• CUNY Academic Commons
    • People
    • Groups
    • Sites
    • Courses
    • Events
    • Activity
    • About
  • Log In
  • Register
  • Help
MALS 78100 – The Digital Humanities in Research and Teaching
building CUNY Communities since 2009
Skip to content
  • Course Group
  • Blog Home
  • Readings
  • Syllabus/Schedule
  • Final Project Assignment
  • #cunydh12
← @mkgold Maybe data viz folks have some literacy work to do? (there’s that word again) #cunydh12
Now featured on the @cunycommons homepage: Brooklyn Zines from @AlyciaicylA http://t.co/lDJ6uZRB #cunydh12 →

Just when you thought it was over!

Posted on May 29, 2012 by Alycia Sellie

Dear Class,

I’m sorry to have missed our final session of the semester, but I’ve been battling bronchitis ever since standing in the park on a rainy May morning. I thought I’d share a bit about my final project even though I had to miss the presentations.

My tool is a little bit of this mixed with a dash of that, inspired by giants like this and rolled up in some aspirations for more free software for library use. It’s inspired not only by the work that zine librarians have been doing at unconferences for some time, but also by alternative and underground materials at large. My work to make alternative print materials accessible reaches into all the parts of my academic life, and is a main motivation for me to study and contribute to the field of librarianship as well into print culture scholarship.

Ideally, this tool I have proposed for this class would be used not only to locate the physical copies of zines, pamphlets and other items we might think of as ephemeral. This union catalog would also draw together an unconnected sea of metadata already on the web, and potentially be a home for digital collections. Further, it would span both institutional (i.e. lions out front) and independent libraries (i.e. in garden sheds, infoshops or dining rooms) and work for both trained and barefoot librarians alike.

 The most difficult thing about putting this project together for our class was that this project is not entirely imaginary. I have been a part of conversations about a union catalog that could be used to connect zine libraries at a few conferences, and I have been talking with folks from other (non-zine) collections about how they create and organize rich metadata for their collections. The thing that plagued me as I constructed this final project was whether I have the space and time–or anyone else does–to get this thing accomplished, even with funding.

It would do so much for so many folks working with alternative collections to have a free or open source software program that could be implemented and updated by the community, as well as a tool that could be used by trained catalogers and people’s librarians alike.

So the part of the conversation that I am really disappointed I missed in class is the same thing I am now asking myself about this project: will these initial seeds bear any fruit for any of us? Will any of you create the tools you have proposed, or apply for a grant with your project proposal?

Thanks for a great semester everyone!

About Alycia Sellie

Alycia Sellie is the Associate Librarian for Collections at the Graduate Center Library.
View all posts by Alycia Sellie →
This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged finalproject, librarianship, metadata, print. Bookmark the permalink.
← @mkgold Maybe data viz folks have some literacy work to do? (there’s that word again) #cunydh12
Now featured on the @cunycommons homepage: Brooklyn Zines from @AlyciaicylA http://t.co/lDJ6uZRB #cunydh12 →
  • MALS 78100: Digital Humanities in Research and Teaching

  • Subscribe by Email

  • Write a New Blog Post

  • Recent Posts

    • Course Archive
    • Just when you thought it was over!
    • To all our “excitement” my American Idol twitter stats are panning out!
    • DH Project at Brooklyn Museum
    • mapping visually
  • Recent Comments

    • Sameen Q. on GeoCommons
    • Christina M. Ramos on GeoCommons
    • Matthew K. Gold on GeoCommons
    • Sameen Q. on Visualization Tools: Many Eyes
    • Roxanne Shirazi on Decoding Networks
  • Archives

    • October 2012
    • June 2012
    • May 2012
    • April 2012
    • March 2012
    • February 2012
  • Categories

    • twitterfeed
    • Uncategorized
    • Week 1
  • Meta

    • Register
    • Log in
    • Entries feed
    • Comments feed
    • WordPress.org
MALS 78100 – The Digital Humanities in Research and Teaching
Proudly powered by WordPress.
css.php
Need help with the Commons? Visit our
help page
Send us a message
CUNY Academic Commons logo
  • People
  • Groups
  • Sites
  • Courses
  • Events
  • Activity
  • About
  • Help
  • Privacy
  • Terms of Service
  • Creative Commons (CC) license unless otherwise noted
Built with WordPress Protected by Akismet Powered by CUNY Twitter logo RSS logo CUNY logo