Special Collections

The New York Public Library has special collections and units in the following areas.

* A card of admission is required to access these collections at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building

** Registration is required for consultation of materials in these collections at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

• Arents Collection *
  Tobacco Collection and Books in Parts
  
• Berg Collection of English and American Literature *
  First editions, rare books, autograph letters, and manuscripts
• Billy Rose Theatre Division
  Holdings illuminate every type of performance, from street corner to stage to studio
• Theatre on Film and Tape Archive (TOFT)
  Documentation effort, recording Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regional theatre productions, and dialogues between notable theatre personalities
• Children's Center at 42nd Street
  Circulating materials for children of all ages, and for adults with an interest in children’s literature, music, and media
• Dorot Jewish Division
  One of the great collections of Judaica in the world
  
• Jerome Robbins Dance Division
  Chronicles the art of dance in all its manifestations — ballet, ethnic, modern, social, and folk
  
• Manuscripts and Archives *
  29,000 linear feet of archival material in over 3,000 collections
• Map Division
  405,000 maps, 18,000 atlases and books about cartography
  
• Music Division
  Chronicles the art of music in all its diversity — opera, spirituals, ragtime, jazz, musical comedy, orchestral, rock, and pop music
  
• Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle *
  One of the world's leading repositories for the study of English Romanticism
• Photography Collection *
  400,000 original photographic prints, from the medium's 150+ year history
  
• Print Collection *
  Collection on the history of prints and printmakers
• Rare Book Division *
  Chief strength of the Rare Book collection is Americana, especially materials published before 1801
• Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound
  Over 500,000 sound recordings in every format: cylinder, 78rpm, LP, reel-to-reel tape, cassette, CD, laser disc
• Schomburg Art and Artifacts Division **
  Fine and applied art and material culture objects are collected from the seventeenth century to the present
• Schomburg Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division **
  Rare, unique, and primary materials that document the history and culture of peoples of African descent
• Schomburg Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division
  Collection of African American, Caribbean, and African popular and traditional music genres
• Schomburg Photographs and Prints Division **
  Photographs and prints that document peoples of African descent worldwide
  
• Spencer Collection *
  More than 10,000 objects surveying the illustrated word and beautiful bindings of all periods and all countries and cultures