Progressions

NYU Libraries Newsletter

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New Avery Fisher Center Offers  A Range of High Tech Spaces and Tools

Bobst Library’s Avery Fisher Center for Music and Media (AFC), one of the largest academic music and media centers in the country, is also the newest. In January 2017, the doors opened to an entirely new facility on the library’s 7th floor, replacing the original, 2nd-floor AFC opened in 1987.

Completely redesigned with sophisticated new audiovisual technology, the AFC features media-ready study carrels and group study rooms with playback that supports the full spectrum of analog and digital formats. The AFC’s Feldstein Immersion Room provides one of the most dramatic listening experiences anywhere in the city.

The AFC is the centerpiece of a new “music library floor” with paged access to all media collections, reference assistance, circulation, study areas, and stacks. The library’s music collections include 54,000 books and periodicals, 50,000 scores, 115,000 sound recordings, and nearly 50,000 DVDs and videotapes.

“The AFC is the latest project in our phased renovation of Bobst Library,” says Dean of Libraries Carol A. Mandel, “and it exemplifies the commitment to enhanced teaching, learning, and research experience that lies at the heart of every design decision we make.” Curricula throughout NYU, including but by no means limited to its many programs in music, film, and television, draw on media as a research resource. Says Mandel, “Single users and groups now have facilities with high quality audio and video playback that open up whole new possibilities for research and discussion, creative assignments, and expanded coursework.”

Clockwise from top left: Composer Brane Živković “conducting” his Grim Game score in the immersion room (Sally Cummings); a media carrel (Elena Olivo); Technology Specialist Scott Greenberg in the Feldstein Immersion Room (Elena Olivo); Dean Mandel with early music scores on display in the AFC (Dan Creighton); a meeting in one of the Feldstein Media Collaborative Rooms (Sarah Mechling for Perkins Eastman).

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Thoughtful Renovation Supports Cutting-Edge Curricula

“There is a growing interest in spatial perception and experience,” says composer Elizabeth Hoffman, a professor in the Music Department. “For students to appreciate what this means in terms of space as an expressive parameter in electroacoustic music, they have to hear the music performed in a multichannel room.”

For that reason, Hoffman is holding her fall class, Electroacoustic Music Since 1960, in the Feldstein Immersion Room. With speakers on all four walls and ceiling, a 90-inch display, and an audio interface with 24 inputs and outputs, the immersion room is unlike any other at NYU. Composers of spatialized music make use of the space surrounding the listener by sending specific sounds to specific speakers at specific times. It takes the right sound system for such pieces to be appreciated. “The immersion room supports not only multi-channel listening,” Hoffman says, “but high quality, attentive listening.” She plans to work on some of her own compositions in the immersion room, calling it “an ideal environment to test pieces in progress.”

Brane Živković, a composer who teaches in the Department of Film & Television at Tisch, recently used the immersion room to demonstrate new film scoring software. Živković set up a bank of Apple Cinema Displays to show each instrument’s part in his score for The Grim Game, a rediscovered 1919 silent film starring Harry Houdini. The digital mixer allowed him to control and manipulate sixteen-channel surround sound as he synced his score to the action on the screen and demonstrated the story-enhancing expressiveness of each instrument. Živković also holds sessions of his Film Scoring Workshop in the immersion room, citing “the ability to isolate tracks for detailed study.”

Robert Rowe, Director of Music Technology at Steinhardt, says, “The room will be heavily used for immersive and critical listening events. It is a beautifully tuned presentation space for surround-sound audio. The setup is well-designed and easy to use, and the sound is marvelous. It fills a real need among University spaces.”

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Xiaojing Zu Named Library Head at NYU Shanghai

The NYU Shanghai Library has a new Director—Xiaojing Zu, who joined NYU Shanghai in January 2016 as Associate Director for User and Access Services. The appointment, which became effective in January, was announced by Dean Carol A. Mandel and Joanna Waley-Cohen, Provost for NYU Shanghai.

Zu holds advanced degrees in library and information science and in business administration. Before joining NYU, she had been public services librarian at Berry College in Georgia and head librarian at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Hong Kong. Students appreciate  the  library no matter where they are, East or West, says Zu. “They know the library is central to their academic success.”  

“Xiaojing made herself integral to the library right from the start,” says Dean Mandel.  “She streamlined workflows, developed a workshop series to help keep staff on the cutting edge of librarianship, and took on the leadership of our important collaboration with the Pudong Public Library.”

Fluent in Mandarin and English, Zu feels very  much at home in a global university. “I work as closely with colleagues in New York as those in Shanghai,” she says. “Libraries systems and communications have been designed to bring us all together as a team.  It’s the best of both worlds.”

Photo: Elena Olivo

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New Face

Zach Coble, Head of Digital Scholarship Services (DSS) Formerly: Digital Scholarship Specialist Education: MPS, Interactive Telecommunications, NYU (expected 2018); MLIS, University of Missouri; BA, History, Hendrix College, Conway, AR

DSS helps faculty and students use digital tools and methods to conduct research and present it online. An increasing number of faculty are coming to us for help with planning, analyzing, and publishing their digital research projects. Our Web Hosting service, with  exible web space and customizable hosting platforms, is always in high demand for exhibitions and other research presentations. On another front, DSS is collaborating with Data Services to pilot a new service to provide scholars with access to large scale, born digital collections ready for computational analysis.

Photo: Elena Olivo

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Major Gift Honors a Tech Innovator

Lynda Feldstein (NYU ’65), pictured above (left) in the Avery Fisher Center with some of her extended family, made a major gift to the Libraries in memory of her late husband, George Feldstein (NYU ’64, ’68), who earned two degrees in engineering. George Feldstein, founder of Crestron Electronics, pioneered advances in AV control and automation technology—some of which is used in the AFC. “Our family has always had an appreciation for music, both playing and listening,” Lynda Feldstein says. “Technology and music have always been a part of our lives. I am thrilled that the AFC’s integration of the two will help foster excitement and creativity at NYU.” In gratitude, the Libraries named two key AFC facilities—the Immersion Room and the west Media Collaborative Rooms--in the Feldsteins’ honor.

Photo: Elena Olivo

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A Curious Mind, Brittle Paper, and a Preservation Legacy

Author Barbara Goldsmith was doing research in the mid-1970s when something struck her as odd. Pages from books she consulted were crumbling in her hands, but only ones published after 1850 or so. Older books were fine. So began Goldsmith’s successful crusade to have publishers revert to acid-free paper, which lasts 300 years rather than 30 and had been standard before wood pulp was introduced into papermaking. And she was just getting started. When Goldsmith died in June 2016, she left a conservation legacy that will benefit readers and researchers for generations to come.   In recognition of the Libraries’ outstanding conservation program, Goldsmith made a major gift to help establish the Barbara Goldsmith Preservation and Conservation Department in Bobst Library in 2006. Since then, the Department’s expertise has deepened and the field itself has expanded, with the Libraries at the forefront under the leadership of Paula De Stefano. 

The Department’s specialists in book and paper conservation use a wide range of techniques, some cutting edge, some traditional—such as sewing bindings with linen thread and mending tears with Japanese tissue and wheat starch paste. In the media preservation unit, technicians treat moving image and audio recordings on film and tape, obsolescent formats now at the end of their useful life.   The Libraries also collects and preserves born digital content, such as websites and digital art. Digital Library Technology Services (DLTS) manages reformatted and born digital content from special collections and in the Libraries’ digital preservation repository. DLTS and the preservation unit together develop standards and best practices for preserving and providing access to digital content. Most recently, with funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, they are developing new standards for digitally archiving the multimedia work of contemporary composers. 

Several major digitization projects are underway in the Goldsmith Department. One, funded by a major grant from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, is digitizing collections of New York State history. A second is rescuing political footage from Cuba-based documentary filmmaker Estela Bravo, including her work on Fidel Castro.

Conservation students from institutions such as NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts and students from the Tisch School’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program practice and refine their skills in the Goldsmith Department. “Barbara Goldsmith was passionate about preservation and proud of the national leadership role of our extraordinary conservation and preservation staff,” says Dean of Libraries Carol A. Mandel. “It is a fitting tribute to her memory that we are helping to train the next generation of experts.”

Clockwise from top right: Preservation Media Technician Biff McKeldin, Barbara Goldsmith (l) and Dean of Libraries Carol A. Mandel at the dedication of the Department in 2006, Media Preservation Labs Supervisor Ben Moskowitz, Barbara Goldsmith Curator for Preservation Paula De Stefano (l) inspecting film with Media Preservation Head Kimberly Tarr, and Project Conservator Alex Bero. z

Photos: Dan Creighton; Alex Bero photo, Elena Olivo; 2006 photo, NYU Photo Bureau.

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New AFC to Open January 23

The music collections in Bobst Library include tens of thousands of audio and video recordings in the Avery Fisher Center (AFC) and a hundred thousand books and musical scores. This winter, the AFC and the music stacks are moving from the 2nd floor to beautiful new quarters on the 7th floor.  More study spaces, media ready carrels, and collaborative rooms are some of the enhancements that will greet students and faculty when the new AFC opens on January 23rd. Above: On the 7th floor, still a worksite in November, empty shelving units await delivery.

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Kaddish Comes Home

Allen Ginsberg began writing his famous (and some say finest) poem, Kaddish, in the Beat Hotel in Paris in 1957, completing it in New York in 1959. The manuscript is archived in Fales Library, but it spent the summer in Paris as part of Beat Generation, an exhibition at the Centre Pompidou focused on the Beats and their Parisian ties. A plaque on the hotel lists its famous Beat guests.

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In New Lebec Reading Room,  A Heartfelt Lesson in Giving

“The library is the heart and soul of a university,” said Leah Lebec, standing in Bobst Library’s 6th floor reading room in October. Lebec and her husband, Alain, were being honored for their million dollar gift to renovation. They were inspired by “all the opportunities this great university has opened up for our family,” Lebec said. She has a PhD from GSAS; both her parents had NYU degrees, and all the Lebecs’ children, Gabriel, Xavier, and Christina, are alumni as well. Lebec addressed them directly. “There is suffering in our world, and it is up to each of us to try to bring healing. Most of the time that will be in our daily interactions, not in any grand gesture. Don’t worry about giving money unless you can. Be of service. Shine a light in the world through civility, truth, and kindness.”

Vice Provost Ulrich Baer expressed gratitude on behalf of the University. Dean of Libraries Carol A. Mandel thanked the Lebecs for “honoring their NYU ties and encouraging the success of new generations of students by helping to create this beautiful Lebec Reading Room.” Looking at the wall of windows with its sweeping view above Washington Square Park, Leah Lebec observed, “I cannot think of any other room in any other building that would more eloquently symbolize the power of a great education.”  

L to r: Emily Sanford and Christina, Leah, Xavier, Gabriel, and Alain Lebec. Photo: Elena Olivo

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New Faces

Matthew Frenkel, Engineering Librarian (left) Formerly: Technician, Microscopy and Imaging Lab, American Museum of Natural History Education:  PhD, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Rutgers University; BA, Physics, NYU Undergraduate courses in the hard sciences and engineering, unlike those in the humanities, often do not have many inherent opportunities for students to develop advanced research skills, but students will need them in graduate school and professional life. I get a lot of satisfaction from introducing students to the library’s wide variety of electronic tools for making research and data management more efficient. I am planning a program for senior level undergraduates and new graduate students to explore ways to create, conduct, analyze, and share scientific research. 

Dawn Mankowski, Special Collections Conservator (center) Formerly: Conservator, New York State Archives Education: M.A., Art Conservation, Library/Archives specialization, SUNY Buffalo State College, Buffalo, NY; B.A., Art History/Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ I work to preserve and ensure access to our diverse primary source materials. On any given day, I might treat a manuscript cookbook, a rare edition of a Dickens serialized novel, an early book bound in parchment, a 20th century political poster, or a contemporary work on paper. I have expanded our photo-documentation program, including multispectral imaging of recently discovered medieval Talmud manuscript fragments. A rewarding perk of my job is the opportunity to share my book conservation knowledge with IFA students and our Mellon Conservation Fellow. 

Jessica Pace, Preventative Conservator (right) Formerly: Assistant Conservator, American Museum of Natural History Education: MA, Art History, Advanced Certificate in Conservation, NYU; B.A., Art History and Visual Arts, Barnard College, Columbia University

I create strategies that mitigate the deterioration of materials in our archives and special collections. We have traditional content like papyrus, vellum, and paper, and some less categorizable items, such as animal skeletons and a stuffed alligator used in various installation works by the artist David Wojnarowicz, whose papers are in Fales Library. I work to improve the environments in which this valuable material is housed and used. You might find me checking the climate on the data loggers throughout the archives, or working with staff to develop and implement best practices for storing, handling, and exhibiting collections. 

photos: Elena Olivo