@barnlib June

Jill joined BLAIS's Barnard Teaching, Learning, and Digital Scholarship group in October of 2019. She quickly surmounted the challenge of building relationships with faculty across six departments who had varied levels of engagement with library services. During the academic year, she gave over fifty research consultations, taught six classes and a series of citation management workshops, and provided critical one-on-one support to faculty during the shift to remote learning at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. We are grateful for her service!

She collaborated with staff at Barnard's Arthur Ross Greenhouse to scope and build a prototype of an interactive web site dedicated to visualizing specimens in the Greenhouse's collections. She also collected and analyzed data on the costs of textbooks for Barnard courses, which informed a survey that was sent to all faculty and students at the end of the Fall 2019 semester. Next up, Izzi will intern at a small, organic farm in Delaware.

Ruby joined IMATS as an undergraduate student, staffing the equipment room and completing videography and other projects. As a post-bacc starting Fall 2018, Ruby was an essential person to get the Media Center up and running, working out the studio reservation process, equipment ordering, teaching workshops, offering intensive mentorship in the Emerging Filmmaker Mentorship Program, and supporting courses and events. Most notably, she started the student-run variety show The 1 Train is Delayed, which has had many successes, including creating a supportive space for people with marginalized genders to learn production skills. She has also been hard at work on producing her own short film, "Nadya’s Sleepover, Invite Only." We wish her the best and will miss her!

Media Center Director and BLAIS Co-Dean Melanie Hibbert spoke on a panel facilitated by Dell on Thursday, May 21st on the question, “How can technology and teaching and learning professionals prepare for a fall term that is fraught with uncertainty, and what are some lessons and take-aways from the Spring 2020 semester?" As higher education institutions move into fall planning mode, they are struggling to resolve unanswered questions caused by the pandemic threat, while also planning for multiple contingencies.

Performing Arts and Humanities Librarian and Teachers College Ed.D. student Charlotte Price is a co-author on a peer-reviewed essay published in Harvard's Mis/Information Review, "News Literacy Education in a Polarized Political Climate: How Games Can Teach Youth to Spot Misinformation."

We asked Barnard Library student staff to share how and what they're doing since we went online in March and invited them to upload a photo of themselves or one that represents this time period for them. ERC Coordinator Fatima Koli, fellow Amelia Marcantonio-Fields, and graduate assistant Jean Kim took the responses and made a Student Appreciation Map of where our students are working from.

Suze Myers BC '16 was interviewed in the spring 2020 issue of Barnard Magazine. Suze worked in the zine library as an undergraduate and returned to us after completing a graduate program in Design for Visual Communication at the London College of Communication. She designed the Milstein Center's first exhibit, Open Doors, and then worked for a year in the Design Center.

"My thesis from design school, Women’s Lib...  was specifically inspired by my time as a worker in the Barnard Library — after I left, I wished every library could be as radical, warm, and inclusive as the community there."

As part of Reunion Reimagined 2020, join us for a conversation between Martha Tenney, Director of the Barnard Archives and Special Collections, and Rona Wilk ’91, chair of the Reunion Committee. They will give an introduction to the Barnard Archives and discuss how students and alums have preserved their Barnard histories.

The AV team supported the Barnard College Celebration of the Class of 2020 on Monday, May 18 at 4 p.m. EDT, via Zoom Webinar. The celebration stream can be viewed here.

The Digital Humanities Center, Center for Engaged Pedagogy, and IMATS hosted a three-day, virtual intensive for faculty to design assignments that critically engaged with digital technologies. The Thinking Digitally Summer Institute (May 26-28th) was attended by 11 faculty members from six humanities departments. Over the course of three days, faculty examined and discussed digital pedagogy methods and completed online training modules, for digital humanities platforms, designed by Elana Altman, Rachel James, Marko Krkeljas, Vani Natarajan, Sondra Phifer, Taylor Faires, Miranda Jones-Davidis, Miriam Neptune, and Alicia Peaker.

Ben Rosner, in collaboration with faculty and staff from Institutional Research, the Provost's Office, and the CEP constructed, tested, and distributed a course feedback questionnaire to all Barnard students to replace traditional course evaluations. The questionnaire focused on student's learning experiences before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, asking for feedback around virtual learning environments.

Zine Librarian Jenna Freedman Zoomed into three Brooklyn Emerging Leaders Academy (BELA) ethnic studies classes taught by Sara Yukimoto-Saltman to kick off their unit on zines. Students in the 9th and 10th grade classes learned about zines and the Barnard Zine Library in one session, and made their own one-page folding zines in a second one.