Under the sponsorship of the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections of the Cornell University Library, the Rose Goldsen Archive serves as a research repository of new media art, with a current emphasis on digital interfaces and experimentation by international, independent artists. Named after the pioneering critic of the commercialization of mass media, the late Professor Rose Goldsen of Cornell University, the Archive houses art works produced on CD-Rom, DVD-Rom, and the internet, as well as supporting materials, such as unpublished manuscripts and designs, catalogues, monographs, and resource guides to new media art.

Emphasizing multimedia artworks that reflect digital extensions of twentieth-century developments in cinema, video, installation, photography, and sound, its holdings include the vast selection of international works exhibited in the exhibition, Contact Zones: The Art of CD-Rom, as well as net art archived on the CTHEORY Multimedia site archived by the Cornell Library. The aim of the Goldsen Archive is to provide researchers, faculty, and students with a better understanding of the transformation wrought on the artistic process by digital multimedia experimentation and development. To this end, access to the Archive material is generally available on request at the Rare and Manuscript Collections reading room. A novel research archive of international significance, the collection complements holdings in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections of illuminated manuscripts and the early modern printed book, and adds to the breadth of its important collections in human sexuality and Asian Studies.

The Archive is curated by Timothy Murray, Professor of Comparative Literature and English, Director of Graduate Studies in Film and Video, at Cornell University. Author of books on new media, film, and performance, Murray has curated new media exhibitions internationally and is Co-Curator of CTHEORY Multimedia. The curator reviews new materials for inclusion in the archive, and recommends the addition of reference materials that would contribute to the intellectual context of the archive.

For more information, please visit the Goldsen Archive's website.