Read a brief history of the Astor Free Library, which merged with Tilden Foundation and Lenox Library in 1895 to become the New York Public Library.
-
-
In honor of children’s literary author Maurice Sendak we decided to display his books in the branch.
-
What’s the Score?
Our friends at the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford have a new musical crowdsourcing project. You can help them transcribe the Libraries’ music collection (“64 boxes of sheet music, mostly for piano, from the mid-Victorian period, which includes dance music and other pieces designed for home entertainment”). Jolly good!
Click the link to find out more: http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/bodley/library/specialcollections/projects/whats-the-score
-
When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you. The public library is the great equalizer.
— Keith Richards
(Source: nypl.org)
-
This 1927 book jacket from the Library’s General Research Division shows cute cats crossing the road and marching in their own personal parade through the streets of New York City - much like today’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade (which you can watch live here). Happy St. Patrick’s Day and happy Caturday!! We’ll be posting some of our historic St. Patrick’s Day cards today, so stay tuned!
-
The Library has just launched Stereogranimator, a site that lets users turn our historic collection of stereographs into animated images like the one above. Read all about it in the Times and then go play! It’s the latest way we’re using technology to bring our collections to the public, following our What’s on the Menu, Biblion iPad app and map warping projects.
Caturday will never be the same …
-
What do Sam Shepard, Bernadette Peters, Edward Albee and Al Pacino all have in common? It was called the Caffe Cino and it is credited as the birthplace of the Off Off Broadway theater movement in the nineteen sixties. The New York Times writes about the new and fascinating Caffe Cino collection that was recently donated to The Billy Rose Theatre Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Read all about it here
-
Librarians go viral! This amazing quote is printed on a carpet at the Gungahlin Library in Australia. The folks at Duke University Medical Center Library posted it to their Facebook page, where it got picked up and reposted by best-selling author Neil Gaiman, library lover and source of the quote. Authors, libraries, librarians - it’s perfect!
-
Kids And Teens: Have Your Fines Waived!!
Mayor Bloomberg joined NYPL Prez Anthony Marx (at the podium in the photo), Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott, NYPL Trustee Terry McGraw, the heads of the Brooklyn and Queens Library systems and several other elected officials at our Seward Park Library yesterday to announce the citywide New Chapter initiative to give patrons under 18 the opportunity to eliminate all of their prior fines. That’s right - all of ‘em. All kids have to do is return their materials (so grab those overdue Harry Potter books from under your bed and return them, kids, cause you won’t be penalized) or check out a new book and, poof, their fines are waived. The goal - to get kids back in the libraries reading, instead of afraid that they can’t afford the fine. As Marx said, “Our priority was students reading more than collecting the fines, 95 percent of which we weren’t going to collect anyway based on past history. Those folks were not coming to the library because their fines were keeping them away.” Well, come back guys! This program - which was made possible because of a generous donation from McGraw-Hill - lasts till Oct. 31, so spread the word!!
