Behind the Scenes: ICE Library

Most students in ICE career programs spend their days behind a stove, mastering a whole range of culinary techniques with help from our expert Chef Instructors. But in addition to their education in the kitchen, ICE students have all kinds of resources available for them to feast on in our library. Our culinary library is a one-of-a-kind resource for all of our career program students.

As of today, there are 2,492 print items in our library. The collection includes cookbooks, as well as books on management, food history, food writing, biographies, food science, regional cuisines, and wine. We have subscriptions to many newspapers and magazines, such as Crain’s New York Business, Nation’s Restaurant News, TheNew York Times and Food & Wine. New databases, a new online catalog, blog, wiki and extended hours are part of the library services we provide students.

Behind the scenes, our academic librarian, Michele helps students to track down what they want to know. Not only does she have a master’s degree in library science, she working towards a degree in food studies and loves being around food — eating, reading, listening to stories, smelling, drinking, watching, sharing, and cooking. She works in the library four evenings a week and is always available by e-mail to our students. As the librarian, she helps students to help look up anything they may be curious about. For example, she said that if someone came to her with a question about foie gras, they could use the library to look through the history of foie gras to see how the practice of raising ducks has changed.

She added that, “We have current periodicals to find stories written on current practices around foie gras in France and America.” She even suggested using the library to peruse blogs to see what conversations are happening currently. Michele helps our students take their education beyond the kitchen by finding the resources they need to understand the classics and stayon top of everything happening in the food industry.