The Library recognizes and responds to several "communities." These include:

New York City and the Borough of Brooklyn

The general public, for whom Special Collections' materials and services are a valuable tool

Alumnae/alumni, whom we reach principally through the activities of the Friends of the Library

External but related communities like the faculty and students of other CUNY campuses

Campus constituencies such as Faculty Council's Committee on the Library, the Library Representatives, the Technical Representatives, and Student Government

The Borough of Brooklyn

The Learning Café Project. 1997-1999. $650,000. TIIAP (Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program), NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration), Department of Commerce.

In the fall 1997, Brooklyn College, four Brooklyn high schools, the City University of New York, and the College Board http://www.collegeboard.org formed a partnership supported by a $650,000 TIIAP grant to connect the schools to the Internet and develop Learning Cafés in each of them. The Café curriculum (to be delivered in Year 2 of the project, 1998-1999) includes information literacy training, Web-delivered college-preparatory and college-credit courses, and an electronically-assisted college application module. The project aims to improve academic performance, graduation, and college enrollment rates. The Learning Café model is designed to provide schools an incentive to reallocate scarce resources in support of this Internet-centered college-preparatory program. It is being developed as a complete low-cost technological and curricular package, replicable across the country in communities of all sizes.

Curricula (all Web-based) include (1) Information Literacy; (2) Writing and Critical Thinking; (3) College Applications; and (4) A choice of one of three Brooklyn College courses, for college credit. Among the key Web sites created by faculty developers are:
 

http://www.sci.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~lori/TLC/tlc.htm
Lori Scarlatos
The Learning Café Project

http://www.cvc.sunysb.edu:59/toc/tlc.html
Beth Evans
Information Literacy

http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/bc/ahpAVC/VCB.HP.html
John Blamire
Virtual Core 8.1: Biology: The Science of Life

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/history/virtual/core4.htm
Paul Halsall
The Shaping of the Modern World (Core Studies 4)
 

The TIIAP grant is providing released time or stipends for eight faculty developers and faculty mentors: Diane Berardi (English), Valden Madsen (English), Lilia Melani (English), John Blamire (Biology), David Kline (Biology), Catherine McEntee (Biology), Paul Halsall (History), and Margaret King (History). Project Team members from the Library staff include Miriam Deutch (Project Director), Nicholas Irons (Training and Technical Support), Lori Scarlatos (Multimedia Developer), and Jocelyn Berger (Training and Technical Support). Alex Rudshteyn and his staff have provided significant technical assistance to each of the participating high schools.

Web designer/developer Tony Scarlatos built an interface for the Learning Café modules, as well as a framework to which the curriculum for each of them can be attached. Anil Khullar of the University's computer center provided technical assistance. Kathleen Gover, Florence Jackson, and their colleagues in the office of the Dean of Undergraduate Studies planned the testing and registering of those seniors who will enroll in credit-bearing Brooklyn College courses in the spring, 1999. Distance learning specialist Arlene Krebs is our project evaluator.

The equipment for the four Cafés was ordered in the spring 1998 and installed over the course of the summer. Teacher training will occur in early September, before the public schools start. Thanks to the creativity, problem-solving abilities, strength, and hard work of the Library and AIT staffs, the faculty curriculum developers, and the teachers and administrators in our partner schools, the TIIAP project promises to be a huge success by anyone's standards. Already we are thinking about sources of funding for its extension and expansion.

In the category "lessons learned," technical support has proven to be a much greater drain than we ever anticipated. In the end, work which we thought others (Bell Atlantic, IBM) would do instead had to be done by Library/AIT staff. They put many hours of time into wiring, software installation, installing network components (hubs, switches), server configuration, printer installation, connecting T-1 lines to the networks in the classrooms, and so forth. Accordingly, we built into our FIPSE proposal more funds for technical support.