The City University of New York’s 14th annual IT Conference was held at John Jay College on December 3rd and 4th. While a number of sessions addressed open access initiatives at CUNY, a few specifically highlighted the role of CUNY Academic Works as part of these efforts — from the preservation challenges presented by digital dissertations at the CUNY Graduate Center to the launch of a new open access journal devoted to the scholarship of teaching and learning in art history, Art History Pedagogy and Practice, that will be published in CUNY Academic Works.

On Friday afternoon, William Casari, Jill Cirasella, Miriam Deutch and Megan Wacha presented “Opening CUNY: Academic Works at Work.” This session introduced attendees to the repository initiative and discussed how opening content to the world impacts CUNY and its community, both local and global. In order to provide a sense of the range of content types collected by CUNY Academic Works, each speaker addressed a specific collection at their institution: dissertations at the Graduate Center, open educational resources (OERs) at Brooklyn College, the “Save Hostos” Gerald J. Meyer archival collection at Hostos Community College, and faculty research from across the entire City University of New York. Slides are available via CUNY Academic Works.