Humanities
and Social Sciences Library
Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street
New York, NY 10018
Often referred to as the "main branch," the magnificent Beaux-Arts landmark building on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street houses The Research Libraries' Humanities and Social Sciences Library. Here are the Library's rich and diverse collections in the humanities and social sciences. These noncirculating, graduate-level collections were consolidated in 1895 from the collections of the Astor and Lenox Libraries, and have evolved into one of the world's preeminent public resources for the study of human thought, action, and experience -- from anthropology and archaeology, to religion, sports, world history, and literature. (More on the History of The New York Public Library)
The Library houses some 15 million items, among them priceless medieval manuscripts, ancient Japanese scrolls, contemporary novels and poetry, as well as baseball cards, dime novels, comic books, and political ephemera and tracts.
To help its millions of users from all walks of life and corners of the earth to find materials, the Humanities and Social Sciences Library maintains extensive bibliographic and electronic resources. Online catalogs, databases, and collection guides facilitate search, retrieval, and delivery. In addition, the Library maintains a staff of librarians whose expertise continues to be among the Library's proudest traditions.
South Court
In June 2002, the Library's new South Court building, a six-story glass structure that rises within the southern courtyard of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, opened. South Court is the first above-ground structure to be added to the landmark building since it opened in 1911.
The heart of South Court is The Celeste Bartos Education Center, which permits the Library to offer an orientation program to both researchers and tourists. The first-floor Visitors' Center, with 24 seats, offers screenings of a 12-minute film that guides viewers through the history of The New York Public Library. It also includes two 15-seat classrooms equipped with up-to-date computer workstations for hands-on instruction. Here the Library offers free classes on how to use its resources as well as lectures given by curators of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library. A 177-seat auditorium on the lower level provides a space for events such as the Library's popular LIVE series of programs.
The Collections
The collections at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library are divided into two main areas: General Collections and Special Collections.
GENERAL COLLECTIONS
General Collections consists of seven major public service reading rooms:
General Research Division
The Humanities and Social Sciences Library's largest and busiest department (Room 315 on the third floor), the General Research Division (GRD) provides both print and electronic information resources in the areas of anthropology, archaeology, biography, geography, history, languages and literatures of the world, natural history, philosophy, political science, printing and publishing, psychology, religion, and sports.
The Rose Main Reading Room on the third floor is the symbolic heart of The New York Public Library system. The Bill Blass Public Catalog Room is where most users start their work. Numerous computer workstations offer access to the Library's online catalogs and electronic databases.
DeWitt Wallace Periodical Room
The DeWitt Wallace Periodical Room, located on the first floor in Room 108, houses approximately 10,000 general interest and humanities periodicals in 22 languages from 128 countries. Restoration of the Reading Room was made possible with funds given by DeWitt Wallace, the late publisher of Reader's Digest, who spent countless hours here reading and condensing articles for his magazine. A special reading room for microforms is down the hall in Room 100.
Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division
The Map Division (Room 117 on the first floor) is the largest public library collection of its kind in the United States, with more than 431,000 maps and 16,000 atlases. The collection is international in scope and dates from the 16th century to the present. Computer mapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are also available. The variety of the collection is reflected in its steady use by corporations, geologists and economists, genealogists and historians, real estate interests, historic preservationists, urban planners, and consultants.
Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy
The collection (Room 121 on the first floor) documents American history at the national, state, and local level. Holdings also include family histories, periodicals, books relating to the topic of heraldry, flags, and the derivation of names, as well as comprehensive resources for genealogical research, including passenger ship lists, registries, census data, and statistical information. A large collection of ephemeral materials on localities in the United States and on local elections is housed in the division. Pictorial views from all parts of the country take the form of microfiche, scrapbook material, photographs, prints, and postcards. A large selection of New York City historical and current photographs can be found on the NYPL Digital Gallery.
Dorot Jewish Division
The Dorot Jewish Division (Room 84 on the ground floor) is one of the great collections of Judaica in the world and the most accessible for both scholarly and personal use. While the collection offers commentary on all aspects of Jewish life, it also includes Hebrew- and Yiddish-language texts on general subjects. The division is especially strong in reference works, Jewish Americana, history and social studies, Kabbalistic and Hasidic works, rabbinic responsa, Hebrew and Yiddish literature, and periodicals.
Asian and Middle Eastern Division
The division (Rooms 219 and 220 on the second floor) is unique among major research libraries in housing together works in all the languages and cultures of East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and the ancient Near East. The concept of unifying rather than fragmenting these areas recognizes the historic connections, cultural affinities, and economic interrelations among the nations and cultures of this vast area. The Asian and Middle Eastern Division can furnish readers with more than 440,000 books, pamphlets, newspapers, and reels of microfilm in a range of languages including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, 11 Indian languages, Arabic, Persian, Armenian, Georgian, Tibetan, and several languages of the ancient Near East.
Art and Architecture Collection
The Art and Architecture Collection (Room 300 on the third floor) is the primary access point for readers and researchers using the Research Libraries’ materials that relate to the fine and decorative arts, art history, architectural history, design and theory, and textile history. Collected in English and Western European languages only, the extensive collections include monographs, exhibition catalogues, auction records, periodicals, monographic series, portfolio and plate books, ephemera, and oeuvre catalogues and catalogues raisonnés.
Slavic and Baltic Division
With over 450,000 volumes, the Slavic and Baltic Division (Room 217 on the second floor) houses the single largest component of the Library's vernacular-language collection of materials relating to Russia, the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and the Baltic states, and to the various émigré communities outside these homelands. This collection is one of the largest of its kind in the West, containing a diverse array of bibliographies, encyclopedias, dictionaries, guides, and printed and microform catalogs of various components of other great Slavic, Baltic, and East European collections from around the world.
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
The Humanities and Social Sciences Library contains a number of collections and divisions of a specialized nature, which are often unmatched in the depth and breadth of their respective areas of study. These include:
The Special Collections contain general reference works as well as unique and invaluable items. Counted among their literary treasures, for example, are the original manuscripts of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land and Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court; the diaries of Virginia Woolf; Herman Melville's letters to his family; a manuscript notebook of 57 early poems by P.B. Shelley; and Charlotte Brontë's portable writing desk.
Major monuments in the history of the book and the word include Babylonian clay tablets dating to the third millennium B.C.E.; illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages and Renaissance; the first Gutenberg Bible to come to the New World; Shakespeare's First Folio; and a copy of the first printed book in America, the so-called Bay Psalm Book. The manuscripts of George Washington's Farewell Address and Thomas Jefferson's handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence are among the rare historical documents.
The Special Collections are responsible for rare, unique, and often fragile material which has been collected and preserved for the use of qualified and experienced researchers. To assure its preservation, such material must be used in supervised reading rooms, and special permission is required. Access is limited to those researchers who demonstrate a need to use this irreplaceable material, and academic researchers, except under special circumstances, must be working at least on the graduate level.
The Humanities and Social Sciences Library is part of The New York Public Library, which consists of four major research libraries and 85 branch libraries located in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island.
Considered one of the world's greatest libraries, The New York Public Library is the only facility of its kind with both world-class research and circulating collections that are free and open to the general public. Now in its second century of service, The New York Public Library continues to grow and adapt to meet the needs of its millions of users worldwide.
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mmisner: web: last update: 10-27-06
