Exhibit Dates: January 26, 2023 – June 30, 2023 Exhibit Location: Barham Rotunda
Black History
Black History Month gives the Queens College Library the opportunity to celebrate and honor the efforts of QC students and faculty who sought social justice for all by their participation in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, especially the Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964. Starting in 2009, Queens College Library’s Special Collections and Archives (SCA) began collecting materials from alumni, faculty, and community members involved in these movements that now constitute part of the Civil Rights Collection of the photographs, printed materials, and miscellanea seen in the present exhibition documenting experiences of the participants that speak to the courage and optimism as well as to the rich history of QC activism during the civil rights movement.
In 1989, the QC library clock tower was dedicated to the memory of James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman (a QC student), and Michael Schwerner, civil rights activists who were murdered during the Congress of Equality’s (CORE) Freedom Summer project of 1964 by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Their deaths have inspired countless others to continue the struggle for equality and justice for all Americans.
Women History
The inclusion of materials supporting Women History movement in the exhibition bridges the coordinated efforts of the suffragists across centuries and countries for abolitionism and women’s rights by demanding change to the voting laws. The suffragists understood the persuasive power of language and utilized postcards to spread their textual information; propagated visibility through marches and campaigns; and contributed to political empowerment through the visual arts (posters, collages, buttons, et al) to connect to the great and just causes of human history in order to disseminate their message. Their sense of energy and urgency established a new and formidable expression in the world that ultimately changed cultural perceptions and reshaped the discourse of American democracy for the better.
You’re invited! Douglass Day 2023, February 14, featuring a Transcribe-A-Thon of the papers of Mary Ann Shadd Cary.
Douglass Day is a collective act of radical love for Black history, and an event that helped inspire the creation of Black History Month.
Details for Queens College:
Date: 2/14
Location: Queens College Library Room 225
Time: 12:30pm – 2pm
Light refreshments will be provided!
Douglass Day is an annual program that marks the birth of Frederick Douglass. Each year, we gather thousands of people to help create new and freely available resources for learning about Black history. We frequently focus on important Black women’s archives, such as Anna Julia Cooper (2020) and Mary Church Terrell (2021).
This year, Douglass Day features a transcribe-a-thon of the papers of Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823-1893), who “was one of the earliest Black women to edit a newspaper, serve as a Civil War recruiter, attend law school, and so much more” according to the Douglass Day website. The organizers of the event “are pleased to be partnering with the Archives of Ontario, Libraries and Archives Canada, and many others. Together we are presenting newly digitized and fascinating collections from Shadd Cary’s long and fascinating life.”
The event is organized by Transformative Learning in the Humanities and will run at three CUNY campuses. A transcribe-a-thon is an event in which people gather in person or online to work simultaneously on a crowdsourcing project. We share cool finds and more on social media, connecting across all of our locations.
Please register (RSVP) at the link above if you plan to attend in-person at Queens College Library!
We also encourage anyone who is unable to attend in person to join the live stream on YouTube, and contribute transcriptions for the project on February 14. Visit douglassday.org for more details!
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.
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!
The QC Library is pleased to inform library users that they will no longer need to remember another username and password to access interlibrary loan (ILL). Users can now access the interlibrary loan (ILL) system (ILLIAD) using their CUNY Login Credentials. Your CUNY Login credentials follow the pattern: Firstname.LastnameNN@login.cuny.edu, where “NN” is the last 2+ digits of your CUNY EMPLID.
When users select Interlibrary Loan from any access points on the QC Library website or catalogue, OneSearch, they will see a Login to ILLIAD button. By selecting that button, users will be prompted to login with their CUNY Login Credentials.
Should you have any questions or concerns, please review the ILL page or email us at illqc@qc.cuny.edu.
This past October, Queens College’s Special Collections and Archives and Professor John Wegner’s Design 1 class met to cultivate inspiration for the Design course’s final project: designing a suite of menu materials for imagined New York City restaurants.
The Restaurant Menu Collection, donated in 2014, includes menus from New York, New Jersey, around the country, and even the world, dating from 1938 through 2013. However, the strength of the collection lies in its New York City menus. What sets this collection apart is its emphasis on takeout and to-go menus, “underscor[ing] food habits and trends” that “give insight into the current economic and technological advances of a given community.”
Selections from the Restaurant Menu Collection
While the collection is a valuable historical resource in itself, Professor John Wegner saw an additional use for it: as a site of creativity and a way for his Design 1 students to get inspired. “I wanted to collaborate with the Queens College Special Collections and Archives because it’s such a valuable resource for inspiration, documenting the rich visual history of our local community,” he explained. The collection speaks to a clear history of food habits across the five boroughs, but it also displays vibrant examples of business history, technological history, and, yes, design history. Questions like “How has the ordering process changed from phone calls to websites and apps?” and “What kind of customer is the restaurant trying to attract and how is that reflected in the design of the menu?” can be explored when browsing this collection.
Students from Design 1 review materials from the Restaurant Menu Collection
In Wegner’s Design 1 class, students were asked to create an identity for a brand-new restaurant concept, complete with logotype and menu design. To jump start the creative process, he scheduled a class in the library to look at the Restaurant Menu Collection in-person, saying “As a designer, I think it’s important to have a sense of place in the world, and to be in touch with the history of your community.”
In addition to reviewing and interacting with the Restaurant Menu Collection, students also learned about what archives are and how they can use the physical and digital materials SCA collects. Art librarian Scott Davis was on hand to talk about resources for graphic designers and artists more generally, all available through the Queens College Library.
See below for several selections from students’ beautiful final portfolios!
Design by Christine KimDesign by Rosalyn GarciaDesign by Maya SpellerDesign by Laila LestageDesign by Esther WeissDesign by Ashley Mercedes
Are you interested in utilizing archival resources in your class or encouraging archival literacy in your students? SCA can work with you to provide instruction in archives at the Queens College Library. Contact qc.archives@qc.cuny.edu for more information.
Now accepting applications for the Spring 2023 Open Educational Resources Faculty Fellowship!
The Queens College Library is pleased to invite applications for the Spring 2023 cohort. To date, more than 100 Queens College faculty from 33 departments have participated in the OER Faculty Fellowship, developing their pedagogical practice in an interdisciplinary environment while saving QC students an estimated $1.5 million in textbook costs. We are excited to expand our community!
Queens College is a member of ICPSR – Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. At the beginning of 2023, it was our library data services’ pleasure to introduce ICPSR’s recent data events and resources to our community.
Welcome to the December edition of QC Research Highlights! This month, we will feature a few articles by QC faculty authors who are interested in bilingualism, cultural exchange, and the migration of literary forms from one language to another.
Thanks to all the authors who have contributed their works.
All the works featured in this series are available to read and download for free from CUNY Academic Works.
Education
Embracing multilingualism to improve pedagogy, Marcela Ossa Parra (Elementary and Early Childhood Education) and co-author Patrick Proctor of Boston College argue for a pedagogy of translanguaging in their article, “The Translanguaging Pedagogies Continuum.” Translanguaging pedagogy steps away from monolingualism to integrate students’ home languages and other communicative repertories. The authors, using the metaphor of the corriente (current) put translanguaging pedagogical practices along a three-point continuum (listening to the corriente, channeling the corriente, and flowing with the corriente) depending on how thoroughly the instructors integrate multilingual students’ language practices into the class. Translanguaging pedagogy breaks up the artificial notion of language separation and creates a method of valuing students and their home cultures in the classroom. Teachers who do not speak the same languages as their multilingual students can still engage in this form of pedagogy; Ossa Parra and Proctor provide some strategies at each point along their continuum and explain the benefits of using translanguaging pedagogy – for both the students and the teacher. At every point of the continuum, it is essential to recognize students’ language practices – and by extension, their cultures – as valuable in the classroom.
On the other hand, there is also a business aspect to cultural exchange, even in the field of education. Daisuke Akiba‘s (School of Education) article, “Recruitment of International Students through a Synthesis of English as a Second Language Instruction, Social Justice, and Service Learning,” is interested in how American colleges and universities can attract international students. In particular, he is interested in strategies for institutions other than large, well-known research universities. Akiba describes a pilot program undertaken at a diverse, urban public college in the northeastern United States, with the goal of attracting Japanese students to study education there. Assessment revealed that the students in question were interested in short-term programs, the opportunity to improve their English with content-area, credit-bearing courses, and low tuition. The pilot program had a social justice focus and sought to meet these specific student needs, thus filling a niche that more well-known institutions might not. Akiba suggests this strategy may be successful for recruiting international students to regional colleges and universities.
English
Of course, the results are quite different when speakers of the language are not directly involved. Roger Sedarat (English) looks carefully at Walt Whitman’s use of Persian poetry in “The Battle Trumpet Blown!”: Whitman’s Persian Imitations in Drum-Taps. Whitman’s exposure to Persian poetry was largely through Ralph Waldo Emerson and (especially significant for this article) William Alger. Sedarat argues that Whitman was deeply influenced by Persian poetry during the Civil War, using it to move away from the individualism expressed in his earlier works to seek mystical transcendence. Sedarat carefully analyzes Whitman’s imitations of specific poems from Alger’s book, The Poetry of the East, in Whitman’s collection Drum-Taps. He shows how Whitman turns the notion of spiritual surrender found in these poems to his own ends in making an argument for national unity, while at the same time employing Orientalist tropes of the “old and meditative East.” Sedarat’s article is interested in how Whitman imitated Persian poets at the very moment that he became a distinctly American poet, achieving the “transformation of his American vision through an Orientalist gaze toward Iran.”
This is one of a series of blog posts featuring faculty publications in CUNY Academic Works. Academic Works is a service of the CUNY Libraries dedicated to collecting and providing access to the research, scholarship, and creative and pedagogical work of the City University of New York. In service to CUNY’s mission as a public university, content in Academic Works is freely available to all.
Wondering what an archivist does? In this post, Pamela Padilla, the library’s Shirley Klein Rare Book and Manuscripts Graduate Fellow, provides a sneak peek of her work processing the Alexander Kouguell Papers. Kouguell, a world-class cellist, taught at Queens College for over 68 years and sadly passed away on October 2, 2022. He donated his papers to the Queens College Library just a couple of months ago, in August 2022.
Most librarians will agree that archival science is an important branch of library work, but despite the deference there is often the question of what exactly an archivist does. There are many aspects to an archivists’ profession such as reference work, collections care, and management of new/existing material, but today I will be focusing on processing—an invaluable part of collections care.
Photo 1. Kouguell’s Elementary Photo deframing and tools.
This was the case with the Alexander Kouguell collection, which required extensive processing. Not every collection has these processing demands, but the Alexander Kouguell Collection is diverse not only in its content but its mediums. Music manuscripts required rehousing, documents required de-framing, and photographs required sleeving. Several scrapbooks had to be vacuumed to mitigate any risk of mold, and their contents were well worth saving.
Photo 2. Alexander Kouguell, Florence Kouguell, and a man assumed to be Florence’s brother eating ice cream cones in Paris, France.
Dr. Kouguell’s career as a professor at Queens College began in the 1940’s and lasted over 60 years, with an additional 10 as an adjunct lecturer. His collection offers its viewer a snapshot of his life, from his honeymoon photos to his participation in Queens Colleges faculty orchestra throughout his tenure, but his extensive career as a cellist also offers a cultural snapshot of NYC throughout half a century. The preservation of his life and history serve as a reminder of the impact that can be made by a singular person.
It’s usually the case that people unfamiliar with the profession may ask “Why rehouse anything? Aren’t the folders/envelopes/plastic slips that these materials come in enough?” and our answer to that is that they usually aren’t. Photographic negatives, photographs themselves, or oversized papers aren’t typically argued against when discussing rehousing, but even paper requires special care. Paper isn’t what it used to be and hasn’t been since the mid 19th century—its lower quality leads to an inevitable yellowing and breakdown due to acid hydrolysis, or the breaking down of the cellulose that keeps the paper together. This process threatens paper and its contents.
Photo 3. Deframing and picture processing of Alexander Kouguell’s pictures. Photo 4. Pamela Padilla using the Nilfisk® Museum Vacuum Cleaner with HEPA Filter to vacuum any potential mold.
The processing of collection often begins before the first object is rehoused. That is, it begins with the acquisition. An archivist ensures that their institution has an appropriate level of copyright and intellectual control through of a deed of gift. By ensuring the proper acquisition of a collection from a donor through a mutually agreed upon deed of gift (assuming the donor is one outside of the institution), an archivist has begun the processing of this collection.
Photo 5. Head of Special Collections and Archives Annie Tummino with Alexander Kouguell in his studio, summer 2022.
The processing of an archival collection takes time, patience, and (surprisingly enough) a bit of elbow grease. It’s how we rehouse our materials to maximize their longevity and how institutions ensure they have the intellectual control needed to make collections accessible.
Pamela Padilla is a second-year candidate in the Dual Degree program in Library Science and History (MLS/MA), pursuing a Certificate in Archives and Preservation of Cultural Materials. Padilla is one of three graduate students participating in the Archives Fellowship Program at Queens College Library over the 2022-2023 academic year. Fellows carry out real-world projects in Special Collections and Archives, receiving stipends, mentorship, and professional development opportunities.
by Max Thorn, Instruction Librarian and Carlo Minchillo, Research & Information Services Librarian
The Queens College Library (QCL) cares about serving students better. That’s why we recently undertook a survey asking students about their experiences using the library. We kicked off the survey with two events in the library asking students to fill out the survey—and handed out hundreds of snacks as we talked with students! Then we emailed the survey to the campus community and kept it open for two weeks. In the end, we received 1,475 responses! It’s safe to say this represents our largest sample of student feedback in living memory. Three lucky respondents were randomly selected to each win a grand prize of $50 cash card and a bag of QC merch. Congratulations to Eden Barzvi, Hagar Masboob, and Caleb Carman!
Ask Us
As the semester draws to a close, are you having trouble with a research paper? On our “Ask Us” page you’ll find options to reach a librarian via 24/7 chat, text, email, and face-to-face appointments. Whether it’s Psychology 101 or anything in between, we have research guides to help you with your subject!
Finals are coming right up, and with it our popular 24-hour library service from December 13 at 8 a.m. until December 21 at 8 p.m.
Our sincere thanks to everyone who filled out our survey. Your feedback will help us better serve you this academic year and beyond.
