2024 was a busy year for Cornell University Library’s teaching librarians. In the fall semester alone, they taught 428 instruction sessions for various courses and ran 50 workshops on a range of topics, from managing research data to understanding copyright laws.
As they partnered with teachers in developing students’ research and critical-thinking skills, they brought creative, learning tools and techniques into the classroom.
“Part of our responsibilities include supporting instructors to create more open and interactive learning environments, and one way of doing that is connecting them to new research methods, materials, and outputs,” said Hannah Toombs, an Engaged Learning librarian at Cornell University Library.
Learning and teaching with creative tools
Fanzines are good examples of creative and effective learning tools, according to Toombs and Robin Gee, a Critical Pedagogy and Equity librarian.
Last fall, Toombs and Gee conducted workshops for Elementary and Intermediate Spanish instructors on teaching their students how to make small, hand-made booklets, where they can apply their Spanish language skills to express ideas, sentiments, and research findings on various topics.
“The flexibility of fanzines in terms of topic, format, and medium made them perfect for a collaborative project across Spanish language courses at different levels,” said Silvia Amigo-Silvestre, senior lecturer and course coordinator of Spanish at Cornell.
“We had a total of 29 sections, 22 instructors, and 382 students,” Amigo-Silvestre said. “Hannah and Robin gave us the training we needed to carry out the project with our students in our respective sections.”
The classes culminated with “Zinefest,” on Dec. 4 at Willard Straight Hall, an event where students exhibited and talked about their works as part of their final projects.
It was an exciting showcase for the students.
“I saw many interesting projects on many diverse topics including medicine (heart health), climate change, fashion, ideal houses and many more interesting topics,” wrote one student in an anonymous class survey. “The Zinefest made me look forward to taking the higher-level Spanish classes where we learn more nuanced topics and then get to create fun projects about them.”
Another student wrote: “I enjoyed seeing the artistic visions of other students in different levels of Spanish. It was an inspiring experience.”
Student work showcased at Zinefest, at Willard Straight Hall. Photo by Silvia Amigo-Silvestre.
At the start of 2025 and with a new semester ahead, Toombs and Gee are eager to teach more about fanzines and to run other workshops and instruction sessions.
“Some of the topics will include digital storytelling, understanding language and power in how library collections are organized, and, of course, more zine workshops,” said Toombs, who is also the library liaison to Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Latine/x Studies, and Spanish and Portuguese. “I am also excited to teach the LSP1101 class (Research Strategies in Africana and Latinx Studies), where I’ll have a chance to share a lot of different parts of library research with students, in addition to some cool visits to Cornell University Library’s collections and archives.”
“Most of my requests will start coming in during the first week or two of classes, but I do already have a request to introduce students to ChatGPT and using it in nutritional science research,” said Gee. “I think that kind of class is a great opportunity to encourage students to think critically about where information comes from, how it’s being created and for what purpose, what biases are present and what perspectives are being left out—all very similar to the critical information literacy skills I teach in my zine workshops.”
Testing ideas at the library
For Kurt Waldman’s Environmental Decision Making class last fall, Cornell University Library provided physical space to apply and test the concepts students learned in the classroom.
Waldman assigned a group of his students to study how patrons discard recyclable items at Olin Library and to then implement interventions that would increase proper recycling.
“They spent some time observing the behavior, trying to figure out what they thought was causing people not to recycle, and then they essentially developed tools and policies focusing on social norms,” said Waldman, an assistant professor in the Department of Global Development at Cornell and an advocate for campus sustainability.
“It’s a combination of theory and policy and putting them together in an applied, engaged way,” he said.
For their final project, the student group was aided by Cornell University Library’s facilities team on improving how recycling was promoted and collected at Olin, including purchasing and installing new trash and recycling receptacles.
“We really worked to change the infrastructure in Olin,” said Jenna Saevitzon ’25, a senior in Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences who is pursuing a degree in environment and sustainability. “We got blue bins instead of the same silver bins, and there was a label on them that clearly has the recycling symbol that everyone knows.”
“We also created educational posters, and we included a social norm, which was something like ‘70 percent of Columbia students recycled, do you want to fall behind?’ just to create a sense of competition,” said Saevitzon, who is the cofounder of the Energy Transition Club at Cornell.
Jon Ladley, director of facilities at Cornell University Library, said he was pleased to partner with the students.
“The timing of this study really worked out very well with the current renovation,” he said. “With the public spaces on the first floor getting refreshed already, this was the perfect time to rethink how trash and recycling is collected on the floor.”
Ladley said the facilities team welcomes feedback and project proposals from campus groups. Apart from the recycling project, Ladley is partnering with students in electrical and computer engineering to repurpose the old Olin Library call board as a digital clock and multi-purpose display.
“We got reached out to by a professor in electrical engineering and a group of his students that wanted to do a side project,” Ladley said. “They’re taking this piece of equipment from the 1960s and turning it into something modern that we can use in the new space.”
Similarly, the student recycling project benefits Cornell University Library’s recycling efforts, according to Ladley.
“In their report, they saw a 20 percent reduction in contaminated recyclables, and that’s with only having their signage and the digital sign and the change in receptacles, which were only out for less than two weeks,” Ladley said.
