The New York Daily News highlighted German Traces NYC, a mobile website designed by Pratt School of Information and Library Science Professors Anthony Cocciolo and Debbie Rabina, in its Friday, February 24 Real Estate section. German Traces NYC is an ongoing project that brings places of German cultural heritage in New York City from 1840–1945 to life through a mobile website that blends cultural heritage information with GPS mapping technology to create augmented reality walking tours. Daily News reporter Jason Sheftell toured German cultural heritage sites in New York City's East Village using the mobile website with Cocciolo, Rabina, and Brigitte Doellgast, library director of Goethe-Institut, New York.
Cocciolo and Rabina were awarded $56,000 for research and development of the project, which they tested with SILS students. The two professors designed German Traces NYC to be a learning experience that uses historical photographs and multimedia narratives to reveal the history of the city's German immigrants.