New York Public Library

The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States (and fourth largest in the world), behind only the Library of Congress. It is an independently managed, nonprofit corporation operating with both private and public financing. The library has branches in the boroughs of Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island, and affiliations with academic and professional libraries in the metropolitan area of New York State. The City of New York's other two boroughs, Brooklyn and Queens, are served by the Brooklyn Public Library and the Queens Borough Public Library, respectively. The branch libraries are open to the general public and consist of research libraries and circulating libraries.

The library was developed in the 19th century, founded from an amalgamation of grass-roots libraries, and social libraries of bibliophiles and the wealthy, aided by the philanthropy of the wealthiest Americans of their age.

History

Founding

At the behest of Joseph Cogswell, John Jacob Astor placed a codicil in his will to bequeath $400,000 (equivalent of $10.9 million in 2014) for the creation of a public library. After Astor's death in 1848, the resulting board of trustees executed the will's conditions and constructed the Astor Library in 1854 in the East Village. The library created was a free reference library; its books were not permitted to circulate. By 1872, the Astor Library was described in a New York Times editorial as a "major reference and research resource", but, "Popular it certainly is not, and, so greatly is it lacking in the essentials of a public library, that its stores might almost as well be under lock and key, for any access the masses of the people can get thereto".

An act of the New York State Legislature incorporated the Lenox Library in 1870. The library was built on Fifth Avenue, between 70th and 71st streets, in 1877. Bibliophile and philanthropist James Lenox donated a vast collection of his Americana, art works, manuscripts, and rare books, including the first Gutenberg Bible in the New World. At its inception, the library charged admission and did not permit physical access to any literary items.

Former Governor of New York and presidential candidate Samuel J. Tilden believed that a library with city-wide reach was required, and upon his death in 1886, he bequeathed the bulk of his fortuneâ€"about $2.4 million (equivalent of $63 million in 2014)â€"to "establish and maintain a free library and reading room in the city of New York". This money would sit untouched in a trust for several years, until John Bigelow, a New York attorney, and trustee of the Tilden fortune, came up with an idea to merge two of the city's largest libraries.

Both the Astor and Lenox libraries were struggling financially. Although New York City already had numerous libraries in the 19th century, almost all of them were privately funded and many charged admission or usage fees. On May 23, 1895, Bigelow and representatives of the two libraries agreed to create "The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations". The plan was hailed as an example of private philanthropy for the public good. The newly established library consolidated with the grass-roots New York Free Circulating Library, in February 1901.

In March, Andrew Carnegie tentatively agreed to donate $5.2 million (equivalent of $147 million in 2014) to construct sixty-five branch libraries in the city, with the requirement that they be operated and maintained by the City of New York. The Brooklyn and Queens public library systems, which predated the consolidation of New York City, eschewed the grants offered to them and did not join the NYPL system; they believed that they would not get treatment equal to the Manhattan and Bronx counterparts. Later in 1901 Carnegie formally signed a contract with the City of New York to transfer his donation to the city, in order to enable it to justify purchasing the land for building the branch libraries. The NYPL Board of trustees hired consultants for the planning, and accepted their recommendation that a limited number of architectural firms be hired to build the Carnegie libraries: this would ensure uniformity of appearance and minimize cost. The trustees hired McKim, Mead & White, CarrÃ¨re and Hastings, and Walter Cook to design all the branch libraries.

Collection development

The notable New York author Washington Irving was a close friend of Astor for decades and had helped the philanthropist design the Astor Library. Irving served as President of the library's Board of Trustees from 1848 until his death in 1859, shaping the library's collecting policies with his strong sensibility regarding European intellectual life. Subsequently the Library hired nationally prominent experts to guide its collections policies; they reported directly to directors John Shaw Billings (who also developed the National Library of Medicine), Edwin H. Anderson, Harry Miller Lydenberg, Franklin F. Hopper, Ralph A. Beals, and Edward Freehafer (1954â€"70). They emphasized expertise, objectivity and a very broad world-wide range of knowledge in acquiring, preserving, organizing, and making available to the general population nearly 12 million books and 26.5 million additional items. The directors in turn reported to an elite board of trustees, chiefly elderly, well-educated, philanthropic, predominantly Protestant, upper-class white men with commanding positions in American society. They saw their role as protecting the library's autonomy from politicians as well as bestowing upon it status, resources, and prudent care.

Representative of many major board decisions was the purchase in 1931 of the private library of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich (1847â€"1909), uncle of the last tsar. This was one of the largest acquisitions of Russian books and photographic materials; at the time, the Soviet government had a policy of selling its cultural collections abroad for gold.

The military drew extensively from the Library's map and book collections in the world wars, including hiring its staff. For example, the Map Division's chief Walter Ristow was appointed as head of the geography section of the War Department's New York Office of Military Intelligence from 1942 to 1945. Ristow and his staff discovered, copied, and loaned thousands of strategic, rare or unique maps to war agencies in need of information not available through other sources.

Branch libraries

Main branch building

The organizers of the New York Public Library, wanting an imposing main branch, chose a central site available at the two-block section of Fifth Avenue between 40th and 42nd streets. It was occupied by the no-longer-needed Croton Reservoir. Dr. John Shaw Billings, the first director of the library, created an initial design which became the basis of the new building (now known as the Schwarzman Building) on Fifth Avenue. Billings's plan called for a huge reading room on top of seven floors of bookstacks, combined with a system that was designed to get books into the hands of library users as fast as possible. Following a competition among the city's most prominent architects, CarrÃ¨re and Hastings was selected to design and construct the building. The cornerstone was laid in May 1902, and the building's completion was expected to be in three years. In 1910, 75 miles (121Â km) of shelves were installed, and it took a year to move and install the books that were in the Astor and Lenox libraries.

On May 23, 1911, the main branch of the New York Public Library was officially opened in a ceremony presided over by President William Howard Taft. After a dedication ceremony, attended by 50,000 people, the library was open to the general public that day. The library had cost $9 million to build and its collection consisted of more than 1,000,000 volumes. The library structure was a Beaux-Arts design and was the largest marble structure up to that time in the United States. The two stone lions guarding the entrance were sculpted by E. C. Potter. Its main reading room was contemporaneously the largest of its kind in the world at 77 feet (23.5 m) wide by 295 feet (89.9 m) long, with 50 feet (15.2 m) high ceilings. It is lined with thousands of reference books on open shelves along the floor level and along the balcony. The New York Public Library instantly became one of the nation's largest libraries and a vital part of the intellectual life of America.

The building was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965. Over the decades, the library system added branch libraries, and the research collection expanded. By the 1970s, it was clear the collection eventually would outgrow the existing Fifth Avenue structure. 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 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 and the park was restored above it.

In the three decades before 2007, the building's interior was gradually renovated. On December 20, 2007, the library announced it would undertake a three-year, $50 million renovation of the building exterior, which has suffered damage from weathering and pollution. The renovation was completed on time, and on February 2, 2011 the refurbished facade was unveiled. The restoration design was overseen by Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc., whose previous projects include the Metropolitan Museum of Art's limestone facades and the American Museum of Natural History, made of granite. These renovations were underwritten by a $100-million gift from philanthropist Stephen A. Schwarzman, whose name was to be inscribed at the bottom of the columns framing the building's entrances. Today the main reading room is equipped with computers with access to library collections and the Internet, and docking facilities for laptops. A Fellows program makes reserved rooms available for writers and scholars, selected annually, and many have accomplished important research and writing at the Library.

Other research branches

In the 1990s, the New York Public Library decided to relocate that portion of the research collection devoted to science, technology, and business to a new location. The library purchased and adapted the former B. Altman department store on 34th Street. In 1995, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the library, the $100 million Science, Industry and Business Library (SIBL), designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates of Manhattan, 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 research library system; together they hold approximately 44,000,000 items. Total item holdings, including the collections of the Branch Libraries, are 50.6 million. The Humanities and Social Sciences Library on 42nd Street is still the heart of the NYPL's research library system. The SIBL, with approximately 2 million volumes and 60,000 periodicals, is the nation's largest public library devoted solely to science and business. The NYPL's two other research libraries are the Schomburg Center for Research and Black 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 as ordinary branch libraries.

Recent history

The New York Public Library was not created by government statute. From its earliest days, the library was formed from a partnership of city government with private philanthropy. As of 2010, the research libraries in the system are largely funded with private money, and the branch or circulating libraries are financed primarily with city government funds. Until 2009, the research and branch libraries operated almost entirely as separate systems, but that year various operations were merged. By early 2010, the NYPL staff had been reduced by about 16 percent, in part through the consolidations.

In 2010, as part of the consolidation program, the NYPL moved various back-office operations to a new Library Services Center building in Long Island City. A former warehouse was renovated for this purpose for $50 million. In the basement, a new, $2.3 million book sorter uses bar codes on library items to sort them for delivery to 132 branch libraries. At two-thirds the length of a football field, the machine is the largest of its kind in the world, according to library officials. Books located in one branch and requested from another go through the sorter, which use has cut the previous waiting time by at least a day. Together with 14 library employees, the machine can sort 7,500 items an hour (or 125 a minute). On the first floor of the Library Services Center is an ordering and cataloging office; on the second, the digital imaging department (formerly at the Main Branch building) and the manuscripts and archives division, where the air is kept cooler; on the third, the Barbara Goldsmith Preservation Division, with a staff of 10 (as of 2010) but designed for as many as 30 employees.

The NYPL maintains a force of NYC special patrolmen, who provide security and protection to various libraries, and NYPL special investigators, who oversee security operations at the library facilities. These officials have on-duty arrest authority granted by the New York Penal Law. Some library branches contract for security guards.

In February 2013, the New York and Brooklyn public libraries announced that they would merge their technical services departments. The new department would be called Book Ops. The proposed merger anticipates a saving to the Brooklyn Public Library of $2 million and $1.5 million to the New York Public Library. Although not part of the immediate merger, it is expected that the Queens Library will eventually share some resources with the other city libraries.

Controversies

The consolidations and changes in collections have promoted continuing debate and controversy since 2004 when David Ferriero was named the Andrew W. Mellon Director and Chief Executive of the Research Libraries. NYPL had engaged consultants Booz Allen Hamilton to survey the institution, and Ferriero endorsed the survey's report as a big step "in the process of reinventing the library". The consolidation program has resulted in the elimination of subjects such as the Asian and Middle East Division (formerly named Oriental Division), as well as the Slavic and Baltic Division.

A number of innovations in recent years have been criticized. In 2004 NYPL announced participation in the Google Books Library Project. By agreement between Google and major international libraries, selected collections of public domain books would be scanned in their entirety and made available online for free to the public. The negotiations between the two partners called for each to project guesses about ways that libraries are likely to expand in the future. According to the terms of the agreement, the data cannot be crawled or harvested by any other search engine; no downloading or redistribution is allowed. The partners and a wider community of research libraries can share the content.

The sale of the separately endowed former Donnell Library in midtown provoked controversy. The elimination of Donnell was a result of the dissolution of children's, young adult and foreign language collections. The Donnell Media Center was also dismantled, with parts of its collections redistributed. The site was redeveloped for a luxury hotel.

The NYPL has justified the changes as a means to achieve new collaborations and new synergy. Several veteran librarians with institutional memory have left, and the number of age-level specialists in the boroughs have been cut back.

Branch libraries

The New York Public Library system maintains commitment as a public lending library through its branch libraries in The Bronx, Manhattan and Staten Island, including the Mid-Manhattan Library, 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. The branch libraries comprise the third-largest library in the United States. 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, redistributed from Donnell.

The system has 35 libraries in Manhattan, 34 in the Bronx, and 13 in Staten Island. The newest is the Mariners Harbor Branch Library, located in Mariners Harbor, Staten Island, opened on December 16, 2013.

In 2010 the New York Public Library consisted of 87 libraries: four non-lending research libraries, four main lending libraries, a library for the blind and physically challenged, and 77 neighborhood branch libraries in the three boroughs served. All libraries in the NYPL system may be used free of charge by all visitors. As of 2010, the research collections contain 44,507,623 items (books, videotapes, maps, etc.). The Branch Libraries contain 8,438,775 items. Together the collections total nearly 53 million items, a number surpassed only by the Library of Congress and the British Library.

Taken as a whole, the three library systems in the city have 209 branches with 63 million items in their collections.

Services

ASK NYPL

Since 1968, Telephone Reference has been an integral part of the NYPL's reference services; it previously was limited. Now known as ASK NYPL, the service provides answers by phone and online via chat and e-mail 24 hours a day, seven days per week. Library users can ask reference questions in Spanish and English and seek help at anytime through online chat via the Library's website. Through participation in an international cooperative, the Library receives support answering questions outside regular hours.

The service fulfilled nearly 70,000 requests for information in 2007. Inquiries range from the serious and life-changing (a New Orleans resident who lost his birth certificate in Katrina needing to know how to obtain a copy; it turns out he was born in Brooklyn), to the fun or even off-the-wall (a short-story writer researching the history of Gorgonzola cheese). In 1992 a selection of unusual and entertaining questions and answers from ASK NYPL was the source for Book of Answers: The New York Public Library Telephone Reference Service's Most Unusual and Entertaining Questions, a popular volume published by Fireside Books. National and international questioners have included scores of newspaper reporters, authors, celebrities, professors, secretaries, CEOs, and everyone in between.

In 2008, ASK NYPL reference service introduced two enhancements that improve and expand the service. The Library recently launched 917-ASK-NYPL, to make its telephone number easier for users to remember. The service is available daily, except Sundays and holidays, between 9:00Â am and 6:00Â pm EST/EDT. The library staff will not answer crossword or contest questions, do children's homework, or answer philosophical speculations.

Website

The New York Public Library website provides access to the library's catalogs, online collections and subscription databases. It also has information about the library's free events, exhibitions, computer classes and English as a Second Language (ESL) 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 LEO system allows cardholders to request books from any branch and have them delivered to any branch.

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 (1995â€"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 over 700,000 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.

Controversy

A new NYPL strategy adopted in 2006 anticipated merging branch and research libraries into "One NYPL". The organizational change projected a unified online catalog for all the collections, as well as one card to be used at both branch and research libraries. The 2009 website and online-catalog transition did not proceed smoothly, and for a time, patrons and staff seemed equally at a loss for how to work effectively with the new system. Notices were posted in branch and research libraries. Further revision to the catalog and library interfaces have been made.

Library Way

There is a series of illustrated bronze sidewalk plaques featuring quotes from famous authors, poets, and other notables. "Library Way", as it is known, features a total of 96 plaques embedded along the both sides of 41st Street between Park and Fifth Avenues, approaching the New York Public Library Main Branch on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street.

In popular culture

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

Architecture and sculpture

A replica of the library is featured in Universal Studios Florida and Universal Studios Singapore

Film

The library appears in such films as 42nd Street (1933), Portrait of Jennie (1948), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), You're a Big Boy Now (1966), A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969), Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Chapter Two (1979), Escape from New York (1981), Prizzi's Honor (1985), Regarding Henry (1991), The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), The Time Machine (2002), and Sex and the City (2008).
In The Wiz (1978), Dorothy and Toto happen on it; one of the stone lions comes to life and joins them on their journey out of Oz.
It is featured prominently in Ghostbusters (1984), when three of the main characters encounter the ghost of librarian Eleanor Twitty. Her origins and the library's prominence are explored in the video game sequel, Ghostbusters: The Video Game. In May 2010, the library invited comedy group Improv Everywhere to put on a brief performance in the main reading room based on Ghostbusters, as a promotional stunt.
It is the setting for apocalyptic science fiction film The Day After Tomorrow (2004).
A thinly disguised NYPL is the workplace of a librarian with access to many mythical objects imparting magical powers for fighting evil, in The Library series of films starring Noah Wyle. The first of the series is The Librarian: Quest for the Spear (2004).
NYPL is featured in Oblivion (2013), starring Tom Cruise, shown as a rubble remnant of post-Apocalypse war.

Literature

Lynne Sharon Schwartz's The Writing on the Wall (2005) features a language researcher working 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 WarÂ 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.
In the 1984 murder mystery by Jane Smiley, Duplicate Keys, an NYPL librarian stumbles on two dead bodies, c. 1930.
In Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, the main character visits the NYPL to look up her condition in the dictionary.
Allen Kurzweil's The Grand Complication is the story of an NYPL librarian whose research skills are used to find a missing museum object.
Lawrence Blochman's 1942 mystery, Death Walks in Marble Halls, features a murder committed using a brass spindle from a catalog drawer.
A lightly fictionalized portrait of Abraham Solomon Freidus, first chief of the Jewish Division is found in a chapter of Abraham Cahan's The Rise of David Levinsky (1917).
Linda Fairstein's Lethal Legacy (2009) is centered around the library.
Laura Ruby's The Chaos King centers around the library.

The library is referred to in:

James Baldwin's Go Tell It On the Mountain (1953)
Beatrice Joy Chute's The Good Woman (1986)
Henry Sydnor Harrison's V.V.'s Eyes (1913)**Stephen King's Firestarter (1980)
Bernard Malamud's short story "The German Refugee" (in his Complete Stories [1997]; originally published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1963)
Christopher Morley's short story, "Owd Bob," in his humor book Mince Pie (1919)
Sarah Schulman's Girls, Visions and Everything (1986)
Isaac Bashevis Singer's posthumous Shadows on the Hudson (1998)
P. G. Wodehouse's A Damsel in Distress (1919)

Additionally, 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.

Poetry

Both branches and the central building have been immortalized in numerous poems, including:

Paul Blackburn's "Graffiti" (in The Collected Poems of Paul Blackburn [1985])
Richard Eberhart's "Reading Room, The New York Public Library" (in his Collected Poems, 1930â€"1986 [1988])
Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "Library Scene, Manhattan" (in his How to Paint Sunlight [2001])
Arthur Guiterman's "The Book Line; Rivington Street Branch, New York Public Library" (in his Ballads of Old New York [1920])
Muriel Rukeyser's "Nuns in the Wind" (in The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser [2005])
Susan Thomas' "New York Public Library" (the anthology American Diaspora [2001])
E.B. White's "Reading Room" (Poems and Sketches of E.B. White [1981])
Aaron Zeitlin's poem about going to the library, included in his 2-volume Ale lider un poemes [Complete Lyrics and Poems] (1967 and 1970)

Music

NYPL is featured in the 1972 Alice Cooper rock/pop video for Elected (1972).

Television

It is the setting for much of "The Persistence of Memory", the eleventh part of Carl Sagan's Cosmos TV series.
The animated television series Futurama has Fry confronting a giant brain at the NYPL in the episode "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid".
In the Seinfeld episode "The Library", 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 its steps.
It was shown in the pilot episode of the ABC series Traveler as the Drexler Museum of Art.
In the second episode of "Girl Meets World" (Girl Meets Boy), Cory gives to the class and assignament to do in the New York Public Library.

Other New York City library systems

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.

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

Other libraries in New York City, some of which can be used by the public, are listed in the Directory of Special Libraries and Information Centers.

Notes

References

The NYPL website contains much of the information used in this article

External links

Official website (Mobile)

NYPL Research Libraries
LIVE from the NYPL
Databases and Indexes Online From Home
NYPL Digital Collections
Picture Collection Online
NYPL Best of Reference
NYPL Treasures Video series
The Life of Samuel J. Tilden
NYPL for the Performing Arts
The New York Public Library at 100 â€" slideshow by Life magazine
New York Public Library collected news and commentary at The New York Times
Teachinghistory.org review of NYPL website American Shores
Texts on Wikisource:
- H. M. Lydenberg (1905). "New York Public Library". New International Encyclopedia.Â
- "New York Public Library". The New Student's Reference Work. 1914.Â
- "New York Public Library". Encyclopedia Americana. 1920.Â
- "New York Public Library". Collier's New Encyclopedia. 1921.Â
Great Public Library Plan 1895-03-02
Great Libraries Combine 1895-03-03
For the Public Library: Plans of Carrere & Hastings Adopted by the Board of Estimate 1897-12-02
Merged with Public Library 1901-01-09
A General Library Act Introduced 1901-04-10
Carnegie Bill Passed 1901-04-10
Library Enabling Act Goes to Mayor 1901-04-10
Directors of Brooklyn Public Library Give a Dinner for its President 1901-04-11
Charter Hearings Today 1901-04-13
None Oppose Library Bill 1901-04-16
Urges City to Accept Carnegie Gift 1901-04-17
Work of Assembly and Senate 1901-04-18
Carnegie Library Bill Signed 1901-04-28
This is What "Carnegie Did" 1901-10-27
Considering Plans for Sites of the Carnegie Branches in the Several Boroughs 1901-05-08
The New York Public Library 1911-04-09

New York Public Library

Wednesday, February 25, 2015