LACUNY Institute 2025
The Persistent Record: Preserving Knowledge in an Uncertain World
Wednesday, May 21, 2025
Registration – NAC 2nd Floor Lobby
8:30 am – 9:15 am
Continental Breakfast –
CCNY Libraries Staff Room,
Cohen Library Room 5/337
8:30 am – 9:15 am
Keynote Speaker
CUNY DSI Room 2/202
9:30 am – 10:30 am
Associate Dean and Chief Librarian at The City College Libraries Dr. Mario H. Ramirez will welcome Institute participants, followed by the Keynote Address by Natalie Milbrodt, University Archivist, City University of New York.
What are the qualities and motivations driving our work as librarians and archivists? Milbrodt will share global and local stories of the courageous care for humanity that is both desperately needed and in abundance all around us. She will also share updates from the Cultivating Archives and Institutional Memory initiative, now halfway to its completion. This once-in-a-generation project serves archivists working across CUNY to explore and unify collections and practices.
Concurrent Sessions 1
10:45 am – 11:35 pm
Academic Libraries for Bookstore Lovers
CUNY DSI Room 2/202
Presentation. Academic libraries have begun to bolster their offerings by purchasing “leisure” materials. At CUNY Kingsborough we have created five separate browsing collections, each focusing on a particular subcategory.This session will include a discussion of browsing behavior in academic libraries and the pitfalls and benefits of creating these collections.
Julia Furray, CUNY Kingsborough Community College
Michael Kirby, CUNY Kingsborough Community College
TikTok, ChatGPT, and Google Search in the Library Classroom
Cohen Library Room 1/340A
Presentation. As our society moves forward with an ever- increasing reliance on not just technology, but algorithm-based interactions, the consequences of this evolution must be understood. How do students use TikTok, ChaptGPT, and Google search? And, more importantly, how are librarians confronting the bias ingrained in these sources?
Alice Kallman, CUNY Graduate Center
Concurrent Sessions 2
11:50 am – 12:40 pm
Using What We’ve Got: Activating Institutional Archives in Uncertain Times
CCNY Archives, Cohen Library Room 5/301
Presentation. This presentation details a scalable primary source research project that leverages current institutional archival materials to foster multiple literacies, critical thinking, and student belonging. This project encourages academic freedom through student-led exploration of physical and digitized primary sources and can be adapted by any academic institution with a yearbook collection.
Iris Finkel, CUNY Hunter College
Dorian Onifer, CUNY Hunter College
When the Web Goes Dark
CUNY DSI Room 2/202
Workshop. This workshop will utilize the pedagogy of the Question Formulation Technique from the Right Question Institute to allow participants to fully explore and share their expertise on a critical topic of the moment: how to combat censorship and keep information publicly accessible that has already been censored in the ‘public good’ of the internet archive. The workshop facilitator will share examples from their 0-12 campus library, and connections to the CUNY system.
Ariela Rothstein, New York City Department of Education– Springfield Gardens Educational Campus Library
Lunch
CCNY Libraries Staff Room, Cohen Library Room 5/337
12:55 pm – 1:45 pm
Concurrent Sessions 3
2:00 pm – 2:50 pm
Empowered Thinking: A Workshop on Constructivist Media Decoding
Cohen Library Room 1/340A
Workshop. Explore how Constructivist Media Decoding (CMD) empowers students to critically analyze media. This engaging session provides practical tools to discern truth from manipulation, fostering deeper reflection, collaboration, and digital literacy. CMD equips educators to inspire thoughtful media habits, positioning them at the center of impactful digital literacy instruction.
Leanne Ellis, New York City Public Schools Office of Library Services
Vincent Hyland, New York City Public Schools Office of Library Services
Endangered Archives: Student Newspapers, Censorship, and the Fight to Preserve Campus History
CCNY Archives, Cohen Library Room 5/301
Panel. In an era where information is increasingly politicized and access to knowledge is under threat, libraries play a crucial role as stewards of historical and cultural records. Librarians and archivists are now facing unprecedented challenges, including the removal of controversial materials, digital censorship, and the suppression of historically significant documents.
Wanett Clyde, CUNY New York City College of Technology
Carlos Semchechen, CUNY Office of the Archivist
Concurrent Sessions 4
3:05 pm – 3:55 pm
Counter-Archives and the Aporetic Condition: Preserving Public Memory Through Canadian Digital Storytelling
CCNY Archives, Cohen Library Room 5/301
Virtual panel.
Counter-archival practices in Canadian digital storytelling challenge institutional forgetting. This presentation examines the National Film Board of Canada’s projects through the lens of the Canadian aporetic condition, revealing how public narratives resist algorithmic censorship, safeguard vulnerable knowledge, and reframe preservation as a transformative, politically engaged act in today’s digital landscape.
John Bessai, Independent Scholar
States of Abstraction: Toward a Theory of Radical Democracy for Libraries
Cohen Library Room 1/340A
Presentation. In this paper I interrogate what we actually mean by democracy in the context of LIS and why it might be a less stable category than originally thought. I submit that a lens more suited to the role of libraries in, and for, democracy, may be that of radical democracy.
Keaton Slansky, CUNY Queens College
Urgent Expertise, Explored Together: A Scholarly Communication Peer-Mentoring Group
CUNY DSI Room 2/202
Panel.
In Spring 2025, a group of librarians came together to strengthen their understanding of scholarly communication via a structured peer-mentoring program. In this panel, participants will discuss why the peer-mentoring group was formed, how it functions, and how current events are making scholarly communication expertise more essential than ever.
Marta Bladek, CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Jill Cirasella, CUNY Graduate Center
Alex Crowley, CUNY Queens College
Michelle Ehrenpreis, CUNY Lehman College
Rosemary Farrell, CUNY School of Public Health and Health Policy/CUNY City College
Carrie Jedlicka, CUNY Kingsborough Community College
Michael Kahn, CUNY Bronx Community College
Eric Silberberg, CUNY Queens College
Lily Susman, CUNY Hunter College
Closing Session
CCNY Archives, Cohen Library Room 5/301
4:10 pm – 5:00 pm
To close out the LACUNY Institute 2025, Professor Nelson Santana of CUNY Bronx Community College will join Professor William Gibbons of CUNY City College of New York for a conversation about gate-keeping, diversity, and who owns and controls data.
We thank our hosts:
The City College of New York
City College of New York Archives
City College of New York Libraries
CUNY Dominican Studies Institute Archives and Library
Dr. Mario H. Ramirez, Associate Dean and Chief Librarian, The City College of New York
Thanks to our sponsors:
Gold: Ithaka
Silver: Sage
Important Locations:
Cohen Library – Located on the second floor of the North Academic Center (NAC) building.
Cohen Library Room 1/340A – Located on the ground floor of Cohen Library (cannot enter from the ground floor of the NAC building).
CCNY Archives, Cohen Library Room 5/301 – Located on the 5th floor of Cohen Library.
CCNY Libraries Staff Room, Cohen Library Room 5/337 – Located on the 5th floor of Cohen Library, to the right when facing the entrance to the Archives.
CUNY DSI Room 2/202 – The CUNY Dominican Studies Institute Archives and Library, located on the second floor of the NAC building. Not accessible via Cohen Library.
We, the members of the LACUNY Institute Planning Committee 2025, would also like to thank you, the attendees, for joining us for our first conference with an in-person component since 2019. We could not have done this without you.
Professor Nicole Williams, Chair
Medical Librarian for Electronic Resources, CUNY School of Medicine
Professor Rosemary Farrell, CUNY School of Public Health and Health Policy/City College of New York
Professor Iris Finkel, Web & Digital Initiatives Librarian, Hunter College
Professor Dianne Gordon Conyers, Serials Librarian, LaGuardia Community College
Professor Ajatshatru (A.J.) Pathak, Health and Informatics Librarian, Hunter College
Professor Mark Aaron Polger, Coordinator of Library Outreach, College of Staten Island
Professor Alexandra Rojas, Head of Reference/Public Services, LaGuardia Community College
Professor Madeline Ruggiero, Collection Development Librarian, Queensborough Community College
Professor Nelson Santana, Deputy Chief & Collection Development Librarian, Bronx Community College
Professor Samantha Slattery, Research Services Librarian, Hunter College
Professor Derek Stadler, Head of Media Services, Web Services Librarian, LaGuardia Community College
LACUNY Institute 2025 Wifi information
ccny-guest is for those outside of CUNY
Eduroam is for CUNY students/employees
