One of the things I like most about my job is being part of my college and university community. CUNY (the City University of New York) is a unique institution — the largest urban public university system in the U.S. — and New York City College of Technology (typically referred to as City Tech), where I work, is unique within the CUNY system. The college’s history is interesting: founded in 1946 as the New York State Institute of Applied Sciences, it was renamed New York City Community College in 1953 — the first community college in NYC. City Tech joined the CUNY system in 1964, and the Voorhees Technical Institute merged into the college in 1971 (itself an institution with roots dating back to 1881). In 1983 City Tech became a comprehensive college and began to offer 4 year degrees as well as 2 year degrees. With 10 new baccalaureate programs added in the past 15 years, in 2013 the college began to graduate more bachelors than associates students.
Like the college, the library has gone and continues to go through changes. We’ve been lucky enough to add several faculty and staff lines in the library, which has helped as student enrollment has shot up from about 12,000 to over 17,000 in the past decade. We’ve been able to make more technology available for students and have increased our information literacy efforts as well, including single session instruction and two semester length courses. It’s apparent to library workers as well as the students, faculty, and staff at the college that the library needs more space, especially as the number of students on campus continues to grow. So we’ve been gathering data to help us make that case. A new building is going up on campus and, while the library’s not slated to move to new digs, we have lots of great ideas for how we can use some of the space that will be freed up to benefit our college community.
Historically our collections have been curriculum-driven, and they continue to be today. But as the curriculum changes to focus increasingly on baccalaureate students, how will our collections strategies need to change? As part of a large university we’re lucky to have access to many resources within the CUNY campus libraries, both by request and on-site (and the latter may not be as onerous as it sounds depending on what part of NYC you’re coming from and going to). City Tech is also home to several degree programs — Hospitality Management and Entertainment Technology, just to name two — in which the major coursework is highly hands-on and may rely less on the kinds of resources that academic libraries have traditionally offered access to.
On the other hand, with the rise in baccalaureate students we’ve also seen an expansion of opportunities for undergraduate research at City Tech. The advanced research strategies workshop we offer for our undergraduate honors research scholars (positions that pay a modest stipend to students) have slowly but surely become standing room only, and the student research poster session held at the end of each semester has overflowed the bounds of the rooms that once housed it, spilling out into hallways and lounge areas. For their specialized research with faculty mentors, these students may need access to resources and services that we haven’t always offered in our library, beyond what’s required for their coursework.
For a variety of reasons I’m not the biggest fan of conversations about the future of libraries. They too often seem to turn into techno-evangelism and can align closer with corporate interests than makes me comfortable. Our present — what’s happening right now at my library (and probably yours, too) — is much more interesting and exciting, and I’m enjoying the opportunity that my colleagues and I have to focus on meeting our students’ changing needs in real time.
