Curriculum Vitae

Professional experience

• Provide expertise on AI literacy and generative AI integration in academic libraries, including policy development, evaluation frameworks, and pedagogical applications.
• Advise the CUNY Office of Library Services on AI in research and discovery systems, including vendor evaluation across the CUNY libraries.
• Support, coordinate, collaborate, and consult with faculty and students on digital research projects.
• Write scripts and create applications that automate processes for the library.
• Lead library workshops on research and technology, and embed in classrooms to teach digital techniques.
• Advise researchers and grant applicants on data management.
• Provide reference support and subject liaison work, including collection development, for Computational Linguistics, Data Science, Data Visualization, Demography, Digital Humanities, and Geography/GIS.

• Co-founded the CUNY AI Lab with Stefano Morello and Zach Muhlbauer. The Lab is run jointly by GC Digital Initiatives, the Teaching and Learning Center, the Mina Rees Library, and the American Social History Project.
• Designed and built the CAIL Gateway for shared model access, routing, policy, attribution, and quotas.
• Built and maintain the Lab’s public tool suite, including Agent Studio, Site Studio, and PDF accessibility.
• Guide the work and priorities of the Lab’s fellows.

• Planned, built, and deployed a mobile, responsive library catalog for CUNY+, including a custom API.
• Developed a web application to track and analyze reference data (frequency, length, and nature of questions) to inform personnel and resource management; in use across Hunter College Libraries.
• Wrote a macro to automate catalog record deletion, saving thousands of hours of cataloging labor.
• Provided reference service to graduate and undergraduate students at the Health Professions Library.
• Taught information literacy classes on search strategy: Medline, CINAHL, APA, RefWorks, Zotero.
• Led workshops teaching programming (Python, JavaScript) to CUNY librarians.

• Developed and piloted an RFID book inventory solution using a programmable microcontroller.

• Provided reference service to students, faculty, and staff at Bobst Library.
• Answered virtual reference questions via email, IM, and text.
• Created original catalog records for the Tamiment Library collection of rare radical literature.

• Designed a project to reclaim “lost” items in collections and wrote instructional documents for its implementation.
• Generated original and copy catalog records for the Gillette collection of rare 17th- and 18th-century pamphlets.
• Cataloged the Avery Library’s collection of architectural literature.

Education

• MA, Liberal Studies, Digital Humanities — CUNY Graduate Center, 2016
• MS, Library and Information Science — Palmer School, Long Island University, 2010
• Bachelor of Liberal Arts — St. John’s College, 2008

Grants and awards

• 2025
  Principal Investigator, Provost’s Innovation Grant, “Enhancing Web Accessibility Through Multimodal LLM Analysis” — $10,000
• 2023
  Co-Principal Investigator, NEH Digital Humanities Advancement Grant for DHRIFT — $300,000
• 2019
  Manager of Open Educational Resources, NEH Advancement Grant for the Digital Humanities Research Institute — $250,000
• 2017
  Coordinator and workshop leader, NEH Start-Up Grant for the Digital Humanities Research Institute — $60,000
• 2015
  Co-Principal Investigator, NEH Start-Up Grant for DH Box — $60,000
• 2014
  Principal Investigator, ACERT Faculty Innovations in Teaching with Technology Grant — $2,000

Publications

Peer-reviewed publications

• 2026
  Stephen Zweibel. Do Artifacts Still Have Politics? Technological Determinism and Professional Agency in Academic Libraries' AI Transformation. portal: Libraries and the Academy 26(3): 495–512.
• 2022
  Stephen Zweibel. Automating reference consultation requests with JavaScript and a Google Form. Code4Lib Journal 55.
• 2020
  Roxanne Shirazi, Stephen Zweibel. Documenting digital projects: Instituting guidelines for digital dissertations and theses. College and Research Libraries 81(7).
• 2020
  Stephen Zweibel. Scraping BePress: Downloading Dissertations for Preservation. Code4Lib Journal 47.

Invited publications

• 2012
  Stephen Zweibel, Zachary B. Lane. Probing the Effects of Policy Changes by Evaluating Circulation Activity Data at Columbia University Libraries. The Serials Librarian 63(1): 17–27.

Professional guidelines

• 2025
  Stephen Zweibel. Evaluating AI Tools in Research Systems. CUNY Library Research Artificial Intelligence Task Force.

Open educational resources

• 2026
  Stephen Zweibel. Working with AI Coding Tools: Guides for Librarians and Researchers. Open educational resource, CC BY 4.0.

Other publications

• 2026
  CUNY AI Lab. Running the CUNY AI Lab on Open Weights. CUNY AI Lab blog.
• 2017
  Stephen Zweibel, Patrick Smyth. DH Box and Access in the Digital Humanities. dh+lib.

Conference participation

Instruction

• 2026
  “Practical JavaScript for Interactive Scholarship.” Invited workshop, with Zachary Lloyd. Digital Humanities Summer Institute (June 8–12), Montreal.
• 2025
  “Introduction to JavaScript.” Invited workshop. Digital Humanities Summer Institute, Montreal.
• 2024
  “Web APIs with Python.” Invited workshop. Digital Humanities Summer Institute (June 10–14), Victoria, BC.
• 2019
  “Web APIs with Python.” Invited workshop. Digital Humanities Summer Institute (June 3–14), Victoria, BC.
• 2018
  “Web APIs with Python.” Invited workshop. Digital Humanities Summer Institute (June 4–15), Victoria, BC.

Invited talks

• 2026
  “What Is Agentic Programming?” Critical Psychology Colloquium, CUNY Graduate Center, October 8, 2026, New York, NY.
• 2021
  ACRL ETD Formatting User’s Group, June 2021.
• 2015
  DH Box lightning talk. CUNY Graduate Center, November 2015, New York, NY.
• 2015
  “Know Thy Shelf.” Columbia University Libraries, May 2015, New York, NY.
• 2014
  “DH Box: A Computer Lab in the Cloud.” Hunter College ACERT, May 2014, New York, NY.

Invited panels

• 2026
  “Human Perspectives on Teaching and Learning in the Age of AI.” Fireside chat, Bronx EdTech Showcase (May 1), Bronx Community College, Bronx, NY. Panelist.
• 2018
  “Assessment in Reference.” LACUNY Assessment Fair (April), New York, NY. Panelist.
• 2016
  “Ideas in Circulation: Open Scholarship for Social Justice.” CUNY Graduate Center (February), New York, NY. Moderator.

Peer-reviewed panels

• 2026
  “Harnessing Agentic AI: Tools for Open University Infrastructure.” In Building Community-Oriented Infrastructures for AI Experimentation. ACH 2026 (June 24–26), virtual. Panelist.
• 2025
  “What Happens When ‘Hacking’ Becomes Easy? Teaching Python in 2025.” Digital Humanities 2025 (July 14–18), Lisbon, Portugal. Panelist.
• 2019
  “Digital Humanities Research Institute.” ACH 2019 (July 23–26), Pittsburgh, PA. Panelist.
• 2017
  “DH Box.” In “Open Source Lit, Open Source Crit.” MLA 2017 (January 5–8), Philadelphia, PA. Panelist.

Poster presentations

• 2024
  “DHRIFT: Digital Humanities Resource Infrastructure for Teaching Technology.” With Lisa Rhody. Peer-reviewed, published proceedings. Digital Humanities 2024 (August 6–9), Washington, DC.
• 2017
  “DH Box.” With Jojo Karlin and Patrick Smyth. Peer-reviewed, published proceedings. Digital Humanities 2017 (August 8–11), Montreal.
• 2016
  “Crafting the Digital Front Matter: Guidelines for Depositing Digital Dissertations.” With Roxanne Shirazi. US Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Association Conference (September 25–28), Columbus, OH.
• 2016
  “DH Box: Building Cloud-Based Infrastructure for the Digital Humanities.” With Jojo Karlin and Patrick Smyth. Canadian Society for Digital Humanities (May 28–June 3), Calgary, AB.

Presentations

• 2026
  “Evaluating AI in Library Discovery.” Presentation to CUNY librarians, New York, NY.
• 2015
  “DH Box: A Push-Button Computer Lab.” METRO Annual Conference, New York, NY.
• 2014
  “DH Box: A Push-Button Computer Lab.” CUNY 13th Annual IT Conference (December), New York, NY.
• 2013
  “Life with Pi: Microcomputing in Academia.” CUNY 12th Annual IT Conference (December), New York, NY.
• 2013
  “Augur for Reference Desk Statistics.” METRO Reference SIG (September), New York, NY.
• 2013
  “Building a Library Catalog API.” METRO Code4Lib SIG (April), New York, NY.

Web and application development

• 2025–present
  CUNY AI Lab Gateway: shared model access, routing, policy, attribution, and quotas
• 2025–present
  CUNY AI Lab public tool suite: Agent Studio, Site Studio, Kale Deploy
• 2025–present
  PDF Accessibility App: accessibility validation and AI-assisted tagging for CUNY Academic Works
• 2025–present
  AI Reference Agent for the Mina Rees Library (prototype), and the Library Agent Gateway that extends it to other library systems
• 2025–26
  CV-to-CSV, a faculty scholarship extraction tool used by the GC Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness
• 2026
  Omeka S platform for the Center for the Humanities Digital Archive, with Roxanne Shirazi
• 2026
  Graduate Center dissertation collection in Omeka, built from 12,083 ETD records
• 2023–25
  DHRIFT: Digital Humanities Resource Infrastructure for Teaching Technology
• 2021–22
  Current Mina Rees Library website (library.gc.cuny.edu), designed and built
• 2019–21
  DHRI Curriculum website
• 2018–19
  Redesign of the CUNY Graduate Center Library website
• 2014–19
  DH Box, a digital humanities laboratory in the cloud
• 2013–16
  Augur, a reference desk statistics tracking application
• 2013
  CUNY+ mobile catalog
• 2012
  Know Thy Shelf, an RFID library inventory solution using a microcontroller

Teaching

Workshops

• 2019–24
  Data for Public Good Fellowship
• 2017–present
  Digital Humanities Research Institute

Drop-in and course-specific workshops: The command line; Python; JavaScript; data management; databases; APIs; HTML and CSS; text analysis; agentic AI coding tools; introduction to research for master’s students; citation management.

Service

Committees and working groups

• Chair, CUNY Libraries Research Artificial Intelligence Task Force (2024–25). Authored Evaluating AI Tools in Research Systems, approved as official CUNY policy in October 2025.
• Convener, GC Library AI Working Group (2025–present)
• CUNY Office of Library Services Discovery Working Group (2025–26)
• Library Appointments Committee, Graduate Center Library (2025–26)
• CUNY Graduate Center IT Committee (2017–present)
• Chair, Web Services Steering Committee, Graduate Center Library (2016–2026)
• CUNY Libraries Alma Analytics Working Group (2019–20)
• LACUNY Executive Council (2015–17)
• Chair, LACUNY Emerging Technology Committee (2013–15)

Refereeing

• 2025
  Reviewer, GC Provost’s Digital Innovation Grant proposals
• 2024
  Reviewer, NEH digital humanities grants
• 2019
  Reviewer, Library Information Technology Association book proposal
• 2018
  Reviewer, Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy
• 2017
  Reviewer, GC Provost’s Digital Innovation Grant proposals
• 2016
  Reviewer, NEH digital humanities grants
• 2016
  Reviewer, GC Provost’s Digital Innovation Grant proposals

Skills

Programming

Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP

AI infrastructure

Model access gateways, model evaluation, agentic coding tools

CMSs and repositories

WordPress, Drupal, Omeka, Blackboard

Databases

MySQL, Access

Library systems

Ex Libris Alma and Primo, Ex Libris Aleph, OCLC Connexion, EZproxy, Voyager

Cataloging

Dublin Core, RDA, MODS, MARC21, AACR2

Languages

French (intermediate), Ancient Greek (reading)

Memberships

ALA, ACRL