Interview date: March 4, 2010

Howard Besser

Howard Besser is a Professor of Cinema Studies and Director of New York University’s Moving Image Archiving & Preservation Program (MIAP) as well as Senior Scientist for the Digital Library Initiatives at NYU’s Bobst Library.

Previously Besser was a Professor of Library Information Studies at UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies, where he taught and did research on multimedia, image databases, digital libraries, metadata standards, digital longevity, web design, informational literacy, distance learning, intellectual property, and the social and cultural impact of new information technologies.  Besser is an international expert on new technologies in libraries, museums, and archives, and has been active in both national and international efforts to develop metadata and standards for the cultural heritage community.

His four main interest areas are image and multimedia databases (particularly in cultural institutions), the social and cultural effects of information technology, digital library issues (predominantly in regards to standards, longevity, and intellectual property), as well as the development of new ways to teach with technology (including web-based instruction and distance learning).  Besser remains particularly interested in design issues and the use of critical theory perspectives.

For many years Besser has been actively involved in developing and testing new methods for using technology to teach. Since spring of 1994, Besser has been using the Internet as the key delivery system for instructional support, placing curriculums and other supporting materials on the World Wide Web. Besser encourages students to engage in online discussion groups and to relate to their peers in a responsive, collective cyber discourse.

From 1994 to 1996, Besser was on the faculty of the University of Michigan’s School of Information where he headed a committee developing a curriculum in multimedia and digital publishing. In 1995, he was named Outstanding Teacher of the Year by the American Society for Information Science. From 1997 to 1999, Besser taught a course at NYU regarding web design and directed a grant project that hired students from his department to develop well-designed online web-based delivery systems.

In 2003, he retired from his position at UCLA, but nonetheless, remains a Professor Emeritus there.

Besser’s legendary collection of over 2,000 tee shirts contribute to his fame. In 2004, his students compiled a database of over 500 tee shirts. You can see part of his collection for yourself at: http://besser.tsoa.nyu.edu/T-Shirts/. It is an urban legend that the reason that the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative uses only 15 fields is because that’s how much room there was on the back of one of Besser’s shirts.