Hunter College Libraries Blog

In connection with the Hunter College Art Galleries’ exhibitions to : Night, Contemporary Representations of the Night (curated by Joachim Pissarro, Mara Hoberman, and Julia Moreno)
<http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/art/galleries/index.htm> a work entitled Infinite Light created by the French artist Laurent Grasso, is intended to span the exterior of the pedestrian bridges that connect the main buildings at Hunter College. The piece is comprised of the words “day for night” illuminated in neon and repeated several times. The fluorescent tubes cast a blue tint which is similar to the filters used by cinematographers when filming scenes during the day to represent nighttime. By playing with the technique of “day for night,” Infinite Light produces an effect which is both spectacular—in the visual seductiveness of the material used, the scale of the piece, and the repetition of the words—and deceptive because the intensity of the light it produces means that paradoxically, it is only visible once night begins to fall.

The work was unveiled on Thursday, September 25 at 6:45 pm on the Hunter West Building Plaza located at 68th Street and Lexington Avenue, SW corner

Infinite Light

The following is a short list of related library resources:

Light! : the industrial age 1750-1900 : art & science, technology & society
Hunter Main - Library Stacks - N8219.L5 B58 2001

Into the light : the projected image in American art, 1964-1977
Hunter Main - Library Stacks - N6512.5 .V53 I43 2001

Visions of light : the art of cinematography [video recording]
Hunter Reserve - DVD68 (available for 7 day loan)

Dan Flavin : a retrospective
Hunter Main - Library Stacks - N6537 .F55 A4 2004

Jenny Holzer
Hunter Main - Library Stacks - N6537.H577 A4 1997

Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees :
a life of contemporary artist Robert Irwin
Hunter Reserve - N6537 .I64 W4 1982

James Turrell : the art of light and space
Hunter Main - Library Stacks - N6537.T78 A84 1990

Library Competition

Announcing the 16th Annual Competition for Best Research Papers

Don’t forget the library’s annual competition for Best Research Papers, to be awarded in Spring 2009 at the annual Library Day event.

Prizes will be awarded for papers judged to be the best of 2008. Papers written in the winter, spring, summer, and fall semesters of 2008 qualify.

The goal of this competition is to stimulate the creative use of library resources, including those of the Hunter archives and the research facilities of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies. Winning papers will be thoroughly researched, well written, and properly documented.

Barnes & Noble Gift Certificates of $100.00 and $50.00 each will be given in separate categories for (1) 100 level, (2) other undergraduate, and (3) graduate research papers. All departments and special programs in the college may participate. No more than three papers may be submitted for one course. Theses are excluded. 

The deadline is Tuesday, January 13, 2009. Only papers submitted by course instructors will be eligible for awards. Papers should be sent to Tony Doyle at the Hunter College Library with a note giving the course name, number and semester (Winter, Spring, Summer, or Fall 2008). Submissions should also include students’ phone numbers and email addresses. There is no special format, and submitting the papers is sufficient statement of recommendation. A faculty panel will select the winners. Awards will be presented at the college-wide Hunter Library Day reception in the spring of 2009.

Faculty sponsors of winning candidates will also be formally recognized for their support in this common effort to promote the research and writing skills of Hunter students.

For more information please contact Tony Doyle at 772-4181or tdoyle@hunter.cuny.edu.

Tony Doyle served as program chair for the sixth annual Information Ethics Roundtable, held on May 9 on the eighth floor of Hunter West. The topic was Information Ethics and its Applications. The program consisted of five speakers. Each speaker spoke for roughly 30 minutes, followed by 10 minutes of commentary, followed in turn by 20 minutes of discussion.

The first speaker was Frances Grodzinsky, (Computer Science, Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, Connecticut). Professor Grodzinsky’s talk was entitled “The Verizon v. RIAA Case Revisited: Some Further Reflections on the Tension between Privacy and Property Interests.” The case in question arose out of concern from the Recording Industry Association of America about free music file sharing services like Napster and later peer-to-peer services like Lime Wire and Grokster. The RIAA has maintained that the potential threat of such services to music still under copyright justifies forcing internet providers like Verizon to hand over the internet records of their subscribers. Grodzinsky disagreed, arguing that the interest that the rest of us have in privacy trumps the RIAA’s intellectual property interests. Don Fallis of the University of Arizona’s School of Information Resources and Library Science commented.

The keynote speaker, Luciano Floridi (University of Hertforshire, Department of Philosophy, University of Oxford, and Universita degli Studi di Bari, Scienze Filosofiche), presented next. Professor Floridi is a pioneer in the flourishing field of the philosophy of information. Floridi’s talk, “Individual Data and the Limits of their Ownership,” defended the conclusion that a person has a strong moral claim to all personal data and that the unauthorized use of that data is a akin to theft. Kay Mathiesen of the University of Arizona’s School of Information Resources and Library Science commented.

The third speaker was James Stacey Taylor (Philosophy and Religion, The College of New Jersey). Professor Taylor, in his talk, “Privacy, Personal Information, and Hedonism: A Defense of Peeping Tom,” argued that undetected, unpublicized voyeurism causes no harm. He went on to urge that, if the practice causes no harm, then the main reason for thinking that it is wrong is seriously undermined. Steve Ross of Hunter’s Philosophy Department commented.

Richard Volkman (Philosophy, Southern Connecticut State University) spoke next. His talk was entitled “If Information Wants to Be Free, Information Wants to be in the Market.” Professor Volkman defended, among other things, the contention that retailers should be able to gather as much information about their customers as those customers’ buying habits reveal and that retailers should be able to profit from this information. In short, let the market determine what kind of personal information should be available to private companies and how they might benefit from it. Professor Volkman’s commentator was Catherine Womack of the Philosophy Department at Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts.

Mark Manion (Humanities Department, Drexel University in Philadelphia) followed. His topic was “The Ethics of Peer-to-Peer File Sharing.” Professor Manion was critical of the power that the major recording companies exert over copyrighted material, arguing that copyright protection is far in excess of what it is needed to maximize the creation, production, and distribution of music. Marc Meola of the College of New Jersey Library commented.

Roughly 50 to 60 people attended the event. Each talk was followed by lively discussion.

Funding for the Roundtable was provided by The Library Association of CUNY (LACUNY), The Hunter College Library, and the Hunter College Enterprise Board.

I am pleased to announce the appointment of Anne Larsen as Director of Facilities Planning & Technology in the Libraries.  Anne comes to us from the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners where she spent 10 years as a Library Building Consultant.  She has also served as Library Director of the Massachusetts Communications College, Head of Public Services at Sullivan County Community College/SUNY, Library Director at the American University in Bulgaria and was Collection Development Librarian and Reference Librarian at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.  Anne has her MSLS from Pratt, a BA in English Literature from Brooklyn College, and was in the PhD program in English at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Did you know you can chat live with a librarian, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week?

We’ve all been there - stuck on a research paper or project at 3am, library closed, project due the next day, desperate for help and not knowing where to turn!

Fortunately, you can get online and IM a professional reference librarian any time of the day or night and get some much-needed research assistance, and maybe even some sleep.

Go to the Hunter College Libraries website and click on the “Ask a Librarian” logo in the lower left section of the screen.  From there, you can choose “Chat live with a reference librarian 24/7.” You may also choose to send us an email, if your situation is less dire.

Never fear – help is on the way!  And you don’t even need to change out of your pajamas.