The Stephen B. Luce Library at SUNY Maritime College houses and maintains the Maritime Heritage special collection. This presentation will discuss several ways in which Alma and Analytics are currently being used to facilitate special collections projects and fill in gaps where historical data about the collection have been lost. Examples include developing a collection development policy and beginning a long-term weeding project.

During the 2021 municipal election cycle, organizers at Urban Librarians Unite published the responses of over 100 political candidates running for office in New York City. The twelve question survey focused on public and school libraries in New York City, and shed light on candidates’ attitudes towards public funds, infrastructure, and the role of city government in public services.The questionnaire was sent out to 319 candidates running for City Council and 84 candidates running for Mayor, Comptroller, Public Advocate, and Borough President, using data from the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism’s City Election Initiative, as well as additional data collected by the organization about candidates running for city-wide office in 2021. In this presentation, participants will learn about the process the organizers used to plan and execute the political questionnaire. This will cover the policy research behind the questionnaire, the application of the open data, and the results of the project. After attending this session, participants should be able to evaluate if a similar project is appropriate for their organization and be able to set-up a similar project. As the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism does not appear to be continuing to update their City Elections Initiative, the organizers are also look for community feedback for similar data available for future elections.

SUNY Maritime College is a 150-year-old institution, dedicated to preparing students entering STEM fields including marine transportation, engineering, and marine environmental science. Sixty percent of these students are also earning their Merchant Marine Credential, requiring them to spend three summer semesters on board the college’s training ship. The training ship is a floating school which includes housing, classrooms, a gym, a cafeteria, and yes, even a library, staffed by a librarian. TSES VII is the college’s first new training ship in thirty years, and is the country’s first ever purpose-built training ship, the first of five being built for the five state-run maritime academies. Sailing under a maiden voyage in January 2024, this new facility has afforded librarians from the Stephen B. Luce Library the opportunity to redefine how the library fits into this ultimate experiential learning environment. In this presentation, the Discovery and Electronic Resources Librarian and the User Services and Student Engagement Librarian will discuss how they prepped a brand new library space and program, and discuss lessons learned sailing on board with students during the January 2024 Winter Sea Term.

When librarians discuss scholarly communications, the focus is often on supporting faculty at research-driven universities. But what does scholarly communication look like at smaller colleges? In this session, the three presenters, representing SUNY Cortland, Alfred University and SUNY Maritime, will share challenges and insights from working with institutional repositories, when it’s not the main focus of their jobs. Topics will include balancing workloads, functioning within unique institutional circumstances, outreach to faculty, managing expectations and collaboration with colleagues.

As the pedagogical benefits of working with primary sources have become more well-known, archivists are increasingly serving as educators and interpreters of their collections. However, archivists often have little experience as educators, and must learn new skills to provide effective instruction. This presentation provides a mix of both theoretical discussion and practical lessons based on the author's experience at SUNY Maritime College.

SUNY Maritime librarians have an opportunity to overhaul their space as part of a SUNY grant for an “Academic Success Center” — the first renovation of this AIA-award winning space since the 1970s. The library needed to determine how to adapt its space for exciting new purposes, incorporating its needs with the needs of the Learning Center, the administration, the faculty, and the students. We used surveys, observations, and visioning groups to quantify these needs and elicit ideas. This presentation will examine how we collected and used various forms of data to guide our process, including successes and pitfalls.