The NYC Rare Book & Manuscript Workshop

Free Events, Limited Space: RSVP!

Spring 2011 Schedule

The NYC Rare Book and Manuscript Workshop is a multi-institutional, hands-on workshop that provides students with a rare opportunity to learn about the collections at libraries and institutions throughout the New York area, and to meet with nationally recognized curators and librarians. Students can attend individual sessions or the entire series. The workshop is free of charge, but space is extremely limited and reservations will be required. To sign up, email nyrarebook@gmail.com. Further details about signing up for these events can be found below.

Session 7: February 21, 2010, 4-6pm, at NYPL

Isaac Gewirtz, Curator, Berg Collection, NYPL

Modern Literary Manuscripts Workshop

Isaac Gewirtz will lead a session on Modern Literary Manuscripts, drawing on examples fromthe

Berg Collection, to instruct students in understanding the inception and evolution of literary texts from their earliest manifestations in author correspondence, diaries, and notebooks, through rough drafts, typescripts, galleys, and various printed editions. Authors included will be Virginia Woolf, TS Eliot, Jack Kerouac, and Saul Bellow.

Session 8: February 28, 2011, 4-6pm, at the Morgan Library

Declan Kiely, Robert H. Taylor Curator & Clara Drummond, Assistant Curator, Morgan Library

Using Modern Literary Archives

Declan Kiely & Clara Drummond will conduct a session on using manuscripts and letters by modern writers, instructing students on the arrangement and description of archival collections and effective methods of archival research. The focus of this session will be the Morgan Library’s PARIS REVIEW ARCHIVE, which contains correspondence, manuscripts and typescripts (interviews, fiction, and poetry), revised galley and page proofs, photographs, and audio recordings. The Archive also includes records relating to editorial, production, and business matters, and other records of the international literary journal from its founding in 1953 through 2003. The Archive documents author submissions, the collaboration between interviewer and interviewee that lies behind the journal’s renowned Art of Fiction/Art of Poetry interviews, and the decisions made in producing each issue, as well as the careers of its staff and many of the most important twentieth-century writers and artists who contributed to the Paris Review.

Session 9: March 14, 2011, 4:00-6:00pm, Fales Special Collections Library, NYU

Marvin J. Taylor, Director, Fales Library and Special Collection and founding curator of the

Downtown New York Collection at New York University

“Who’s Scene Is It, Anyway?”: Curators, Scholars, and the Fields of Cultural Production.

In 1994, Taylor began to document the artistic movements that exploded all over downtown NYC during the 1970s and 1980s. This scene gave birth to punk rock, performance art, installation art, postmodern dance, experimental literature, video art, No Wave film, New Wave, and a host of other experiments in art and life. The downtown collection at Fales comprises over 12,000 linear feet of archives, 15,000 printed items, 28,000 video recordings, 30,000 audio recordings, and 8,000 film elements. Some collections include the papers of Richard Hell, David Wojnarowicz, Lynne Tillman, Gary Indiana, Richard Foreman, Martha Wilson, and the archives of Group Material, The Judson Memorial Church, A.I.R. Gallery, Creative Time, Artists Space, Paper Tiger Television. Taylor will discuss how to do research into a “scene” using archives and other sources, including interviews and oral histories. He will address questions such as: how do scenes develop? Who “owns” them? Why do they disappear? How and/or can they be archived? What is the relationship curators and scholars to a scene? Useful texts to consult before the workshop are The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 1974-1984 (Princeton UP, 2006) and Pierre Bourdieu’s The Field of Cultural Production.

Session 10: March 28, 2010, 2:30-4:30pm, The New York Historical Society

Henry Raine, Director of Digital Programs, New-York Historical Society

Ephemera as Primary Sources for Scholarship

This session will provide an overview of the different types of ephemera and discuss their potential research value in the broader context of the New-York Historical Society’s collections of books, pamphlets, manuscripts, newspapers, maps, prints, photographs, and architectural materials relating to the history of New York and the United States. Highlights will be shown from the library’s collections of broadsides, song sheets, hotel and apartment files, menus, almanacs, and business and advertising ephemera, providing an overview of the institution’s vast and varied collections of ephemera. Also covered will be the challenges of managing ephemera collections in libraries, and strategies that researchers can use to identify and access ephemera holdings at other institutions.

Session 11, April 18, 2011, 4-6pm, The Grolier Club

Eric Holzenberg, Director, and J. Fernando Pena, Librarian, the Grolier Club of New York

Book Collecting and the Antiquarian Book Trade in Support of Scholarship

Drawing on the Grolier Club’s holdings of books, manuscripts and archives relating to private collecting and the antiquarian book trade, the session will explore the significant dual roles of the bibliophile and the book dealer over time in the development of institutional libraries and the support of scholarship generally. The session will cover book catalogues of all types, their history and evolving use; the agency of the private collector from the 15th century to the present in defining and shaping fields of research; and the development of the antiquarian book dealer as a partner in that endeavor.

To sign up: Send an e-mail to nyrarebook@gmail.com letting us know which event or events you'd like to attend. Sign up for as many sessions as you like. Because of the limited space, we ask that you only sign up for events that you are actually prepared to attend. A waiting list will be maintained.

Please feel free to contact one of the NYU coordinators with any questions at nyrarebook@gmail.com. We look forward to seeing you at the workshop!