ontheshelves

Some great news – I got my idea of having a Zine Workshop at the library approved. Below is the wonderful flier I created in all it’s glory! As this will be the pilot for our new zine collection, I’m hoping this event does well. Crossing fingers!

The workshop will be held at the Leonard Lief Library – Lehman College on Tuesday, April 17, 2018. OPEN to CUNY students with ID. Register @ https://lehman.libcal.com/event/4037074

Spread the News!

So I haven’t posted here in awhile, mostly because my thesis work was completed and I had my second baby! Yay!

Life as usual took root and carried me away. Now that I’m back at work and thinking about my research leave projects, I decided to make an effort to be creative again. This was in part because I felt like I’ve been going through writer’s block. And for quite some time, my creativeness came out through my thesis writing – which being academic, didn’t strike me as all that creative in it’s use of language. I think I’m craving something more visual and hands-on this time around.

I was talking to a friend the other day about how many years I actually spent researching women and extreme metal and how now, I feel a bit lost. So what to do….

Well, I’ve got some research in library land in the works but it’s feeling a bit stagnant. So I’m attempting to try something creative to get the brain flowing. One of my research projects is starting a Zine collection at our college library. I’ve volunteered once or twice at local Zinefests and have been a fan of zines for some time. About two years ago, I had a back burner idea to start one of my own. So that’s what this is. It’s my attempt to start my very own perzine (personal zine) for those who might not know the term. I had a name and even a blog site figured out a long time ago – ObZine. I thought I’d start the first issue off with the theme of “feminism and metal bodies“. I figured I’d have content I could take from my thesis and showcase it in a visual way. For text, I’m going to try apply quotes from women academics that I admire who are doing work in metal studies.

But first, like any good librarian, I started digging and doing some research. To my wonderment, I found a beautiful POC zine over at https://blkgrlswurld.com/. What’s great about it, is not only the fact that the creators are people of color, but they’re metalheads too – who live in nyc as well! Finding stuff like this helps to validate the research work I’ve done, and makes me extremely happy. It reminds me of when I got a copy of my colleague Laina Dawes’ book, “What Are You Doing Here? A Black Woman’s Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal“. While I’m not black, this book resonated in so many ways with me. It cemented the various ways in which the metal music scene can be deterring for a woman and a woman of color. And it confirmed my own experiences of “outsiderness” when participating in the scene. Laina’s book opens a dialogue for discussions on racism, sexism, bigotry and discrimination in metal and really gets to  heart of what many POC’s feel when taking part in any subculture – exclusion.

With zines ruminating in my head, I’m hoping it will give me more ideas on how to organize and conduct the future workshop I want to hold this March at my college. Part of the plan is to have a local zinester come in and co-teach a brief workshop for students and faculty. The final products being zines that the students and faculty make to jumpstart a new zine collection at the college. I’ve gotta do more research on what’s worked and what’s failed for other zine librarians but I’ve already got a collection proposal drafted for my chief to review and a few meetings set up for planning. So there’s that!

Wish me luck.

 

 

 

It’s DONE!

Just wanted to report that my long road to finishing up my second Masters in Anthropology is done. I actually finished up last Spring but due to paperwork and general CUNY slowness, it only posted to our online repository yesterday.

Here it is in all it’s glory – Individual Thought Patterns: Women in NY’s Extreme Metal Music Scene

And in case you’re unfamiliar with my work or have only started reading this blog, my back story is that I started this blog when I went back to school to get my second masters. My hopes was that this blog would serve as a place where I could post my papers and thoughts about my program. Here are all the posts related to my research.

Somewhat early into my program, I became interested in ethnomusicology due to my main reader’s influence – Dr. Jonathan Shannon. He taught my first ethnology class and spoke about his own work in the Middle East on musical performance. This led me to look into musical subcultures. Pair that with my 2nd reader’s influence – Dr. Aminata Maraesa – and her work  with women and health in Belize and I was hooked. Hence the birth of my thesis subject on women and extreme metal music.

At the time that I started writing, I was working at Columbia University with hopes to one day get a tenure position elsewhere (side note: Columbia doesn’t have tenure positions for their librarians!)  Most librarian positions at colleges require you to have a second masters to be on the faculty tenure line. Columbia and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (my previous employers) didn’t have a faculty structure for their librarians.

After 4 years at Columbia, I luckily landed the job that I have now at Lehman college – which is a tenured position.

So what can I report? And would I do it all over again? To this, I have a plethora of insights to impart, in no particular order.

First among them:

1. DON’T LOSE FAITH

That’s mainly because throughout, you will constantly doubt your self worth and ability to keep going. On top of that, if you’re like me and approaching your mid-thirties and a woman, you question how graduate work fits in with your career and family planning choices. As some of you may know, I had my daughter in the midst of grad school and was lucky enough to bounce right back into the thick of things, but to say it was easy would be the biggest understatement of the century. Not to mention – impostor syndrome (that’s a whole other post!)

2. FIND A NETWORK OF SUPPORT

You learn pretty quickly about the reliability of people in your program and school. For me, that was learning that Hunter’s graduate Anthropology program was very much a sink or swim environment with little funding. It fell victim to the general apathy and bureaucracy  of the CUNY system. While that was an enlightening and challenging experience for me, I didn’t fault my instructors and professors, most of whom always seemed to be both encouraging and passionate about their own work. The issues lay with the lack of communication, the bureaucratic processes and multiple systems for self registering. In addition, for a grad program that caters exclusively to night students and older adults, administrative offices were never open during the night (i.e. Bursar, Degree Audit, Department Office, etc.)!

It wasn’t until the end of my program that I finally met other students as lost as I was with regard to the systems we needed to be checking (I kid you not: CUNY has several online systems – (Blackboard, CUNYFirst, the CUNY Portal, MyHunter, DegreeWorks, and MyHunter365 to name a few) or the timelines we needed to be adhering to. And just like that, I had a network of students, who, like me, could exchange and share information that wasn’t being shared widely throughout our program.

3. REACH OUT TO YOUR LIBRARIANS

I’m not just saying this because I am librarian. I’m saying this because college librarians are often the most informed folks out there. Think about it – their purpose in a college is to help you, the student, get the information you need. So look for them, take a basic research instruction class and ask for help. Most times, students and faculty aren’t even aware of the free resources available to them through their school.

4. READ & WRITE

It sounds simple but I think a lot of students who think about pursuing a Masters don’t really think about the implications of how much reading and writing you’ll be doing, especially in the humanities and social sciences. I’ve found the more you read and write, the better you’ll become in processing, digesting and articulating your thoughts on any given reading. This will eventually hone your research and thesis work.

5. TALK IT OUT

This might go along with point # 2 but use social media and informal gatherings to talk to others about your ideas. Present at conferences! I think back to how lucky I was to submit my draft thesis as a topic for my first Metal conference. Getting accepted to present was one of the best things to ever happen to me. I gained a network of academics who empowered me to keep continuing. In addition, because my topic was on Women and Extreme metal, finding folks in my own Anthropology department to support my interests was hard, so looking outside and talking with other metal academics was paramount. I presented at metal conferences, joined a professional metal academic organization and talked at popular culture conferences.

Another benefit was in 2014 when I attended the Popular Culture Association  Conference and was exposed to the idea of ‘Vigilante Feminism” which I wrote about in my thesis!

Now that it’s over, I’ve already been asked the dreaded – “Now what?” question. To answer that is simple – I’m going to take a much-needed break to focus on my current librarian work.

In my new position as Head of Technical Services there’s much to learn about and I doubt even a full year on the job will enable me to know everything. It takes time, but I’m glad to have some new free time to devote to my career. Even better, my work allows me, or in some cases requires me, to continue pursuing my research interests. That’s because part of being on the tenure track is taking Research Leave to work on projects and ideas I have that can be published and presented on. I’ll have 7 years until I’m eligible for consideration for tenure.

My current interests are manifold. I want to tie in my love of metal music to librarianship and so starting a special collection has always been a back burner idea. Moreover, the physical and artful nature of zines and programming is another interest I’ve had ever since volunteering at my very first Zinefest in 2016. I’m a comic-book and graphic novel lover, so liking zines is probably no surprise.

I’m also interested in gaming and literacy and how that might work in library instruction This pulls me back full circle to a project I presented back in my library school days on MMOG’s and instruction. I was completely influenced by Constance Steinkuehler. You’ll love her work!

And lastly, let’s not forget a new love of mine that came about because of my thesis work – Women’s Studies. When asked if I’d pursue a PHD, this was the only subject that I thought would ever bring me back to school. As you can tell, for now, I’m tired out. My plan is to see how my current tenure track position works out. If it looks like an opportunity presents itself (i.e.- an affordable part time PHD program) then I’ll reconsider, but for now, I’m pretty happy to just be writing and talking at conferences.

So it’s obvious from my blog title that I’ve been up to a million things this past summer. First among them is starting my new position as the Head of Technical Services at the Leonard Lief Library at Lehman College. I started at the beginning of CUNY’s Fall semester, and it’s been non-stop since. Having come from Columbia University’s Libraries, the differences are both unsurprising and abundant. Unlike Columbia, Leonard Lief’s library is at the same time small and big; small because it’s one library to serve the entire college and big because it’s part of the larger university wide collective – the CUNY Libraries. When I was at Columbia, I was working only in Butler, the main undergraduate library. Outside of Butler library there existed the art library, music library, social work library, etc. (all entities functioning as part of the Columbia University Libraries). While my work at Columbia will always hold a special place for me, I just don’t think I had the right opportunities for growth in the Acquisitions unit there. That’s simply and partly due to the size of such a university. And well…that’s all I have to say about that.

My new role as Head of Tech Services at Lehman is both a wonderful and challenging position. The first two full weeks consisted of my shadowing technical service staff to get an overview of current procedures and practice and then attending meetings with the CUNY collective groups in Cataloging and Electronic Resources. The CUNY committees have been an indispensable think tank of librarians, helping me to learn and adjust to how library technical services has worked in the past.

To add, learning all about CUNYFirst and Lehman Finance operations has been interesting. Lehman functions in duality; first as it’s own college entity and at the same time as part of the CUNY branch libraries. So one can imagine there being a lot to learn with regard to shared resources, acquisitions of said resources, and the ways in which each college’s tech services functions, both locally and centrally. Plenty to learn, but challenging aspects that I’m taking in stride.

Reporting to my chief librarian has also been bright and optimistic. His support of both my position trajectory and personal scholarly interests (Metal Music Studies) has made for an accommodating transition. It also doesn’t hurt to work with library faculty and staff who are both informative and kind. The overall vibe here is that everyone wants to see the library evolve and succeed.

And the most attractive aspect of my new position – seeing a faculty and student body that is full of diversity. With my work, research on gender studies and social justice issues, it comes with an edifying feeling to finally be part of an institution that understands the importance of diversity and inclusivity.

All the new learning aside, I’ve had the serendipitous luck to be starting at a time where we also have a new college president-President Jose Luis Cruz, whose convocation speech already addresses goals to work towards for the 2016-2017 school year. With this optimistic zeal and outlook, it seems that new and exciting opportunities abound in my academic path and I’m looking eagerly towards its development.

On top of all this new change for me, our daughter started pre-k the week after I started the new job. Here she is on her first day, sans socks or shoes! Talk about a week of new beginnings.

It was a week of many firsts. I took the first day of pre-k off just so that I could make sure I was available and be by my cell phone the entire day in case of some crazy emergency.

In reflection, my husband and I both laughed when we realized how we were acting like such “newbie” parents and the obvious nervousness we exuded at drop-off. All the seasoned parents with more than one kid simply said hi to the new pre-k teacher and basically gave their kid a kiss/hug and were like, “peace out.”

Not us…we had to linger, a good 15-20 minutes at that.

We finally left when Ella ignored us in favor of her new classroom toys. Such is pre-k life.