Community Archaeology at the Trowel's Edge

ABSTRACTThe Public Archaeology Facility's (PAF) Community Archaeology Program (CAP) at Binghamton University began 25 years ago in response to intense community interest in participating in archaeology. Although non-archaeologists have unlimited access to programming and social media about archaeology, there is more limited access to professionally supervised opportunities. PAF developed CAP to provide non-archaeologists with the opportunity to participate in highly supervised archaeological research projects to share in the process of discovery at the “trowel's edge.” CAP recognizes the challenges and critiques of community programs and mitigates these by creating a climate of ethical practice. Our goal is to educate individuals about the presence of a rich and fascinating past in their own communities and create the sweat equity that can result in advocates for preservation. We operate under the principles that the heritage story embedded in an artifact is worthy of our respect and protection, and that an educated public is more likely to support the preservation of this heritage. Making a connection to people through artifacts builds not only a deeper understanding of the past but also an empathy for preservation. In this article, we introduce the program and reflect on the 25-year history of CAP and future directions.

Shannon Hayes

Writer and farmer Shannon Hayes lives with three generations of her family on Sap Bush Hollow Farm in West Fulton, New York, a rural community at the northernmost tip of Appalachia. Like many of her peers, Hayes left the region after high school. However, after receiving a BA in creative writing from Binghamton University and an MA and PhD in sustainable agriculture and community development from Cornell, she returned to the farm where she was reared and became what she calls a radical homemaker: a woman or man who focuses on a sustainable domestic life without rejecting feminist ideals. In making this choice, Hayes is part of a larger group of people who are rejuvenating communities while growing and consuming more local food....

The Big Deal Is Dead! Long Live The Big Deal!

In many countries, the proclamation "The king is dead, long live the king" heralds the demise of the old monarch and the accession of a new one. This tradition ensures that the throne never remains empty while facilitating a smooth transition of power. When the "Big Deal" journal subscription model debuted in 1996, few suspected the extent to which academic libraries would come to rely upon it, or that it would become the primary channel by which academic libraries procure academic journal content. As budget cuts take their toll on libraries, the demise of the Big Deal model seems inevitable as the true value of all-inclusive packages becomes less evident. But is it? Collection analysis reveals that many titles included within these Big Deal packages remain unused or underutilized, significantly decreasing the overall value of serial subscription packages. SPARC's Big Deal Cancellation Tracker shows an increasing number of libraries and consortia forgoing this model in favor of regaining local control over their collections and budgets. Binghamton University Libraries is no exception. Recent curriculum changes and financial developments have prompted us to adopt an ongoing evaluation of our users' information needs and proactively negotiate and cancel deals in order to better serve our constituents. This session described our fact finding, workflow modifications, and data analysis processes as well as the outcomes of our adventures in pursuing and planning for the cancellation of Big Deal agreements based on local collection development priorities and serials budget realities.

Change: Watch For The Right Time

Collection budgets are an essential tool for building collections yet the amounts of allocations can ebb and flow over the years. Modifying the budget structure is an intimidating, exhausting exercise with administrative and political ramifications that affect the workload of collections librarians as well as the workflows in acquisitions departments. External and internal forces such as impending budget cuts and serials reviews, a new library system, new department heads, newly minted librarians’ learning curves, and the creation or demolition of big deals seem like roadblocks to a budget revision process. They can also be seized as opportunities to look at new models. Libraries get by with the allocations provided in any given year, but would it be better for the collections if the approach to allocations was more flexible from the beginning, more of a proactive allocation instead of reactive? At Binghamton University Libraries, the hiring of a new Head of Collection Development and migrating to a new library system necessitated collaborative conversations concerning structures and roles for the two departments. This paper presents scenarios and recommendations for determining when and how to collaboratively evaluate a legacy budget structure, redefine allocations, and review staff roles.

Supervisors as mentors: How supervisory mentorship can supplement formal mentoring programs

Binghamton University Libraries’ mentoring program has been in place since 2006. The goals of this program are to orient new librarians to the organizational culture by building relationships with more senior librarians, and to help new librarians achieve tenure by providing support and advice on job performance, service, and scholarship throughout the six years leading to tenure review.

Teaching Evolution across the Curriculum

The chapters are based largely on a movement to teach evolution across the curriculum, beginning in 2003 when one of the authors decided to initiate a program at Binghamton University. The first sister program was started by another author at SUNY–New Paltz in 2007, followed by a National Science Foundation grant during 2008–2010 to develop the programs and create a multi-institution consortium. Over 40 campuses expressed interest, but only a few developed full-fledged campus-wide programs. The EvoS Consortium movement can therefore be considered a glass that is partly full and partly empty. As this volume shows, the need to teach evolution across the curriculum is greater than ever and campus-wide established programs work well, but their establishment has become limited. In this final chapter, the authors attempt to diagnose the limiting factors and suggest ways to teach evolution across the curriculum that include, but go beyond, campus-wide programs.

Darwinian-Inspired Curricula

Since the advent of the first interdisciplinary Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) programs at Binghamton University and the State University of New York at New Paltz, students across disciplines have been afforded the opportunity to learn foundational evolutionary principles. They have had the opportunity to explore how evolutionary ideas apply across the curriculum, as well as to issues of everyday life. This book is designed to be an exposé of the EvoS concept, including basic features of an EvoS curriculum, the goals of such a curriculum, and real-world applications of evolution-based ideas found in an EvoS curriculum. Contextualized in the complexities of modern higher education, this book includes chapters discussing the place of EvoS within the broader landscape of higher education as well as controversies in the field. This chapter introduces the coverage and organization of the book by providing a lay of the land.

Grants and Acquisitions

The Binghamton University Libraries were awarded a Council on Library and Information Resources Recordings at Risk grant for the “Learning from Legends: Reflections on the 1960s Collection” project. The grant award is for $16,552 and was one of only 16 selected from the total of 51 applications.Arizona State University (ASU) has been awarded a $380,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a three-year implementation project to reinvent the library’s strategy and practice for open-stack print collections. The work will enable ASU Library to design and develop inclusive library print collections for ASU Library to engage, educate, and inspire scholars and learners of the ASU community.

Spiritual and Ecclesiastical Biographies: Research, Results, and Reading, ed. Anders Jarlert. Konferenser, 94. Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, 2017, 245 pp.

The papers combined in this volume were originally presented at a conference at the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities in Stockholm, June 11–12, 2015. The explicit purpose of this event and the subsequent volume was to expose the work of Swedish and other scholars on the genre of biographies to an international audience, reflecting on life-writing or ego-documents, emphasizing spiritual autobiographies. According to the brief bios at the end of the book, Robert Swanson, for instance, is Emeritus Professor at Binghamton University; Jean-Mark Ticchi teaches at the Centre d’Etudes en Sciences Sociales du Religieux in Paris; and Enock Bongani Zulu was lecturer at the Lutheran Theological Institute in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. The book cover is decorated with an image showing a page in Margery Kempe’s Book from ca. 1440, indicating that the focus might rest on the Middle Ages. This is only very partially the case.