– PORTFOLIO –
Building a 21st Century Library
Few aspects of university life conjure as quaint an image as the
library, recalling memories of card catalogs and dusty oversized
tomes. And while some academic institutions may still have such
old-fashioned rooms, Lehman College is dedicated to modernizing
its libraries so that they are anything but outdated.
a web comic called The Researchers. Jasmyn, says Poggiali, has
been well received by students who expressed that they would be
receptive to online tutoring. “We’d like to work with faculty in a wide
variety of departments to see how Jasmyn might be useful in other
contexts and classes,” she said.
How do you best move from card catalogs to Internet hubs,
without sacrificing necessary research skills to technological
shortcuts? How do you create a space that is adaptable and optimally organized for the various mediums of information, from print
to Internet to video? These are the questions that Jennifer Poggiali,
Lehman’s instructional technologies librarian, is tackling. “Academic
libraries collect, preserve, organize, and provide access to information resources,” she said. “At Lehman, we’re a quiet place in a very
unquiet world, where students can focus on solitary work or meet
classmates for group learning.” Through her work with Michael
Ferraro, a professor of art at the College, she is keeping Lehman’s
library future-focused in how it delivers these vital functions.
There are a number of other challenges to building a library
that melds the best of scholarship with technological advances,
and Lehman is meeting them head on, making sure it is as
informed as its students about how to use the technology.
In addition, Poggiali says a top functioning library nee