August Newsletter: Education Program

The Gottesman Libraries Education Program informs students, faculty and staff about the latest thinking in education, in ways that engage members of the community with one another and with a broad range of educational experts. The program also provides understanding of work being done throughout the College. Read more about offerings in August.

Workshops

Regularly scheduled instructional offerings include workshops, tours, orientations, and course-specific instruction in coordination with staff and faculty of the College.

Your Research Journey is a five-part library workshop series to help guide you in your research throughout the semester, by providing you with manageable tools and resources to use along your journey. Whether this is your first time conducting research, or you are a well-seasoned researcher and looking for a refresher, each workshop introduces fundamental information to lay a foundation of knowledge on which you can build your scholarly work. While the workshops in this series are designed to build upon each other, you are welcome to attend any workshop individually. All are held on Wednesdays, 3-4pm.

Elevate Your Research builds upon the foundational series, Your Research Journey, by presenting valuable new topics, resources, and methodologies to make you an even stronger and highly proficient researcher. Held on Thursdays, 3-4pm, this series also invites deeper, collaborative work to strengthen academic research initiatives.

Charting Your Path, Wednesday,  8/13, 3-4pm

Graduate school research may feel daunting, but this foundational workshop will address the key concepts, strategies, and tools to help develop your research skills.  Charting Your Path will start with a broad overview of what library research can look like, including the terms you may come across in your journey. We will also cover how to use Gottesman Libraries and the Columbia University Libraries to access physical and digital resources; discuss reference management tools; show how to create strong keyword searches; and end with a review of strategies for better search results. Attendees will leave this workshop with the information needed to be successful in Library research across all research disciplines.

Presenter:  Ava Kaplan, Research and Instruction Librarian

Where: 101 Russell / Online

Searching Strategies, Wednesday, 8/20, 3-4pm

How do you know you are retrieving all the relevant information needed for your research topic? Do you find your catalog and database searches are not giving you the best results? This workshop will cover the strategies and concepts needed to give you confidence that you are finding the best results in your searches and take you beyond conducting simple searches by using tools to search in a variety of contexts. The workshop host will review how to use Educat+, the catalog of the Gottesman Libraries; CLIO, the Columbia University Libraries catalog; and database providers, like EBSCO and Proquest. We will then show how you can optimize your queries by using Boolean logic and punctuation to refine your search style and retrieve exactly the resources you seek.

Presenter: Ava Kaplan, Research and Instruction Librarian

 Where: 101 Russell / Online

Managing Your Citations with Zotero, Wednesday, 8/27, 3-4pm

Learn how to download, install, and use Zotero to organize and manage your citations as you do research. This workshop provides a quick start introduction including: downloading; tour of the interface; nuts and bolts of how to ingest references through a web connector; and different ways of citing. 

Presenter: Ava Kaplan, Research and Instruction Librarian

Where: 101 Russell / Online

Highlighted Databases

Every month we draw attention to select databases that strengthen learning, teaching, and research in academic areas and their relevance to current offerings and programs.

The study of Philosophy and Education embraces exploration of the fundamental nature, purpose, and methods of teaching and learning. Taking a step further, how can we  advance humanistic and critical thinking about education, and also philosophical psychology? In August, we highlight resources that support study, teaching and research in Philosophy and Education, including aesthetics, ethics, social and political philosophy. Read more on the library's news feed.

Live Music

The Everett Cafe Music Program sponsors performances by TC student and affiliated musicians. We are winding down the summer and are looking ahead to the new academic year.

Please contact us if you are interested in playing! We welcome solos, duets, and trios and we are scheduling performances for the Fall.

Book Displays

Book displays  are curated and designed by library staff to share the joy of books and reading, while encouraging greater awareness of available resources  and their significance to the Library and College.

Everett Cafe: Set in Summer

Set in Summer features classic works of literature, as well as newer reads whose narratives occur during the summer season. Whether their storylines take place in a wealthy residential neighborhood, small American town, New York City borough, leafy medieval English forest, remote Scottish isle, or other inspiring locale, this curated collection conjures up the feeling of warmth, joy, and freedom associated with lighter, more carefree days. 

Enjoy a good summer read, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a delightful comedy written around 1595 by William Shakespeare, to the magical, heartwarming novel, One Italian Summer (2023), by Rebecca Serle. Among these shelves, and with nostalgia for print, you will find Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ray Bradbury, Truman Capote, Harper Lee, Barbara Kingsolver, Betty Smith, Debbie Johnson, Mary Kaye Andrews, Tove Jansson, Sue Monk Kidd, and Emily Henry – an eclectic mix inspiring a thirst for lemonade and all things summer.

Bring a book on vacation, to a family picnic or an outdoor concert, even as quiet company to the beach. It’s time to kick back, relax, and immerse yourself in the glorious pages of Summer, beginning here in the Northern Hemisphere on June 20th– and deliciously lasting until the third week in September.

Set in Summer is designed by Kai Oh, Library Associate, and curated by Jennifer Govan, Library Director and Senior Librarian.

At Everett Cafe, you'll find a new book collection every few weeks that relates to current events, education, or learning environments.

Staff Picks:  Coincidence, Serendipity, and Synchronicity: Exploring Life's Unlikely Connections

"The logical brain understands life as the result of causal circumstances; we assume an explanation lies behind every meaningful encounter. But what about those more mysterious moments when experience becomes imbued with something…more? Coincidences, serendipity, and synchronicity are all related phenomena united by their roots in chance, their lack of obvious causality, and the way they provoke us to notice unexpected connections or patterns in our lives. These are moments like running into an old friend on vacation, stumbling across an Instagram post that inspires a career switch, or dreaming of a place then encountering it in waking life—experiences that often feel uncanny and can lead to a shift in perspective, a happy accident, or an "aha" moment. The books in this display all attend to these kinds of experiences. From the sociological insights of Robert K. Merton's The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity to C.G. Jung's foundational work on Synchronicity, you'll find books that examine these phenomena through various lenses—scientific, philosophical, and personal. Dive into these captivating reads and re-examine the role of chance, choice, and meaning in your life."

-- Ava Kaplan, Research and Instruction Librarian

Coincidence, Serendipity, Synchronicity: Exploring Life's Unlikely Connections is curated by Ava Kaplan, Research and Instruction Librarian, and designed by Kai Oh, Library Associate / Art and Design.

Where: Second Floor Collaboration Space 

Staff Picks is curated and designed each month by the Gottesman Libraries' staff to highlight resources on educational topics and themes of special interest.

Rocket Cases: Warmest Reads for Kids

Come enjoy a selection of summery books, many of them set at the beach, on the water, during a family vacation, or on an idyllic island.  Titles are drawn from the contemporary juvenile collection and showcased as rocket displays to launch you into the warmest season the year and spur reading by your students or to your own kids.

Warmest Reads for Kids is curated by Ashley Cho and Kaili Ebert, Library Associates for Reference and Reader Services

Where: Second Floor

The Rocket Cases feature award winning and notable children's pop up book displays, with seasonal, educational, or other themes drawn from the juvenile collections.

Curiosity Cabinets: Backpack, Camelback, Outback, Wayback: Curious Accounts of Travel

Showcased in this display are historical examples of travelogues and travel writings, from those of Venetian merchant Marco Polo, with his unique interpretation of the East in the thirteenth-century, to musings on Manhattan by the popular twentieth-century American children’s book author E.B. White. Selected works date from the mid 1600s through the 1940s, spanning all continents and representing different modes of travel – by men and women, pioneers and adventurers, students and teachers, romantics and essayists, the religious and the political, the philosophical and mercantile. Some travel by foot, others by camel, horse, automobile, train, boat, or plane. All have a story or two to tell, and all help us see the world from a different perspective throughout history.

While the emphasis is on personal narrative, included are examples of travel books or texts for schools – notably the popular Peter Parley series, written by Samuel Goodrich and others from 1827 onwards, to connect the study of geography, biography, history, science, and miscellaneous tales. In addition, there are diaries, memoirs, letters, photographs, maps, souvenirs, brochures, and intriguing artifacts – among them, a Syrian medicine bowl from the Adelaide Nutting Historical Nursing Collection and a Burmese book with Buddhist script enameled on copper plates.

Backpack, Camelback, Outback, Wayback: Curious Accounts of Travel compliments the Offit Gallery exhibit, Give and Receive: From the Virtual to the Real, where postcards, which travel by mail without envelopes, express thoughts and sentiments about the status quo of the world as we know it today.

Where: Third Floor

The Curiosity Cabinets showcase interesting and insightful material from the historical collections to inform and enhance  concomitant art exhibitions and book displays. Read more here.

News Displays

Need to keep current, look to the past, teach a topic? The Everett Cafe features daily postings of news from around the world, and also promotes awareness of historical events from an educational context. Be sure to check the Cafe News postings on the library blog.

Curiosity Lands on Mars, Wednesday, 8/6

Independence for India, Friday, 8/15

Amelia Earhart Flies Solo Across the U.S., Sunday, 8/24

Exhibits

Educational exhibitions are mounted in partnership with the Teachers College community and others with an interest in displaying unique and innovative educational materials, while also regularly showcasing Teachers College's Historical Art Collections. 

The library has several spaces in Russell Hall to exhibit diverse materials, and also features digital and web-based exhibitions when possible. 

Ode to Summer

Complementing the Everett Cafe book display, Set in Summer, are select works from the Teachers College Art Collection that reflect the warmest season, June through August in the Northern Hemisphere. These pictures are drawn from the Federico Castellon Memorial Print Collection, McNeeley Costume Drawings, Passow Collection of Israeli Children’s Peace Art, Ukrainian Children’s Art Collection, and Ziegfeld Collection of International Children’s Art. Created from the 1920s-1970s by adults and children from all over the world, the artworks capture the warmth, joy, vibrancy, and also the tranquility of Summer, when children are on school vacation, holidays are key, and rejuvenation is beneficial. Pieces relate to nature and environment, summer activities, and the fantastical and imaginary to help us pause and just enjoy this welcome time of year!

Ode to Summer is designed by Soeun Bae, with assistance from Kai Oh, Library Associates for Art and Design, and curated by Jennifer Govan, Library Director and Senior Librarian. The exhibit is supported by the continuing generosity of the Myers Foundations.

Where: First Floor

When: through August 31st