LibraryBuzz – News from the City Tech Library

LibraryBuzz – News from the City Tech Library
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As the semester comes to a close, the library ‘s Workshop Committee is offering its final workshop series designed to support students through finals, research projects, and end-of-term assignments. Building on a semester of programming focused on literacy, research skills, and cultural engagement, these sessions provide practical tools and timely support when it matters most.
We begin on Wednesday, April 22 (1:00 – 2:00PM) with our Ecopoetry & Earth Day workshop., where students can explore environmental themes through poetry, discover research resources, and participate in a clothing swap, highlighting how sustainability can be both creative and actionable.
On Thursday, April 30 (1:00 -2:00PM) join Last-Minute Research Rescue, a fast -paced session designed to help students quickly locate credible sources, refine topics, and complete research efficiently, ideal for final papers and projects under tight deadlines.
Our May programming continues with May Day & Labor Research Workshop on Friday, May 1 (2:00 -3:00PM)., exploring the history and ongoing relevance of labor movements, including the Haymarket affair, and how these issues connect to present-day work and society.
On Tuesday, May 5 (1:00 – 2:00PM), our cultural series concludes with Cinco de Mayo: History, Culture & Research, offering students the opportunity to explore the historical and cultural significance of the holiday while learning how to find reliable sources on Mexican history and identity.
Drop-In Research Help Series
For flexible, last-minute support, the library is also offering a Drop-In Research Series:
Online (Saturday, May 9, 1:00 – 2:00 PM) Real-time virtual assistance
Roving Campus support (Wednesday, May 13, 1:00 – 2:00 PM) Pop-up help stations across campus
In-Person (Thursday, May 14, 1:00 – 2:00 PM) Classroom-based finals support
No registration necessary, just drop in with your questions.
Whether you need help finding sources, or using electronic tools, the library is here to support your success through the final stretch of the semester.
For workshop times, locations, and registration (where applicable, please visit the
library’s website
. Contact Prof. Nandi Prince  (
Nandi.Prince25@citytech.cuny.edu
) for more information.
As Earth Day approaches, the
Library’s
Workshop Committee invites students to participate on April 22, 1:00 – 2:15PM in our
Ecopoetry & Earth Day Workshop
, which brings together creative expression and sustainability. Through ecopoetry, poetry that engages with nature, climate, and environmental justice, students will explore environmental themes while discovering research resources. Some notable ecopoetry titles to explore include
The Complete Poetry of Aime Cesaire
and
Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry
, which offer powerful perspectives on the relationship between environment, history, and identity.
Earth Day, observed on April 22, encourages reflection on our shared responsibility to care for the environment. This year’s theme, “Our Power, Our Planet,” emphasizes the role individuals and communities play in creating change. Across New York City, there are many opportunities to engage. Recent car-free Earth Day programming in Downtown Brooklyn transformed public spaces into hubs for sustainability-focused activities, including recycling events and upcycled art workshops. The citywide event continues April 25, when streets across all five boroughs, including Brooklyn Fifth avenue, will open to pedestrians and cyclist, promoting environmental awareness and alternative transportation. Students can also participate in park clean-ups, environmental festivals, and community-based initiatives that make sustainability accessible and practical.
At the policy level, New York City is advancing environmental efforts. On April 16, 2026, the City Council passed a comprehensive legislative package aimed at expanding green space, improving water quality testing, supporting wildlife, and strengthening organic waste recycling requirements.
Earth Day reminds us that awareness is only the beginning, meaningful change comes through participation, reflection, and informed action.
The application period is now open and will
close at 11:59 pm on Friday, May 15th.
We’re offering two info sessions via zoom on Friday, April 17th and May 1st; both from 2-3 pm.
April 17th Online Info Session –
Register to join
May 1st Online Info Session –
Register to join
Overview
The Library seeks applicants for the 2026-27 Open Educational Resources (OER) Fellowship, which brings together faculty across the college working in a community of practice model as each participant develops a course-specific OER. Launched in 2015, this funded program runs in conjunction with the CUNY-wide OER initiative managed at the system-level by our partners at CUNY Central’s Office of Library Services (OLS). The initiative “seeks to incentivize and empower faculty to support their students by reducing the cost of their course materials to zero and creating, adapting, and adopting Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP).”
We invite proposals from faculty new to or returning to the City Tech OER Fellowship. Proposals that incorporate active learning methods, take a student-centered approach, and address underrepresented and multidisciplinary subject areas are encouraged.
Before Applying
Types of OER projects that are well-suited to the OER Fellowship Program:
Zero-cost OER for a course that previously required a paid textbook (this may include first-time experimental pilots to assign OER in place of paid course materials).
Zero-cost OER for a course with a recommended text that does not require paid materials.
Zero-cost ancillary/supplemental OER (e.g., study guides, review modules, lessons, discussion questions, class activities, lecture outlines, and/or writing assignments).
Faculty interested in potential authorship of OER involving multiple authors/collaborators, or interested in proposing a project that would span beyond one academic year to complete, should contact Cailean Cooney to explore whether the College’s OER Team can support your project.
Similarly, faculty interested in substantive revision and extension of OER that have previously received funding should contact Cailean Cooney prior to submitting an application.
Eligibility
Full-time faculty that coordinate or regularly teach at least one section of a course, and have
consulted with course/discipline coordinator AND department chair
about the proposed OER project.
Part-time faculty on 1-3 year re-appointments, with the
approval of course/discipline coordinator AND department chair
to move forward with the proposed OER project.
Fellowship Participation and Requirements
Active participation in an intentional community of practice with college peers: mandatory participation in 7 synchronous meetings held on Fridays from 10 AM – 12 PM during the academic year via zoom (3 in fall; 4 in spring).
Active participation in asynchronous discussion and activities conducted on the Fellowship cohort’s OpenLab site.
Learning materials created with funding from this project must be assigned a
Creative Commons license
(CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-SA). This includes materials authored from scratch, adaptations of CC licensed materials, and curated compilations. Fellows are also eligible to include existing materials that are public domain, library digital resources, or freely available to link to without violating copyright.
Accessibility: Materials adopted, adapted, or created as a result of this grant must meet
university-wide accessibility standards
Finished projects must be shared publicly via an
OpenLab
site or other CUNY supported public platform (
Pressbooks
Manifold
). If the materials are document-based, they must be submitted to CUNY’s institutional repository,
CUNY Academic Works
Projects must be completed during the 2026-2027 academic year with a deadline of June 15, 2027.
Funding Information
Faculty compensation will include project work and faculty development training. Faculty will be paid for participating in 14 hours of professional development meetings (at adjunct hourly NTA rate). In addition to this, faculty stipends for OER projects may range from $1,300 – $6,000, depending on scope of work, also calculated at the
non-teaching adjunct hourly rate
Support offered by the OER Team
Help finding openly licensed, public domain materials, and library subscribed digital resources to use
Help understanding and applying Creative Commons licenses
Guidance regarding copyright and fair use
Help assembling an organized and accessible OER
Help transferring materials onto an open platform
Key Dates
Applicants selected for the OER Fellowship will conduct work from September 2026 through June 2027. Fellows are expected to implement the OER the next time they are scheduled to teach the course.
Fellowship application opens for submissions: April 14, 2026
Online info sessions (register in advance): April 17 & May 1, 2026 at 2-3pm
Fellowship application due date: May 15, 2026
Notice of application decisions emailed: Early June 2026
Fall 2026:
September: Fellows finalize project scope
Fellows complete working draft of sample educational material
Fellows participate in 3 synchronous Fellowship cohort meetings
Fellows incorporate best practices for licensing, attribution, and accessibility into their OER
Fellows contribute to asynchronous discussion and activities via the cohort Fellowship OpenLab site
Spring 2027:
Fellows participate in 4 synchronous Fellowship cohort meetings
Fellows contribute to asynchronous discussion and activities via the cohort Fellowship OpenLab site
Fellows produce OER and finalize platform selection
June 2027:
Fellows complete and submit OER for review by OER Team
Fellows address feedback from OER Team
Fellows payments are processed
Application Details
Apply online
by Friday, May 15th, 2026.
Examples of primary course materials created by colleagues through the OER Fellowship:
Introduction to Data Science
course materials by Prof. Elizabeth Milonas of Computer Systems Technology
Communication Design Theory OER
course materials by Prof. Jenna Spevack of Communication Design
Genetics Laboratory Manual
by Prof. Christopher Blair, Biological Sciences
Medical Metrics for Health Facilities
textbook by Prof. Sitaji Gurung, Health Sciences
Infant and Child Development: From Conception Through Late Childhood
textbook by Profs. Maria Pagano and Marie Parnes, Psychology, Social Sciences
Please contact Prof. Cailean Cooney, OER Librarian
ccooney@citytech.cuny.edu
or Prof. Junior Tidal, Chief Librarian
jtidal@citytech.cuny.edu
with questions.
More information:
Open Educational Resources at City Tech
3/30 Update:
The library will close early at 4pm on April 1st due to the college network upgrades.
The library will be open 9am-5pm during spring break, April 1st-9th.
Enjoy the break!
CUNY is transitioning all student email over spring break 2026 to this new format:
firstname.lastname##@stu-mail.citytech.cuny.edu
For more information, visit the Office of Computing and Information Services
site
If you signed up for the New York Times Digital pass, update to your new address.
Be sure to:
Sign up for multi-factor authentication
Back up your OneDrive contents as these
won’t be migrated
Update your password
Get Evidence! Scholarly Metrics for Your PARSE and CV
Tuesday, March 31, 1:00 – 2:00 PM
Covers Google Scholar Profile for citations and Google Scholar for journal rankings, Scimago for journal rankings, Altmetric Attention Scores for social media, and download reports from Academic Works (and other repositories). We’ll also touch on finding individual journal acceptance rates as well as Journal Impact Factors. The workshop will briefly address books and book chapters as well as other ways we can demonstrate the value and impact of our work.
Registration
The second meeting of the City Tech Banned Books book group is coming up soon: Friday, March 27 from noon-1pm. We will meet in
L432
in the Library, and everyone in the City Tech community is welcome to attend and participate. The book we’re reading together is
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
by Alison Bechdel, a graphic memoir that is equal parts heartbreaking and humorous. Copies are available in
CUNY libraries
and throughout New York City’s public libraries:
Brooklyn Public Library
Queens Public Library
, and
New York Public Library
. Get in touch if you have questions about locating a copy before we meet! Interested but want to learn more before committing? Read a synopsis and critical acclaim of
Fun Home
Space is limited so please
by March 26. The Banned Books book club is sponsored by the IDEA subcommittee of the City Tech General Education Committee.
Photo by
Richard Patterson
on Flickr
. Available under a
Creative Commons Attribution license
City Tech has been made aware of phishing tactics to deceive students for the multi-factor authentication (MFA) codes.
Attackers will attempt to trick users into revealing their login credentials or authentication codes, through emails, text messages, or websites that mimic legitimate services.
Be aware that no one at CUNY will ask for your MFA code and no one should ever approve a MFA prompt they did not initiate.
If you have been contacted to reveal your MFA code or login credentials, please report these to the
Office of Computer Information Services
STUDENT IT HELP DESK
StudentHelpdesk@citytech.cuny.edu
718-260-4900
Library Building (L-114)
FACULTY/STAFF HELP DESK
Helpdesk
@aleonard718-260-5626
NAMM Building (N-901)
You can recognize MFA phishing attempts by looking out for:
Unexpected requests
Poor grammar and spelling
Suspicious links
Urgent language
Unfamiliar senders
The library’s new series of faculty workshops on information literacy continues this month. If you heard about
last month’s workshop
(or even if you didn’t) but were unable to participate, please consider registering for either or both of the March workshops. Here are the details:
Revising your (low-stakes) assignment |
March 18, 1pm-2pm | Participants are encouraged to bring a research-based assignment or class activity that they wish to revise to get more consistent results with students’ research efforts. The goal will be to update an assignment or classroom activity to clarify expectations about its research component and improve research results.
Please register by March 17
on Zoom
. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. Participants are encouraged to bring questions and examples to the workshop.
Part-time faculty
who participate will be
compensated at their hourly non-teaching adjunct rate
for attending.
Strategies for countering misinformation and disinformation |
March 24, 3pm-4pm | We routinely encounter misinformation and disinformation when we’re online, and even if we identify it, we don’t always have the capacity to find credible sources of information. Participants will learn and practice the techniques that professional fact-checkers use to evaluate information and find reliable sources. Together we will generate ideas about using these strategies in class or in written assignments. Please register on Zoom by March 23. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. Participants are encouraged to bring questions and examples to the workshop.
Part-time faculty
who participate will be
compensated at their hourly non-teaching adjunct rate
for attending.
Call for Applicants
Application Form:
Applications open March 19
th
and close at noon on April 7
th
2026. Before March 19th, the submission form will not accept submissions, but this is a
pdf
of the application questions for your reference.
Info Session Registration:
There will be four info sessions on March 10th, 12th, 16th and 18th, 2026. We strongly encourage applicants to attend one or more of these sessions to learn more about this opportunity. We will post recordings of these sessions on this page.
Facilitators
Natalie Milbrodt, CUNY University Archivist
Bridget Day, CUNY Digital Archivist
Regina Carra, CUNY Outreach and Processing Archivist
Richard Knipel, CUNY Wikimedian-in-Residence
Overview
The 2026 Summer Archives and Open Knowledge Faculty Fellowship aims to support 14 full-time teaching faculty members with $5000 of summer salary to expand the use of CUNY archival collections and Wikimedia platforms in the Fall 2026 semester. Fellows are required to participate in three day-long workshops at the Office of Library Services 57
th
Street offices and to use the remaining weeks before the start of the Fall 2026 semester to produce
either of the following
Lesson plans, openly licensed and delivered in a reusable format, for a course they teach in the Fall 2026 semester using CUNY archival collections and/or integrating Wikimedia platforms
Public programming that centers CUNY archival collections or Wikimedia related topics. This could be a speaker series, hands-on workshops, walking tours, interactive exhibitions, or other projects that present archival collections and wiki content and practices in meaningful and engaging ways in public environments.
OLS staff will document and disseminate all fellowship projects with funders and the public. The fellowship deliverables (whether lesson plans, recordings of public events, or guides) will be collected in CUNY Academic Works and displayed as part of the CUNY Central Archives website. We also ask Fellows to produce a brief (400 word) blogpost with reflections on their experiences developing their projects and their learning outcomes. Please contact
archives@cuny.edu
if you would like to discuss proposing a project that could only be produced after the Fall 2026 semester. We understand that some courses, for example, are not offered every semester, and want to work with you if possible.
Suggestions as you formulate your project proposal
You are welcome to develop your proposed project using CUNY archival collections and/or Wiki applications of your own choosing. CUNY archives are a rich and diverse collection of primary source materials that can inspire thousands of courses and public programs.
If you would like to use CUNY archival collections in your project, please reach out to the campus contact person listed on
our site
of CUNY archives to discuss your proposal. That archivist must complete this
approval form
to let us know they support your project.
Your project may include:
Using reproductions of primary source materials (photos, correspondence, etc.) in class that you find through research in a CUNY archival collection
Hosting a Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon on a theme connected to your scholarship
Collaborating with a CUNY archivist to host classroom session(s) where students interact with primary sources through document analysis or other hands-on activities
Developing a publication or speaker series based on historical records you have researched in a CUNY archives
Conducting a data analysis project with students using Wikidata
Using archival collections as creative prompts for writing or artworks by students
Exploring contemporary activism through comparisons to historical activist movements documented in CUNY archival collections
Teaching research skills and primary source literacy using CUNY archival collections
Developing department or campuswide event or activity that uses Wiki platforms or CUNY archives
Please note that you must also discuss your proposal with your department chair and ask them to complete this
approval form
to let us know they support your project.
Application
Applications for Archives and Open Knowledge Faculty Fellowship open on March 19
th
and close at
12:00pm (noon), Tuesday, April 7, 2026
. Selection decisions will be made by April 21, 2026, and notifications will be sent to applicants.
Online Info Sessions
are available to familiarize you with CUNY’s archival collections and answer your questions as you generate your proposal. Each of the four sessions (held on March 10th, 12th, 16th and 18th) will feature guest archivists from across CUNY who will share information about their collections and answer your questions.
Selection criteria will include the feasibility of project completion and potential for greater impact, along with considerations such as the diversity of CUNY institutions, discipline areas, and faculty rank. See the rubric below for application criteria.
Continue reading
“Summer 2026 Archives & Open Knowledge Faculty Fellowship”
About this blog
This is the news blog for the Ursula C. Schwerin Library of the New York City College of Technology, CUNY.

The City Tech Library believes in free speech, academic freedom, and the autonomy of library faculty as scholars. The views and opinions expressed on individual blog posts are strictly of their authors.
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