Asst. Prof. Roxanne Shirazi, Dissertation Research Librarian

Roxanne Shirazi is a familiar face at the Graduate Center Library, but this spring we welcome her to a full-time Assistant Professor tenure track position. Prof. Shirazi will coordinate the library’s archiving and distribution of electronic theses and dissertations (known in the trade as ETDs), as well as the capstone projects. She has eased the ordeal associated with graduation by streamlining our deposit workflow and applying new tech customizations. She overhauled the dissertation deposit instructions and began a concerted outreach including blog posts, instructional workshops, and meetings with program administrators. She readily consults with graduate authors about copyright matters, document formatting, and research methods. She manages the Graduate Center ETD section of the CUNY Academic Works and ProQuest’s ETD Administrator. She pioneered the Graduate Center’s fully electronic dissertation deposit process.

Roxanne started at the GC Library as an Adjunct Reference and Digital Outreach Librarian in fall 2013 as she pursued her 2nd master’s degree in the MALS program. In spring 2016, Roxanne joined the library staff full time, but on a one-year substitute line as the Graduate Center’s Dissertation Research Librarian.

Roxanne posted her MALS thesis (Yellow Dust Abode: The Hawley-Suski Letters, 1942-1945) openly in CUNY Academic Works in 2016. She earned a B.A. in Film Studies from the University of California at Berkeley several years earlier. Her current research interests involve scholarly communication, digital publishing, copyright, and graduate student education. Roxanne explains that she aims to examine “conflict between traditional academic publishing regimes and digital technologies.” Her immediate research considers “how doctoral researchers manage their digital assets — large collections of archival photographs, or annotated PDS, for example.” She is founding editor of the acclaimed blog dh+lib (“where the digital humanities and librarianship meet”), sponsored by the Association of College and Research Libraries. She is an active and thoughtful Twitter citizen. Follow her @RoxanneShirazi.

Roxanne earned her MSLIS from Pratt Institute, with an Advanced Certificate in Archives, where her concentration was in special collections, with coursework about technical services, conservation, reference, and outreach for library and archival materials in print, audiovisual, photographic and digital formats. Prior to becoming a librarian, she managed the Columbia University Bookstore.

We welcome her wholeheartedly to the GC Library faculty!

 

About the Author

Prof. Polly Thistlethwaite is CUNY's Interim University Dean for Library Services.