Posts from the General Research Division

What do The Rolling Stones, The Supremes, The Beach Boys, Elvis Presley, The Velvet Underground, and Woodstock have in common?  They were cultural symbols and products of the Sixties. The Sixties gave birth to a popular culture in film and music that reflected and influenced the decade's social upheavals: the rise of Cold War politics, civil rights movements, student protests, and the Vietnam war all profoundly affected American society and culture. 

In the spirit of Halloween, I decided to avoid the typical horror films of vampires, zombies, ghosts, werewolves, ghouls, the Devil, Frankenstein, witches, masked murderers, psycho killers, aliens, predators, possessed dolls, haunted houses, undead creatures, serial murderers, paranormal activities and the likes and just settle with a different film that most people would not associate the holiday with — I re-watched one of my favorite films: Spirited Away (for the fifth time since it debuted in 2001) directed by Hayao Miyazaki. (Don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of horror films but I am a bigger fan of Miyazaki's films.)

"The hag Sedition was your mother, and Perversity begot you. Mischief was your midwife and Misrule your nurse, and Unreason brought you up at her feet — no other ancestry and rearing had you, you freakish homunculus, germinated outside of lawful procreation."  — Fellow playwright Henry Arthur Jones, on Bernard Shaw and his anti-war stance

For the past four weeks, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Village Voice, Le Monde, El Pais, The Independent, El Diario-La Prensa, Frankfurter Allgemeine, Yomiuri Shimbun, World Journal East, Corriere Della Sera, Asahi Shimbun, The Nation, New York Magazine, and many other presses have been covering a small but growing political movement known as “Occupy Wall Street,” currently taking place in Lower Manhattan. All of these current local, national, and international newspapers and periodicals can be 

This week the New York Comic Con is in town! From October 13 through 16, the New York Comic Con will be held in the Javits Center in Midtown Manhattan. This annual convention is dedicated to comics, graphic novels, anime, manga, toys, video games, movies, and television!

At NYPL, we also celebrate comics and comic books. From the first issue of Captain America to Archie Comics, NYPL collects comics for leisure reading and for research. We also offer programs on anime shows and workshops on how to draw manga. Comics and comic books are one of the most pervasive and influential media forms of 20th-century popular culture. A survey of current scholarly 

Deep inside the NYPL’s Bryant Park Stack Extension (known as BPSE to insiders — pronounced as “Bip-See”) lay many literary treasures and secrets; some are academically obscure and rare while others are widely known and read. The Book of Khalid by Ameen Rihani fits in between.

Contrary to what you may have heard — or thought you heard, at least — this year does not mark the centennial of The New York Public Library. The centennial marks the opening of what many still think of as the Library's "main branch" on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, the Beaux-Arts landmark recently rechristened the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. But we could also call it the centennial of the Tilden Library, as I'll explain.

To get ready for the upcoming Symposium on Frankenstein, or, Everybody Loves the Creature, I’ve been re-reading (yes, re-reading thank you) Shelley’s The Last Man.  Sometimes it is billed as science fiction, because in 2056 the world is ravished by plague and we get down to, yes, the last man.  But besides being spared any inkling of what 2011 would be like, lucky creature, let alone 2056, Shelly writes pretty much of her own time.  Yes, England is a Republic, but there is still a royal faction in the wings, plotting a come-back.  There is quite a bit of roman à clef about it.  Lionel, our narrator and LM, is Shelley herself; Adrian, 

In NYPL's Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, we have an extensive historical collection of regional, local, and international newspapers from Colonial America to Imperial Japan. This blog post will explore how one can find NYPL’s (print and non-print) historical newspapers. 

"One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other."

— Jane Austen, Emma

A large percentage of my favorite authors (not to mention people) happen to be women. Whether this is a comment about the nature of imaginative writing or about my own nature I have yet to work out. Of course it is no surprise that men can be just as sensitive as women and that women can be just as bloodthirsty as men, but how exactly does this translate to the fictional universe? Are there certain gender-based qualities which color the writing of one sex as opposed to another? If you didn’t know in advance, would you be able to guess 

Well, the Library's Stephen A. Schwarzman Building has turned one hundred years old, and our intrepid attendees at May 7th's Handmade Crafternoon did their part to celebrate this special birthday by making amazing zines that express what they love about the Library.

They say we no longer read for pleasure. They say we’re too busy with our tweets and texts, our iPads and iPhones and iPods, and our thousands of virtual Facebook friends even to consider picking up a book. They say that teachers are afraid to assign their students complete novels for fear they will never be read in entirety. They also say we are each and every day afflicted with such an enormous amount of undigested electronic information that we stand no chance of sorting out even the smallest part of it.

They say we have the attention span of newts.

This Saturday's Handmade Crafternoon is going to be a celebration of Library love!  On Saturday, May 7th, from 2:00 to 4:00pm, we'll welcome Ayun Halliday, author of the Zinester’s Guide to New York City; and Karen Gisonny, a fabulous librarian who wrangles the Library's amazing zine collection.

Our laws make law impossible; our liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our morality is an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or malexperienced dupes; our power wielded by cowards or weaklings; and our honour  false in all its points.  I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons...
                  
          Preface to Major Barbara

In my recent reading of Michael Holroyd’s biography, Bernard Shaw, I came upon a curious 

Last week I read about artist Walter Kitundu's San Francisco International Airport installation, "Bay Area Bird Encounters." This work combines music, art, and natural history in an interactive mural with accompanying xylophone benches, and I do wish that I could visit it. Reading about it reminded me of Abby Glassenberg's Handmade Crafternoon appearance last month, and how inspiring birds in art can be. I'm happy that it's reminded me to share the list of inspiring books I selected for browsing at Abby's event.

Social Dancing, which consists of various forms of dance, such as square dancing, is a communal tradition brought to the American continent by its earliest immigrants. Big in centuries past, social dancing is still practiced today, even in New York City. I know because I attended my first dance very recently: a barn dance.

We're off and running.  Today was fascinating.  Professor Matt spoke convincingly about the various solutions, or non-solutions, to the end of the sonnets.  At each sonnet's end, at the end of the 'young man' sonnets, or the 'dark lady's' sonnets, or the end of the set, or the end with "A Lover's Complaint" to follow?  All indeterminate, false and tricksy.  The sonnets seem to invite that.  But what was really fun was John Benson (no, not Ben Jonson - one can't make these things up) and his re-ordering and regrouping of the sonnets into a storied sequence.  Professor Matt approves, thinking the sonnets cried out for this.  And 

Five Dayes! Beginning Monday!  Abandon thine drabbe chores aynd Come ye too heare the Great One explained.

William Doyle, a writer in residence in the Library's Allen Room, thinks so.  His new book A Soldier's Dream explores the question of whether one young American soldier helped change the course of the Iraq War?