Celebrating Tom Greenfield’s New Encyclopedia

In case you were unable to attend the event on Thursday, February 18th, Milne Library hosted a reception to celebrate the publication of Dr. Tom Greenfield’s newly-published work, Broadway: An Encyclopedia of Theater and American Culture. Published in December 2009 by ABC-CLIO, Inc., the two-volume set features contributions from several Geneseo faculty.


The crowd of nearly 50 attendees was comprised of students, faculty from several departments, President Dahl and Provost Long. Milne’s Director, Ed Rivenburgh, opened with the promise of this being the first of many future events focusing on and promoting faculty scholarship. He also mentioned the new digital projects being worked on, and that Associate Director Cyril Oberlander and Special Collections Librarian Liz Argentieri were at that very moment attending a Thoreau conference gathering ideas about digitizing SUNY Geneseo’s Walter Harding’s collection.

Sue Ann Brainard, Instruction Librarian and author of five entries to the encyclopedia then introduced Dr. Greenfield, who graciously and humorously thanked every one who worked on the project. He pointedly thanked Ms. Brainard and another librarian from the Performing Arts Library in New York City Public Library, for their enthusiasm, saying that, “whenever I asked either one of them a research question, they would get back to him with 6 more sources than I needed, and they kept working on a question even after I was done with it.”

In his appreciation, he relayed how “he was the envy of all his academic friends from other institutions, who were amazed that the library was doing this.” The reception was completed with the cutting of the cake, conversation and many congratulations.

The books are currently available for in-Library use and located in the Author’s Hall upstairs in Milne. Stop by the Reference desk and we’ll help you find it.

Congratulations, Tom and all the contributors!

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