Penfield Library’s faculty and staff congratulate this year’s winners of the University Impact Collections Grant:

  • Kathleen Locklear - Accounting, Finance & Law
  • Michael Chaness - Anthropology
  • Rebecca Peters - Anthropology
  • Courtney Gazda - Counseling Services
  • Celinet Duran Jimenez - Criminal Justice
  • Matthew McLeskey - Criminal Justice
  • Jennifer Kagan and Sarah Fleming - Curriculum and Instruction
  • Namrata Sharma - Curriculum and Instruction
  • Sandy Bargainnier - Health Promotion and Wellness
  • Sarfraz Mian - Marketing and Management
  • Roseli Rojo - Modern Languages and Literatures
  • Patrick Schultz - Modern Languages and Literatures
  • David Lambie - Philosophy
  • Danielle Aldea Hodgins - Theatre

These grants for SUNY Oswego faculty and professional staff allow recipients to select up to $500 worth of physical materials to add to the library’s collection. Groups who submit a joint application may select up to $1,000 worth of materials.

Library materials purchased with these grants must support professional development, scholarly activity, curriculum needs or student success. The larger the impact the grant will have on supporting SUNY Oswego and its strategic initiatives, the higher priority that grant has for being funded.

“It is so important that our pre-service candidates -- and Oswego students at large -- have access to quality and current young adult and middle grades literature,” said Fleming. She and Kagan added 50 titles to Penfield’s collections through their accepted proposal.

“They are very current YA (young adult) and middle grade books that we can get into the hands of our undergraduate and graduate students, who can get them into the hands of middle school and high school students,” Kagan said. In Fleming and Kagan’s proposal, Kagan described an assignment where she has students give five- to seven-minute book talks promoting why someone would want to read a particular book.

“Whether [students] use it for their own pleasure reading or in planning for their adolescent English instruction, these titles are an exciting addition to our collection,” Fleming said. She said it was hard to choose a single favorite title to recommend from the list, but eventually settled on "Tangleroot" by Kalela Williams: it’s “historical fiction with a mysterious twist!”

Duran Jimenez's additions to the library’s collection focus on race and ethnicity in the criminal justice system, with an emphasis on titles authored by people of color. She particularly recommends the book "Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot" by Mikki Kendall.

“This book highlights the importance of intersectionality and how traditional, mainstream feminism was never meant to include women of color. It focuses on the diversity of social problems and how women of color are uniquely impacted in US society,” Duran Jimenez said.

“In today's social and political climate, it is imperative that we increase access to materials that center all experiences and voices, but particularly those of the marginalized,” she said. “Knowledge is the most powerful tool in our arsenal in the battle against oppression -- if it wasn't, they wouldn't work so hard to keep us from it.”

Library materials purchased through the University Impact Collections grant intentionally support statewide library collection development in New York in addition to advancing learning, scholarship and student success at SUNY Oswego. These grants are funded by New York State’s Coordinated Collection Development Aid (CCDA) program, which is designed to make library materials on a vast array of topics available to residents of New York.

“The CCDA program through New York State financially recognizes the contributions which academic libraries make to state and regional resource sharing,” said Collection Management Librarian Kathryn Johns-Masten. “The program seeks to enhance individual academic library collections across the state which strengthens regional collections.”

Deeper library collections around the state mean more library materials available for the SUNY Oswego community (and other NY state residents) to request through interlibrary loan, since any library participating in CCDA must make materials purchased with this money available through that service.

“Libraries play a vital role providing access to a wide range of materials. Building collections across the state that include a wide range of subject areas ensures people around the state have access to a variety of information, knowledge, and perspectives,” said Johns-Masten.

Penfield Library hopes to continue awarding University Impact Collections Grants in future years, as funding allows. The CCDA money behind these grants comes from New York State and is administered by the New York State Library. However, the New York State Library relies heavily on money from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) for its staffing: According to Caitlin Kenney, reference and research services coordinator of the Western New York Library Resources Council, approximately two-thirds of the New York State Library’s 84 employees are funded through IMLS. Dramatic recent cuts at IMLS have raised questions about both direct and indirect impacts on library programs such as CCDA, Kenney said.

“[T]he ability of [New York’s Division of Library Development] and State Library to administer grant funds to the councils and other library systems in a timely fashion may be impacted if staff positions funded by IMLS end up being cut due to the elimination of IMLS,” Kenney said.

-- Submitted by Penfield Library