3. Ten Representative Research Consultation Topics
1. Gendered public service messages in 19th century NYC
2. Comparing Zora Neale Hurston and Diana Ross: biography and text/lyrics
3. What did women in Chaucer's England want?
4. Information about 1945 glass menagerie production, creative team and finances
5. Preschoolers agency in gendered/gender neutral classrooms
6. Punk Jews in zines
7. Originally: finding a journal. Really: research help on Ruth Orkin American Girl photograph thesis
8. Do you have materials about Jean Frances Blackwell Hutson (Barnard '35, curator/chief of the
Schomburg Center)?
9. Political imaginings in text and performance for exilic Palestinian and Cuban activist/writers
10. "I'm investigating the female body as an instrument of limitation to women and as an apparatus
for gender inequality. I will be looking at the role of the body as a burden due to the associated
pain, stress, and required energies of pregnancy. Some of my research questions include: What
sort of understanding of biology would the authors have had access to (Eliza
Haywood, Milton, Bronte, Virginia Woolf) What were the relevant arguments of biology in
relation to gender theory What sort of social codes existed for social relations What was the
understanding of pregnancy? What forms of birth control were available? To what extent was
biology a part of feminist theory? How would Haywood have viewed the scene from Genesis?
What were feminist theories/criticisms/reactions to Genesis? Are there any medical text books
that outline the care of the pregnant body from the 18th century?" (this was for First Year
English!)

4. Instruction
• 3 Guest lectures for Library and Information Science
classes
– NYU, Institutional Archives and Electronic Records
Management: Shannon O'Neill
– Pratt Institute, Knowledge Organization: Jenna
Freedman
– University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Digital Public
History: Jenna Freedman
• 7 ERL staff trainings
• 7 Bamboo DiRT staff peer education workshops
• 174 classes taught by Barnard
librarians, archivists, Empirical Reasoning Lab staff
and media specialists taught in 2013
– 3 classes on zines for students from other institutions
(Calhoun, CUNY, U. Saskatchewan)
– 12 by archivists 12
– 46 by the ERL Associate Director (and 2 by her staff)
– 111 by librarians (not including archivists)
• 2,442 students reached, which per the Barnard At-a-
Glance page is the entire student population or
more, though we don't know how many of the
students we taught were unique visitors vs. were
lucky enough to see BLAIS staff more than once
during the calendar year
Wikimedia Commons photo, cropped

5. Staff news
• Chris Day, hired as Instructional Media &
Technology Services AV Technician
• Alexis Seeley, Manager of Instructional Media
& Technology Services promoted to Associate
Dean of Teaching, Research and Technology
• Martha Tenney hired as Digital Archivist

6. ThatCamp Feminisms – collaboration between
BCRW (Anne Jonas) & the library (Megan Wacha)

7. Collections: books, audio, video, etc.
• 72: LGBTQ YA items added
• 78: Lesbian fiction items added
• 261: Alumnae collection items
added
• 735: Zines added
• 5,562: total items added
Biggest borrowing day of the year: January 22 with 435 items, nearly
one every two minutes the library was open.
Biggest check-in day of the year: May 17 with 635 items returned over
graduation weekend.

8. Rhizomatic Growth: Peer Learning with BambooDiRT at Barnard Library
Vani Natarajan and Heather Lember (poster at ACRL-NY)
What happens when we turn a library computer lab into an adventurous test
space for digital pedagogy? A group of Barnard Library and Academic
Information Services staff participated in a peer education initiative last
summer, in an attempt to find answers to this and other questions. In weekly
workshops, staff guided each other through digital tools featured in the
Bamboo DiRT repository. The Bamboo DiRT workshops functioned not only as
spaces to learn about digital tools, but to learn about pedagogy itself. Rather
than fetishize tools, we engaged critically. Teams developed rich learning
materials, like a map on the geography of James Baldwin’s fiction. Participants
will be writing tool reviews to help developers devise “recipes” grouping tools
in thematic workflows. From this project, a larger community of digital
humanists may glean a lively, multimodal understanding of the roles and
possibilities of digital research tools in libraries, archives, classrooms, and
beyond.

9. This is what a need for empirical research support being
satisfied looks like!

10. All questions asked
during an ERL visit
are categorized
based on the
content. Often the
questions asked
during a single visit
will include multiple
categories. The
bolder lines show a
larger number of
instances that
categories were
paired.

12. IMATS superlatives
• Most Popular: Canon DSLR camera, over 2500 pieces of equipment
loaned
• Mostly Likely to be recorded: Public Speaking, over 200 classes and
events recorded, edited
• Most Dramatic: German Telanovellas inspired by Ugly Betty
written, directed, and performed in German
– Over 100 student videos created by the "Mayor" of Barnard - Ken Kim
– Over 1400 events supported by AV Services
• Best Make Over - James Room, 8 other classrooms and events
spaces upgraded.
• Most common place to make a
request –
imats.barnard.edu/requests,
new website launched

13. Selected Archives Acquisitions
• Kitty Kolbert's Casey vs. Planned Parenthood Collection The Kitty Kolbert
collection covers the fight for reproductive rights in the 1990s and
includes Kitty's correspondence, memoranda, transcripts, files related to
the court case Planned Parenthood vs. Casey from 1990-1995.
• Transfer of Physical Education Department that included a large amount
of Dance Uptown history The Physical Education came to us when Lisa
Northrop needed to clean out a closet and discovered file cabinets full of
records. The Archives staff came to retrieve them and discovered a
number of significant records documenting Dance Uptown.
• Archives collections grew by 186.72% over last year Our major growth
can largely be attributed to the shift in our mission and vision for the
Archives which now collects special collections materials that touch on
women's & gender studies and dance.

14. Selected Zines Acquisitions & News
• About 400 zines from zine maker and
collector Keight Bergmann
• Donation from zine maker, collector and
women's and Asian-American studies
scholar Mimi Thi Nguyen and the People
of Color Zine Project
• First riot grrrl ephemera collection from
zine maker, collector and Sociology
scholar Lauren Jade Martin (also largest
donor of zines)
Profiled in Kate Eichhorn’s book The Archival
Turn in Feminism: Outrage in Order.
Published by Temple University Press in July.

15. Ten Representative New-to-Us Library of Congress Subject
Headings Used to Describe Zines
1. Androgyny (Psychology).
2. Christian lesbians.
3. Espionage--Handbooks, manuals, etc.
4. Labor unions--Songs and music.
5. Menstrual regulation.
6. Ovid--43 B.C.-17 A.D. or 18 A.D.--Metamorphoses--Adaptations--
Comic books, strips, etc.
7. Parents of autistic children.
8. Smugglers--West Bank--Interviews.
9. Softies (Musical group).
10. Workaholics.

16. Exhibits
• Archives: staff & student
worker picks
– Exams from the 1890s
– Courses you could have taken
– Clubs 1900-1910
– Student publications 1977-2000
• Zines: graduate student intern
installations
– Marissa Falco retrospective
– Revision: Collage in Zines
Photo from Barnard Archives blog

17. Staff Presentations
• Drabinski, Emily, Jenna Freedman, and Lia Friedman. Questioning Authority: Standard Three and
the Critical Classroom. (Indianapolis: Association of College and Research Libraries biannual
conference, 2013).
• Freedman, Jenna. "Archivo-Punk: on the Politics of Preserving Riot Grrrl Music, Texts, and Material
Culture." (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University colloquium, 2013).
• Freedman, Jenna. "Pinko Vs. Punk: a Generational Comparison of Alternative Press Publications and
Zines." (Chicago: Caxton Club annual symposium, 2013).
• Haitian Women 4 Haitian Refugees (Miriam Neptune), "Birthright Crisis 2013." (New York: African
Diaspora Film Festival screening, 2013).
• Kennison, Rebecca and Lisa Norberg. "Sustainability and Open Access: A Discussion at the New York
Academy of Medicine." (New York: METRO panel, New York Academy of Medicine, 2013).
• Kennison, Rebecca and Lisa Norberg. "Toward A Sustainable Approach to Open Access Publishing
and Archiving." (Washington, DC: Coalition for Networked Information Fall Briefing, 2013)
• Natarajan, Vani and Maggie Schreiner. "Librarians and Archivists in Palestine!" (New York:
WBAI/Asia Pacific Forum radio interview, 2013).
• Natarajan, Vani. "Decolonizing Documentation: Librarians and Archivists to Palestine." (New
Orleans: Middle East Librarians Association Conference, 2013).

18. Staff Presentations
• Natarajan, Vani and Heather Lember. "Rhizomatic Growth: Peer Learning with BambooDiRT at
Barnard Library." (New York: ACRL-NY Annual Symposium, 2013.)
• Neptune, Miriam. "(Un)Making a Dominican: The Context for Denationalization." (New York: CUNY
Graduate Center, Center for the Humanities panel, 2013)
• Rodriguez, Derek and Lisa Norberg. "Assessing library impact on student learning outcomes: a case
study using the Understanding Library Impacts protocol." (Rome: 5th International Conference on
Quantitative and Qualitative Methods in Libraries, 2013).
• Wacha, Megan and Alexis Seeley. "Wikipedia as a Site to Publish and Promote Patrons."
(Louisville, KY: Library Information Technology Association Forum , 2013).
• Tebbe, Felice, Jenna Freedman, Ari Yana Misfeldt, and Eleanor Whitney. "Art by and for Change."
(New Haven: Book Art Association Annual Meeting panel, 2013).
• Wacha, Megan. "Demystifying the Working Life of a New Academic Librarian - What to Expect in
the First Days, Weeks, Months & Years." (New York: METRO & ACRL/NY Present panel, 2013.)
• Wacha, Megan. “Make Something New. Now.” NYLA@BEA, New York Library Association, New
York, NY. May 29, 2013. Invited Panelist.
• Wacha, Megan and Alexis Seeley (2013). WikiWomen’s History Month Project. Presented at the
Wikipedia Day Conference at New York University, New York, NY, February 23, 2013. Invited
Presentation.

19. Staff publications
• Edwards, Chloë, Amy F. Brown, Meg Eastwood, Martha Tenney and
Kevin O’Donnell "Processing Internal Hard Drives" / by Practical
Technology for Archives, no.1 (2013).
• Freedman, Jenna, Hannah Mermelstein and Vani Natarajan, eds.
Librarians and archivists to Palestine. (Brooklyn: self-published by
the delegation, 2013).
• Kennison, Rebecca and Lisa Norberg. Toward a Sustainable
Approach to Open Access Publishing and Archiving: a Green Paper.
(New York: self-published, 2013).

20. Selected Events
• February: Archives Open House
• March: Maps & Messages
workshop with Marissa Falco
• July: International Zine Library
Day
• Six Stressbusters events
throughout the academic year.
Approximate number of backs &
necks rubbed: 180.

21. Professional Participation & Contributions
• Vani Natarajan helped organize and
participated in a Librarians &
Archivists delegation to Palestine.
• Shannon O'Neill chaired "Breaking
into the Field," panel at the New York
Archives Conference
• Heather Van Volkinburg was elected
to National Numeracy Network (NNN)
Board of Directors and shortly
thereafter appointed Vice-President
of the board.
• Megan Wacha served on the ACRL/NY
Symposium Planning Committee for
the 2013 ACRL/NY Symposium.