@barnlib September/October 2020

Events

Media Center Workshops, Resistance + Resilience Series

Micro-Podcasting: October 9th, 1-2pm EDT: Associate Director Rachel James and Post-Bacc Eva-Quenby Johnson lead a step-by-step workshop on adapting podcast production to current circumstances with DIY methods, in which participants can create their own podcast from start to finish with free software and the tools and tech they already have.
Story and Structure for Short Films: October 23th, 1-2pm EDT: Explore storytelling and writing structure for the short film format with resident Screenwriters and Media Center staff, Josalynn Smith and Rachel James. Attend with some ideas you’d like to explore with the group, or feel free to come if you’re just looking for some inspiration!

Movement Lab

MoLab x PIMA Collaborative Series: September 25th – October 30th: Join Brooklyn College’s Performance and Interactive Media Arts (PIMA) grad students to create experimental performance art with an international presentation opportunity at the Vrystaat Arts Festival in South Africa. RSVP
MeMoSa: Marianela Boán: October 1st, 5:30-7pm EDT: Award winning choreographer, Marianela Boán, shares insights into her practice and continuous drive to create and push boundaries in this multilingual event.
Angela’s Pulse: Fishtrap Method Workshop: October 16th, 1-3pm EDT: MoLab Company-in-Residence Angela’s Pulse leads us in an interactive workshop rooted in story-telling and building community. Come prepared to write, move, remember, listen and feel.

Digital Humanities Center

"This is Who I Am" Performance: October 14th, 4pm EDT: As part of a year-long series of programs in collaboration with Queer Asylum, the DHC will broadcast a special performance by ice&fire theatre company, which explores human rights stories through performance.
Reducing Your Digital Carbon Footprint Workshop: October 28, 2020, 1-2pm EDT: A hands on workshop that helps participants become more aware of their digital carbon footprint, and helps them reduce it.

Empirical Reasoning Center

#dataforjustice: Decolonial Mapmaking: October 29, 7pm EDT: The ERC is hosting its first event in its #dataforjustice series, featuring Majd Al-Shihabi, a systems design engineer, who builds openness into information systems. His most recent project is Palestine Open Maps, a platform for open sourcing historical maps of Palestine.

Staff News

Welcome, New Post-Baccs!

We’re excited to introduce you to several new post-baccalaureate fellows in the library and the Milstein Centers!

Katie Brady (BC ‘20), Computational Science Center
Ana Lam (BC ‘20) Digital Humanities Center
Amelia Marcantonio-Fields (BC ‘20), Empirical Reasoning Center
Victor Ohene (CC ’20), Design Center
Eva Quenby-Johnson (BC ‘20), Media Center
Hana Rivers (BC ‘20), Center for Engaged Pedagogy

Josalynn Smith has been promoted from IMATS Administrative Assistant to the Media Specialist. Congratulations, Josalynn!

Goodbye and Thank You!

Karl-Mary Akre (BC ‘16) leaves Barnard to begin a fully funded graduate MFA program in creative writing and screenwriting at University of Texas Austin. Throughout her tenure from an undergraduate student to IMATS Media Specialist she became integral to the BLAIS team, serving as a mentor in the Emerging Filmmaker Mentorship Program, coordinating events and programming, teaching workshops, and creating instructional materials.

Taylor Faires (BC ‘19) left the Digital Humanities Center in August to start her Master’s of Science in Information at the University of Michigan. Over the past year, Taylor was instrumental in producing the DHC’s vibrant programming, including book salons, Earth Day events, The Caribbean Digital symposium, and the Thinking Digitally Summer Institute.

We also said goodbye to Georgia Michalovic, Movement Lab Graduate Fellow, who was critical to the planning and implementation of the Lab’s programming, classes, and events. Her intellectual and artistic curiosity added so much more to the Movement Lab than we can quantify.

Collections & FLI Partnership Library

Barnard Library Circulation & Access Services Staff Team Members are on site and supporting you remotely, along with the team of staff across the Columbia University Libraries. Visit our Guide to Current Barnard Library Services for details on our restarted scanning and return services, and our new service paging from Barnard for pickup at Butler.

In a little more than three weeks, we’ve connected Barnard and Columbia communities members with 670 items from the Barnard collections!

252 Scan requests filled at Barnard between 8/17/20-9/18/20
408 Books paged from Barnard for pickup at Butler between 9/1/20-9/18/20

Barnard Library staff teams in Course Reserves and the Barnard FLI Partnership Library have been working to support student access to curricula during remote learning. Here’s an overview of student support so far this fall:

73 Barnard Courses with Course Reserves linked to e-resources
170 New sign ups by students to check out books from the Barnard and Columbia FLI Partnership Libraries
48 Barnard students received textbooks by mail through the Barnard FLI Partnership Library
4 Countries Barnard students live in where the Barnard FLI Partnership Library mailed textbooks
21 Barnard students received e-textbooks through the Barnard FLI Partnership Library
$13,223.83 Saved by students through the Barnard FLI Partnership Library

Visit the Barnard Library page on finding & borrowing course materials, if you are looking for course materials.

DHC

The DHC is collaborating with 7 courses and 6 faculty members this semester on Markdown workshops, discussions on ethics of design, interactive timelines, and more.

This summer, we released the podcast Writing Home, American Voices from the Caribbean - a collaboration with BCRW and the Media Center, which features intimate conversations with Caribbean writers Alexis Pauline Gumbs ‘04, Staceyann Chin and Naomi Jackson.

We will preview the annual The Caribbean Digital symposium (on December 4th), with an online gathering to crowdsource and define keywords related to Caribbean studies, coming in early October.

Watch the DHC events page for updates and more information.

Personal Librarians

This fall semester, we’ve seen many more requests for in-class workshops! Over 65 workshops have already been scheduled for Fall courses, and we expect more in Fall B. Personal Librarians have been emailing students to dish tips on scheduling a remote research consultation, navigating online library services, and the latest antics of very cute pets. Not sure who your personal librarian is? Check out the PL homepage guide.

IMATS & AV

IMATS and AV have been working hard this summer and fall for the successful launch of Fall 2020 courses. This includes:

AV upgrading over 40 instructional spaces for and supporting 48 classes on campus this semester
Fielding close to 100 responses from an all-faculty survey, and distributing webcams, headphones, tablets, and a pilot faculty loaner laptop program in order to support instruction
Offering training sessions and clinic hours in Zoom and Canvas, and responding to over 400 support tickets in Aug. and Sept.
Installing and supporting new educational technologies and tools, such as Padlet and Hypothes.is, in collaboration with BCIT and CUIT

Highlights from NSOP

2020-21 NSOP Week was unusual, but successful because of the tremendous amount of work and imagination from the people at BLAIS. Our new STEM librarian, Erin Anthony, coordinated the remote events along with BLAIS staff and Student Life to welcome new students "to campus" and familiarize them with BLAIS. Check out a handy Libguide with all of the events here! Below are some highlights:

Over 100 students participated in a mapping project with the Empirical Reasoning Center.
More than 60 students participated in "The Thing from the Future" hosted by the Design Center.
Jenna Freedman presented a zine close reading/media fluency project titled, "Ocean Capewell's Talk Show Fantasy: Inside a 1996 Teen Zinester's Brain."
The Computational Science Center held an information session for students.
Vani Natarajan developed an online Shange Magic exhibit to present the work of Ntozake Shange and mimic an exhibit now up in the Milstein Center.
The Digital Humanities Center and the Archives developed programs to highlight important collections from Barnard's past.
The Movement Lab encouraged students to make movement introduction videos in the absence of in-person introductions.
Eva-Quenby Johnson provided a great overview of the Media Center for students to get excited about upcoming online programs.

Special thanks to all of the collaborators who made the events a success!