Professional Bio & Research Interests

  Caroline Fuchs is Associate Professor and Outreach Librarian at St. John’s University Libraries, Queens, New York. In addition to an M.L.S, she holds an M.A. in English and an M.A. in History. Before her appointment as Outreach Librarian at St. John’s, Caroline was the Special Collections Librarian at the Mina Rees Library at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

As Outreach Librarian at St. John’s University, she is the subject specialist for literature,  language and linguistics, military & naval history, rhetoric & speech, Italian-American studies, digital humanities, comics & graphic novels, and French. She partners with faculty, particularly in the English department of St. John’s College, to give individualized workshops and instruction sessions, and to create online guides/tutorials for undergraduate and graduate students. Areas of particular interest in this area include comparative immigrant literature, hip hop, post-colonial literature, and American women writers. She is a SJU Center for Teaching & Learning Teaching & Technology Senior Faculty Fellow, a Senior Fellow at the Vincentian Center for Church and Society, and was a Writing across the Curriculum Faculty Fellow. Working closely with the Center for Teaching & Learning, she teaches workshops for faculty and graduate students on Zotero, WordPress, Twitter, LinkedIn, digital  humanities and digital pedagogy.  Fuchs is one of the founding members of the SJU Digital Humanities Interest Group, and is the librarian liaison to the SJU Student Veterans Success Center. Most recently, she has volunteered to be a member of the newly-created SJU Fair Trade Steering Committee.

In addition to her role as Outreach Librarian at St. John’s University, she created and teaches the course “Exploring New York City through Comics” as part of the Discover New York, a freshman course that aims to be “an introduction to New York City through the lens of a particular subject discipline.”

Prof. Fuchs is an active member of the library community. She has been a member of the Executive Board of Greater New York Metropolitan Chapter of the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL/NY) since 2008. She served on the Symposium Planning Committee for several years, and was the Chair of the ACRL/NY 2011 Annual Symposium Committee. She is currently the Recording Secretary of the ACRL/NY, and the Co-Chair of the ACRL/NY First Year Experience Discussion Group.

Prof. Fuchs is an active member of national library associations, including the American Library Association (ALA), the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). She holds numerous committee appointments. She is the Past-Chair of ACRL Chapters Council, where she had also served as Recording Secretary in 2013-2013. She is a member of the ACRL Excellence in Academic Libraries Awards Committee, the ACRL Representatives Assembly, the ALA Chapter Relations Committee,  and the RUSA Membership Committee. She served as Chair of the AFL-CIO ALA Labor Committee from 2010-2014, the RUSA Access to Information Committee, and the ACRL/ULS Academic Outreach Committee.

With Kathryn Shaughnessy (Instructional Services Librarian, St. John’s University), she was the co-convener of the Library 2.0 Special Interest Group of the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO), and with Carol Feltes (University Librarian, Rockefeller University) the co-founder and co-convener of the Advocacy Special Interest Group at METRO, where  she is also a member of METRO’s Documentary Heritage Program Advisory Council.

At St. John’s University (SJU), she has been an elected member of the University Senate since 2011. She also serves on the Advisory Board of the SJU Italian Cultural Center and is a member of the SJU Division of Library and Information Science Advisory Board.

Her research interests in library science relates to the role of the academic librarian as a research partner and fully integrated member of the teaching and learning communities on campus, the practical application of educational technology, and the ways in which social media and online interactive software alter the way in which we teach and learn. Her most current research focus is on the graphic novel and information literacy, as well as the use of graphic novels (and comics) to study and interpret American history, political events, and global social issues.  She is exploring the use of graphic novels in fostering academic teaching, learning and the discussion of “big picture issues” such as social justice/injustice, race, poverty, immigrant identity, war, etc.

Her subject specialties include graphic narrative/comics; American literature; English literature; American history; rhetoric, communications & speech, information literacy and digital pedagogy.

Click here to see her St. John’s University Libraries’ CampusGuide profile and a brief list of her online research guides.