About
I'm an Associate Professor and Digital Scholarship Librarian at the Mina Rees Library of the CUNY Graduate Center. I help students and faculty plan and build digital projects, work with data, and make decisions about AI in research and teaching.
I also co-direct the CUNY AI Lab. I built the CAIL Gateway, which connects the lab’s tools to a curated set of models. The lab also operates the zero-retention CAIL Sandbox, a public model registry, and tools for classroom and research work.
Current work
CUNY AI Lab
I built the CAIL Gateway, which maintains the lab’s model catalog, routes requests across providers, tracks who is using what, and reports the budget they have left. My other work includes the Tools Portal, agentic studios, model and provider policy, workshops, and public documentation.
Libraries and digital scholarship
At the library, I consult on digital projects, data analysis, visualization, web publishing, preservation, and research workflows. I serve as liaison to programs including Data Science, Digital Humanities, Demography, Computational Linguistics, and Geography/GIS.
Research and writing
I write about how academic libraries and universities adopt AI while preserving professional judgment, privacy, and their public mission. I also work on agentic programming, computational literacy, and the practical governance of shared AI infrastructure. My 2026 article, Do Artifacts Still Have Politics?, develops that argument for academic libraries.
Selected projects
- CAIL Gateway
The service I built behind CAIL’s tools, connecting them to the models we provide and keeping track of access and use. - CUNY AI Lab
Shared AI infrastructure, tools, documentation, and professional development for CUNY. - DHRIFT
Co-director of Digital Humanities Resource Infrastructure for Teaching Technology, supported by a 2023 NEH Level III Advancement Grant. - DH Box
Creator and developer of a cloud-based digital humanities platform supported by a 2015 NEH Start-Up Grant. - Open-source library and research tools
Projects include Reference Agent, Augur, and workshop materials for programming and research APIs.
Teaching
I teach graduate courses in AI-assisted programming, Python for research, and JavaScript at the Graduate Center. The courses are project-oriented and designed for humanities and social science researchers. I also lead workshops on APIs, command-line tools, databases, text analysis, data management, and related research methods.
Service
- Chair and primary author, CUNY Libraries Research Artificial Intelligence Task Force, 2024-25
- Author of Evaluating AI Tools in Research Systems, approved by the CUNY Office of Library Services in October 2025
- Member, CUNY Graduate Center IT Committee
- Chair, Mina Rees Library Web Services Steering Committee
- Reviewer for NEH Digital Humanities grants and academic journals
Education
- MS in Library and Information Science, Long Island University, 2010
- MA in Liberal Studies, Digital Humanities track, CUNY Graduate Center, 2016
- Bachelor of Liberal Arts, St. John's College, 2008
Contact
szweibel@gc.cuny.edu
Mina Rees Library, Room 2313
The Graduate Center, CUNY
365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016