Campus Updates

[alana]

Please share campus updates using this thread!

[Chrissy O'Grady]

New Paltz

We remain without a cataloging & metadata librarian. No updates from campus. Librarians will be sharing the impact of this vacancy at the next campus faculty senate meeting. Impacts include not being able to purchase books with incomplete OCLC record and turning off our SOAR collection.

Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha and her Chief of Staff, Ben Wolcott, visited the campus on March 2nd, to discuss the University’s construction priorities. Dean Susan Frey met with Assemblymember Shrestha to address the critical need for a new HVAC system in the building.

Librarians Jennifer Rutner and Kate Bellody collaborated with the Office of Veteran & Military Services on an exhibition titled "Artifacts of Service" in the library's gallery space. Images from the display can be found here: https://www.instagram.com/newpaltzvets/

[cfishner]

Delhi

The Resnick Library hosted a Book Fair and Read-A-Thon in conjunction with Read Across America Day. The Book Fair was co-hosted with our Center for Student Engagement and Leadership; we gave out over 60 free books to students along with other fun trinkets reminiscent of book fair items. At the Read-A-Thon students were able to earn tickets to enter a prize drawing for every 15 minutes that they read.

For Women's History Month Librarian Rebecca Snyder is hosting a documentary discussion series, Draw for Change, which will discuss women cartoonists who challenge censorship and opposition in their societies.

The library is hosting the SCRLC traveling exhibit, "Urban Renewal in New York", for the month of March.

The library is currently down 3 full time librarians. We are waiting to see if campus will approve the hire of 1 of these positions, but have not received any word yet. As such, we are being very conscious of prioritizing our workload and documenting impact.

[Michelle Bowers]

Upstate

Two of our librarians will be recognized at Upstate's Celebration of the Faculty next month. Olivia Tsistinas (Assistant Director for Outreach and Engagement) has been nominated for the Gold Standard Award. This award recognizes faculty for "work exemplifying the missions of Upstate, with particular emphasis on professionalism, work ethic and character." Sarah Lawler (Clinical Outreach Librarian) will be recognized for achieving tenure and promotion to Associate Librarian. Congratulations, Olivia and Sarah!

On April 9th, Adelaide Tracey (Research and Instruction Librarian) is hosting a workshop on how to structure a monitoring practice to track newly published research, rapidly developing health topics, and more.

Access Services continues to coordinate some great events aimed at students' well-being. This week the library hosted Tea for Two Tuesday, and next week we're partnering with the Student Counseling Center on a workshop, How to Manage Stress for Overall Wellness. Next month, the library will host an adopt-a-plant event for Arbor Day. The library is also hosting three more therapy dog sessions over the next month to give students a chance to take a break and de-stress.

[Jocelyn Ireland]

MVCC Libraries held a bookmark design contest. See the attached image of the 5 winners. Each winner received a Barnes and Noble gift card.

We are currently reviewing the accessibility of our libguides (we're not alone in this, I'm sure).

We will be soliciting entries for our annual Marjorie Thorpe Essay Contest soon.

Staff presentations:
Joe Malek and Milo Cameron had proposals accepted to present at SUNYLA's annual conference. Joe will be presenting "Roody’s Readers: A College Campus Reading Challenge." Milo is presenting "Information as Power: Librarians at the Intersection of Politics and Community." Milo is also presenting "Across the Spectrum: Tips for Teaching Students with Autism" for MVCC's Center for Inclusive Teaching Excellence (CITE). Jocelyn Ireland is also presenting for CITE and at the CCCAT Conference a session titled "The Blueprint: Designing for Academic Integrity" on promoting academic integrity through intentional course design. Jocelyn Ireland is also designing a 15 hour AI Literacy summer course for area youth on behalf of the Oneida County Workforce Development Program.

[Dana Laird]

Brockport

Drake Memorial Library is preparing for the upcoming SUNYLA Conference at Brockport this June. We are excited to host this amazing event! Poster proposals are currently being accepted: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfQj5qGQ-lDJrU-LvTtBXlxMRQwSYUa9QbmYlo6MG8xnnvOHA/viewform

The library has a student intern this semester, gaining experience and college credit in an academic library setting. This is our first time offering experiential learning and plan to continue this in upcoming fall and spring semesters.

[kstanwicks]

Personnel
   • Scholarly Communications Librarian position is posted; online interviews are underway.
   • Business and Data Services Librarian position has also been posted.
Facilities
   • The university's facilities staff are working on converting our older PhD study carrel spaces into tutoring space for our undergraduate learning commons
   • We continue to work with architects, campus facilities, and the SUNY construction fund on our master planning initiative. Our architects recently delivered multiple test fits, and we are moving into preliminary design stages.
SUNY Digital Transformation
   • SUNY Research Connect is live as a system platform to highlight faculty research.
      ○ Faculty manage individual profiles; centers and institutes manage their own entries.
      ○ Libraries provide training support; campus triage is coordinated with DfRED and SUNY ORIED.
   • Continued work to align campus support with SUNY digital transformation expectations, including a sustainable Research Information Management (RIM) approach.
Accessibility
   • We held a LibGuides edit-a-thon earlier this week to work toward meeting Title II guidelines for our LibGuide content.
   • ILL staff worked on updating ILL and doc del cover pages with language about accessibility.
   • The Libraries partnered with our teaching and learning center to offer workshops on accessible course resources.
Collections, Innovation, and Community Engagement
   • Creative Technologies Lab opening scheduled for April 2; expanded maker programming underway, including community partnerships.
   • Video game collection expanded to include classic titles via emulation.
   • Special Collections milestones include full digitization of over 100 years of university yearbooks.
   • Library faculty participating in campus AI governance through the Provost’s AI Taskforce.
   • UAlbany Libraries went live with a partnership with the Albany Public Library.

[dannick]

Alfred University - Ceramics - We received a generous donation of several pieces of furniture (soft seating chairs, a modern carrel, and a bookcase) from an alum and we are hard at work supporting digital accessibility on our campus.

[Morgan Bond]

Oswego

Oswego hosted a series of professional development sessions and collaborative discussions with Oswego County school librarians and representatives of the NCLS public library system last week. The topics ranged from AI, the NYS Portrait of a Graduate, and building a culture of reading.

The library has a reference intern this semester! The reference intern will be working with librarians to create a library outreach project, plan and run an event, create asynchronous learning materials, lead an instruction session, and more.

[CynthiaMc]

JCC has a new Assistant Dean of the Learning Commons and Online Learning, Dr. Laura Parmenter.
I am retiring this year so there will be a position for a reference librarian posted shortly.
 We are slowly putting our library back together after a "refresh"--books are getting unboxed and shelved. Everyone is excited about this!