 Hi, everybody. Thank you all for joining us this afternoon in New York. My name is Stefan Bodaker. I oversee the admissions at Columbia GSAP. And we're super excited to welcome you to today's session because we're highlighting the session is called Life at GSAP, which is a very ambitious title, but it's also a broader umbrella for maybe a series of conversations that we can have. And today is just one of those aspects that we want to share with you some of the resources and, in a way, services that we offer to the students at GSAP as you're considering applying, as you're in the process of applying, as you're thinking about graduate schools. We wanted to sort of lift the curtain a little bit on some of the things you might find at Columbia GSAP. And one of the sort of the first place to start, in a way, because it's interestingly also the first place when you enter the building, the first thing you see, literally physically, in our building, is the Avery Library. And that is a tremendous resource. I actually had a meeting with a student an hour ago, and he was a student from Iran. And he was just speaking, actually, Jenny, about the library and what a just phenomenal resource it is. And I always feel a little bit awkward describing the library, because it is the greatest architectural collection in the world. And it feels strange to say that. But I think we have to say it. And with that, thank you, Jenny, for joining us. Jenny Davis is a librarian at the Avery Library. We will start with a conversation. Jenny will present the library and then take some questions for about the first half hour of today's meeting. And then in the second half hour, we'll speak a little bit about the career services that GSAP offers. And we have four of my colleagues who work with students across the programs at GSAP. So we'll jump into that in about 30 minutes or so. So thank you. Thanks, Jenny. Thank you all for being here. I'll turn it over to you. All right. Thank you, Stefan. Thank you for saying that we are the best collection, because I happen to agree. So I'm excited to talk to all of you today about what kind of collections we have at Avery, what kind of services we have to offer you. We don't have that much time, so we're really just scratching the surface on the many thousands of resources that are available to you. So I'm just going to highlight a few today. And I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. Please don't hesitate to pop questions into the chat. I may not see them right away, but if something is particularly urgent, please let me know. Otherwise, I'll take some questions at the end. So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. And Stefan, if you could just let me know that I have successfully shared my screen. That would be great. Yes? Yes. OK. Awesome. OK, wonderful. All right. So it's really great to see all of you. And again, today, I'm just going to be presenting some of the collections and services we have at Avery Library. I'm the public services librarian at Avery, which means that I handle coordinating our reference service, so all of that kind of research assistance that we can provide for you and our instruction sessions as well, like this one. So those of you who've been on campus, this entrance looks very familiar to you, I'm sure. And Avery is one of the largest collections of its kind. But it started in 1890, actually. And it was named for Henry Ogden Avery, who was a young New York architect, and a friend of Robert Ware, who was the founder of the School of Architecture, actually. And after he died quite young, his parents dedicated the collection to Columbia in his memory as a memorial to him. And this included about 2,000 books and drawings, as well as an endowment to ensure the future growth of the collection. And then in 1912, Avery was one of the first libraries on campus to move into its own McKim, Mead, and White building on our Morningside Heights campus. And so it has grown substantially since then. So we've gone from 2,000 of Avery's own volumes to over 650,000 volumes, again, making us a very, very large architecture and fine arts collection. And I should add that we are Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library. So again, we started with Avery's architecture collection. And in the 1970s, the Fine Arts collection was brought into Avery Library. Those of you who've been in the space know that we kind of do a little bit of time travel where we start in our beautiful 1912 reading room that you see here. And we had done into our 1970s expanded area. And so Avery collects books and periodicals in all areas relating to the built environment, archaeology, architecture, anything related to the fine arts, and again, over 650,000 volumes and 1,300 periodicals. So the scale of that alone is very, very big. But towards the end, I want to also talk a little bit about what's available to you through Columbia Libraries in general as a Columbia student and a Columbia affiliate because it's not just Avery that is available to you, but millions of other resources as well. OK, so again, how do we get from those 2,000 original volumes to 650,000? So we have some in-house subject experts that make selections, again, on all areas related to the built environment. But we also partner with our colleagues in the Global Studies Department to make sure that we're selecting in all geographic areas and all languages. So you will find all of that covered in Avery and throughout Columbia Libraries. We also, of course, are responsive to the GSAP curriculum. So things that you need are usually right downstairs in Avery Library, very conveniently located. We also are really excited to take suggestions from our affiliates, so our students, our faculty, our staff. This is everyone's collection. And so we want to know if there's something that we should have that we don't have in that 650,000 volumes. We also contribute to web archiving efforts. So anyone who is familiar with web archiving, that's essentially taking a snapshot of a website to preserve for later use. And what we do is contribute to a few different large web archiving collections. Some are related to the built environment. And this enables us to capture websites that might be about community development, different kinds of organizations related to historic preservation. And this means that we can kind of bring more voices into our collection and through our online catalog, which is called Clio. So if anyone wants to explore our collections, we'll touch on them briefly today. But if you go to clio.columbia.edu, C-L-I-O, you can search and see everything that we have. And these web archives are included in our Clio searches. So that's a way that we can sort of bring all of these different sort of voices and topics into our collection all in one place. OK, so in addition to our print resources, we have many, many, many electronic resources available to you. One that we produce is the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, which I'll talk about in more detail in just a minute. But we are always on the lookout for any resources that we think are going to be helpful to our users and make your research process easier, even if you don't realize it on your end. We just know on our end. So a few of the things that we've gotten relatively recently are these big kind of journal and magazine archives that you can easily search full text. You can search all of the ads, the table of contents. And that includes Art in America, Magazine Antiques, Art News, all of which do cover architecture to some extent. Art Forum Archive, the image from the right is from our Art Forum Archive and the Country Life Archive as well. And that's just a really small sample. But just to kind of make the point that we're always looking for some new digital collection that we can add to our resources that will make your search process a little bit easier and more streamlined and to make it so that you can discover more material. OK, so in addition to our general collections, which is the stuff you see out on the shelves and our online resources, Avery is home to three special collections. So the first one I'll talk about is Avery Classics, which is one of the largest architectural verbal collections in the world, composed of about 40,000 printed volumes published over seven centuries, everything from early architectural treatises to modern printed material and everything in between. Graphic suites, periodicals, manuscripts, broadsides, photos, ephemera, amazing trade catalogs of building materials and supplies. So just an amazingly broad collection within architectural history and just incredible collections. So most folks who come to GSAP visit Classics at some point, either for their own research or for a class. So I hope that you will be joining us and be able to use these amazing collections. And I have a few images from these, like we have these Sears home builders catalogs. We have a collection of real estate brochures, many of which are fully digitized and searchable on our website, complete with plans. And we have lots of ephemera as well. So these two items are from the Durst collection, which is like a New York history ephemera collection, much of which is digitized. But again, all of this lives in Avery Classics. And all of our special collections are by appointment. So Avery Classics and the others that I'll talk about are all available by appointment. But again, if you find yourself at GSAP, you will be visiting there at some point, I'm sure. OK, so the next special collection I will talk about is Avery Drawings and Archives, which is drawings, photos, and architectural records, exactly what it sounds like. About 900 collections focusing largely on American and New York City architects of the 19th and 20th centuries, just absolutely enormous and amazing collections in drawings and archives. The largest collection is the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives, which was jointly acquired with MoMA in 2012 and is one of the most comprehensive archives of any American architect. So again, all of those architectural drawings and photos are held in Avery Drawings and Archives. And by appointment, our users can make appointments to use them in person. We have some images from that here. You can see all of the photos and original illustrations and drawings. And the final special collection here in Avery is Avery Art Properties. So if you've been on our campus or even seen images of our campus, you've actually seen art properties because this department oversees all of the art that is on Columbia's campus. So if you're in buildings and you see drawings, paintings, and sculptures, those fall under art properties. But there's also a collection, besides what you see on campus, of 13,000 works of art covering most media, time periods, and cultures. And our researchers can make appointments to view these objects in person and use them for their research. So there's an image of that on the right here. And again, a lot of the artwork is displayed on campus, but there's also storage as well. And one of the exciting things that we've been doing is integrating these works of art into the library catalog. So about half of them are in there at this point. And so you can actually search and not only find books and journals, you can find archival material, you can find those archived websites, and you can find original works of art as well. So again, all of these are available by appointment. Our Avery website is here where you can see all of the kind of updates to our service and our research guides as well. I'm gonna skip past that really quickly. Our hours do vary throughout the semester, but again, you have access to all Columbia libraries as Columbia affiliates. So there are libraries that are open very, very late. Avery is a beautiful and very quiet workspace. So there are spaces on campus that are a little bit more geared towards group work and Zoom calls and things like that. So as you get on campus, I encourage you to explore all of the different libraries and find some other spaces as well. And of course we have printers and scanners in Avery as well. We have overhead scanners and flatbeds as well, and those are available free of charge for our users. Okay, so one thing that makes Avery a little bit different from libraries you may have used before is that much of the collection does not circulate, meaning it stays in Avery library and does not get taken out. So the benefit of this, of course, is that when you need the books, they're usually there waiting for you, not checked out for a very long time. However, there is one collection of books at Avery, and this is our service desk. You can see we have now entered the 1970s, right, from our 1912 reading room. This is our service desk where you can pick up things that you've requested from one of our interlibrary loan services. You can find course reserves, but in this room is where you'll find the only books in the collection that do leave the library. And you can do that by searching the catalog or by looking at the books themselves. They have stickers to mark if they cannot be taken out. But what I should add here is that we have some options for you in light of the fact that we do not circulate. So PhD students are eligible to sign up for a carol, which is like a desk with a shelf attached to it. Non-PhD students are eligible to sign up for a shelf. These are assigned each semester, and that shelf is assigned just to you, your half of the shelf, and you can check out 15 items to that shelf or carol for the whole semester. So this means that we can keep the materials non-circulating, keep them available for as many people as possible, but also have them conveniently waiting for you when you come to use them for your research. So it's kind of a happy middle ground that keeps the books as available to as many people as possible. Okay, so among our public services at Columbia and Avery, we have an Ask a Librarian chat. So this is staffed across Columbia libraries, but it does have weekends and evening hours. So for our users that have a quick question about finding an article or locating a book, this is an awesome service to use. Our users will get an instant response. And if the person doesn't know the answers to the question, they will refer them to the person who does. We of course do email reference at Avery, and we staff that Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, and we have someone who's on call each day for reference. So our users get really prompt responses to their questions. We offer one-on-one consultations. So those are often with me or one of our other librarians. And this is usually about an hour long appointment, can be longer, can be shorter. And we know that GSAP folks are really, really busy. Whatever your program is, we know you've got a lot going on. And so this is a really good use of your time because if you schedule a meeting with us ahead of time, we're usually able to prepare for you and kind of have some suggestions ready when you come to meet with us, walk you through some searches, make some suggestions, and you'll usually leave with something that you can use for whatever your project is. We also, both in Avery and Columbia libraries wide, offer workshops on just about everything library related that you can think of. So there's typically orientations for different programs when they begin, but also there are workshops on searching the catalog, searching databases, managing your citations and your sources. Pretty much anything you can think of, we offer workshops related to that and we often offer them very, very frequently so that our users will all have a chance to participate. Okay, so now I'll talk just a little bit about kind of Columbia libraries in general. So in addition to Avery, our students have access to all Columbia libraries, which is over 13 million volumes and 160,000 journals and serials. Anything you can think of, electronic resources, videos, we have streaming services, we have very large map collections, AV material. I mean, all of that is in over 450 languages. It's very, very large system. On the homepage of the library's website, you can find kind of all the basic information, but a couple of things that I like to highlight are the workshops that I just mentioned and also subject specialists. So of course in Avery, we are here to help you with your research, but in addition to the staff at Avery, there are subject specialists in just about every subject area that you can think of. So we know that a lot of people are working on multidisciplinary research. So if you are working on something that intersects with engineering or sociology or psychology or social work, whatever it is you're working on, there are usually multiple people available to help you and to point you to resources in their subject area that they are an expert at. So there are literally dozens of subject specialists at Columbia ready to help you with your research, in addition to those of us at Avery. Okay, so if there's something that in those 13 million volumes at Columbia that we don't have and you need it, there are many ways that we can get it for you. We share an off-site facility with Harvard, Princeton and New York Public Library, which means that you have very fast access to the materials that they keep there as well. And we also participate in Borrow Direct, which is kind of like a smaller interlibrary loan consortium. It gets you books very quickly. And we also participate in interlibrary loan, which is kind of we can source things from just about anywhere. So if you need scans of an article that we don't have, if you need a chapter from a book that we don't have, or if you need a whole book that we don't have, we can usually get it for you. Okay, in terms of searching the collection, obviously Clio, our library catalog, is your home for all things library. But I just wanted to highlight that at Avery and throughout Columbia Libraries, we have tons of research guides to help you kind of jumpstart and find the resources that are kind of most used in your area. And you'll see that we have specific guides here either on different themes or for different programs at GSAP, using the resources that we know are kind of most heavily used and most requested. So that's just kind of one way that we can sort of compile those into one place so that you can get started a little bit more quickly. Another service that we offer at Columbia that is extremely popular is scanning. So the guidelines for requesting a scan are that you're requesting a short portion of a work. So you can always come grab this book in Avery yourself, but if you just know that you need one chapter or you need one article from a journal, and again, that's gonna be one chapter or one article, one short section, you can use the catalog to request a scan and it will be scanned as a PDF and sent to you. So that is a huge time saver in terms of maybe not having to track those articles down, not having to come in and use that book if there are other things that you're focusing on in your research. So again, that's extremely popular service and that typically takes a few business days depending on the time of the semester and depending on how many requests we are getting at any given time. So one resource that I really want to highlight is the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, which is produced by Avery. Our editor, James Subzak, is in charge of that. And essentially for those who have never used the Avery Index before, it's a discovery tool to help you find articles that are listed in print periodicals because unfortunately, not everything in the world is digitized and full-text searchable like those journal archives I showed earlier. But this is a way that you can kind of discover articles within journals and then have the information that you need to track them down and we are very much here to help you with that. But this is an amazing source for our GSAP students because when you search this resource, it enables you to specify lots of different types of information when you're searching but also which illustration type you're looking for because we know that's a really, really important component of your research. So I highly recommend getting familiar with the Avery Index and I should add as well that our alumni retain access to the Avery Index after graduation, very highly, highly used resource and that's something that our users retain access to which we're really excited about. Okay, that's all I have to share for now. I know that was a lot really fast so I'm very happy to take questions. I'm gonna unshare for now but any questions I'm happy to answer. I'll start us off, Jenny. Thank you for the presentation. That was super informative and it's great to see and I appreciate you sharing all the, both the resources in the collection and how we access those. A few times you mentioned a reference like some of the ways to access the collection as if prospective students might already have done that. Are there some of these services that are like public or open like some of these search tools like the Avery Index or other aspects that students outside of Columbia are using? That's a great question. So the Avery Index is a subscription resource but many, many schools subscribe to it which is why I thought some folks may have been familiar or heard of it before, many have not. So that's a subscription resource that we create that product at Avery but many schools subscribe to that. It's available through EBSCO host and pro quest if those are databases that you're familiar with. And Clio, our online catalog, that's something that anyone can search. So obviously as an affiliate, you'd have full access to everything in the collection. But again, if you are curious about our collections and want to know more, I can put the link to the catalog in the chat and you can search for titles or for topics that you're looking for. If anyone has specific questions, I'm happy to answer that. But we do offer a lot of, again, as Columbia libraries as a whole, we subscribe to a lot of these bigger databases and smaller resources as well. And we have access to so many things and some of those things are restricted to affiliates. So I don't know if that answers your questions, Stefan, but... Yeah, perfect. Yeah, that's it. Because I have also had prospective students reach out and reference the Avery Index and it must be through those subscriptions, right? That other universities have to the service. Yes. Are there any questions you can feel free to turn on your cameras and mics and just jump right in. You don't have to be shy or you can pop a question in the chat and we can also read it out and respond that way. Not yet. Jenny, once some of these students are at the school, they're going to bombard you with questions. I look forward to it. Ask away. I appreciate your time, Jenny. And we're going to jump on to the next sort of topic of our afternoon meeting. So thank you so much for sharing the Avery Library resources and joining the call, Jenny. You're very welcome. Thanks so much.