Behind the Scenes

Did you see the awesome new trailer for the Milstein Division of U.S. History, Local History & Genealogy? (Yes, even library research divisions can have trailers.) Find out how it was made and what the mysterious researcher was investigating. Perhaps his search will inspire you to dig up your own family secrets…

Daisy Bates was the poster child of black resistance. She was a quarterback, the coach. We were the players.

— Ernest Green, one of the Little Rock Nine, the group of students who integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957.

Learn more about Daisy Bates at the Schomburg Center on Saturday, when they host a film screening of Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock at 4pm. The director will be there for a talk-back.

Rusty Goffe, an original oompa loompa from the 1971 film classic Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, was joined by a group of oompa loompas (with Golden Tickets!) as he visited the New York Public Library to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the movie. You can check out the DVD (and look for Rusty) at NYPL!

It’s alive! The NYPL has animated the first book Frankenstein author Mary Shelley ever worked on - a kid’s story called Mounseer Nongtongpaw, or the Discoveries of John Bull in a Trip to Paris. It was published by Shelley’s anarchist philosopher dad William Godwin in 1808 when she was a mere 10-years-old and is “probably the first book publication Mary Shelley was ever involved in,” said Charles Carter, a librarian from the Pforzheimer Collection, which houses the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, his family and his friends. “She basically came up with a plot sketch for what was going to happen in the story. She had help from adults, but still, it’s very interesting.” In-house digital producer Jonathan Blanc put the video together in only a few weeks, Carter said, as a way to promote a new exhibit opening today called Shelley’s Ghost at Oxford University’s Bodleian Library. The show - a version of which will come to NYPL in 2012 - features 12 of the collection’s “greatest treasures,” said Carter, who wrote a blog post about it today. “I was trying to think of ways to promote it that would be adaptable to an electronic medium,” he said. “This particular item, because it’s so heavily illustrated, would lend itself well, I thought. I was thinking of a Reading Rainbow kind of thing.” Well done, and appropriate. The story was originally based on a comedic song from the early 1790s. Mary Shelley and company remixed it into the book. Since the book and its lavish artwork are part of the public domain, we were free to remix that and create our little animated adaptation. Some things never change.