Program Description
The Cross-Reference Coalition is an experimental public school that knits together the member institutions of the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO) — comprising hundreds of libraries and archives across New York City and Westchester County — and connects that community to the region’s artists, designers, and graduate students.
We aim to discover what new knowledges and creative practices might emerge through integrative thinking, interdisciplinary collaborations, inter-institutional partnerships, and the activation of New York City’s shared public knowledge. The program launched in Fall 2025 with a course on The Misfit, and we now invite you to join us for our second course, in Spring 2026!
To learn more, check out our program slide deck or see the timeline below. Applications are open through Wednesday, January 7th at midnight ET. Registration fees for accepted participants are offered on a sliding scale and capped at $125.
About “Search and Discovery”
Search engine optimization and generative artificial intelligence have progressively destroyed web search. Meanwhile, expanding privatization, surveillance, and the militarization of our public spaces have impeded our capacity to explore and inhabit the physical world — and the instrumentalization and “optimization” of education have impeded organic, curiosity-driven investigation. In this course, we’ll gather to survey the state of search and discovery, reclaim lost methods, explore strategies for circumventing automation and extraction, imagine new modes of orienteering, and conjure up new terrains of wonderment.
Our journey will encompass the history of exploration and cartography, legacies of inquiry, tools of discovery, theories of curiosity, and counter-algorithmic means of “finding things out.” We’ll aim to engage with navigators and user-experience designers, tour guides and psychologists, artists and archaeologists. Each weekly session will exemplify a different mode of finding and exploring New York’s terrains and treasures, and our work will culminate in the collective creation, through the summer and early fall, of a scavenger hunt, map, or field guide promoting discovery of the city’s knowledge institutions and cultural heritage.
Important Dates
- Call for Applications Opens: Monday, November 17th
- Information Session: Monday, December 8th, 12:00 pm ET (view recording)
- Application Deadline: Wednesday, January 7th at midnight ET
- Applicants Notified: Wednesday, January 14th
- First Class: Wednesday, February 18th, 3:30 pm—6:00 pm (see FAQ)
- Subsequent Classes: Every Wednesday until April 29, with a one-week break on either March 18 or 25, depending upon our hosts’ schedules
- Late Spring – Fall 2026: Three or four group workshops (to be scheduled) and two individual consultations (scheduled at your convenience) to develop our class project.
What Program Participants Can Expect
Cohort-based Learning
Each week for ten weeks, participants will have the chance to connect with one another and to explore local knowledge institutions and collections. Together, we’ll engage with critical literature and creative work on the class’s theme, participate in discussions, host guest speakers, and take part in field trips and workshops. And across the following months, we’ll make something together!
Learning Modalities
Because we’ll be centering embodied experiences of material spaces and engaging with physical materials, most of our sessions will be hosted in-person. These sessions will involve discussions or guest lectures at local libraries and field trips around New York City. We’ll also integrate a couple zoom-based discussion sections to reflect and plan for our collaborative project.
Site Visits
We’ll enjoy exhibition walk-throughs, behind-the-scenes tours of various knowledge institutions, visits to artists’ and design studios, and a range of other out-and-about learning experiences. The instructor will finalize specific sites as course plans solidify. We’ll adjust our meeting times to accommodate logistics, and participants will need to arrange their own transportation. In addition, we’ll likely offer optional, more time-intensive expeditions on occasional weekends. We’ll aim to ensure that all sites are accessible and close to public transit.
About the Instructor
Shannon Mattern is METRO’s Director of Creative Research, the 2025 Kluge Chair of Modern Culture at the Library of Congress, and 2025 Design Indexer at the Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum. She has held tenured, full professorships in media studies, anthropology, and the history of art at The New School in New York and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
Shannon has written four books about libraries, maps, and urban intelligence; edited several collections on digital technologies and everyday knowledge practices; and published over 100 articles (nearly all in open-access venues) and book chapters about a range of topics — from experimental libraries, geo-archives, deep-time document preservation, lichen typography, and “tree thinking” to local data stewardship, counter-cartography, public design processes, pneumatic tubes, field guides, repair manuals, and dashboards.
At The New School, where she served from 2004 to 2022, Shannon collaborated regularly with the Parsons School of Design, directed the 600-student graduate program in media studies and the undergraduate program in anthropology, and founded and directed the graduate minor in anthropology and design.
She has designed and taught over 40 courses on topics ranging from urban technology, maps, and information infrastructures to design ethnography, local media, and critical university studies — and, since 2002, she’s created an open-access website for nearly all of those courses. She won The New School’s Distinguished Teaching Award and was nominated in her second year for Penn’s top teaching award.
Eligibility
Enrollment is open to:
- Library, museum, or archives workers currently employed at METRO’s cultural heritage member institutions (individuals of all experience levels and department types are warmly welcomed)
- Graduate students currently enrolled at METRO’s higher education member institutions
- Self-identified artists and designers who live or work in New York City or Westchester County
METRO is committed to providing a welcoming and productive environment for all. Our Code of Conduct applies to all meetings, classes, and events associated with this program.
Expenses
Registration fees, which help fund speaker and advisor honoraria, space rental, and materials, are due upon acceptance and registration, and are offered on a sliding scale:
Regular rate: $125
Individuals who are not affiliated with a METRO member institution
Member rate: $100
Individuals who are affiliated with a METRO member institution
Solidarity rate: $50
For people (regardless of affiliation) who are currently undergraduate or graduate students, hourly library/archive workers, freelancers, in-between jobs, under-employed, otherwise precarious, or on a limited budget