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New York Public Library

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New York Public Library

Location	New York, New York
Established	1895
Number of branches	87
Population served	8,143,198 (New York City)
Budget	$50,171,798
Director	Paul LeClerc
Employees	3,147
Website	http://www.nypl.org/

The New York Public Library (NYPL) is one of the leading public libraries of the world and is one of America's most significant research libraries. It is unusual in that it is composed of a very large circulating public library system combined with a very large non-lending research library system. It is simultaneously one of the largest public library systems in the United States and one of the largest research library systems. It is a privately managed, nonprofit corporation with a public mission, operating with both private and public financing.

The historian David McCullough has described the New York Public Library as one of the five most important libraries in America, the others being the Library of Congress, the Boston Public Library, and the university libraries of Harvard and Yale.

Although it is called the New York Public Library it does not cover all five boroughs of America's largest city. New York City does not have a single public library system but three of them. The other two are the Brooklyn Public Library and the Queens Borough Public Library.

Currently, the New York Public Library consists of 86 libraries in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island: four non-lending research libraries, four main lending libraries, a library for the blind and physically handicapped, and 77 neighborhood branch libraries. All libraries in the NYPL system may be used free of charge by all visitors.

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[edit] History

New York Public Library, central block, built 1897–1911, Carrère and Hastings, architects (June 2003)

By the late nineteenth century, despite its size and importance, New York City had no real public library. It still did not have what Boston had enjoyed since 1854: a municipally supported public library that allowed the general public to borrow books and other materials to take home to read and use. In 1895, Boston opened a fine new home for the Boston Public Library but the nation's largest city still had none. That same year though, the New York Public Library was born.

The origins of the New York Public Library can be traced back to the time when New York was emerging as a great metropolis. Fortunately, among its people were men who foresaw that if New York was indeed to become one of the world's great cities it must also have a great public library.

Among them was former New York governor and presidential candidate Samuel J. Tilden who left the bulk of his fortune -- about $2.4 million -- to "establish and maintain a free library and reading room in the city of New York." At the time of Tilden's death in 1886, New York already had two important libraries: the Astor Library, and the Lenox Library.

The Astor Library was created by John Jacob Astor, an immigrant who became the wealthiest man in America. When he died in 1848, he left $400,000 in his will for the establishment of a library in New York City. The Astor Library opened the following year, 1849. Although it was not a circulating library, it was a major reference library for research.

New York's other main library was established by James Lenox and consisted mainly of his extensive collection of rare books (which included the first Gutenberg Bible to come to the New World), manuscripts, and Americana. The Lenox Library was intended primarily for bibliophiles and scholars. While it was free of charge, tickets of admission (such as those that are still required to gain access to the British Library) were still needed by potential users.

So although there were already two fine libraries in New York City in 1886 and both were open to the public, neither could be termed a truly public institution in the sense that Tilden seems to have envisioned. But Tilden's vision was soon to come into fruition not only because of the generous bequest he left in his will but because of a man who was a trustee of his estate.

By 1892, both the Astor and Lenox libraries were experiencing financial difficulties. Almost as if fate would have it, John Bigelow, a New York attorney, and Tilden trustee, formulated a plan to combine the resources of the financially-strapped Astor and Lenox libraries with the Tilden bequest to form "The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations". Bigelow's plan, signed and agreed upon on May 23, 1895, was hailed as an example of private philanthropy for the public good.

The newly established library consolidated with The New York Free Circulating Library in February, 1901, and the philanthropist Andrew Carnegie donated $5.2 million to construct branch libraries, with the requirement that they be maintained by the City of New York. Later in 1901 the New York Public Library signed a contract with the City of New York to operate 39 branch libraries in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island.

Unlike most other great libraries, such as the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library was not created by government statute. From the earliest days of the New York Public Library, a tradition of partnership of city government with private philanthropy began. A tradition which continues to this day.

Having the books and the money to create and build a great library befitting the nation's largest city, the next step was to find a new home for the library. Fortunately one was already at hand. The Croton Reservoir that occupied a two-block section of Fifth Avenue between 40th and 42nd Streets was obsolete and no longer needed. Dr. John Shaw Billings who was named first director of the New York Public Library seized the opportunity. He knew exactly what he wanted there. His design for the new library became the basis of the landmark building that became the central Research Library (now known as the Humanities and Social Science Library) on Fifth Avenue.

Billings's plan called for a huge reading room on top of seven floors of bookstacks combined with the fastest system for getting books into the hands of those who requested to read them. Following a competition among the city's most famous architects, the relatively unknown firm of Carrère and Hastings was selected to design and construct the new library. The result, regarded as the apex of Beaux-Arts design, was the largest marble structure ever attempted in America. The cornerstone was laid in May 1902.

Work progressed slowly but steadily on the Library which eventually cost $9 million to build. During the summer of 1905, huge columns were put into place and work on the roof was begun. By the end of 1906, the roof was finished and the designers commenced five years of interior work. In 1910, 75 miles of shelves were installed to house the collections that were set to make their home there, with plenty of space left for future acquisitions. It took a whole year to move and install the books that were in the Astor and Lenox libraries.

On May 23, 1911, the New York Public Library was officially opened. The ceremony was presided over by President William Howard Taft and was attended by Governor John Alden Dix and Mayor William J. Gaynor.

The following day, May 24, the public were invited. The response was sensational. Tens of thousands thronged to be the Library's "jewel in the crown." The opening day collection consisted of more than 1,000,000 volumes. The New York Public Library instantly became one of the nation's largest libraries and a vital part of the intellectual life of America. True to Dr. Billings' plan, library records for that day show that one of the very first items called for was N. I. Grot's Nravstvennye idealy nashego vremeni (Ethical Ideas of Our Time ) a study of Friedrich Nietzsche and Leo Tolstoy. The reader filed his slip at 9:08 a.m. and received his book just six minutes later.

But to those who came not to read but just to see the new library there was a lot to see. First there were two stone lions that stood at the stairway to the entrance. The famous lions guarding the entrance were sculpted by Edward Clark Potter. They were originally named Leo Astor and Leo Lenox, in honor of the library's founders. These names were transformed into Lord Astor and Lady Lenox (although both lions are male). In the 1930s they were nicknamed "Patience" and "Fortitude" by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. He chose these names because he felt that the citizens of New York would need to possess these qualities to see themselves through the Great Depression. Patience is on the south side (the left as one faces the main entrance) and Fortitude on the north.

Then there is the famous main reading room of the Research Library (Room 315) - a majestic 78 feet (23.8 m) wide by 297 feet (90.5 m) long, with 52 feet (15.8 m) high ceilings - lined with thousands of reference books on open shelves along the floor level and along the balcony; lit by massive windows and grand chandeliers; furnished with sturdy wood tables, comfortable chairs, and brass lamps. Today it is also equipped with computers with access to library collections and the Internet and docking facilities for laptops. Readers study books brought to them from the library's closed stacks. There are special rooms for notable authors and scholars, many of whom have done important research and writing at the Library. But the Library has always been about more than scholars, during the Great Depression, many ordinary people, out of work, used the Library to improve their lot in life (just as they still do).

Over the decades, the library grew with more branch libraries with more books serving more people. However the famous research collection grew until, by the 1970s, it was clear that eventually the collection would outgrow the existing structure. So it was decided to make the library bigger by burrowing underground toward Bryant Park. In the 1980s the central research library added more than 125,000 square feet (12,000 m²) of space and literally miles of bookshelf space to its already vast storage capacity to make room for future acquisitions. This expansion required a major construction project in which Bryant Park, directly west of the library, was closed to the public and excavated. The new library facilities were built below ground level. The park was then restored on top of the underground facilities and re-opened to the public.

Even though the central research library on 42nd Street had greatly expanded its capacity, in the 1990s the decision was made to remove that portion of the research collection devoted to science, technology, and business to a new location. The new location was the abandoned B. Altman department store on 34th Street. In 1995, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the New York Public Library, the $100 million Science, Industry and Business Library, designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates of Manhattan, finally opened to the public. Upon the creation of the SIBL, the central research library on 42nd Street was renamed the Humanities and Social Sciences Library.

Today there are four research libraries that comprise the NYPL's outstanding research library system which hold approximately 40,000,000 items. The Humanities and Social Sciences Library on 42nd Street is still the heart of the NYPL's research library system but the Science, Industry and Business Library with approximately 2 million volumes and 60,000 periodicals is quickly gaining greater prominence in the NYPL's research library system because of its up-to-date electronic resources available to the general public. The SIBL, the nation's largest public library devoted solely to science and business, provides users with broad access to science, technology, and business information via 150 networked computer work stations. The NYPL's two other research libraries are the Schomburg Center for Black Research and Culture, located at 135th Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, located at Lincoln Center. In addition to their reference collections, the Library for the Performing Arts and the SIBL also have circulating components that are administered by the NYPL's Branch Libraries system.

On July 17, 2007, the building was briefly evacuated and the surounding area was cordoned off by New York police because of a suspicious package found across the street. It turned out to be a bag of old clothes.^[1]

A panoramic view of the Rose Main Reading Room, facing south.

[edit] Branch Libraries

The Donnell Library Center in midtown Manhattan.

The New York Public Library system maintains its commitment to being a public lending library through its branch libraries in The Bronx, Manhattan and Staten Island, including the Mid-Manhattan Library, The Donnell Library Center, The Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library, the circulating collections of the Science, Industry and Business Library, and the circulating collections of the Library for the Performing Arts. These circulating libraries offer a wide range of collections, programs, and services, including the renowned Picture Collection at Mid-Manhattan Library and the Media Center at Donnell.

The 82 branch libraries are:
Bronx

Allerton Branch
Baychester Branch
Belmont Branch
Castle Hill Branch
City Island Branch
Clason's Point Branch
Eastchester Branch
Edenwald Branch
Francis Martin Branch
Grand Concourse Branch
High Bridge Branch
Hunt's Point Branch
Jerome Park Branch
Kingsbridge Branch
Melrose Branch
Morris Park Branch
Morrisania Branch
Mosholu Branch
Mott Haven Branch
Parkchester Branch
Pelham Bay Branch
Riverdale Branch
Sedgwick Branch
Soundview Branch
Spuyten Duyvil Branch
Throg's Neck Branch
Tremont Branch
Van Cortlandt Branch
Van Nest Branch
Wakefield Branch
West Farms Branch
Westchester Square Branch
Woodlawn Heights Branch
Woodstock Branch

Manhattan

58th Street Branch
67th Street Branch
96th Street Branch
115th Street Branch
125th Street Branch
Aguilar Branch
Bloomingdale Branch
Chatham Square Branch
Columbus Branch
Countee Cullen Branch
Epiphany Branch
Fort Washington Branch
George Bruce Branch
Hamilton Fish Park Branch
Hamilton Grange Branch
Harlem Branch
Hudson Park Branch
Inwood Branch
Jefferson Market Branch
Kips Bay Branch
Macomb's Bridge Branch
Morningside Heights
Muhlenberg Branch
Mulberry Street Branch
New Amsterdam Branch
Ottendorfer Branch
Riverside Branch
Roosevelt Island Branch
Seward Park Branch
St. Agnes Branch
Terence Cardinal Cooke-Cathedral Branch
Tompkins Square Branch
Washington Heights Branch
Webster Branch
Yorkville Branch

Staten Island

Dongan Hills Branch
Great Kills Branch
Huguenot Park Branch
New Dorp Branch
Port Richmond Branch
Richmondtown Branch
South Beach Branch
Stapleton Branch
Todt Hill-Westerleigh Branch
Tottenville Branch
West New Brighton Branch

[edit] Telephone Reference Service

The New York Public library has a telephone-reference system that was organized as a separate library unit in 1968 and remains one of the largest. Located in the Mid-Manhattan Library branch at 455 Fifth Avenue, the unit has 10 researchers with degrees ranging from elementary education, chemistry, mechanical engineering and criminal justice, to a Ph.D. in English literature. They can consult with as many as 50 other researchers in the library system.

New York Public Library Elevation

Under their rules, each inquiry must be answered in under five minutes, meaning the caller gets an answer or somewhere to go for an answer — like a specialty library, trade group or Web site. Researchers cannot call questioners back. Although the majority of calls are in English, the staff can get by in Chinese, Spanish, German and some Yiddish. Specialty libraries, like the Slavic and Baltic division, can lend a hand with, for example, Albanian.

Internet inquiries make up only a third of the questions, but they can take up to 35 minutes each and 85% of total staff time. Internet inquiries come by e-mail (13,398 in 2005) and a one-on-one chat that resembles instant messaging (7,220 in 2005). While telephone calls have declined recently to fewer than 150 a day from more than 1,000, they still made up two-thirds, or 41,715, of all inquiries in 2005; the rest were by computer.

Every day, except Sundays and holidays, between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, anyone, of any age, from anywhere in the world can telephone 212-340-0849 and ask a question. The library staff will not answer crossword or contest questions, do children's homework, or answer philosophical speculations.^[2]

[edit] Website

Postcard, ca. 1920.

The New York Public Library website provides access to the library's catalogs, online collections and subscription databases, and has information about the library's free events, exhibitions, computer classes and English as a Second Language classes. The two online catalogs, LEO (which searches the circulating collections) and CATNYP (which searches the research collections) allow users to search the library's holdings of books, journals and other materials.

The NYPL gives cardholders free access from home to thousands of current and historical magazines, newspapers, journals and reference books in subscription databases, including EBSCOhost, which contains full text of major magazines; full text of the New York Times (1995-present), Gale's Ready Reference Shelf which includes the Encyclopedia of Associations and periodical indexes, Books in Print; and Ulrich's Periodicals Directory.

The NYPL Digital Gallery is a database of half a million images digitized from the library's collections. The Digital Gallery was named one of Time Magazine's 50 Coolest Websites of 2005 and Best Research Site of 2006 by an international panel of museum professionals.

Other databases available only from within the library include Nature, IEEE and Wiley science journals, Wall Street Journal archives, and Factiva.

[edit] The Library in literature and film

At the entrance to the New York Public Library.

The NYPL has frequently appeared in feature films, and was recently seen in the pilot episode of ABC's hit series Traveler, as the Drexler Museum Of Art, most often as backdrop or a brief meeting place for characters. It serves as the backdrop for a central plot development in the 2002 film Spider-Man and a major location in the 2004 apocalyptic science fiction film The Day After Tomorrow. It is also featured prominently in the 1984 film Ghostbusters. In the film, a librarian in the basement reported seeing a ghost, which became violent when approached. Other films in which the library appears include Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), You're a Big Boy Now (1966), Chapter Two (1979), Escape from New York (1981), The Time Machine (2002), and Regarding Henry (1991). In the 1978 film, The Wiz, Dorothy and Toto stumble across the Library and one of the Library Lions comes alive and joins them on their journey out of Oz. In The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), the lobby and hallways of the Humanities Library were used as a stand-in for the interior of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In the episode "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid" in the animated television series Futurama, the giant brain is confronted by Fry in the library. In an episode of Seinfeld, Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards) dates an NYPL librarian, Jerry Seinfeld is accosted by a library cop (Philip Baker Hall) for late fees, and George Costanza (Jason Alexander) encounters his high school gym teacher living homeless on the building's stairs.

In novels, Lynne Sharon Schwartz's The Writing on the Wall (2005), features a language researcher at NYPL who grapples with her past following the September 11, 2001 attacks. Cynthia Ozick's 2004 novel Heir to the Glimmering World, set just prior to World War II, involves a refugee-scholar from Hitler's Germany researching the Karaite Jews at NYPL. In the 1996 novel Contest by Matthew Reilly the NYPL is the setting for an intergalactic gladiatorial fight that results in the building's total destruction. In 1985, novelist Jerome Badanes based his novel The Final Opus of Leon Solomon on the real-life tragedy of an impoverished scholar who stole books from the Jewish Division, only to be caught and commit suicide. In the 1984 murder mystery by Jane Smiley, Duplicate Keys, an NYPL librarian stumbles on two dead bodies, circa 1930. Another mystery, Allen Kurzweil's The Grand Complication is the story of an NYPL librarian whose research skills are put to work finding a missing museum object. Donna Hill, who was herself an NYPL librarian in the 1950s, set her 1965 novel Catch a Brass Canary at an NYPL branch library. Lawrence Blochman's 1942 mystery Death Walks in Marble Halls features a murder committed using a brass spindle from a catalog drawer.

Smaller mentions of the library can be found in Henry Sydnor Harrison's 1913 novel V.V.'s Eyes; P. G. Wodehouse's 1919 A Damsel in Distress; James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On the Mountain (1953); Stephen King's 1980 Firestarter; B.J. Chute's 1986 The Good Woman; Sarah Schulman's 1986 Girls, Visions and Everything; and in Isaac Bashevis Singer's posthumous Shadows on the Hudson (1998). A charming, lightly fictionalized portrait of the Jewish Division's first chief, Abraham Solomon Freidus, is found in a chapter of Abraham Cahan's The Rise of David Levinsky (1917). Bernard Malamud’s short story "The German Refugee," (in his Complete Stories [1997]; originally published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1963) mentions the library, as does the story "Owd Bob" in Christopher Morley's 1919 humor book, Mince Pie.

Both branches and the central building have been immortalized in numerous poems, including Richard Eberhart’s “Reading Room, The New York Public Library” (in his Collected Poems, 1930-1986 [1988]); Arthur Guiterman’s “The Book Line; Rivington Street Branch, New York Public Library” (in his Ballads of Old New York [1920]); Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “Library Scene, Manhattan” (in his How to Paint Sunlight [2001]); James Haug’s “Heat: a Composite” (in his The Stolen Car [1989]); Muriel Rukeyser’s “Nuns in the Wind” (in The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser [2005]); Paul Blackburn’s “Graffiti” (in The Collected Poems of Paul Blackburn [1985]). Two poems by E.B. White (“A Library Lion Speaks” and “Reading Room”) appear in Poems and Sketches of E.B. White (1981).

James Turcotte’s moving meditation on his advancing AIDS takes the form of a poem series called “The New York Public Library,” which appeared in the Minnesota Review in 1993, the year Turcotte died. Other notable periodical poetry about the library includes Ted Mathys’ “Inventory Entering the New York Public Library” in Gulf Coast in 2005 and Jennifer Nostrand’s “The New York Public Library” in the Manhattan Poetry Review, 1989. The anthology American Diaspora (2001) includes Susan Thomas’ “New York Public Library.” Yiddish poet Aaron Zeitlin wrote a poem about going to the library, included in his 2-volume Ale lider un poemes [Complete Lyrics and Poems], published in 1967 and 1970.

Excerpts from several of the many Memoirs and essays mentioning The New York Public Library are included in the anthology Reading Rooms (1991), including reminiscences by Alfred Kazin, Henry Miller, and Kate Simon.

[edit] Other New York City library systems

"Patience" and "Fortitude" : the "Library Lion" statues; New York Public Library with mantle of snow (record snowfall of Dec. 1948)

The New York Public Library, serving Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island, is one of three separate and independent public library systems in New York City. The other two library systems are the Brooklyn Public Library and the Queens Borough Public Library. The three library systems combined operate a total of 208 library branches.

According to the latest Mayor’s Management Report, New York City’s three public library systems had a total library circulation of 35 million broken down as follows: the NYPL and BPL (with 143 branches combined) had a circulation of 15 million, and the QBPL system had a circulation of 20 million through its 62 branch libraries. Altogether the three library systems also hosted 37 million visitors in 2006.

Private libraries in New York City, some of which can be used by the public, are listed in Directory of Special Libraries and Information Centers (Gale)

[edit] References

^ New York Public Library being evacuated. Twitter (17 July, 2007). Retrieved on 2007-07-17.
^ "Library Phone Answerers Survive the Internet." The New York Times 19 June 2006.[1]

[edit] See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

New York Public Library

[edit] External links

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New York Public Library

Monday, August 27, 2007