With awe for all she has done for preservation, both at NYU and nationally, I am announcing the retirement on December 31st, 2020, of Paula De Stefano, Barbara Goldsmith Curator for Preservation and Head of the Barbara Goldsmith Preservation and Conservation Department.
Since joining the Libraries in 1988, Paula has been making an impact on the research, processes, theory, and community of the preservation field. For 12 years she organized the semiannual Barbara Goldsmith Lectures at NYU, given by leaders in the field and attended by practitioners from around the country, strengthening both the preservation community and its expertise. At NYU, Paula created one of the most active and comprehensive preservation departments in any academic library. She was an early implementer of digitization for the preservation of audiovisual collection materials and a strong advocate for the programmatic preservation of archival collections and partnership with special collections. Her leadership and innovation earned her the prestigious 2019 Banks/Harris Award, given by the Preservation and Reformatting Section of the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services.
As director of our environmental monitoring program and emergency planning and preparedness efforts, she has seen us through hurricanes, burst pipes, and construction upheaval. Over the years she successfully applied for a large number of federal and state grants, overseeing her department's grant-funded and endowment budgets. Paula's influence on the field will be felt for a long time to come, given her work with the Tisch School's Moving Image and Archiving Preservation program, her 20 years of teaching in the History Department's Archives and Public History Program, and a combined seven years of teaching in the Palmer School of Library and Information Science and at Pratt Institute's library school.
As a member of the Libraries' senior leadership team, Paula has contributed her deep institutional knowledge of the Libraries, strong organizational and management skills, and a calm, thoughtful collegiality.
Paula's retirement will give her more time for things like photography, travel (someday soon, let's hope), visiting her overseas family and friends, reading, walking, listening to music, and the occasional jigsaw puzzle with family and friends.
I will very much miss Paula's warm and generous professional counsel. I'm looking forward, however, to many continued years of friendship.
Please join me in wishing Paula the best in her coming adventures.
--Austin Booth, Dean, NYU Libraries