This class is part of the concentration in Audiovisual Archives. This class will be taught by Prof. Rachel Mattson. This course will introduce students to the theoretical frameworks and practical foundations of managing audiovisual archival collections in a range of institutional and extra-institutional settings. Topics for consideration and instruction include: care, handling, format identification, collection assessment, planning and implementing preservation projects, copyright, inventories and metadata, digitization, digital storage, donor engagement, funding, and ethics in AV archival stewardship, among other topics.

This class will be a hands-on introduction to the care and treatment of physical materials that might be encountered in special collections. The class will be taught by conservator Slava Polishchuk in the conservation lab at Brooklyn College and will be limited to 10 students. All materials will be provided. Please note that this class is separate and different from the Preservation of Cultural Heritage Materials class. The Northeast Document Conservation Center explains the difference between conservation and preservation here.

This class will be taught by Prof. Zakiya Collier in the Macon branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. Information Activism asks what skills and knowledge are necessary for information professionals to ethically participate in, document, and support movement work against injustice. How do organizers use and disrupt systems of information to grow and sustain the struggle? The course will explore how social movements use media and information to garner support, mobilize community, build capacity, and demand and enact change. Understanding movements in information and information in movements will prepare burgeoning information professionals for fielding research requests that service a wrongful eviction suit as opposed to a final paper and documenting a movement without endangering its organizers. Information activism may take the form of creating databases tracking incidents of police violence or evictions, supporting activists with FOIA requests, resource list distribution, preserving resources used by organizers, researching law cases, identifying misinformation, etc 

This class will be a survey of special libraries and the particular sources, services, skills and challenges that pertain to each. The class will explore types of libraries such as medical, law, theological or prison libraries. The location of the class is Baruch College but the class largely comprises site visits so students should be prepared to travel for this class. The class will be a good way to meet practicing professionals and learn more about the information landscape in New York City. The class will be taught by Prof. Brandon Jeffries.

A new variable topics class that is an elective in the MLS and may be counted as an elective towards the Advanced Certificate in Youth Services. This coming term, the class will be taught by Dr. Vikki Terrile, and the special topic will be the Newbery Award. The John Newbery Medal is awarded annually by the American Library Association for the most distinguished American children's book published the previous year. Awarded since 1922, Newbery winners and honor books are often considered by librarians and educators of their time to exemplify the highest quality in children’s literature but they are not without controversy. This course will explore Newbery books as literature, as cultural touchstones, and as materials open for critique. Students will look at the books in connection to other youth media awards, interrogate diversity and representation within and across the books, and consider the relevance of the Newbery medal in contemporary youth librarianship.

Will be taught by GSLIS alumnus Prof. Dan Woulfin, will examine the role of databases in libraries and other organizations. It gives a good grounding of the concepts, methods and technology behind a traditional relational database as well as some current practices around them including their use in libraries (especially MARC), web applications and APIs, the inclusion of SQL in business intelligence applications, and the use of vendors to manage and run databases in libraries and other information professions. The course will also touch on the use of NoSQL databases, which may include graph databases, document stores, XML based databases, and vector databases, along with the general ETL process of data migration. 

A new class developed by Dr. Nerve Macaspac, will look at geographic information, geographic information systems, participatory mapping, digital humanities practices related to spatial information, and more. The class has been developed out of the “GIS + LIS Curriculum” workshop led by Dr. Macaspac and Dr. John Lauermann, co-hosted by GSLIS and the Pratt Institute last Fall.

This class is part of the concentration in Rare Book Librarianship. The class will be taught be Dr. J.P. Ascher. According to the Rare Book School, descriptive bibliography may be “defined as the close physical description of books and other printed objects: a systematic report concerning their type, paper, printing, illustrations, and binding, and how the circumstances of their publication and distribution may have affected their physical appearance.” Descriptive bibliography is an important skill for rare book librarians to have, and can be useful for those working in special collections and archives, as well as those interested in bibliography in general.