Queens Borough Research Articles

UR in Curriculum: DNA Barcoding Research Tool can be Scaled from Traditional to Course‐based Research Project with Ease

Most of our students at Queensborough Community College, CUNY are first generation, non‐traditional students with a vast majority working full‐time or part‐time to meet family obligations and sustain themselves outside the classroom. As an educator, one has to constantly be mindful of this reality. While a few of our students can follow a traditional one‐on‐one research model, majority cannot. Therefore, the option to bring research to them in their classrooms was considered as part of the CUR (Council on Undergraduate Research) initiative. This pedagogy was reluctantly implemented in honors courses in the Biotechnology degree program.UR (undergraduate research) has since been institutionalized and used cross curriculum in multiple disciplines. A formal approach has been implemented for faculty development. Authentic research experiences are embedded in the curriculum. I partnered with Cold Spring Harbor DNA Barcoding Lab that runs an Urban Barcoding project. This was originally done to help local high school students with authentic research experience. Later, I requested the Urban Barcoding Project team to allow my Queens borough students to participate in the project. I incorporated a DNA Barcoding experiment in my Genetics course as an honors component. Biotechnology students served as mentors to Genetics students while being closely supervised. This served as a capstone experience for sophomores at a community college. A detailed curriculum and assessment strategy was developed for the DNA Barcoding to be incorporated in the curriculum. The Queens borough honors committee then approved this project and its timeline. Students developed a hypothesis driven project while working in teams of three. They met during free club hours all semester long to complete their lab work and analyze their results. This experience also became part of their resume and helped them tremendously as they applied for senior colleges or competitive summer research programs after graduation. After seeing the significant success of this project, my belief that students learn more when they get to do hands on science was reaffirmed. Students not only retained skills that are transferrable but also gainedvconfidence in their skills and work as a team toward completion of their project.This experience also made me realize that the DNA Barcoding project can be scaled from two to twenty students with great ease! I have offered DNA Barcoding project in three settings: Traditional mentor mentee experience; Course‐based authentic research experience and Peer‐Led authentic research experience. Pros and cons for all three will be discussed.Support or Funding InformationNIH‐BioPREP QCC ‐ Stony Brook CollaborationThis abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.

One Staff, Two Branches: The Queens Borough Public Library and New York City's Fiscal Crisis of the 1970s

ABSTRACT During the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, New York City imposed deep budget cuts on the three library systems: the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Public Library, and the Queens Borough Public Library. As the city cut budgets, the public demanded that libraries be kept open, and elected officials struggled to do both. The Queens Library's staff was reduced from over 1,100 to barely 700, with branches open only two or three days a week, with one staff serving both. New buildings remained vacant because the library lacked funds to operate them. When the library proposed closing some branches, the NAACP successfully sued. In the late 1970s, the three systems came to rely upon federal monies for the first time for basic operations. In the early 1980s the city regained its financial footing and library services stabilized, but the budgeting process for the libraries has remained politicized.

Walkable Neighborhoods Spotlight Diverse Cultures

Walkable Neighborhoods Spotlight Diverse Cultures

Readiness and Capacity of Librarians in Public Libraries to Implement a Breast Cancer Outreach and Screening Campaign in Medically Underserved Communities

Community-based partnerships are an important means of addressing cancer health disparities in medically underserved communities. Public libraries may be ideal partners in this effort. To assess the readiness and capacity of a public library system to implement cancer recruitment and outreach campaigns, 58 librarians in the Queens Borough Public Library System in New York completed self-administered questionnaires before and after a training on breast health, cancer, and screening. Results indicate that they are interested in participating in a cancer outreach campaign and feel it is a critical need in their community. Many librarians lacked the knowledge about cancer and cancer information resources needed to participate optimally. Nevertheless, librarians provide a cultural bridge to medically underserved communities. Partnering with a public library system to improve access to care has great potential, yet a number of challenges need to be overcome.

Making the Cyrillic OPAC a Reality

SUMMARY The steps leading to the development of a Cyrillic OPAC at Queens Borough Public Library are presented by the authors. Issues covered include Cyrillic character display, font requirements, searching strategies, web browser interface development, authority and subject control, promotion, and publicity. The importance of librarian and customer involvement and training are discussed.

Information grounds and the use of need‐based services by immigrants in Queens, New York: A context‐based, outcome evaluation approach

AbstractWe elaborate on Pettigrew's (1998, 1999) theory of information grounds while using an outcome evaluation approach enriched by its focus on context to explore the use of need‐based services by immigrants in New York City. Immigrants have substantial information and practical needs for help with adjusting to life in a new country. Because of differences in language, culture, and other factors such as access, new immigrants are a difficult population to study. As a result, little research has examined their predilections from an information behavior perspective. We report findings from a qualitative study of how literacy and coping skills programs are used by and benefit the immigrant customers of the Queens Borough Public Library (QBPL). From our interviews and observation of 45 program users, staff, and other stakeholders, we derived a grand context (in Pettigrew's terms) woven from three subcontexts: the immigrants of Queens, New York; the QBPL, its service model, and activities for immigrants; and professional contributions of QBPL staff. Our findings are discussed along two dimensions: (a) building blocks toward information literacy, and (b) personal gains achieved by immigrants for themselves and their families. We conclude that successful introduction to the QBPL—as per its mission, programming, and staff—can lead immigrants to a synergistic information ground that can help in meeting broad psychological, social, and practical needs.

米国ニューヨーク市クイーンズ区公共図書館における消費者健康情報サービス提供

As information available on consumer health information grows, so do the information needs of the public. Since it is difficult for the public to obtain accurate and authoritative health information, public libraries are expected to provide consumer health information to their communities. Based on an interview with Ms. Pat Stachiw, a medical librarian at the Queens Borough Public Library in New York City, the author reports on consumer health information services provided to this library's customers. After receiving a Langeloth Foundation grant in 2001, the Queens Borough Public Library established the Langeloth Convalescent Education and Information Center in the Central Library to provide effective consumer health information services. The grant provides print and digital resources, a staff librarian, workshops by medical professionals, and training programs for librarians throughout the Queens Borough Library system. The author also discusses what motivated the library to provide these active consumer health information services.

Visible Traces: Rare Books and Special Collections from the National Library of China. Compiled and edited by Philip K. Hu. New York: Queens Borough Public Library; Beijing: National Library of China; Beijing: Morning Glory Publishers, 2000. xiii, 337 pp. $65.00.

Visible Traces: Rare Books and Special Collections from the National Library of China. Compiled and edited by Philip K. Hu. New York: Queens Borough Public Library; Beijing: National Library of China; Beijing: Morning Glory Publishers, 2000. xiii, 337 pp. $65.00. - Volume 60 Issue 2

Survey of the Confidence Levels of Public Service Librarians in Using Electronic Reference Sources

Summary The Internet Self-Managed Work Team of the Queens Borough Public Library surveyed a stratified random sample of public service librarians to determine their confidence levels of using electronic resources to answer reference questions. Two test groups were used to fine-tune the survey instrument, and a control group of non-public service librarians was used for comparison purposes. Questions were categorized into nine types, including Internet, Catalog, Telnet and Test. The results demonstrated high confidence levels in using the Library's Catalog and lower results in using the Internet. The lowest confidence levels were for questions dealing with personal computers and handling customer complaints about the Internet. Branch size, position, or rank of the respondent did not affect confidence levels in any predictable fashion.

Queens Borough Public Library's Guidelines for Cataloging Community Information

Currently, few resources exist to guide libraries in cataloging community information using the new USMARC Format for Community Information (1993). In developing a community information database, Queens Borough Public Library formulated their own cataloging procedures for applying Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd ed., Library of Congress Rule Interpretations, and USMARC Format for Community Information to community information. Their practices include entering corporate names directly whenever possible and assigning LC subject headings for classes of persons and topics, adding neighborhood-level geographic subdivisions. The guidelines were specifically designed to aid non-catalogers in rhe cataloging community information.

Technology in the Western Political Tradition ed. by Arthur M. Melzer, et al

technology and culture Book Reviews 175 considers “Elegies for the Book” (the title of chap. 8) misplaced rather than premature. Lanham reminds us of the attempt in the past few centuries to make expressive media transparent, so that they are unnoticed in the presentation of the underlying (even our metaphors betray us!) ideas. Credibility is now seen to diminish if attempts at persuasiveness are discernible: truth must be naked if it is to be recognized. Pointing out that this seeming nakedness is itself a veneer, Lanham suggests that we restore the full range of rhetorical and artistic devices to our repertoire. Our electronic assistants can provide a buffet of such graphic and auditory supplies as images, typefaces, layouts, and vocal and instrumental sounds. As always, it is up to us to deploy them in an effective manner and to evaluate presentations made to us. The great challenge of the university curriculum, as Lanham sees it, is the preparation of students for life in this new environment. Not the technical competence of the programmer, but the humanistic intimacy experienced by the artist and connoisseur, is the literacy objective he sets before us. As he puts it: “Shouldn’t we be after a generalized ability to manipulate symbolic reality? In our society, this symbolic reality depends on precisely the rich signal of mixed word, sound and image we have been considering” (p. 229). Lanham is an expert stylist, as might be expected, and this book is at once a pleasure to read and a powerful stimulus to thought. Throughout, he engages the work of other scholars, making this an excellent entry to the literature. At the same time, the power and depth of his presentation will not disappoint the knowledgeable reader. Bayla Singer Dr. Singer is an independent scholar resident in Florida. Her most recent publica­ tion, Blueprint for Change: The Life and Times of Lewis Latimer (coedited with Janet M. Schneider), was prepared to accompany an exhibit of the same name that she curated for the Queens Borough Public Library. Technology in the Western Political Tradition. Edited by Arthur M. Melzer, Jerry Weinberger, and M. Richard Zinman. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993. Pp. xv + 333; notes, index. $38.50 (cloth); $15.95 (paper). In 1970, for a proposed journal symposium, Leo Strauss was in­ vited to contribute an article on technology and political philosophy extending his previous allusions to this subject. Strauss replied that although the issue deserved attention, he was unable to do the article, and the inquirer should contact either Joseph Cropsey or Leon Kass. Cropsey demurred because of other work, and Kass deferred on the grounds that he was not yet up to such a task. Technology in the Western Political Tradition, with an extended introduction on “The Problem 176 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE of Technology” by Kass, and twelve other essays, many either written by Strauss’s students or making explicit references to his work, finally fulfills that request of a quarter century ago. This remarkable book grew out of a 1989—90 Symposium on Sci­ ence, Reason, and Modern Democracy at Michigan State University. Indeed, moving from Kass’s introduction to Arthur Melzer’s conclud­ ing “The Problem with ‘The Problem of Technology,’ ” it reads more like a Platonic dialogue than a conference proceedings. For Kass, to approach technology as a problem in fact exemplifies the problem, since it illustrates how much technological thinking now informs our culture. For Melzer, criticisms of technology from both the socialist Left and the romantic Right point toward “our specific duty to free ourselves . . . not only from the deification but also the demonization of [technology]” (p. 320). As a whole, and as an attempt to do precisely that, the volume is divided into two parts. Part 1 contains five papers dealing with “The Emergence of Modern Technology,” and part 2 has seven more on “The Destiny of Modern Technology.” Where technology comes from and where it is going—these are the two big questions for poli­ tics. Although not historical questions alone, they demand historical investigation. Both parts thus display a solid acquaintance with the basic literature in the history of technology, but go further to provide...

Beyond Quality Services

Queens Borough of New York City is the most culturally diverse community in America. The New Americans Project was established to meet the unique needs of this community. The focus here is the Asian American community. The procedures for ensuring appropriate materials for the Chinese and Korean communities are detailed.

A Pedagogical Model

Reference workshops offer an important continuing education option for librarians. The planning, organization, and implementation of an assignment based program for the reference personnel of the Queens Borough Public Library is described. Participant evaluations are analyzed and presented with recommendations for future learning activities. The workshop format is presented in detail as a pedagogical model to be replicated or modified in other library environments.

Opening Doorways to New Immigrants:

Among the five boroughs comprising New York City, Queens has the highest percentage of immigrants. In 1977, Queens Borough Public Library instituted the New Americans Program to serve immigrants whose primary language was not English. Over the years, it has established a wide range of services including the development of foreign language collections, coordinating ESL classes, and scheduling cultural events. The Coping Skills Component is the newest activity to be initiated to assist newcomers' entry into the American mainstream. This article explores the history, function, and organization of the Coping Skills Component. Special attention is focused uoon the role of the oroiect's Coordinator, the building of external and internal communkadon patterns, and community outreach. The ouroose of this examination is to furnish administrators with a paradigh that can be adapted to other public library settings.

A Stochastic Planning System for Siting and Closing Public Service Facilities

In this report we describe a planning tool for siting (or closing) public facilities. The approach is based on an optimizing framework—the objective is to provide and plan services as effectively as possible—in which the demands for future services are taken as stochastic parameters. Two kinds of general errors (overage and underage) are included in the planning objectives, along with economic and other considerations. An interactive choice procedure is recommended. At each stage, the planner selects potential sites for opening and for possibly closing facilities. The planning system is then used to evaluate the various impacts of these choices, and to help suggest several courses of action. The methodology is demonstrated through an example—the Queens Borough public library system in New York City. The system takes advantage of the problem's special structure as a network graph, thus allowing computational efficiencies. Large-scale problems can be easily solved in this environment. The World Bank's General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS) is used to define the basic model.

Prescription Lenses

School Science and MathematicsVolume 86, Issue 8 p. 661-665 Prescription Lenses Whitney Harris, Whitney Harris Queens borough Community College — CUNY Bayside, New York 11364–1497Search for more papers by this author Whitney Harris, Whitney Harris Queens borough Community College — CUNY Bayside, New York 11364–1497Search for more papers by this author First published: December 1986 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1949-8594.1986.tb11670.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume86, Issue8December 1986Pages 661-665 RelatedInformation

The Queens Borough Public Library Cataloguing Department: A Report on Its Functions, Operations and Problems. Maurice F. Tauber

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsThe Queens Borough Public Library Cataloguing Department: A Report on Its Functions, Operations and Problems. Maurice F. Tauber Alex LadensonAlex Ladenson Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Library Quarterly Volume 27, Number 2Apr., 1957 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/618409 Views: 1Total views on this site Copyright 1957 University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Fern Miscellany: Brooklyn

Brooklyn, of all five boroughs of Greater New York, is probably least blessed in sites suitable for the persistence of native species of ferns. While there are many hundreds of acres which have not been built upon, most of such acreage comprises either salt-marshland or regions of grading and fill. It is not impossible that there may exist some small areas of natural marshland where the Osmundas may be found. I have found O. spectabilis on one of the narrow sand strips which border the ocean side of Great South Bay (Oak Island Beach). Even Manhattan, despite is great encrustations of asphalt, brick, and cement has at least some areas of rocky outcrops, including the park section at its northern end. The Bronx has the hundreds of acres along the Bronx River included within the Botanical Garden and Zoological Park area, where woods of native hemlock and other trees offer sites for ferns. Similarly, Queens Borough, although I cannot vouch for any specific ferns, offers park reservations which carry westward the conditions under which a number of species flourish on Long Island in general. Richmond-Staten Island-is the least citified of all five boroughs from its former state. While I have made no recent visit there, its central areas must still offer sites for the persistence of Dryopteris Goldiana and other related wood ferns, and its marshy woods presumably still provide sites for the Massachusetts fern, the narrow chain fern, and others. In earlier days, the area now lying within the boundaries of Kings County (Brooklyn) must have had approximately the same fern flora as adjacent Long Island regions still offer. When road traffic permits, it is still 148

Land Values in New York City

Introductory. Method of study, 545. — I. Vacant land in the borough of Manhattan. Description of parcels. Gross and net increments and decrements, 548. — II. Washington Heights. Tract sold at auction in 1891. Gross and net increments. Early history of tract. Comparison with similar tract in the Bronx, 558. — III. Auction sales. Description of tracts. Losses to purchasers of Bronx lots, 562. — IV. New York City by boroughs. Method of establishing value in 1906 and 1921. Gross and net increments or decrements. Queens borough by wards. Separate tract in South Brooklyn. Increases in land values during nineteenth century. The tax rate and economic rent, 569. — Conclusions, 579.

Work with Clubs in the Queens Borough Public Library

Work with Clubs in the Queens Borough Public Library