COMMUNITY OUTREACH: TAPPING INTO TOMORROW'S SCHOLARS
Since August 2002 when it officially re-opened, the new Library has welcomed not just students, staff, and faculty, but a growing community of Brooklyn College "wanna-bees"-- boys and girls ranging from four to eighteen, their parents, and their teachers, who, we hope, will all one day enroll in Brooklyn College. The Library’s outreach to these various school groups entails many activities--a tour of the interior's 6.4 acres and its twenty-one miles of shelving, a look at the new state-of-the art DVD labs, a talk on the Library's growing art collection, a concert or a film seminar in the Woody Tanger Auditorium or a moment of relaxation in the quiet of the first-floor Reading Room, an opportunity to sit and drink in views of the bucolic calm of the Lily Pond outside.  In recent months, Library faculty have formalized some of these activities into classes, designing a series of workshops that meet the needs of specific college and local community high school programs. Among the first groups hosted in the Library last winter were tenth and eleventh graders from East New York Family Academy and Tilden High School. After a tour of the building, Profs. Irwin Weintraub and Martha Corpus sat down with the students in a Library classroom and introduced them to print resources--general and subject encyclopedias, bound periodicals, newspapers. Students were shown how to use the catalog and to find information in the catalog. Next, students went downstairs for a session on the wonders of microfilm and Government Documents from Prof. Jane Cramer ("you should know how your tax dollar is spent in this city"), then up to the second floor where New Media Manager Nick Johnson showed them around his center with its 110 computers and DVD-viewing classrooms.
The final stop was the Music Library, referred to by Music Librarian Honora Rafael “as the jewel in CUNY’s crown.” Prof. Raphael escorted the students on a tour of this extraordinary collection with its listening rooms and turntables. Back downstairs, Circulation Manager Carol McLaughlin provided the College Now students with access cards, permitting them entry to the Library through the school year.
Over the summer, Dr. Christine Pawelski, head of the School of Education’s Graduate Special Education program, approached the Library with an interesting challenge: Is there a quiet, out of the way place where student teachers could bring their pupils, all from local private and public schools, for tutoring? The idea is that 23 elementary school students would come to the Library for an hour- and-a-half introduction to books, library use, and for help with reading assignments in social studies and English. Library faculty Miriam Deutch and Jane Cramer came up with a "quiet, out of the way" place on the Library’s Lower Level, where youngsters, their tutors, and supervisors could work quietly. The ten-week sessions got under way this past fall, and will return in September. Parents bring the children to the Library, assured that the youngsters are in a safe, but also warm and welcoming environment where they are tutored by graduate students at no cost. For many of these families it is the only recourse their children have to an after-school program. "It is a wonderful example of a partnership between higher education and  the community," glowed Dr. Pawelski.
Perhaps the most formal and expansive outreach to the local high school community involves BC's new Early College initiative, the Brooklyn College High School at Erasmus Hall--the Science, Technology and Research, or STAR, program. Every Friday a  school bus pulls up and out pour three levels of ninth graders (72 students) in groups of 27, 25, and 20, for morning classes on campus. Many of these sessions take place in the Library where Profs. Jocelyn Berger-Barrera, Martha Corpus, Beth Evans, and Irwin Weintraub teach college-bound freshmen how to find resources to research assigned projects. After giving the students and their parents detailed tours of the library, students are taught some of how to use the collage catalog, the difference between a reference book and a circulating book, and the meaning of call numbers. The youngsters are also subjected to a review of how to use cross-disciplinary databases, specifically MAS-Ultra and InfoTrac Junior (designed for High School students), Lexis-Nexis Academic (to access newspapers), and Academic Search Premier (to illustrate the difference between peer-reviewed journals and popular magazines).
Assignments are nothing to scoff at. Among the first was a paper on a place of historical importance in Brooklyn. For this research students took a special field trip to the Library's Special Collections area where Assistant Archivist Marianne LaBotto regaled the aspiring scholars with tales of heroism involved in the building and opening of the Brooklyn Bridge. Subsequent assignments covered the Indus Valley civilization, biographical sketches of famous Erasmus Hall graduates, Latino immigration and emigration and history, and papers on birth defects. One class was assigned to read The House on Mango Street and used the Library's criticism resources to complete their book reports. STAR student workshop sessions are ongoing and students have access to the Library throughout the school year. They also use the online databases. The Library faculty enjoy working with these bright, enthusiastic, often high-spirited students. The Library also works closely with juniors from Midwood and Murrow High Schools who are working on Intel Honors projects. Since the Library first reopened, Profs. Corpus and Weintraub have offered classes in the sciences and social sciences to these potential Brooklyn College enrollees, helping them to determine the resources they will need to complete sometimes highly complex research projects. Perhaps the most exhilarating high school program transpired last fall, on Chemistry Day, an initiative sponsored by the College's Chemistry Department. With only a few days' advance notice, hundreds of local high school science students descended on the Library for a day of workshops. Six hour-long sessions, conducted by Life Sciences Specialist Irwin Weintraub and Prof. Eva Dimova, introduced students to our science databases and print resources. Workshops were interspersed with tours of the Library with our lively College Assistants/student workers as escorts. By day's-end, some 200 high school students had at least a nodding acquaintance with the Library's science databases and print collections.
Prof. Martha Monaghan Corpus Bibliographer for Education,  Physical Education & Exercise Science, Political Science and Psychology mcorpus@brooklyn.cuny.edu
	Back to ACCESS Contents Page