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Modern European History
European history is a primary subject of the General Research Division and constitutes a significant portion of its holdings. The collection is extensive in all types of historical materials, including monographs, scholarly journals, bibliographies, annual surveys, pamphlets, general histories and systematic works, printed archival sources, and biographies. Geographically, the General Research Division holdings span the European continent from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean basin, and from Great Britain to Central and Eastern Europe. Retrospective holdings are most extensive for British and French history, followed by the history of Germany. Historical materials for other European countries are well represented but have not been collected as intensively. Traditionally, the General Research Division has collected books in a wide variety of European languages; however, current purchases are limited primarily to French, German, English, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. The General Research Division also possesses several outstanding and unique collections in European history: on World War I, the French Revolution, British local history, and the Spanish Civil War. In addition, the reseacher should keep in mind that "no statement of number of volumes or description of the books specifically classified as historical gives an adequate idea of the resources for historical study in a large library such as this" (Guide to the Collections of NYPL, comp. by Karl Brown, p. 11). This statement refers to the Library's abundant collections of government documents, periodicals, newspapers, learned society publications, and travel literature-all of potential interest to the student of history. This guide will focus on reference tools aimed at researchers in modern European history, defined in this case as 1789 to the present. Many of these materials are located on the open shelves of the Main Reading Room, which also houses a large selection of historical monographs. If you need further assistance, visit our reference desk, or e-mail us at grdref@nypl.org |