Every spring semester, Duke Kunshan University (DKU) offers students a unique opportunity to enroll in a one-week course focused on innovation and creativity. These mini-term courses are a required component of the DKU curriculum, and every student must complete at least one during their undergraduate career.
Unlike regular courses, most mini-term classes have no prerequisites and are not graded. This flexible structure allows students to explore new academic interests without the pressure of exams or traditional assessments.
Faculty also benefit from this opportunity, using the mini‑term as an experimental classroom. Unrestricted by established research areas or conventional course structures, faculty members have greater flexibility to design syllabi, explore cutting-edge topics, reflect on classic works in the humanities and philosophy, and pursue innovative ideas.
During the 2026 mini‑term, DKU librarians played a more prominent role than ever, supporting faculty, guiding student research, and even co‑teaching courses while sharing their expertise with students.
Let’s take a look at how librarians engaged in these mini-term courses!
CartograFun: See Through the Eye of History
Before maps became the tiny squares on your cellphones that can take you thousands of miles away with a few taps, they had a long history of shaping – and being shaped by – culture, politics, and economics.
In the mini-term class CartograFun: Exploring Maps, Data, and Archives, co-taught by Joseph Giacomelli, Assistant Professor of History, Ryder Kouba, Archives and Special Collections Librarian, and Siti Lei, Data and Visualization Librarian, students examined maps from different parts of the world, explored old maps of Kunshan from centuries ago, and learned digital mapmaking skills to apply to digital humanities projects. The course marked the first time librarians served as co‑instructors in a DKU mini‑term class.
“Without archives, history doesn’t exist,” said Prof. Giacomelli. “Going into the archives, maps are some of the most amazing historical sources. They show us how people in a particular place and time envision the world around them. It’s a reflection of their views, their perceptions of their society, their culture, and the politics and economics of their time.”
That was how the Library entered the conversation. Established in 2024, the DKU Archives and Special Collections support teaching and research through long-term preservation and access to historically significant materials of both university history, Kunshan history, and relevant scholarly topics. In addition to maps and atlases, current collections also include books, manuscripts, and brochures covering local history, economy, culture, and tourism.
“There are a bunch of historical maps in our archives,” said Kouba. “This is a great opportunity to introduce our students to understanding physical maps, the legends, and the coordinates.”
Students were asked to read different theories about maps and learn key terminology and glossaries in map-making and foundations of cartography. They applied the theories to hands-on techniques through the hand-drawn mapping exercises where students drew maps of the DKU Campus and Dayu Bay, a shopping area near the university.
But map-making is more than simply hand-drawing. Modern maps include digital maps that employ geographic information system (GIS) tools and visual design strategies to present geospatial data and create powerful map narratives. DKU students are entitled to use licensed GIS tools such as ArcGIS or open-sourced tools such as QGIS to visualize and analyze geospatial data.
Lei is the in-house expert in the DKU Library for digital maps. She joined the university in 2025 and brought experience working in the map and data library at the University of Toronto. In addition to delivering university-wide workshops on GIS tools and data visualization tools, Lei regularly joined classes and delivered embedded instructional sessions tailored for every instructor’s needs.
“When we usually deliver workshops, we barely have any ideas on how students use the materials and skills taught in the workshops,” said Lei. “But this time, we are happy to see that they are actually applying the materials and techniques in our class.”
For this non-graded course, students were required to work in groups to submit a small digital humanities project as their class projects. Themes were not assigned; students could pick any topics they were interested in and use their inventive minds to work on the maps of fun. Topics for the final projects submitted ranged from a virtual tour of the filming sites for the popular TV show Game of Thrones, to a spatial analysis of football stadiums in London.
“All three of us love maps, and we think they’re fun, so we’re just trying to convey that sense of fun to the students,” said Prof. Giacomelli.
Games, birds, and baseball
The mission of DKU Library is to become an interactive and innovative teaching and learning hub and a scholarly gateway to enhance intellectual discovery, cultivate creativity, and promote scholarship and exchange of knowledge. Aside from directly teaching a mini-term class, DKU librarians assisted in this special academic program in diverse ways, utilizing various library resources and innovative library spaces.
Kouba and Lei respectively delivered embedded sessions in other mini-term classes. In the class Turning Points in Modern Japan, taught by Junius Brown, Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Economy, Kouba introduced the basics of archives and primary sources and led the students on a visit to the DKU Archives to examine the collections related to the class. Lei joined the Qualitative Research class taught by Zhenjie Weng, Assistant Professor in English Language, to teach how to use the qualitative analysis tool NVivo, another licensed product to support students’ academic work.
DKU Library houses resources of various formats to support faculty’s teaching activities. In the mini-term class Intro to Decision Analysis taught by Yanran Yang, Assistant Professor of Sustainability Studies, one of the themes was about decision-making in sports. Hongyi Gong, Research and Instruction Librarian, assisted in locating the online streaming resource for Moneyball, an award-winning film about data-driven decision-making strategies. Gong visited the class to briefly introduce the rules of baseball and the background of the film to help students better understand the in-class assignment.
Understanding what resources are available in the Library for academic research is vital throughout the students’ career in DKU. In another mini-term class Looking at Birds, co-taught by Richard Davis, Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies and Director of the Office of Signature Work, and Chi-Yeung Choi, Assistant Professor of Environmental Science, students and instructors visited the Library for a tour led by Gong, exploring the library collections of bird-related resources and how to use them to conduct independent research. These books are currently on display in an exhibition, The “Mirror” of the Sky: Understanding and Preventing Bird Collisions, curated by the Library, researchers, and students.
Besides the Library Lobby which can be used for academic exhibitions, the functional spaces in the Library are also a highlight of the building. Xueying Cheng, Systems Librarian, led a tour of the Game Studio for students enrolled in the mini-term class Mini-Game Development taught by Feng Tian, Professor of Data Science and Division Chair of Natural and Applied Sciences. Cheng introduced the facilities and equipment in the studio, and students were able to play the collected games to inspire the design of their own games.
The Game Studio is a creative and experimental space provided by DKU Library. It supports game development, virtual reality, AI exploration, and interactive experiences for students and faculty. The studio currently offers nearly 50 curated titles, primarily on Steam (Windows) with League of Legends via Riot. Many titles are suitable for teaching and research in areas such as language and narrative, systems thinking, physics and astronomy, and social themes.
The 2026 mini-term highlighted how librarians are increasingly embedded in DKU’s teaching and learning ecosystem. Their work across courses, disciplines, and learning spaces demonstrates the Library’s evolving role in academic life and its commitment to supporting student success.
