The Mina Rees Library provides guidance and support to Graduate Center students, faculty, and staff as they conduct research, produce scholarship, and share their works. We offer services related to copyright, data analysis and visualization, digital preservation, digital scholarship, open access, open educational resources, research data management, and scholarly communication and publishing.
We offer workshops and consultations on topics related to copyright, including fair use, publication agreements, Creative Commons licenses, and the public domain. Scholarly Communication Librarian and University Liaison Jill Cirasella is available to discuss these matters with faculty, students, and staff. Head of Archives and Special Collections Roxanne Shirazi provides consultations for students completing dissertations, theses, and capstone projects. In addition, some questions may be answered by the Copyright Essentials section of our Scholarly Publishing guide. (Note: We are not lawyers and thus can only provide education, not legal advice.)
Digital Scholarship Librarian Steve Zweibel maintains guides about Analyzing & Visualizing Data and Mapping Data, and is available to advise researchers working with datasets.
We can assist with the preservation of digital projects, including websites, databases, apps, and video and audio files. Digital Services Librarian Stephen Klein consults with scholars on topics such as web archiving and digital project sustainability.
We offer support for students, faculty, and staff undertaking digital humanities projects and other forms of digital scholarship. Digital Scholarship Librarian Steve Zweibel consults with researchers seeking to employ or build digital scholarship tools.
Scholarly Communication Librarian and University Liaison Jill Cirasella is the library’s point person for information about open access and the manager of the Graduate Center portion of CUNY Academic Works. She teaches workshops on open access and related topics, offers drop-in help sessions on Zoom, and welcomes inquiries about finding open access works, making one’s own works open access, using open licenses, etc. Researchers may also contact our subject librarians, all of whom are versed in open access. In addition, some questions may be answered by our CUNY Academic Works guide and/or the Open Access section of our Scholarly Publishing guide.
The Library's Open Knowledge Fellowship funds doctoral students to receive intensive training in open educational resources (OER) and open pedagogy strategies, and to apply what they learn to courses they teach. We also maintain an Open Educational Resources guide and welcome individual inquiries about locating, creating, or teaching with OER. Feel free to reach out to Elvis Bakaitis, Head of Reference and coordinator of the Open Knowledge Fellowship, with any questions.
We can assist researchers with the management and preservation of the data they create or collect as part of their research. We can also help with the creation of data management plans, a required element of many grant applications. Digital Services Librarian Stephen Klein maintains a Data Management guide, holds data management drop-in help sessions on Zoom, and is also available for one-on-one consultations.
“Scholarly communication” refers to all the ways researchers share their scholarly work, including formal publication in books or journals, dissemination through open access repositories, and discussion in news outlets, blogs, podcasts, social media, etc.
We can help researchers understand the ever-changing landscape of scholarly communication and research evaluation. Scholarly Communication Librarian and University Liaison Jill Cirasella maintains a Scholarly Publishing guide, teaches workshops on a variety of scholarly communication topics, offers regular drop-in help sessions on Zoom, and welcomes individual consultations.