(With apologies and gratitude to Douglas Adams and his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy novels for inspiration. NB: direct quotes and paraphrases appear in Hooloovoo — a hyperintelligent shade of the color blue.)

Sprawling across the five boroughs of New York City in the northwestern hemisphere of our mostly harmless planet is the largest public system of higher education in an urban setting in the U.S. Known by local denizens as CUNY (pronounced generally as cue-knee, and by a few immigrants from the Midwest as coo-knee), the CUNYverse is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. However, a few weeks wending through some of its infinite corridors does give a sense of its proportions.

Traveling across the CUNYverse takes time due to a necessary reliance on antiquated public transportation systems which, after 20 minutes waiting on a platform and standing for another 45 hurtling through surprisingly crowded midday subterranean tubes, can feel rather like it is not worth all the bother. Yet busy library faculty do find opportunities to travel between the campuses of the CUNYverse. But traveling in the CUNYverse as a focused meeting attendee, in and out, arrive-attend-depart, does not provide the inquiring librarian with a complete experience of the CUNYverse, as we have discovered over the last two years while we’ve traveled far and wide to collect data for our research study. As we have made our way to and through various campuses for interviews with students and faculty we have collected some observations we hope will be of use to fellow CUNY library faculty travelers.

Here then, is a guide of sorts to the CUNYverse, but caveat emptor: The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.

Policies, Procedures, and Fish

Every large entity from planet to galaxy has policies, and the CUNYverse is no exception. Staff at help or information desks, often the first local inhabitants we have approached for orientation to buildings and procedures, were not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous on occasion, and consistently inconsistent about access to facilities, technology, and bulletin boards. Traveling with one’s CUNY ID and a Babel fish is strongly recommended, for if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything in any form of language, even policy-ese.

Technology: All doors in this spaceship have a cheerful and sunny disposition

Once you’ve successfully installed your Babel fish and gained entrance to a CUNYverse educational outpost, you’ll likely need to access some form of technology during your stay. Electrical outlets, wireless internet access that doesn’t require excessive software downloads, available computers that don’t require travelers to present their credentials for a brief check of the email: in our experience each of these obstinately persisted in their absence at some point, and sometimes with ridiculous persistence, in our travels through the CUNYverse. Useful strategies include camping out by available sources of electricity and internet early in the day before students arrive, though all known life forms must visit the restroom eventually (see below). While local conditions do vary, it may be worthwhile to inquire about temporary access to technologies for the extent of your stay. (The worst they can do is say no, right?)

You Are Here: Your Place in the CUNYverse

Our research-related traveling through the CUNYverse has been, while not exactly a trip through the Total Perspective Vortex, a humbling experience more akin to that of the typical student, or let’s face it, adjunct, than our usual purposeful strike-force approach to visiting outposts of the CUNYverse. Getting around and oriented to buildings that were built without regard for any kind of proper dimensional behavior can be a challenge due to unusual–even baffling–building names and layouts. Sometimes it seems that one must be inoculated with some kind of secret knowledge to learn the ins and outs, but a liberal application of information literacy and critical thinking will get even the least spatially-oriented librarian to her destination. When they can be located it is best to take the stairs, as Happy Vertical People Transporters in the CUNYverse, usually in the form of elevators or escalators, may or may not be working at any particular time, and often enough not, when you need them.

Ensuring that you have everything with you that you will need for the day becomes especially critical if you find yourself waiting for a student or faculty member whose given time of arrival is the one moment of time at which it is [apparently] impossible that [they] will arrive. For there you will be looking down an empty, furniture-free hallway, cement cinder blocks as far as the eye can see, interrupted only by a steady march of closed doors and the gentle waving of posted fliers. We have been extremely fortunate in some cases to have quiet, private spaces in CUNYverse libraries allocated to us for our interviews with students. Our sense of gratitude for any availability of quiet space was often underscored when such spaces were not available and interviews had to be conducted in group study areas, cafeterias and other social areas on campus with decibel levels approaching that of Disaster Area, a plutonium rock band from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones.

Bodily Necessities: Time is an Illusion. Lunchtime Doubly So.

Of course if you’re planning a day trip or more through the CUNYverse, you’ll need to attend to corporeal requirements at some point. Bring lots of water, as both the quantity and quality of hydration stations, water fountains, and other opportunities to slake your thirst are unpredictable.

Like water, it is advisable to carry one’s own food in the CUNYverse whenever possible: cafeterias are reported by students to be noisy, dirty, expensive, and sometimes inconvenient to locate. Alas, cafeterias can seem unavoidable to the traveler caught in one of the many educational outposts in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable spiral arms of the CUNYverse, where the closest commercial restaurant may be as far away as the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. When headed to a cafeteria, the prepared traveler will bring earplugs and her towel to wipe down the table. In the end, Nutri-Matic vending machines may offer a compromise solution to the hungry traveler leery of the cafeteria. And while the items they offer are almost, but not quite, entirely unlike food, they may be the hoopiest frood food available.

Finally, we are sorry to inform the prospective traveler in the CUNYverse that there are simply no good public restrooms system-wide, period. And while it is tempting to say that restrooms in the CUNYverse should be avoided at all costs, we acknowledge that this is advice easier to give than take, so we can only say, Go to it, and good luck.

The Final Word: Don’t Panic!

We have learned by trial and error how to navigate with the least amount of discomfort through the vast corridors of the CUNYverse, and other travelers can too. The basic trick we found to successful longer-range rambles is to carry everything with you that you could possibly need–laptop, books, lunch, coat, umbrella–and always be sure you know where your towel is, since a towel is about the most massively useful thing an [intercampus] hitchhiker can have.

Yet even more than a towel there is always a library at the center of an uncertain and possibly illusory CUNYverse. The library, an oasis of familiar calm and industriousness, where the weary traveler can connect with knowledgeable, helpful and friendly natives (AKA our library colleagues). In our experience they were always ready to offer assistance and advice, or just while away a few minutes in conversation. And we say to you, So long and thanks for all the fish, er, help!

In addition to Adams’ books, the very helpful Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Wikiquote website was invaluable in writing this essay.

By Maura A. Smale (City Tech) and Mariana Regalado (Brooklyn)