News 2023-2024

2024 Chinese American Librarians Association Northeast Chapter Annual Conference

Post Date: 4/11/24, 6:08 PM EDT

On the morning of Friday, April 5, 2024, CALA Northeast Chapter hosted our hybrid Annual Conference themed ‘We’re all in this together’: Catalyzing Social Change in Asian American Communities,” at New York University’s Bobst Library in Manhattan, New York City. The morning started off with an opening keynote from Dr Hua-Yu Sebastian Cherng, NYU Steinhardt’s Vice Dean for Research Equity and Associate Professor for International Education. In Dr. Cherng’s keynote, Chinese America and a Role for Libraries, he shared his personal background and findings from his current research on educational inequities and how these findings connect with work libraries do.

Following the keynote, we had a series of lightning talks. 


Recordings of the keynote and lightning talks will be available for up to 1 year after the conference. To access, please go to our Drive folder here.

For more images, please check out our Gallery!

Members also enjoyed a group lunch at Uncle Ted’s for Chinese food.

Credits to Yuzhou Bai.

For the second half of the conference, attendees visited NYU Special Collections with Shannon O’Neill, NYU Curator for Tamiment-Wagner Collections. Attendees received a tour of the NYU Special Collections and got a sneak preview of the upcoming exhibit, Reading from Left to Left: Radical Bookstores in NYC, 1930s - 2000s.


For more images, please check out our Gallery!

After exploring the special collections, attendees were invited to attend a book talk by Dr. Ava Chin about her family memoir, Mott Street: A Chinese American Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming. This memoir delves into the resilient spirit of New York’s Chinatown, Dr. Chin’s family’s involvement in building the transcontinental railroad, and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. After the talk, participants had the opportunity to engage with Dr. Chin in a Q&A session and a book signing. Books were provided courtesy of Penguin Random House Library Marketing Department.


For more images, please check out our Gallery!

We extend our gratitude to NYU Bobst Library for graciously hosting us for this conference and for the support of NYU Libraries staff, particularly Roxane Pickens, Laurie Murphy, and Gabrielle Randall from the External Engagement Department, Shannon O’Neill and Charlotte Priddle from Special Collections, and Jiebei Luo from Research and Research Services.