Posts from Stephen A. Schwarzman Building

It's amusing to keep track of the critters, and helps me read more non-fiction, novel-hound that I am. The Library has most of these books, but I've only linked a few, as not to clutter and overburden the post. At the end of the list I award prizes, or "the Barkies," for various categories. But just two things first: Re-reads (always a good idea) are in bold, and if you have a taste for rhetorical but highly passionate drama, do read some Thomas Otway (1652-85).

This snowy Saturday afternoon has brought to mind a couple of scenes from nineteenth-century children's books in the Rare Book Division. First, a scene of "Wintervergnügen" (winter fun) from Jugendspiele zur Erholung und Erheiterung (Tilsit, 1846). This is a two-volume work, one devoted to girls and one to boys. Sledding is categorized as one of the boys' games (Knabenspiele), but of course that needn't stop ladies of all ages from joining in.

As the year is coming to an end, many of us are already planning for new and exciting changes in the upcoming year. Some people may consider different vacation spots, career changes or even returning to school. If you are part of the group interested in going to graduate school, we can help!

Timothy Leary first made acquaintance with William S. Burroughs in Tangier, Morocco in the summer of 1961.[1] During this heady time, Leary was reaching out to beat poets and artists for participation in his early drug experiments at Harvard University, and Burroughs made an obvious comrade. Despite Burrough's disappointment with Leary's scientific method, their friendship managed to survive through the years. They occasionally reunited and maintained a life-long correspondence.

The phrase "I'd rather be reading the phonebook" as a (mildly) preferable alternative to boring tasks has given telephone directories a bad reputation. One that I admit I never thought to put to question before. Recently, however, when Special Formats Processing began working on a large collection of telephone directories from the United States and numerous countries around the world, I was pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable the directories turned out to be. Of course, there isn't time to actually read any phonebook cover to cover (although the covers themselves can be very entertaining) but with dozens of phonebooks going through my hands daily, I discovered that they 

If you're as eager as I am to see the movie version of The Hobbit, then you'll be excited to hear about the brand-new translation of the J.R.R. Tolkien classic into Yiddish. OK, maybe not; possibly you don't read Yiddish. But the recent publication of Der Hobit offers a good opportunity to illustrate one of the strengths of the Dorot Jewish Division.

Happy Thanksgiving to you! In honor of the holiday, here's a page from one of my favorite drawing manuals in the collection, 1913's What to Draw and How to Draw It by E. G. Lutz.

LIVE from the NYPL welcomes all National Novel Writing Month participants to come to The New York Public Library on Tuesday, November 20th for a Write-In. Spend a few minutes or hours writing in the Edna Barnes Salomon room to brainstorm, ponder, and work on your NaNoWriMo challenge.

As a visiting artist at the NYPL, I felt the need from the very beginning of my stay in New York City to explore the library visually by making drawings of it on my iPad. The library’s landmark building at 5th Avenue and 42nd Street caught my attention immediately. In the room of the Art and Architecture Collection, the reddish light coming from the reflections of the floor, the wood and the books was one of my first visual discoveries. I loved the quietness of the room, the stillness of everything in there, and, of course, the big table lamps that look like elegant immovable figures among the human figures. All these elements kept me drawing for hours without a break — five 

As a graduate student whose dissertation examines the development of Brooklyn in the nineteenth century, I have spent more hours than I care to count the past several years poring through documents in the Brooklyn Historical Society, the Brooklyn Public Library and other repositories in what was formerly the nation's third-largest city and is now New York City's most populous borough. Recently however, through the New York Public Library's Short-Term Research Fellowship Program and assistance from staff in its Manuscripts and Archives Division, I was able to research in Manhattan, examining NYPL's substantial archival collections relating to Brooklyn during the period it was an 

With the current United States presidential election approaching, I thought it appropriate to share a couple items from the Timothy Leary papers relating to Ron Paul.

September 17, 2012 marked the 150th anniversary of the battle of Antietam, often called "the bloodiest day in American history." With Alexander Gardner's images before us, we can easily imagine the horrific strife of those few hours that left behind over 23,000 casualties. Other contemporary materials can show us what it was like for a soldier to experience that single day within the context of a long and grueling campaign. Project staff member Joseph Lapinski describes such an item encountered in the USSC's Statistical Bureau records — the notebook of a camp inspector visiting Union troops near Sharpsburg, Maryland on October 28, 1862:

When I first started the Leary Processing Internship in June, I had what is probably the most common impression of Timothy Leary. I had obviously heard about him before, but honestly, all I knew about him was that he was famous for his line "turn on, tune in, drop out." To me, he was simply the LSD guru of the 1960s. Not having grown up in his heyday, I only knew what was best and most widely known about him.

There is no language like the Irish for soothing and quieting. —John Millington Synge, The Aran Islands

When I think of my father during my growing-up years, I usually picture him relaxing after work in a kitchen chair with a newspaper, next to the radiator. Did he sit there because its warmth took him back to the hearth that was the heart of the cottage he grew up in, in the rural west of Ireland?

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, or does it? If you come to the South Court Auditorium of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at 42nd Street this Thursday at 1:15 p.m. (whew!) you might find a clue. The first lecture of the year by the writers of the Wertheim Study and Allen Room will be given by John R. Bohrer, a cool guy and journalist often writing for Slate, Huffington Post, Esquire, etc. He's currently writing a book in the Allen Room about Robert Kennedy.

Do you remember the first time you read a book by Syd Hoff? If you were too young to read on your own, maybe someone in your life shared the book with you. For some, books such as Danny and the Dinosaur, Grizzwold, Barney's Horse and Sammy the Seal bring back vivid childhood memories. For others, these books were discovered as one's children or grandchildren began to explore the world of children's books.

One can scarcely think of any park in NYC — or any city, really — without envisioning the ubiquitous pigeon there as well. Despite signs requesting you not feed the birds in adjacent Bryant Park, the library has more than its share of feathered patrons.

Russia — what does it make you think of? Cold winters, fur hats, vast forests, and perhaps some vodka and caviar? As a Russian historian in training, I want to help people understand that Russia is much more complex than these simple images suggest, as accurate as they may be. To offer just one example, over 185 ethnic groups live in Russia, each with its own linguistic, cultural, and religious traditions. By exploring their stories, we can learn more about the role of disenfranchised and underrepresented groups in an expansive, diverse place like Russia. Listening to many different voices from the past can provide a new, valuable perspective on the land of tsars and 

During the month of November 1941, three organizations, the American Library Association, the American Red Cross and the United Service Organizations (USO) formed the Victory Book Campaign (originally named the National Defense Book Campaign). This nationwide campaign's goal was for the public to donate books as reading material for soldiers and sailors serving in the armed forces and supplement the Army and Navy's library service already in place. The urgency for the campaign heightened because military numbers increased rapidly by the Selective Service Act of 1940. American males between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-five years of age were required to register for the draft.