Fales Library - A Place for 19th Century Literature Buffs and Punk Aficionados Alike

       Bobst library is NYU's research powerhouse - the gathering spot for the school's 40,000 students in the search of academic conquest. Hidden in the bowels of the enormous beast, lies Fales library - a special collection of primary source materials. Last week, Marvin Taylor, director of Fales library, took my journalism class on a journey through time in a climate controlled space.
      The crux of the collection's ability to stand out against NYU's vast library facilities is its versatility. Fales is home to everything from a cuneiform tablet dated 3250 B.C. to a journal Patti Smith gave to fellow punk founder Richard Hell in 1973. 
      The library, located on the third floor of Bobst,  holds a collection of rare books and manuscripts in English and American literature, the Downtown Collection, the Food and Cookery Collection and the general Special Collections of the NYU Libraries. The Downtown Collection "documents the downtown New York art, performance, and literary scenes from 1975 to the present", according to the library Web site.  A newcomer that goes hand in hand with the Downtown Collection is the Riot Grrrl Collection, an attempt to document the evolution of the political, artistic, and cultural movement that is Riot Grrrl.

Grrrl Power, Indeed.

       It is also home to one of the largest food research libraries in the country - the Food and Cookery Collection. The ever-expanding collection was recently featured in the New York Times.
      What was most refreshing was the respect Taylor shows to all sorts of archival materials. He said he has to disagree with some of his colleagues who think age makes things more important.
       Referring to the Riot Grrrl Collection, he said, "They are just as evocative of a moment in time and just as rare. Medieval manuscript or zine - we treat them with the same respect," he said.

Marvin Taylor showing us a papyrus fragment containing 11 lines from the Illiad! "It's my favorite document in the collection," he said. Photo courtesy of Betty Ming Liu