all support this proposal that would bring CUNY practice into line with other academic libraries.

CUNY library book loans are unusually brief: 42 days for faculty and doctoral students and 21 days for undergrads and Master’s students. The New York Public Library and MaRLI partners (New York University and Columbia), in contrast, loan books to CUNY faculty and grads for 120 days. CUNY renewal allowances vary by campus, but it is common for CUNY libraries to offer 0 to 3 renewals before a book must be returned to the shelf.

Any extension of library loan periods would require greater use of the overdue recall fines (currently $1/day) for books requested by other borrowers. After an initial guaranteed loan period (currently 3 weeks for undergrads and grads; 6 weeks for faculty and doctoral students), a 1st borrower would be notified by email to return any book that is recalled by a 2nd borrower. 1st borrowers who fail to return within a specified time period (currently 10 days from the email recall notice), would be fined at the higher recall rate. The CUNY Circulation Committee has not yet formed recall policies to govern with the proposed longer loan periods; the above are merely examples. Daily fines for overdue books NOT recalled by another borrower recently increased from $.10/day to $.25/day.

The CUNY Council of Chief Librarians discussed the issue but postponed action until a future spring 2014 meeting. The Council of Chief Librarians is an advisory body to the Office of Library Services

To express your views about CUNY-wide support for faculty and graduate loans supporting research, contact any CUNY Chief Librarian.

 

Alumni Access

Graduates Lose Off-Site Access to Library Databases

 

We regret that the CUNY-mandated email and account changes have interrupted graduates’ off-campus access to GC Library resources. Newly differentiated alumni network accounts now preclude all GC alums, not only those with lapsed GC accounts, from getting to licensed databases from off campus.

Publishers and their distributors license academic work to university libraries for well-defined, controlled audiences of current students and faculty, not alumni. Scholars lose access to academic literature if they lose university affiliation. This is a sad state of affairs. Restrictions on the distribution of academic work, and the high prices libraries pay to support this broken system, are compelling reasons to support open access publishing.

Some database vendors offer “alumni pricing” for a limited set of databases, at significant additional expense. NYU and Columbia offer their alumni a small set of off-campus resources; the GC Library does not currently license any databases for alumni access. Our partner institution, the New York Public Library, offers any card-holder free off-site access to 120 databases, here. Other NYC public libraries offer limited access from off-site, too.

GC alumni with a GC alumni photo ID are perpetually welcome in the GC Library. On-site visitors can get a free guest login for library computers with access to all GC licensed databases. GC Community wifi login enables access to library resources; GC Guest wifi login does not allow access to library resources. Alumni who continue to work as GC faculty research assistants may initiate a departmental request for limited-time GC network accounts, with off-site access to library databases.

Scholars seek the widest possible audiences for their work, and readers deserve to read anything, anytime, regardless of where they are employed. Our scholarly communication system disenfranchises many, as alumni painfully discover, from full academic citizenship. GC librarians sincerely regret the inconvenience.