Contact: Kim Brockway For immediate release (212) 854-2419 kkb18@columbia.eduAn expanded and enhanced Music and Arts Library has opened at Columbia University after nearly a year of renovations. The renovations to the seventh floor of Dodge Hall on the Morningside Heights campus have more than doubled the library's physical space and seating capacity. Viewing and seminar rooms have been added, as have state-of-the-art technologies allowing the library to be integrated into the expanding Columbia Digital Library Project. The renovation, part of the University's $8.5 million project to update its art facilities and resources, is an example of the University's renewed commitment to arts education. Doubling the library's physical space to more than 10,000 square feet has resulted in an increased seating capacity with 24 music workstations outfitted with audio and visual equipment that can accommodate various types of media, from 33 rpm recordings and compact discs to videotapes and laser discs. A viewing room, with seven workstations for laser discs and a multi-media computer, and a 14-seat electronically equipped seminar room, have been created. Study carrels, computer stations (providing access to CLIO, other networked information resources and in-house sound transmission), large tables to accommodate collaborative work and large-format materials, and lounge seating have been added. The library holds a research collection on music history, theory and ethnomusicology, ranking it in the first tier of academic libraries throughout the country. Nearly 70,000 items from its print collections, including monographs, serials and scores, are housed in the new library. Holdings include: original editions of music theoretical treatises [from Gioseffo Zarlino's Istitutioni harmonice (Venice, 1573) to faculty member Fred Lerdahl's A Generative Theory of Tonal Music with Ray Jackendoff (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), the most frequently cited current title in music theory]; first editions of opera scores, and scores by over 350 contemporary composers, including Columbia faculty George Edwards, Jack Beeson and Jonathan Kramer. The library's 25,000 sound and video collections have been augmented by the recordings collection from the estate of theatrical producer Robert L. Weiner and by a comprehensive recordings collection of late 19th- and 20th-century classical music, a gift of Paul Snook. A new feature of the library will be a laser disc collection of films, which will include many with associations to Columbia faculty and students, e.g., director Kathryn Bigelow (Strange Days) and writer-director Ben Ross (Young Poisoner's Handbook). The technological framework has been created that will allow the new Music and Arts Library to be integrated into the Columbia Digital Library Project. Through workstations in the library, students and faculty can hear music delivered over the campus network from a remote server. This project - developed with funding through the Virtual Information Initiative and still in development - involves digitizing the library's sound recordings and making them available in the library and classrooms in Dodge Hall. Two classrooms are now equipped with digital audio capability, allowing for the immediate comparison of specific passages of music by different composers, or manipulating the music in ways not possible through existing formats for new methods of theoretical and cognitive analysis. The Library will celebrate its official opening on May 1. Visitors may enjoy the 360-degree views over the campus and upper Manhattan and experience this new facility available to the Columbia community. Music and Arts Library Opens at Columbia University
Photos of the library are available; please call (212) 854-2419 to request a print. 4.24.97 19,111