Annie Tummino, Author at Queens College Library

Special Collections & Archives Launches Research Fellowship

In late 2021, James J. Periconi donated his collection of Italian-language American imprints to Queens College Special Collections and Archives. Lovingly curated over multiple decades, the collection consists of over 500 items that provide unique insight into what Italian immigrants to the United States were reading, writing, and thinking about at the end of the 19^th and first half of the 20^th centuries.

Thanks to library cataloger Ronnie Gomez, the Periconi collection is now fully cataloged and open for research. What’s more, the Queens College Library, in collaboration with the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, has launched a research fellowship program that will defray costs for a scholar to conduct research with the collection over a period of two to four weeks.

The collection can be browsed through the CUNY OneSearch catalog or on a curated website that includes images and essays. Research fellowship applications are due by May 3, 2023 (extended from April 2). This program is generously funded by James J. Periconi. Details are posted below.

Il Martello [The Hammer], Anno III & IV. New York: Casa Ed. “Il Martello,” 19 issues: Incomplete Anno III, IV- 1918, 1919

Research Fellowship details and logistics

Scholars receive a stipend of between $2500-$4500 to defray travel costs, depending on budget and length of stay. The stipend is provided once the scholar is in-residence.

Scholars are expected to be in residence for a period of two to four weeks between July 1, 2023, and June 30, 2024. Dates must be arranged with Special Collections and Archives well in advance.

All research will take place at the Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library Building, Queens College, City University of New York, during normal business hours.

During the summer months, on-campus housing may be possible just steps from the library. Detailed information upon request.

Scholars at all stages of their careers from the U.S. or abroad may apply. Accepted applicants from outside the U.S. are required to obtain a J-1 visa.

Fellows will have opportunities to interact with the Calandra Institute and associated scholars at The City University of New York, as well as James J. Periconi.

Fellows are expected to share their research in-progress through a virtual discussion hosted by the Calandra Institute within six months of their visit.

Applications for the 2023-2024 fellowship are due by May 2, 2023 (extended from April 2).

Applications must include:

A brief biographical statement of not more than 350 words
An overview of the proposed project, and how access to the Periconi Collection will aid the research process (3 pages maximum)
A current resume or CV
One letter of reference
One-page budget and proposed length of research visit (between 2-4 weeks)

Submit applications with Subject Line “Research Fellowship Application to” qc.archives@qc.cuny.edu by end-of-day on May 3, 2023. Applications will be judged by a committee of reviewers.

Treasures from Special Collections & Archives: Black History Month Edition

In Celebration of Black History Month, this month we share an item from our digital shelves: an oral history with Nathaniel Smith.

Nathaniel Smith is Director of NYC Men Teach at Queens College, CUNY. The interview was conducted by former staff member Obden Mondésir over Zoom in two parts, in November and December 2020. In the interview, Smith talks about his early childhood, family, and education throughout his life. He also touches on Hurricane Katrina, the organization of the BLFSA (the Black & Latinx Faculty & Staff Association) at Queens College, and the lockdown at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this clip, Smith discusses the work of the BLFSA on campus after the murder of George Floyd:

You can watch the full interview on the Queens Memory Aviary portal. You can read the full BLFSA 2020 statement and call to action here.

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Queens College Library: #ColorOurCollections

From February 6-10, 2023, libraries, archives, and other cultural institutions around the world are sharing free coloring sheets and books based on materials in their collections. Sponsored by the New York Academy of Medicine, the initiative is a wonderful way to publicize unique holdings and create new uses for public domain materials. Please download, print, and share your favorites!

Here at the Queens College Library, members of the Special Collections and Archives and Web and Digital Services units teamed up to create a coloring book based on illustrations from the text Pepper and Salt or Seasoning for Young Folk (Harper Brothers, New York, 1885). The item is one of several hundred in our rare juvenile literature collection.

Download Queens College Library Coloring Book

Please share your coloring on social media using the hashtag #ColorOurCollections and make sure to tag @qclibrary and @queenscollegearchives on Instagram and @LibraryQc on Twitter!

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85th Anniversary Exhibit Open for Viewing

The exhibit Under Construction: 85 Years of Building Futures at Queens College illustrates the evolution of the college’s buildings, grounds, and leadership from the early days to the present. The exhibition celebrates the college’s history of providing opportunities for so many students over the decades while recognizing that we are continually “under construction” to meet the demands of the future. The exhibit premiers on October 12th in conjunction with the celebration of the 85^th anniversary of Queens College.

*_{Model of the Queens College grounds, circa 1937}*

Highlights of the exhibit include a never-before-displayed 1915 photo album documenting the Parental School (the predecessor institution to Queens College); a refurbished model of the grounds circa 1937; maps, images, and printed ephemera that document the campus and its activities throughout the decades; and even groundbreaking shovels.

The exhibit takes place across three satellite locations and will be on view through the end of the fall 2022 semester.

See the exhibit:

Barham Rotunda at the Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library
Charles Tanenbaum Room 300i
Music Library in the Aaron Copland School of Music building

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Advanced Archival Practicum Provides Real World Experience to Students

By Annie Tummino and Caitlin Colban-Waldron

A collaboration between the Department of Special Collections and Archives and the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies provided students a special opportunity to gain real-world experience in the library’s archives during the summer 2022 term.

SCA Students — _{Students review materials in the Barbara Rosenthal Collection.}

_{Danica Stompor reviews materials in the “Ephemera” subseries of Rosenthal materials.}

In the course, “Library Science 790.3 Advanced Archival Practice,” students developed advanced proficiency in archival appraisal, arrangement, and access through embedded fieldwork. Under the supervision of course instructor Caitlin Colban-Waldron and with the assistance of Head of Special Collections and Archives Annie Tummino, students engaged in a hands-on project from beginning to completion, processing portions of the archival collection of artist Barbara Rosenthal. The class was held in the Charles J. Tanenbaum Room, funded by the Pine Tree Foundation of New York for use as a special collections classroom.

_{Barbara Rosenthal Photo by Rhys Votano}

Barbara Rosenthal, a QC alumnus and multi-media artist, whose donated work and materials served as the basis for all practical coursework, was an invaluable resource to the students as both a unique and compelling subject and as a rich source of information and context for the materials themselves. By the end of the term, students completed processing work on specific sections of the larger collection and will be able to translate coursework into tangible skills and outcomes for inclusion in their professional résumés.

The course is one of several initiatives developed by the Department of Special Collections and Archives to fulfill its strategic mission of “training the next generation of archivists.” Barbara Rosenthal’s collection is an exciting new addition to the archives, encompassing a lifetime of record-keeping, notes, drafts, versions, and materials for every project in many media, plus household, family, and moment-to-moment life-recording and professional correspondences.

Dr. Peter Archer Visits Queens College Libraries

On April 12, the Queens College Libraries hosted Dr. Peter Archer for an on-campus visit. We are happy to announce that Dr. Archer is organizing his personal papers for donation to the archives, including research documents, photographs, and mementos from his lengthy career as a musician, educator, and academic.

Dr. Archer is widely known as the real NYC music teacher who inspired Disney-Pixar’s ‘Soul’. As explained by the Daily News:

Peter Archer, a band teacher for more than 30 years at Middle School 74 in Bayside, Queens, served as a consultant on the movie, which has Jamie Foxx voicing Joe Gardner, a middle-aged teacher and musician. Archer, 58, helped pinpoint everything from the aesthetic of a middle school band classroom to the emotional tug of balancing a passion for music and a love of teaching.

Here at Queens College, Dr. Archer is known as an alum with a Bachelor of Music degree in Music Performance and a Master of Science degree in Music Education. While working on his doctorate for Boston University, Archer also spent many long days at the Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library archives conducting research for his dissertation, The History of The Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College: 1938-2010, which is available in the Music Library’s reference collection.

Dr. Archer’s papers will join the collections of other prestigious ACSM faculty and alumni, including K. Robert Schwarz, Karol Rathaus, and Leo Kraft. We are thrilled that Dr. Archer is willing to add his own papers to our growing repository of valuable research materials!

References:

Archivist Annie Tummino featured in JSTOR video

In September 2020, the Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library’s Department of Special Collections and Archives launched a partnership with JSTOR to share digitized primary sources on their Open Community Collections platform (more on the launch). Since the launch, the Queens College collection has grown from 700 accessible items to nearly 3,000.

In this video, Annie Tummino, Head of Special Collections and Archives, discusses collections featured on JSTOR, and how they are used by researchers, students, faculty, and the Queens College community.

Head of Special Collections and Archives Annie Tummino discusses sharing digitized materials on JSTOR Open Community Collections.

Digitized collections on JSTOR include The Silhouette, the annual yearbook of Queens College since 1941; activist ephemera; Civil Rights Movement photographs; commencement records, and more. For more information or to schedule an archives visit, see our Special Collections & Archives page on the library website or email us at qc.archives@qc.cuny.edu.

Treasures from Special Collections and Archives: Oral History with Soribel Genao

Soribel Genao is Associate Professor of Educational Leadership in the Department of Educational and Community Programs at Queens College. The interview was conducted by Obden Mondésir on September 15, 2020. It touches on many subjects, including Genao’s upbringing in Manhattan and Brooklyn, her career at Queens College, and the COVID-19 pandemic. In this featured clip, she discusses the development of the Black and Latinx Faculty/Staff Association (BLFSA) at Queens College.

And we were on a Zoom call for two hours, just dissecting and understanding who we were, but the most beautiful part was, here we are on Zoom having the Black and brown faces of Queens College connect for the very first time in a very formal way.

You can watch the full interview on the Queens Memory Aviary portal. You can read the full BLFSA 2020 statement and call to action here.

Queens College Library Acquires Barbara Rosenthal Archives

Barbara Rosenthal
Photo by Rhys Votano

The archival collection of influential cross-media artist Barbara Rosenthal ’75, “Old Master of New Media,” has been acquired by Queens College CUNY in a combined sale and donation facilitated by a generous patron. The artist’s materials are being organized and transported in stages to the newly renovated Pine Tree Foundation Special Collections within the Benjamin S. Rosenthal Library.

Born in the Bronx, Barbara Rosenthal—no relation to the library’s namesake—studied at numerous local institutions, including the Arts Students League of New York and New York University, before completing a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. At Queens College, she earned an MFA in painting. In the decades since she graduated, she built up an international career, holding solo exhibitions and residencies across North America and Europe and winning acclaim for her distinctive photography, installations, and performance art.

“Barbara Rosenthal’s lifetime of record-keeping, notes, drafts, versions, and materials for every project in many media, plus household and moment-to-moment life-recording and professional correspondences, holds enormous value for current and future generations of artists and researchers,” said Annie Tummino, Head of Special Collections and Archives. “Her archives are revelatory of the creative process in ways unique among our archival collections.”

Watch Rosenthal speak about her work, archival collection, and the acquisition here:

Stories from the Civil Rights Archives: The Queens College Student Help Project of 1963

Event: Thursday, December 9, 2021, 4 – 5PM EST

REGISTER FOR EVENT

Queens College is known for its involvement in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, especially the Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964. A year earlier, a lesser known, but no less important project took place, when 16 volunteers from the Queens College Student Help Project traveled to Prince Edward County, Virginia to tutor Black children who were shut out of public schools due to massive resistance to desegregation. There, they lent support to a long struggle for equal education dating back to the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1954 and local, student-led activism for better schools.

In this presentation, primary sources from the archives will bring to life this important history, as documented through a year-long oral history initiative made possible by the Freda S. and J. Chester Johnson Civil Rights & Social Justice Archives Fellowship Program at the Queens College Library. Initiators/alumni of the Student Help Project will also join the event for the Q and A.

ANNIE TUMMINO is an assistant professor and head of Special Collections and Archives at the Queens College Library, where she manages over 5,000 linear feet of college records, personal papers, and rare books. She is particularly interested in preserving the social movement history of Queens College and connecting it to today’s activists and students. She received a master’s in library and information studies from Queens College in 2010 and a master’s in maritime studies from SUNY Maritime College in 2020.

VICTORIA FERNANDEZ is the museum coordinator at the Harriet and Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center at Queensborough Community College CUNY, where she helps develop and revise exhibition content, instruct student programming, manage library and archival collections, and facilitate interactions with their Holocaust survivor support group. She graduated from Queens College in 2021 with a dual master’s degree in history and library science (MLS/MA) after receiving a BA in history and political science from the Macaulay Honors College at QC in 2018. She has held several positions within the field of archives, most recently serving as the 2020– 2021 Freda S. and J. Chester Johnson Civil Rights and Social Justice Archives Fellow at the Queens College Department of Special Collections and Archives.

Sponsored by the Office of Institutional Advancement

Research Fellowship details and logistics

See the exhibit:

References:

In celebration of Black History Month, this month we share an item from our digital shelves: an oral history with Soribel Genao.