Miniature children's booksI might be old school, but my favorite way of picking what to read, watch, listen, or even do research on, is by browsing. Letting inspiration be a part of what I learn next. Unfortunately, browsing is out of the question when one deals with closed stacks, offsite storage, and of course special collections.

As a Specialist in the Library’s Special Formats Processing department, what my colleagues and I mostly work on making available to the public is exactly the kinds of materials one cannot find on the open shelves.

Recently, Special Formats staff at the Library Services Center were asked to pull out highlights from some of the collections we are currently working on, for a little show-and-tell. It turned out a great opportunity to share with you what should be coming up next, give you the chance to browse through some of the Library’s special collections. And even though I am not unaware of the Library collections’ extent and diversity, I couldn’t help being impressed to see miniature children’s books, theatrical costume designs and scripts, Russian newspapers, comic books, original caricatures, Tibetan Buddhist pothi format books, musical scores, scrapbooks, letters and photographs, and audio-visual material, all next to one another.

Wizard of Oz and unidentified production costume designs, from the Caroline F. Siedle Costume Designs

Russian language newspaper in China, 1906

Comic books, mid-20th to 21st century

Alex Gard caricatures and drawings, ca. 1926-1948

Tibetan Buddhist literature

Magic Scrapbooks (with photographs and letters of Houdini)

Theatre scripts

Musical scores, from CBS Scores Collection

Herschel Bernardi and Maria Karnilova in Fiddler on the Roof, and Ethel Merman and Richard Nixon backstage photo of Gypsy, from the Friedman-Abeles Photograph Collection

Mary Isabella Manners, Dutchess of Rutland (1756-1831), from Historical and Public Figures: A General Portrait File to the 1920s

The full spread!
As soon as these collections are fully processed and cataloged, they will appear in our Catalog, and will be available at the divisions they belong to. These include the Billy Rose Theatre Division, the The Miriam & Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs,the Music Division, the Rare Book Division, and Slavic and Asian holdings.