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In the course of teaching in the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies, Peg Christoff learned about the tremendous pain and suffering caused by the 2001 Gujarat earthquake in India; and that the resulting massive flooding in the monsoon season affected nearly 450,000 people and relocated more than 130,000 to homeless shelters. However, it took a trip to India and many interviews with those who lived through this tragedy to appreciate the way this climate change disaster had affected women’s lives.
In 2016, Peg hired Jamie Sommer (who was a doctoral student at Stony Brook at the time) to learn more about the Women for Results program sponsored by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The UNFCCC’s sponsorship and a subsequent publication by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN’s) Global Gender Office described an innovative program, Bhungroo (“straw” in English), that used an irrigation technology to turn a humanitarian crisis into a powerful opportunity for women who previously had little voice in their homes or communities. They learned that, traditionally, women in India could not own land; however, the Bhungroo project introduced a brilliant work-around strategy to give women rights to the irrigation technology. Peg and Jamie first interviewed the creators of the program, Trupti Jain and her husband, Biplab Paul, via Skype; and, then, in 2019, with a grant from Stony Brook University, they traveled to Gujarat to interview farmers in three villages to understand the project’s impact on women’s social status in their communities.
In this digital collection, you will find all interview materials from their field research, including interview release forms, audio and video recordings, translations of the interviews from Gujarati into English, short videos, and photographs. Also included are two related student undergraduate research projects that Peg supervised and interviews with those who were to be part of a spring symposium prior to COVID-19.
Date: 2020
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"Documenting COVID-19: Stony Brook University Experiences" is a digital archive project established by Stony Brook University Libraries and launched in September 2020 to collect, preserve, and publish the institutional history of Stony Brook University during this unprecedented moment in history.
The entire Stony Brook University community was invited to contribute to the archive. Participation from across all of our campuses was vital to ensure an inclusive record of the SBU experience is available for future generations of researchers. The archive is primarily formed from submissions received directly from students, faculty, staff, and alumni that document life during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Date: 2020
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Kronos, published from 1980 to 2001, is the yearbook of the School of Medicine at Stony Brook University. Stony Brook University Libraries has digitized every issue of the yearbook to expand access to them and to preserve an important source of university history. The Kronos Digital Yearbook Collection provides online, searchable access to the issues through a webpage interface. Original copies of the yearbooks are housed in the University Archives and in the Health Sciences Library.
Date: 2020
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As a final project for a course through the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies, “Women in U.S.-Asian Relations” (AAS/POL 307), students conducted interviews with women who are cross-cultural “travelers” between the United States and Asia.
Before conducting their interviews, the students examined the ways women historically sought to increase understanding between the U.S. and Asia over a 125-year time period (from the 1850s to the 1970s). They learned about transformative occupations — from writers and poets to missionaries, journalists, film makers, diplomats, medical and social workers, scientists, scholars, and chefs – to determine how women used motivational discourse and social networking, mentoring, and partnering to interpret China, India, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and Vietnam for diverse audiences in America and Asia.
Date: 2016/2017
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The Max Fink Papers at Special Collections and University Archives, Stony Brook University Libraries document the extraordinary career of psychiatrist and neurologist Max Fink, MD. Dr. Fink is a world leading expert and defender of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). His studies of ECT began in 1952 at Hillside Hospital in New York and he has published prolifically for six decades on the use and effects of ECT. In 1979, he authored Convulsive Therapy: Theory and Practice, the book medical historian Edward Shorter and internationally recognized psychiatrist David Healy called the “definitive medical text on electroconvulsive shock.”
The collection is comprised of nearly 250 linear feet (475 boxes) of original research materials dating from the 1880s through 2017 and includes Dr. Fink’s notes, manuscripts, publications, correspondence, grant reports, and visual materials on the research and study of convulsive therapy (electroshock), catatonia, melancholia, pharmaco-electroencephalography, and psychopharmacology.
The first release of the Max Fink Digital Collection, a subset of the papers, includes nearly 7,000 items (20,000 pages) of original notes on experimental psychiatry, outgoing letters to colleagues, professional writings, and an autobiographical memoir completed in 2017. More items from the archival collection will be digitized in the future.
Date: 2018
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Established in 1981, the Senator Jacob K. Javits Collection at Stony Brook University is a historically significant trove for scholars and students studying 20th century history and politics. Today, nearly 40 years after it was received, the 1.8 million-item collection remains one of Special Collections’ most frequently consulted archives by researchers from around the world. This is testament to Senator Javits’ incomparable impact and influence.
With support from The Jacob K. and Marian B. Javits Foundation, Stony Brook University Libraries has developed a digital collection and a multimedia online exhibition to showcase the Senator’s accomplishments, and to articulate and illustrate the significance of his legacy. An interactive timeline highlights Senator Javits’ monumental career achievements in public service including the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, the War Powers Act of 1973, and civil rights legislation.
Date: 2020
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The online Dental Instruments: Past and Present digital collection is made possible by a National Network of Libraries of Medicine grant awarded in Summer 2017 to Stony Brook University Librarians: Kathleen Kasten, Head of Humanities and Social Sciences; Jamie Saragossi, Head of the Health Sciences Library; and Shafeek Fazal, Associate Dean for Library Technology, Discovery, and Digital Initiatives.
The works contained within this collection are the final products of a joint collaboration between the Stony Brook University Health Sciences Library, Library Information Technology, and the Preservation Department. The project was conducted during the Spring 2015 academic semester, and its goal was to create a digital exhibit based on the Dental Instruments: Past and Present exhibit on display in the Health Sciences Library by digitizing images, text, and objects.
The physical exhibit went on display at the Health Sciences Library in 2014 and is composed of items from several collections, including: The Mills Collection, the collection of Dr. Allan Kucine, the Baer Collection (held at the Stony Brook University School of Dental Medicine), as well as items provided by the Stony Brook University School of Dental Medicine and a copy of The long climb: From barber-surgeons to doctors of dental surgery, donated by the author, Philias Garant, DDS, Professor Emeritus at Stony Brook University School of Dental Medicine. This digital collection represents the items on view in the physical collection, complemented by a bibliography, educational references, and explanatory texts.
Date: 2018
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“Otto F. Ege: Fifty Original Leaves from Medieval Manuscripts” is a digital collection published by Stony Brook University Libraries in December 2017.
An educator and book seller, Otto F. Ege (1888-1951) is perhaps best known for separating and systematically removing pages or leaves from books. A self-proclaimed biblioclast or “book-breaker,” Ege rationalized that disbinding volumes provided the masses with opportunities to study and to have tangible experiences with authentic medieval manuscripts. As a result, modestly funded libraries and smaller institutions were able to acquire manuscript specimens at a reasonable cost.
The digital collection features photographs of the Ege-compiled portfolio “Fifty Original Leaves from Medieval Manuscripts, Western Europe, XII-XVI Century.” Special Collections owns portfolio “No. 19” of the 40 unique sets created by Ege. The rectos and versos of each leaf, context cards, and housing have been photographed and fully described in accordance with Dublin Core and VRA metadata standards. The University Libraries created the collection to increase accessibility to the manuscripts and to aid efforts by students and scholars to “virtually” reconstruct the books from which the scattered leaves were taken.
Date: 2018