Today is bittersweet, as it marks the final day of Eric Stedfeld’s 23-year tenure with DLTS. Eric embodies the guiding principles of NYU Libraries: throughout his career, he has dedicated himself to improving access to the Library’s collections through collaboration and creative problem solving, all the while forging lasting connections and effective working relationships through his deep and abiding respect for others. As a too-small sendoff gesture, we invited DLTS staff members to ask Eric a couple of interview questions; the following has been compiled and edited from those interviews.
Reflecting back on his time, Eric admits that the department wasn’t the place that he thought he would wind up staying for two decades. “Library work was not something I anticipated or initially planned for,” he said. “My career evolved…from art direction for multimedia shows, to exhibit design at the New York Hall of Science.” When he was first hired, as the second employee of NYU’s brand new digital library initiative, his title felt a little unfamiliar. “I came from an art background, and at the time my title was ‘Information Technology Specialist,’ but that was the title they seemed to be giving everybody at the time–so it covered anything from programmer to coordinating websites.” Eric also recognized that building on his foundational background with UNIX and Perl would be a boon to any digital library projects coming down the pipeline. “It frankly never occurred to me that I could, you know, get another degree while at NYU,” he said, “so I took advantage of that. When I was hired, I pursued my masters of science in computer science, built on some other language skills and some of those principles of computer science…when I was hired, it was much more along the lines of being a developer, so starting off I was more in the weeds that way.”
As the department, now called Digital Library Technology Services, grew and more experienced developers were hired, Eric saw further opportunities and challenges as the department’s portfolio grew. He earned his certification in project management and, through his work on the Richard Maass “Witness to the Early American Experience” project, he helped establish groundwork for the digitization and publication of archival materials. “The Maass project required developing an approach for integrating multiple sources of materials…a further complication!” he said. “Standards and tools were still emerging, and the project combined databases using SQL, XML, Java, METS, and web technologies.” As famously long-suffering fan of the New York Mets, it was a perfect alignment of the stars that he worked as part of an early development team for the Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard, a Library of Congress schema for encoding descriptive, administrative and structural metadata expressed using XML. “Me being a Mets fan, I said ‘Well how about that?’ and then we were trying to back-fill what the terms would be to make ‘METS’ work…somebody came up with one for ‘YANKEES,’ somebody else came up with one for ‘DIAMONDBACKS,’ which was really something.” When asked for his opinion on the team’s chances for the 2021 season, he cannot help but be guardedly optimistic. “Googling ‘Do the Mets have what it takes this year?‘, I quickly found someone’s posting from the end of May: “NY Mets have no business being in first place but don’t tell them!” he said. “This year it looks like it’s really going to work, but I don’t want to get my hopes up too early in the season…certainly not before the All-Star game.”
Asked about his favorite projects over the years, Eric highlights three main categories that projects fall into: collections that contribute to deeper cultural awareness; collections with international impact; and collections that simply astound the eye. When pressed, he responded with a particular collection that hits all three of those distinctions. “I would perhaps select Sylvester Manor, the project was large in size and scope–including the funding–and was one that I had also worked on in some earlier iterations,” he said. “Sylvestor Manor’s role in history as a northern plantation on Long Island, holding enslaved people, makes its study relevant to current considerations of our country’s legacy of racial injustice.”
We’ve certainly missed each others’ presences over the course of this pandemic year, and it feels unfair to say adieu to a colleague just as the university begins to hum back to life. Eric is always a coworker that you are glad to see in your workspace or around the water cooler–we will absolutely miss seeing him around the office. “When the Library first started putting money into several years of renovations, I was surprised that in an age of digital access to resources, so many would seek out the opportunity to gather and work in the Library’s physical space,” he said. “Now, after over a year of working from home in relative isolation during the pandemic, I can better appreciate the value of having someplace to gather together!”
Eric’s retirement plans include spending time creating order out of chaos with some new, challenging jigsaw puzzles, as well as continuing his work exploring the gospel blues tradition and spiritual music through his Rose King Music Facebook page. And he’s not finished with archival projects yet, either. Eric will continue his work with his church, St. George’s on 16th Street, in creating and maintaining a growing archive for the two historic churches of the Parish of Calvary-St. George’s Church.
We will miss you, Eric!
Special thanks to Carol, Alex, Joe, Deb, Laura and Kate for their time and questions.