The Organizing Resource Library (ORL) is a free and fully accessible digital library and archive of mutual aid organizing tools and oral histories—created for, by, and in collaboration with mutual aid organizers in New York City. It exists to preserve, and make openly available, materials from mutual aid work in marginalized communities across NYC that were devastated during the COVID-19 crisis. In this presentation representatives from the ORL will share what they’ve accomplished during the grant period, successes that were made possible through the support of the grant, and challenges the collective encountered.

The CUNY Digital History Archive (CDHA) used its 2020-2021 METRO Equity in Action grant to support the digitization and curation of historical materials documenting three movements that aimed to make access to public higher education more equitable toward and inclusive of New York City’s diverse residents. Based at the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), the CDHA, established in 2011, is a community-curated digital public archive and portal that provides scholars, students, and the broader public online access to archival materials related to the rich history of CUNY, the nation’s largest urban public university system. Working under the direction of Professor Stephen Brier (CDHA Co-Director and Chief Historian) and Chloe Smolarski (CDHA Collections Manager), the CDHA hired three Urban Education doctoral students to select documents, create metadata, and add descriptive materials to make accessible collections related to: The efforts in the late 1960s of African American residents in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood to push CUNY to found a new public college in their community (Juliet Young) The movement to found a Puerto Rican Studies Program at Brooklyn College in the early 1970s (Gisely Cólon López) The activities of SLAM! (Student Liberation Action Movement), a group of CUNY activists in the 1990s that fought for increased public funding for CUNY (Lucien Baskin) The new materials will become accessible via the CDHA website by late October 2021.

Designing and building out websites with their "archivability" in mind from the early planning stages will ensure that the content being produced is more readily preservable and will remain accessible to users and cultural heritage researchers well into the future. Join Sumitra Duncan, Head of the Web Archiving Program at the New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC) and Web Archive Lead at the Frick Art Reference Library, for a webinar presentation from her perspective as a web archivist on recommended practices for developing more easily archivable websites. Attendees can expect to: Gain insights on the significance of the practice of web archiving Identify known challenges to archiving certain types of born-digital content Get practical guidance and recommendations for producing web-based content that is more likely to be successfully web archived and preserved in the long term Sumitra Duncan is the Head of the Web Archiving Program for the New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC), which consists of the Frick Art Reference Library and the libraries and archives of the Brooklyn Museum and the Museum of Modern Art. She co-founded and co-coordinates the Web Archiving Special Interest Group of the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) and the Archive-It New York Users Group. Sumitra has previously led web archiving workshops for the Digital Preservation Outreach and Education Network (DPOE-N), the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO), ARLIS/NA, the Frick Art Reference Library's Digital Art History Lab, and The New School’s Parsons School of Design. She holds an MSLIS from Pratt Institute with Advanced Certificates in Archives and Museum Libraries.

With the support of METRO’s Equity in Action grant program, the Brooklyn Public Library and The New York Public Library worked in partnership with BookOps, which serves the cataloging needs of both institutions, to begin aligning their public catalogs with their values by identifying and replacing the subject headings “illegal aliens” and “aliens” with more inclusive terminology. An investigation by the project team determined that controlled vocabulary at the local level would be the most effective route for changing these headings. The project also included a number of public-facing initiatives to educate library professionals and the general public about the larger context of these cataloging efforts, resulting in workflow documentation for the library profession as well as curricular materials for educators. The project team partnered with THE CITY newsroom to convene a series of focus groups with staff and patrons to better understand the impact of language choice on library access for immigrant communities in New York City. At the same time, both libraries developed a robust programming series including panel discussions, film screenings and youth conversation groups to bring the themes raised by the project to a larger audience. This presentation will address all three components of the project: cataloging, programs, and community engagement. Panelists will give a concise overview of the metadata work, which focused on the creation of new subject authority records to replace the Library of Congress headings in the public catalogs of both libraries, as well as detail how the project team approached the community-focused programming series and engagement efforts, and the outcomes of those activities.

Join our Economics & Business METRO community for our fall event at Bryant Park. Meet at the Josephine Shaw Lowell Memorial Fountain. We will share updates while social distancing: BYO coffee and mask! After catching up, we will advance to SNFL for an informal walkthrough of the 5th floor Business Center and rooftop terrace. (Masks are currently required at all times in NYPL buildings, so we will save an official tour for a later date.) In the event of rain, we will cancel. Please register for contact tracing purposes.

Linking Lost Jazz Shrines (LLJS) is an ongoing collaboration between the Weeksville Heritage Center and the Semantic Lab at Pratt Institute to investigate the application of linked open data technologies to the Weeksville Lost Jazz Shrines of Brooklyn (WLJSB) oral history collection. This rich collection documents Central Brooklyn’s cultural legacy of jazz history between the 1930s and 1960s. The primary aim of the project is to make the WLJSB archival collection more discoverable and accessible to researchers and the general public alike. The project also enriches and expands the existing network of jazz musicians developed by the Linked Jazz Project with an infusion of influential, yet lesser-known artists and the venues where they performed. This presentation will discuss the workflows, Sélavy tool development, data modeling, and ethical decision-making involved in our transformation of textual archival documents into linked data.

This webinar will be facilitated by METRO’s Equity in Action Grant Program Manager Traci Mark. Traci will review the main components of the grant process, including: The program’s information sheet The grant application form The selection rubric used by the program’s advisory council There will be a Q & A period at the end of the session. Please be sure to review our grant documentation before you arrive and bring any questions you might have about our Equity in Action grant program.

During this webinar, Traci Mark (Program Manager- Equity, Archives and Media Preservation) and Davis Erin Anderson (Assistant Director for Programs and Partnerships) will explore what they learned from the previous grant cycle. This session is meant to answer questions and demystify the process of what happens behind the scenes. We’ll be discussing: What we’re looking for in potential grantees The types of projects we funded last year Lessons learned during the first cycle of Equity in Action Traci and Davis will also be speaking with former Equity in Action grant recipient Melissa Gasparotto from New York Public Library about their experience working with METRO and applying for the grant.

Join New School faculty member and METRO board president Shannon Mattern for this conversation with Ever Bussey, Trevor Owens, Everest Pipkin, and Jasmine McNealy, inspired by Shannon's new book, A City Is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences (Princeton University Press): A City Is Not a Computer reveals how cities encompass myriad forms of local and indigenous intelligences and knowledge institutions, arguing that these resources are a vital supplement and corrective to increasingly prevalent algorithmic models...Incorporating insights from urban studies, data science, and media and information studies, [Mattern] offers a visionary new approach to urban planning and design. Shannon Mattern is a Professor of Anthropology at The New School for Social Research. Her writing and teaching focus on archives, libraries, and other media spaces; media infrastructures; spatial epistemologies; and mediated sensation and exhibition, themes explored in her latest book, A City Is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences (Princeton University Press). She is also the author of The New Downtown Library: Designing with Communities, Deep Mapping the Media City, and Code and Clay, Data and Dirt: Five Thousand Years of Urban Media, published by University of Minnesota Press. In addition to writing dozens of articles and book chapters, she contributes a regular long-form column about urban data and mediated infrastructures to Places, a journal focusing on architecture, urbanism, and landscape, and she collaborates on public design and interactive projects and exhibitions. You can find her at wordsinspace.net. Ever Bussey is a social researcher and media maker from Detroit. Their interests concern digital technologies and the role they play in shifting or maintaining power dynamics in human relationships. Ever’s talents include using research and digital media to construct and combat narratives through data visualization, archives, or film. They hold a BA in Media Arts and Studies from Wayne State University and an MA in Media Studies from The New School. Jasmine McNealy is associate director of the Marian B. Brechner First Amendment Project and an associate professor in the Department of Media Production, Management & Technology in the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida, where she studies information, communication, and technology with a view toward influencing law and policy. Her research focuses on privacy, data governance, surveillance, and communities. A 2018-2019 Fellow and current Data & Society Affiliate, she holds a PhD in Mass Communication with an emphasis in Media Law and a J.D. from the University of Florida, and a Bachelor of Science degree in both Journalism and Afro-American studies from the University of Wisconsin. Trevor Owens is a librarian, researcher, policy maker, and educator advancing digital infrastructure and programs for libraries, archives, museums, and related cultural institutions. Owens serves as the first Head of Digital Content Management at the Library of Congress. He is also a Public Historian in Residence at American University, and a lecturer for the University of Maryland’s College of Information, where he is also a Research Affiliate with the Center for Archival Futures. Owens is the author of three books, the most recent of which, The Theory and Craft of Digital Preservation, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2018 and has won outstanding publication awards from both the American Library Association and the Society of American Archivists. Everest Pipkin is a drawing, game, and software artist from Central Texas who produces small work with large data sets. They hold a BFA from University of Texas at Austin, an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, and have shown nationally and internationally at The Design Museum of London, The Texas Biennial, The XXI Triennale of Milan, The Photographers Gallery of London, Center for Land Use Interpretation, and others. This event is co-hosted by Code As Liberal Art at The New School and the Metropolitan New York Library Council.

As cultural institutions are at the beginning stages of reopening, now is the perfect time to examine how to do this with care, consideration, and empathy for staff and patron needs. There are likely certain parts of remote working that we would like to leave in the past, and some parts we hope continue in the future. We’ll be talking about this with Susanne Markgren (Assistant Director, Head of Technical Services at Manhattan College) and Linda Miles (Assistant Professor and Librarian at Hostos Community College). How do we do this mindfully while allowing space for readjustment and change? This panel discussion will delve into these important questions that many of us have asked ourselves.

We’ve been navigating productivity culture since far before the pandemic started. And the abrupt transition meant, for many of us, an increase in working hours, as time set aside for commuting was funneled into our daily work. We’ve had to alter our way of working throughout this time whilst also facing the necessary demands for change within our society. Now that many libraries and archives are reopening their doors, staff are shifting to acclimate to working, meeting, assisting patrons, providing emotional labor and support and so much else again. April Hathcock (Director of Scholarly Communications and Information Policy) and Kimberly Springer (Curator at the Oral History Archives of Columbia) are here to talk about it. Join us for a panel discussion, where we’ll share how our relationship to productivity has changed and how productivity culture can inherently be toxic in nature.

We’re finally emerging from the worst of this historic pandemic, and current economic trends finally favor workers. Businesses are hiring again and benefits are ending. Meanwhile, the digital divide is still an issue we have to contend with and many of the patrons we work with need us more than ever. Libraries are uniquely positioned to provide essential services to those who are looking for work. We’ve got the skills, the resources, and the ideals to truly help our communities. During this time of compassion fatigue, this workshop series presents a call for empathetic job and career services for those who need it most. We will work through the current state of library-based career services, share specific advice for providing career services across the digital divide, and discuss how library staff can assist patrons with their job searches while keeping their mental health in mind. Presented by NYPL’s Ricci Yuhico, art three of this series will cover: The limits of emotional labor / avoiding burnout on the part of library staff When and how to “push people out of the nest” Knowing your community resources and when to make referrals We hope to see you there! Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_AAKrpcEMQqCvWR0_xDE05g

Videotape (and audiotape) preservation is all about equipment: sourcing equipment, getting the right equipment for the formats you’re digitizing, paying attention to how your equipment is functioning, repairing or finding experts to repair equipment for you, and putting all of these pieces together. In this hour-long webinar, Kelly Haydon and Benjamin Turkus, audiovisual preservationists and members of the XFR Collective, will offer a tour of videotape/audiotape preservation gear, focusing on strategies for creating high quality but super streamlined digitization set-ups. Topics will include: gathering the right gear for your needs; overcoming institutional bureaucratic procurement issues; determining what gear is essential and what gear would be preferred but optional; interoperability issues, particularly between computers and capture cards; format-specific considerations. This workshop is designed for librarians, archivists, and community members with some experience with tape-based digitization and access workflows. The instructors will focus on the most prolific formats (VHS, audiocassette, MiniDV) and will cover other formats as well. Benjamin Turkus (he/him) is the Assistant Manager of Audio and Moving Image Preservation at the New York Public Library. He's an adjunct professor at New York University, where he holds an MA in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation. Previously, he was the Preservation Project Manager at the Bay Area Video Coalition. He is a member of XFR Collective. Kelly Haydon (she/her) is a project manager at CUNY TV library. Previously, she was the Audiovisual Archivist for NYU Special Collections and the Preservation Manager at Bay Area Video Coalition. She holds degrees from NYU’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program (where she is also an adjunct professor) and School of Visual Arts. She is a proud, core member of XFR Collective.

Data breaches are terrifying, and cause for a lot of consternation. Join this session with our experts Dan Ayala and Gary Price to talk through what can be done on an individual level as well as by library IT staff to avoid having sensitive information compromised. We will also discuss resources libraries can share with their communities to help them avoid such a fate as well. Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_M6yOywbMTx-PAwpDqMM7tw

If you were bored in the late 80s/early 90s you could always catch something weird on public access television. XFR Collective and METRO bring you a selection of oddities from the weekly arts-oriented show Downtown Tonight. First a stream of consciousness rant on the eve of the 1992 presidential election… “You kids do not know how much we waited for computers.” Then Craig Silver interviews poet Elizabeth Rogers on living in China through the 1980s followed by a “Cool Couture Fashion Show” at Tompkins Square Park. Last but not least Downtown tonight brings you scenes from the June 11th, 1988 March for Peace held in Central Park and an opening at the Helio Gallery for Jose Ortega. This program will be hosted by Spectacle Theater on Thursday, July 22nd at 8:00 pm. You can stream it here: https://stream.spectacletheater.com/ Program Notes From 1987 to 1993, artists Craig Silver and Lynn Seeney produced Downtown Tonight. They interviewed and profiled visual artists, musicians, writers and filmmakers and documented the cultural scene of New York’s Lower East Side. They also presented original experimental video work. The videotaped programs were aired on Channel D on Manhattan Cable TV, which evolved into Manhattan Neighborhood Network. These episodes of Downtown Tonight were lovingly transferred by XFR Collective from big ‘ol U-matic tapes on a rack built for the Metropolitan New York Library Council community. The tapes are among the shelf stock of the Monday Wednesday Friday Video Club, which was a video store and distribution network founded in 1986 by artist Alan Moore. Sort of like a DIY Blockbuster, the idea was to bypass the gallery system of a screen in a white box, and bring video art directly to viewers at home at affordable prices. In 2018, XFR Collective began working with Moore to slowly digitize each tape in the MWF collection. XFR Collective partners with artists, activists, and community organizations to lower the barriers to preserving at-risk audiovisual media – especially unseen, unheard, or marginalized works – through digitization, screenings, educational workshops, and pop-up events. Operating through a non-hierarchical model, we work to create an inclusive environment in which to explore practical methods for media preservation, archiving, and access.

Major data breaches are increasingly front and center in the news, and for good reason. We live in an age where foreign actors can shut down major infrastructure from thousands of miles away. Join this session with security experts Dan Ayala and Gary Price to learn exactly how events like the Colonial Pipeline occur, who is behind these terrible events, and what, precisely, this has to do with libraries and archives. We will follow up this session with a specific presentation about what steps you and your library can take to prevent these giant headaches. Register here.

Feel free to circulate broadly! METRO’s Digital Preservation SIG has become the Data Lifecycle Interest Group! Come to our first community meeting where the co-organizers will share more about the group’s expanded mission, introduce ourselves to each other, and share our collective and developing vision for future programming. When: July 7, 2021 at 2pm EDT (18:00 UTC) RSVP here! After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. ​We’re looking forward to ‘seeing’ you there! Also, note that the name of this list will be changed soon from ‘digipress@lists.metrolists.org’ to ‘datalifecycle@lists.metrolists.org​.’ Thanks from the co-organizers, Stephen Klein (CUNY Graduate Center) Vicky Rampin (NYU) Jessica Wagner Webster (Baruch-CUNY) ABOUT THE DATA LIFECYCLE SIG: The Data Lifecycle Special Interest Group will broadly touch upon all aspects of data. Join this group for presentations and discussions on data extraction, massaging & normalization, exports, archiving, preservation, sustainability and reproducibility.

In this presentation, members of the Prison Library Support Network will discuss: (1) how our organization started and how we build our relationships; (2) the projects we have done: from the asks that inspire them, to the way we work through them as a non-hierarchical organization, to their impact in the library and prison communities; and (3) what brought us to and keeps us tied to this work—how it brings joy and how it fosters radical information liberation, i.e., information access alternatives that subvert power structures. We’ll discuss how attendees can do similar work and end with a Q&A. Our goal for this presentation is to offer our work as one model for organizing sustainable, volunteer-powered information networks and services, and to encourage reflection on what our roles as information workers look like in the struggle for collective liberation. This webinar was initially presented as part of the 2021 Urban Libraries Conference. Register here About PSLN: The Prison Library Support Network (PLSN) is an information-based collective founded in 2016 to support incarcerated people by organizing networks for sharing resources and building community around prison abolition in libraries, archives, and other knowledge-based institutions. Much of our work is driven by the question: how can we use our skills and resources as information workers to create and support spaces for abolition? We believe abolition is a form of collective liberation and information workers are uniquely positioned to, as library worker Liv Graham describes, “think outside the box—aka outside of Institutions—to build open systems of access to information about, for, and by us, working toward an attainable vision of collective information resources that support liberation and abolition through access.”

Katelyn Angell and Elvis Bakaitis will present different strategies on how to help undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty to locate appropriate grants/funding. They will describe a recent grants initiative led by the Mina Rees Library (The Graduate Center), including interdepartmental partnerships and the CUNY Research Foundation. Initiatives and resources developed to promote external scholarships for undergraduates at Long Island University-Brooklyn will also be discussed. Elvis Bakaitis is currently the Interim Head of Reference at The Graduate Center’s Mina Rees Library. They are proud to serve on the University LGBTQ Council; the board of CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies; and LACUNY Diversity & Multicultural Roundtable. Bakaitis holds an MLIS from Queens College and Certificate in Geriatric Care Management from the Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging at Hunter College. Katelyn (Kate) Angell is Associate Professor/Coordinator of Library Instruction at Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus and Adjunct Reference Librarian at The CUNY Graduate Center. She holds a BA from Wesleyan University, MLIS from St. John’s University, and MA in Psychology from LIU Brooklyn. Kate’s research interests include information literacy instruction, the organization of information, and the history of medicine. Register here

Join us on Friday, June 18th from 2:00 to 3:00pm for a Juneteenth Celebration. This gathering is meant for BIPOC cultural workers only; we kindly ask that allies and comrades who identify as non-BIPOC to sit this one out. Our intention is to create a space that offers community, joy and conversation during this time. Please come with a spirit of openness and empathy as we share thoughts and feelings without judgement. This call will be facilitated by Traci Mark (Media Archivist and Educational Programming Associate at METRO) and Zakiya Collier (Digital Archivist at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture).

It’s summer, it’s Pride season, and although we’re gay and tired, we have enough energy for ice cream. Join your fellow LGBTQ+ library folks to unwind with a sweet treat at 6:30pm on June 17th*. We’ll meet at Uncle Louie G’s / Piccoli Take-Out, grab treats, and head over to Prospect Park across the street. Sign up here to receive email notifications about this event. We will email you only in the event of a rain/heatwave delay. Covid precautions: We will be outdoors only. Masks are welcome. *(rain/heatwave date June 24th) This event was planned in collaboration with Djaz Zulida. Thanks so much, Djaz!

Register with the link: https://bit.ly/3hT6vEi Join our Economics & Business METRO community for our Spring/Summer Townhall event—we want your input! We’ll be sharing updates from our member libraries, debriefing our poster session event, brainstorming future directions for our group, and discussing plans for fall reopenings. Please share this event with colleagues who may be interested in attending, and join our new mailing list: https://lists.metrolists.org/mailman/listinfo/econbiz

METRO’s Library Assistants and Support Staff Association are proud to present a webinar focused on promoting and sustaining an inclusive work environment and support LGBTQ staff and patrons. Join this webinar to learn about creating a respectful environment by understanding the distinction between gender and sexuality, the history of gay rights, and the importance of learning and use people’s pronouns. Tiffanie Claude leads The New York Public Library’s diversity and inclusion initiatives. In this role, she provides strategic direction, leadership and champions the development of an inclusive environment by integrating diversity practice into all aspects of the organization. Her life’s mission is to lead with excellence by empowering and motivating a Culture of Equity. She is a champion for progressive change and uses her space to foster positive growth and development at every touchpoint around her.

This is the fourth webinar in a series exploring topics related to Digital Preservation. In this session, Vicky Rampin (Librarian for Research Data Management and Reproducibility at New York University) will discuss open scholarship and reproducible research practices, and how librarians and archivists can make a difference in the sustainability of research. This session doesn’t require any prior knowledge of data librarianship, reproducibility, digital preservation, or open scholarship, but aims to provide a holistic overview of how these manifest in our scholarly communities. Vicky Rampin is the Librarian for Research Data Management and Reproducibility and the subject specialist for data science at NewYork University. In her role, Vicky supports researchers of all levels and disciplines in creating well-managed, reproducible scholarship. Her research centers on integrating reproducible practices into the research workflow, advocating openness for all research materials, and contributing to open infrastructure. She works on Taguette, a free and open source qualitative data analysis tool, and ReproZip, a free and open source tool for full computational reproducibility. Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_YU52PyQGTwOOR23Kj_uEng Special thanks to CUNY-Graduate Center’s Stephen Klein and New York University’s David Millman for their assistance developing this series.

This is the fourth webinar in a series exploring topics related to Digital Preservation. In this session, Vicky Rampin (Librarian for Research Data Management and Reproducibility at New York University) will discuss open scholarship and reproducible research practices, and how librarians and archivists can make a difference in the sustainability of research. This session doesn’t require any prior knowledge of data librarianship, reproducibility, digital preservation, or open scholarship, but aims to provide a holistic overview of how these manifest in our scholarly communities. Vicky Rampin is the Librarian for Research Data Management and Reproducibility and the subject specialist for data science at NewYork University. In her role, Vicky supports researchers of all levels and disciplines in creating well-managed, reproducible scholarship. Her research centers on integrating reproducible practices into the research workflow, advocating openness for all research materials, and contributing to open infrastructure. She works on Taguette, a free and open source qualitative data analysis tool, and ReproZip, a free and open source tool for full computational reproducibility. Register here. Special thanks to CUNY-Graduate Center’s Stephen Klein and New York University’s David Millman for their assistance developing this series.