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Humanities and Social Sciences Library > Collections & Reading Rooms > General Research Division Collection DescriptionThe General Research Division is the largest department within the New York Public Library system, and the collection it administers constitutes one of the most significant free scholarly resources in the country. This interdisciplinary collection includes material in most areas of the humanities and social sciences and currently consists of approximately five million items, including books, serials, newspapers, microforms, electronic resources, and selected documentary video and audio cassettes. An estimated 100,000 items are added to the collection every year. Collection development is the responsibility of a team of bibliographers who assess new material received from national and international vendors; search bibliographies, publishers’ lists, and out-of-print and antiquarian dealers’ catalogs for obscure and ephemeral items; evaluate gifts for their suitability; and in general monitor the overall growth and development of the collection. From 1895, when the consolidation of the Astor and Lenox libraries formed the backbone of the present collection, the General Research Division has worked intensively to amass an impressive variety of documentary and intellectual resources. These efforts have created a collection that reflects the times even as it casts a light onto the past and looks ahead to the future. While the principal strengths of the humanities collection include literature, history, philosophy, and religion, the interconnectedness of these subjects allows for a variety of scholarly approaches and permits research to develop in surprising ways. In the area of social sciences, the same interdisciplinary method merges political science, women’s studies, anthropology, sociology, archaeology, Native American resources, criminology, psychology, gay and lesbian studies, and ethnic studies in a unique fusion. Although in many ways the growth of the General Research Division’s scholarly collections parallels that of the world’s premier libraries, one unusual aspect is the attention given to popular, eclectic, and otherwise ephemeral items. Small but comprehensive collections incorporated within the overall collection include cookery, small press and alternative publications, comic books, pamphlets, genre novels with an emphasis on science fiction, and other material which could be considered an expression of popular culture. The collections cover a broad geographic range, including North America,
Latin America, Europe, Australia and the Pacific region. The variety
of languages is also extensive. While the emphasis is placed on English,
Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese, additional attention
is given to Albanian, Afrikaans, Basque, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, Estonian,
Faroese, Finnish, Flemish, Friesian, Gaelic, Galician, Modern Greek,
Hungarian,
Icelandic, Lappish, Moldavian, Norwegian, the Oceanic languages, Romanian,
and Swedish. Material is also collected in Classical Greek and Latin,
the Amerindian and Eskimo languages, and artificial languages such
as Esperanto.
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