Congratulations to our colleagues who have received PSC-CUNY Research Awards under cycle 42! The range of research interests of CUNY library faculty is reflected in the many panels that granted awards.
William Casari, Hostos Community College, Art History, Visual Arts, Communication Arts & Sciences Panel
“Street Life: Connecting Cultures of Santo Domingo and New York City”
This photographic essay will illustrate the crossover of the lived experience on a major street in New York City and one in the Caribbean. The streets in question—The Grand Concourse in the Bronx and Avenida Mella in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, are both urban thoroughfares with many cars, pedestrians, apartments and retail. Each street is an important conduit that supports life in its city. While the Grand Concourse is dense with a mixture of brick six-story apartment buildings, Avenida Mella has a lower profile with many three and four story poured concrete structures. How does daily life play out on each street for Dominicans who heavily populate both streets? This photographic project will document the lived experience on and around each street and will result in a photographic essay published online.
Sheau-yueh Chao, Baruch College, Computer Science and Library Panel
“The Yuan Chronicle”
This project is a continuation of the investigators’ 2008 project entitled “The Second Generation Descendants of Yuan Shikai, the First President of China (PSCREG-39-55). It is again a collaboration of Professor Ka-Chuen Gee from Lehman College and Professor Sheau-yueh J. Chao from Baruch College. In their first project, the investigators collected original and secondary sources for a book which will trace surviving Yuan descendants in China and record their life stories through personal interviews. After consolidating the resources they collected, the investigators decided to expand the scope to include the clan’s ancestry, history of the Yuan Shikai family, and records of descendants. Now entitled “the Yuan Chronicle,” this book will be a comprehensive history of the Yuan clan. The investigators have obtained a contract from a publisher, Edwin Mellon Press. In order to make their book as complete and current as possible, they decided to go back to China to collect new resources and to update the information they gathered
Dorothea Coiffe, Borough of Manhattan Community College, Computer Science and Library Panel
“Moving Image Websites for Undergraduate Education: An Annotated Webliography”
Visual learning dominates how most millennials and digital-natives attain and process information. The use of moving images makes the teaching and learning process more engaging, as the old adage says about a picture being worth a thousand words. The purpose of this project and proposal is to see if having central online presence of up-to-date information on the myriad of moving image websites is a useful teaching tool source in higher education. The researcher will do a comprehensive study to find online moving image websites that will allow professors to incorporate national and global footage, both historic and recent, into their lessons. The generation of an annotated webliography and a one-stop open source Web 2.0 platform using LibGuides will be a vital educational resource for faculty and students alike. The findings and the experience will support the development of a research article to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Kathleen Collins, John Jay, Performing Arts Panel
“Dr. Joyce Brothers and American Television: A Joint Biography”
An iconic pioneer in the field of media psychology, Joyce Brothers achieved household-name status thanks to the longevity of her self-titled advice program and appearances on TV comedies, dramas and talk shows over four decades. Because her career accompanies the evolution and uses of TV over most of its existence, hers is an apt lens through which to observe galvanizing events and trends in television including the popularity of quiz shows (she was the first woman to win top prize money as an expert on boxing) through culture battles over the purpose and meaning of “public interest” to a self-help obsessed culture. Brothers’ career has intersected, influenced and progressed with television itself. This project will illustrate her trajectory as it was affected by and affected the social, political and cultural context of the decades, concurrent changes in television and attitudes about television, changes in the field of psychology and mental health and attending attitudes, and TV’s role and potential pro-social and/or educational effects.
David Donabedian, Hunter College, Computer Science and Library Panel
“Twenty Years After: Armenian Research Libraries Today”
The purpose of this research is to explore the challenges facing Armenian research libraries today. Specifically, I will examine the current state of research libraries. Six research libraries located in Yerevan, the nation's capital, have been selected. These include Yerevan State University Library (1,500,000 vols), the National Library of Armenia (over 6, 200,000 vols), the Fundamental Scientific Library of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia (3, 000, 000 vols), the Matenadaran Institute of Ancient Armenian Manuscripts (over 100,000 archival documents and over 17,000 Armenian manuscripts), the Armenian Centre for Scientific and Technical Information (22,000,000 vols) and the Armenian Scientific-Medical Library (500, 000 vols). The instrument for the fifty to seventy minute interviews with library administrators will consist of questions based on the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) standards for libraries in higher education.
Ewa Dzurak, College of Staten Island, Computer Science and Library Panel
“Comparative history of three Polish academic libraries”
This project is a comparative, exploratory, and descriptive inquiry into a history and development of three Polish academic libraries: The University of Warsaw Library (UWL), the Jagiellonian University Library (JUL) in Cracow, and Adam Mickiewicz University Library (AMUL) in Poznan. Those libraries were chosen because of their significance and their location in three Polish regions, which fell under different rule after the Partitions of Poland. They had faced distinct policies and found themselves in different political and cultural climate that influenced their growth. This project is an exploration of a realization that libraries are greatly affected by the political and economical history of place in which they are located. Their present state is to a large degree a result of a long development determined by conditions created by three occupying powers.
James Kaser, College of Staten Island, Computer Science and Library Panel
“New Orleans in Fiction”
I request a grant of $5,220 to support research to create an annotated bibliography of fiction set in New Orleans, Louisiana. The money is requested to help defray the cost of travel to use books at the Library of Congress. These titles (rare books and pulp fiction) are only available at the Library of Congress, are not available for interlibrary loan, and are central to my project. My research is original since no such bibliography exists and serves the needs of a wide range of researchers and will be published as a book. Increasingly, scholars from a variety of disciplines (cultural historians, social historians, and literary and cultural studies scholars) have begun analyzing settings of fictional works. Without my research, these scholars would have great difficulty in locating works of fiction set in New Orleans since library catalogs have not traditionally included settings as an access point in catalog records and no complete bibliography exists.
Kate Lyons, Hostos Community College, Computer Science and Library Panel
“A research analysis of the applicability of different iOS development tools to library resource creation”
Users who are increasingly looking to their mobile devices to meet their information needs are finding that in many cases these needs are being met by commercially developed applications. Library apps make up a relatively small portion of available apps. Yet, libraries, which are society’s traditional providers of free (or low-cost), authoritative information culled by professionals without commercial interests, ought to be creating apps for mobile devices. Library content should be available on whatever type of device is emerging as the way users find information. Librarians were a strong force in moving content from print to digital formats, and now the next iteration in the progression seems to be a move to mobile platforms. This project aims to research best practices in selecting mobile development tools for the creation of different library applications, so that users can ultimately have access to library information on the devices they’re using.
Sara Marcus, Queensborough Community College, Computer Science and Library Panel
“The History and Applicability of Sears Subject Headings”
Librarians are considered the keepers of knowledge. However, the very method in which this knowledge is kept can cause confusion, not only for the patron seeking the knowledge held, but also for the librarian unfamiliar with the methods used in cataloging and classifying books. Changing terms, or terms that do not change and thus portray what today could be considered bias or prejudice, can cause confusion or even worse embarrassment in searching the vast knowledgebase available. While there has been much attention paid to the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), limited attention has been paid to the development and application of the Sears Subject Headings (Sears). Librarians are known for their organizational work, particularly catalogers who organize the knowledge in the library into a seemingly accessible order. Based on a prior PSC-CUNY grant-funded research, this research will trace the creation and application of Sears Subject Headings through analysis of preliminary materials in the Sears Subject Headings volumes.
Devin McKay, Queensborough Community College, Computer Science and Library Panel
“American Benedictine Libraries: A Comparison at Three Monasteries”
The proposed project is an investigation of three Benedictine monastic libraries in the United States. Very little has been written about American monastic libraries yet monastic libraries have played an important part in the culture of librarianship. The libraries included in the project are all located in Benedictine monasteries, founded in the late nineteenth century. But they are also very different from each other. One library contains approximately 15,000 volumes. Another, substantially larger, serves a population of seminarians in addition to scholars. The third library, located in a small monastery, is attached to a college. The investigator will compare libraries, looking at such aspects as uniqueness of the collections and how they are used. Library publications such as Libraries & the Cultural Record and Library & Information History would be likely to publish articles on this topic.
Maura Smale, New York College of Technology, Computer Science and Library Panel
“The Scholarly Habits of Undergraduate Students at CUNY, Phase III”
This research project uses ethnographic methods to examine the scholarly behavior patterns of undergraduates across six CUNY colleges. It builds on a study begun in 2009 at City Tech and Brooklyn College (Phase I), and continuing during 2010-2011 at four additional CUNY campuses (Phase II). During Phase III we will hire a research assistant to transcribe our recorded interviews and assist with processing our data. As we review and code the data we will undertake a detailed comparative analysis of our results and prepare them for dissemination and publication. Results from this study of students across the urban, public, commuter colleges of CUNY are a unique contribution to research on student scholarly habits and our understanding of the undergraduate experience. This research has wide-ranging implications for students and faculty across the university, and promises to offer evidence for developing and improving research and instruction services in the library and beyond.
Cynthia Tobar, CUNY Grad Center, Interdisciplinary Panel
“Grassroots Organizing and Working-Class Feminist Activism at Welfare Rights Initiative”
I propose to create a digital oral history archive documenting the Welfare Rights Initiative (WRI), a grassroots student activist and community leadership training organization located at Hunter College. I wish to examine, via these oral history interviews, social movement activity at the level of a grassroots organization as exemplified by the WRI, which was developed to aid student welfare recipients to become agents of social change and actively involve them with policymaking. I believe this social justice organization exemplifies not only grassroots organizing efforts in New York City, but also the history of working-class feminist activism in the United States. This project will document WRI’s progression from a student and faculty-led grassroots movement to its present incarnation as a student advocacy organization. It will provide students and scholars of social movements a positive working example of how women from various backgrounds can band together and enact social change.
