Blog Posts by Subject: Organizations and Museums

I cataloged a couple of gay libraries in Dublin, Ireland and Albany, NY, and there has been much in the news media lately about LGBT rights since New York State began recognizing gay and lesbian marriages in 2011. I think it is awesome and terrific that people are now able to legally marry who they love regardless of the gender of the spouses. Below are some LGBT libraries and museums that I found.

When the librarian told the kids that the library was slated to close because it was in a state of disrepair, the kids brainstormed about how to help the library. In fact, at each step of the way, not surprisingly, they read books to educate themselves about the logistics of their ideas and to flesh them out.

With my hand, I touch the outside, or contour, of a small ceramic jug, a container for cream. I slowly trace the curve of the rim, continuing to the pointed lip. I put down the jug, and pick up a piece of charcoal or a soft pastel. I draw round curves, recreating what I see in my mind's eye, moving my hand across the paper, keeping pace with my inner vision.

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts has an extensive dance collection. I love the kinesthetic artistry of physical movement. I was curious about dance libraries and museums, and below are some that I found.

We here at AskNYPL get regular requests for digital images on different topics and we're always happy to share the New York Public Library's very own Digital Gallery. While the NYPL Digital Gallery does a wonderful job with its collection, making things easy to find and accessible, we don't always have the content folks are looking for. These instances lead us outside NYPL's resources and we've found some spectacular image resources.

As the holidays are upon us, many teens and their families start thinking about fulfilling community service requirements for school. Winter break is coming up and it might be a good time to get some volunteer hours completed. It sounds simple, but finding volunteer opportunities for kids is not always that easy.

My sister just took some amazing photos of me on my aunt's horse, which reminds me just how awesome photography is. I visited the International Center of Photography library near Bryant Park, which has amazing photography books. I have always loved the composition design aspect of photographs, and I took well over 100 photos of my queen and her three orange kittens that I had this spring. Below are some photography libraries and museums that I found.

In October, museums and other cultural organizations throughout the U.S. and the world celebrate the 10th annual Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month. The goal: "making pictorial literacy and access to the world of art a reality for all blind people."

Beginning March 21, 2012, the American Brahms Society, in conjunction with the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, will present Brahms in the New Century. This three-day conference will bring some of the most important Brahms scholars to New York to share their latest research and analytical insights.

Here at Dongan Hills Library, we have formed a #WUSEUM... a collection of material relating to all things Wu-Tang Clan. The collection of CDs, DVDs, and books associated with the Staten Island rap group is curated by Dongan Hills Library staff members Imer Ardolic and Steve Herman. Many of the items in our #WUSEUM are highlighted in this list!

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.)

In 1947, a Life magazine headline read: “New York Lamasery: a new Tibetan temple bewilders Staten Island.”

An American woman, Jacques Marchais -- a pioneer collector and respected expert on Tibetan art -- had created a uniquely peaceful museum. Nestled into the side of Lighthouse Hill, one of the highest points on the eastern seaboard, Marchais had designed a small complex of fieldstone buildings and gardens resembling a rustic Tibetan mountain monastery; she conceived of this as a cultural center, a bridge between Tibet and the United States.

Katarina Bishop grew up all over Europe, but she isn’t an heiress. She has a Faberge egg, but she isn’t a Romanov. Kat is used to looking at a room and seeing all the angles, but that was before she stole a whole other life at the Colgan School only to walk away from it months later without a trace.

That was before everything went sideways.

He came from my hometown. As a teenager, he collected photographs of movie stars. A few years later, I clipped fan zines featuring Hayley Mills and the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and the Dave Clark 5 and Star Trek, which last title had a lot to do with his obsessions.

A class field trip to El Museo del Barrio inspires the students' creativity.

The largest cultural institutions of New York City like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The American Museum of Natural History and New York Public Library, were established in the latter half of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century. There was a major push among the wealthiest Americans to establish a cultural identity of our own. We were a young country, bereft of the cultural lineage that existed in Europe. Despite America’s youth we showed ourselves to be a vast country, devoted to the dollar, with seemingly room for little else. But men, like J.P. Morgan understood that life void of education and culture was a life not worth living. A balance must be met, to 

On quitting his classes at Harvard in 1927, Edwin Land moved to New York and became a regular user of the library’s Science Division. His goal: the manufacture of a polarizing light filter, the basic idea behind Polaroid sunglasses. Between the library and a variety of makeshift labs, he eventually figured out how to embed microscopic crystals of “herapathite” in molten sheets of plastic and align them all in one direction. He named the invention Polaroid, and used the name again when he invented his instant photography. Land had discovered the identity of the crucial polarizing crystal while reading an 1852 article by the British doctor-scientist William Herapath, 

Chances are, if you spend any time online you've come across Flickr. Flickr is a wonderful site for storing, sharing and building community around photographs. It's similar to online photo services like Kodak Gallery or Shutterfly except with a greater social focus and tools and features reminiscent of Facebook. About a year ago Flickr launched the Flickr Commons, a project dedicated to sharing and describing the public photo collections of the world's leading cultural heritage institutions.

Architectural Record has a recurring section called "Building Types Study". The February 2008 issue’s section is dedicated to library design and one of the three libraries discussed is NYPL’s Mulberry Street Branch. The Record commends the architectural firm Roger Marvel Architects for allowing diffused light to penetrate “into both subterranean levels via the central stair”, which it calls “an important psychological feat.”