Weekly Reflections

As my field work is limited by my full-time work at NYPL, I sadly only have one day a week to dedicate to Seward Park Campus. This past Wednesday was dominated by the Dust Child book tour, which you can read my reflection on in this same portfolio. Prior to beginning setup, however, I did manage to get in some time managing our collection. My efforts this past week were dedicated to our collection of comics and graphic novels, a format near and dear to my heart.

At the risk of sounding pedantic, I'd like to clarify my personal use of format terminology. By "comics", I mean the trade paperback collections of material originally published as individual "floppies" by the Big Two (Marvel and DC) as well as many renowned indies like Image, Dark Horse, and Boom Studios. These are often (but not always) long-form, serial titles using established characters and created by a changing roster of writers, artists, and letterers. In contrast, I use the term "graphic novel" to apply to standalone graphic works which are usually originally published in their entirety. Some notable recent examples include Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki, and The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen.

This distinction becomes very important when cataloging and shelving items. Graphic novels tend to fit well with established practices for other types of fiction, usually organized on the shelf by author's last name. However, that system is an extraordinarily poor fit for comics. In terms of findability and browsability, a given patron will likely be looking for a specific character rather than an author, or perhaps a new book within an extended comics universe. To this end, I filtered the collection at Seward Park Campus Library to separate all the comics from the graphic novels.

The graphic novels I left as they were, arranged by the author's last name. For the comics, I utilized the same system I use in my home library. They were first separated by publisher, resulting in four sections (Marvel, DC/Vertigo, Image, and Boom/Boom Box!). These sections were then organized alphabetically by series title, and finally chronologically by original publish date. This resulted in the photos you can find in the gallery. A notable success with this re-shelving project is bringing the 1998 Christopher Priest run on Black Panther side-by-side with the iconic 2016 run by Ta-Nehisi Coates, when they were originally separated by every author from D to O.

As glad as I am to see comics and graphic novels gaining more and more respect as an appropriate way to enjoy reading, the intricacies of the comics industry necessitates certain adjustments of traditional cataloging processes. I'm excited to continue working with these collections as I move forward with my career.

As week three of this DFW coincided with the NYC public school mid-term break, I didn't have the opportunity to physically enter the library. Instead, I spent the day with an eye towards the upcoming midterm report, wherein progress towards the agreed-upon fieldwork learning objectives will be assessed. Specifically, I worked on my number one objective of hosting a program for the patrons of the SPCL. This objective also coincides with my work at the NYPL, where I'm planning programming to begin in the summer after the current quarter ends. As these mark some of my first forays into larger-scale programming, I'm approaching the projects as limited-time prospects; for SPCL I'm planning to host a zine workshop for Mental Health Awareness Month, and for NYPL I am hoping to create YA programming relevant to Pride Month. As I'm only in these positions for a limited time (the former lasting until the end of the quarter and the latter until the Melrose Branch re-opens in 2024), I'm hoping to use the opportunities as relatively low-stakes practice prior to designing and implementing more long-term, ongoing programs in my similarly long-term positions.

This week's session at the SPCL consisted of three major events. First was the hosting of a book club for Sarah Glidden's nonfiction graphic novel "Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq". My own thoughts on the book will shortly be available on my Goodreads page - what I want to focus on here is how the book club actually functioned. Unfortunately, none of the three students who signed up to join the discussion attended the meeting, leaving head librarian Mina Leazer and me seated with one of the library's regulars who hadn't read the book. While Mina and I spent some time having a spirited conversation about the content and merit of the book, we also spoke with the regular about his reaction to the title. As someone who loves graphic novels and wants to uphold their literary value, I was very interested in his responses. Firstly, the watercolor art style didn't appeal to this student, who cited his favorite artist as Tyson Hesse (best known for his work on IDW Publishing's Sonic the Hedgehog comic). Second, the subject matter of journalistic philosophy through the lens of conflict in the Middle East didn't resonate with him at all. To illustrate this point, the student didn't recognize the name Saddam Hussein - understandable, as Hussein was executed around the time that this student was born. I still strongly believe that graphic mediums have tremendous power in discussing weighty (esp. nonfiction) topics, but this was interesting food for thought as to understanding where and how either the graphic or textual elements of a work need to meet a YA audience where they're at.

The other two major aspects of this week's work were both instigated by teachers at the Seward Park Campus. For the first, Mina and I were asked to participate in a project for a career pathways class wherein students interviewed us regarding our experiences from ages 18-25. They then used our responses to chart out the steps our lives took on a "Game of Life"-style board game inspired track. I greatly enjoyed the opportunity to get to know a member of the student body better than I otherwise would, as well as experiencing an excellent example of how library staff can be called on for reasons outside the typical arena of librarianship. In contrast, the last part of my work day was the construction of a book list/display at the request of one of the ELA teachers. This teacher's class had just finished reading “The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls, and wanted the library to show off some similar and related titles. Pictures of the display can be found in the gallery - select titles I chose for this list include “Running With Scissors” by Augusten Burroughs, “A Child Called ‘It’” by Dave Pelzer, and “Hillbilly Elegy” by J.D. Vance. This provided some excellent RA practice, and I enjoyed getting experience working with one of the school's instructors.

The main focus of this week's time at SPCL was a poetry workshop hosted during lunch in recognition of National Poetry Month. We had a few different stations open to the students, the biggest of two variations on found poems: "blackout" or erasure poetry, and "fridge magnet"-style cutout poetry. The raw materials for these were garnered from a host of books that had been weeded from the library, mainly large collections of duplicate titles previously used by ELA instructors. The program was a huge success, especially thanks to the inclusion of button-making equipment. This was my first time actually using a button press, and I'm thankful that I got the opportunity given how prevalent I know it to be in children's and YA programming. While many students were content to make buttons not related to the poetry activities (opting instead for hand-drawn designs/slogans or cutouts from manga volumes), most students engaged well with the hands-on approach to crafting poetry. This is definitely a program I would like to expand on in my future practice.

This week's standout was tackling the book room for New Design High School, the school located on the same floor as the campus library. Mina and myself were shown the book room, primarily used by the ELA department, by a teacher representative. It had been some years since the room had been actively managed, and it showed - there were massive stacks of books no longer used on any curriculum, copies of current books separated and spread among multiple cabinets, and a great deal of old college and career pathway (CCP) materials which were no longer helpful to the students (the oldest of which dated back to 2014). With guidance from the teacher rep, Mina and I systematically emptied the cabinets of any old or unused materials, discarding almost all of the old CCP informational booklets and outdated test prep materials. The unused ELA books we took back to the library, where I checked each title against our catalog to see if we had copies on the shelves. I then used our ILS (Follett Destiny) to add to our collection those titles that we were missing, totaling at least twenty books. It had been almost a year since my last experience adding books through Destiny, and I was happy to get the refresher course. It was also enlightening to see how barcodes were handled at SPCL - titles which had been previously discarded or otherwise removed from the collection had their barcodes recycled, hosted on a spreadsheet for preferential use over Destiny's automatically-generated next-in-sequence code. Time allowing, I hope to follow up with Mina on the utility of recycling these barcodes over using new ones over the following weeks.

This week my main focus was on preparing for a program to be held the following week, on May 17th. As May is Mental Health Awareness Month, I wanted to do programming related to not just awareness but practice, with an aim towards providing students with some helpful ways of taking care of their own mental health. One of my personal standbys for programming is making one-page zines; there's very low cost overhead to give students the joy of making something tangible that also has significant flexibility in what content can be used. To this end, I gathered a selection of journaling prompts from mental health blogs and websites and compiled them into a printer-ready zine template, a copy of which you can find in the Photo Gallery section of this portfolio. I also planned to provide plenty of blank pages for students to use for self-guided zine creation, as my experience with the button-making a few weeks back taught me that students are much more likely to engage with a program if they have freedom as to what they can create. I'm hopeful that the program goes well!

As we're nearing the end of the quarter, I spent this week beginning a collection management project at SPCL, which will double as part of this fieldwork and as the "worksite practice" option for my final project in my Collection Development course. In preparation for Pride Month, Mina requested that I turn my eye to the LGBTQ+ materials housed in our collection. As a proud member of the LGBTQ+ community, I'm thrilled to be tackling this collection - especially in the current climate of reactionary "culture war" attacks on educational institutions across the country. While I would love to comb through the entire collection, the fact that I only have one day a week to spend at SPCL necessitates a more limited scope. I am narrowing my attention to two sections of our non-fiction collection: Dewey Decimal 306.76 (Culture and Institutions -- Relations between the sexes, sexualities, love -- Sexual orientation, gender identity), and biographies. The full results of this project will be detailed under the "Collection Assessment" page of this repository.

During lunch, the library hosted the Mental Health Zine program mentioned in last week's reflection. Photos of the program are available in the Gallery. As expected, most students were more interested in creating their own zines (especially in comic/manga style) than in using the journaling template. However, I still consider this a great success - I'm a strong believer in creation as mental self-care, whatever form that may take. While I hope some students got at least some thinking material as to the benefits of journaling and self-reflection, I'm nonetheless glad to have provided an activity that was fun and encouraged their creativity.

This week, I began the process of deselection and weeding in the 306.76 section of the nonfiction collection, refreshing the selection of LGBTQ+ nonfiction in preparation for Pride Month. The full details of this endeavor can be found under the “Collection Assessment” header on the main repository page. One facet I wish to underscore here is how important I find collection management to be in the realm of nonfiction, especially in the social sciences. I firmly believe in the merit of carrying titles which express differing beliefs and philosophies than my own - it’s incredibly important to have one’s viewpoint challenged, so that one can gain a deeper understanding of how and why they hold their beliefs. However, in rapidly-changing fields such as queer studies, new information, schools of thought, and cultural understandings can quickly leave titles out of date. Case in point: many of the titles on our shelf spoke directly to the issue of gay marriage and gay parenting, which are both topics which have considerably different cultural weight and mainstream understanding in 2023 than they did on their publishing dates, often the late 00's or early 10's. Weeding is a socially loaded endeavor under the best of circumstances, and has heightened stakes when dealing with politically touchy subjects such as queer theory and critical race theory. However, I believe it is imperative as a librarian - especially a school librarian - that a collection reflects current schools of thought as closely as possible.

This week was bittersweet - I’ve had a fantastic time working with the staff and students at the Seward Park Campus, and I’ll dearly miss their presence moving forward. My work this week was on finishing the collection management project (found under the “Collection Assessment” heading in the repository) by preparing a list of purchase recommendations to replace weeded materials and expand the collection. I was suprised to see that the Opposing Viewpoint series, published by Greenhaven Press, had recenty released a title on “LGBTQ Rights”. This was an instant selection, as I had weeded a few older OV titles containing outdated arguments and standpoints. I’m very curious as to the content, and will be requesting a copy from the NYPL to puruse over the summer. Although I (and many other LGBTQ+ folks I know) have painful memories of debate courses on gay rights, often utilizing OV titles, I think the series’ mission is admirable as a whole. Given how vitriolic rhetoric can be on the topic of LGBTQ+ rights, I’m interested to see what tone is struck by this new title.

I’m walking away from this fieldwork having learned many valuable lessons and having gained crucial experience, for which I would like to profusely thank Mina Leazer. The SCPL was instantly welcoming and supportive, and I’m glad to have been a part of it, even for a short while. My full reflection can be found under “Final Reflection” in the repository.