We’re thrilled to share the Call for Applications for a new course from the Cross-Reference Coalition: an interdisciplinary community learning project from the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO).
The program launched in Fall 2025 with a course on The Misfit, and we now invite you to join us for our second course, in Spring 2026!
Course Description: Search & Discovery
Search engine optimization and generative artificial intelligence have progressively destroyed web search. Meanwhile, expanding privatization, surveillance, and the militarization of our public spaces have impeded our capacity to explore and inhabit the physical world — and the instrumentalization and “optimization” of education have impeded organic, curiosity-driven investigation. In this course, we’ll gather to survey the state of search and discovery, reclaim lost methods, explore strategies for circumventing automation and extraction, imagine new modes of orienteering, and conjure up new terrains of wonderment. Our journey will encompass the history of exploration and cartography, legacies of inquiry, tools of discovery, theories of curiosity, and counter-algorithmic means of “finding things out.” We’ll aim to engage with navigators and user-experience designers, tour guides and psychologists, artists and archaeologists. Each weekly session will exemplify a different mode of finding and exploring New York’s terrains and treasures, and our work will culminate in the collective creation, through the summer and early fall, of a scavenger hunt, map, or field guide promoting discovery of the city’s knowledge institutions and cultural heritage.
This is a 10-week graduate-level class with a collaborative project to follow. Cultural heritage workers and graduate students affiliated with METRO’s member institutions are eligible to apply. We’re also excited to welcome applications from NYC-based artists and designers.
When: Wednesday afternoons from 3:30pm – 6:00pm starting February 18th, 2026
Where: mainly in-person at sites across New York City
Instructor: Dr. Shannon Mattern, METRO’s Director of Creative Research and the 2025 Kluge Chair of Modern Culture at the Library of Congress.
Cost: $125 with discounted METRO member and solidarity rates
To learn more, check out the call for applications or attend the information session on Monday, December 8th, 12:00 pm ET.
Applications will be accepted through Wednesday, January 7th, 2026. Apply here!
