Humanities and Social Sciences Library > Collections & Reading Rooms > Slavic and Baltic Division

Requesting Materials

Off-site Users

As a non-circulating research collection, the NYPL is a lending library of last resort. Often the condition of heavily-used older materials, stored in the stacks before the implementation of climate control (i.e., prior to the early 1980s), precludes their loan to other institutions. Individual items are often of such rarity that a curator will deny an inter-library loan request for the item itself. Nevertheless, the NYPL regularly satisfies slightly more than half of all inter-library loan requests received. Off-site readers may request photographic, micrographic, or xerographic copies of NYPL materials, physical condition permitting (see Interlibrary Loan and Copy Services)

On-site Users

The procedures for requesting and using materials vary between organizational units. Special collections such as the Berg Collection, the Spencer Collection, the Print Collection, and the Rare Books Division require special permission for access. Readers needing materials in these units should register in person with the Office of Special Collections (Rm. 316; 212-930-0740). Users of items held in other Divisions of the Research Libraries should consult with staff regarding specific policies and procedures.

If an item is not held by the Library, readers may request a search of the RLIN/OCLC bibliographic databases, the microfiche edition of the Slavic Cyrillic Union Catalog of Pre-1956 Imprints (Totowa, N.J.: Rowan and Littlefield for the Library of Congress, 1980), and other bibliographic aids, to check the holdings of other major research centers in the United States and abroad. The Division's Reference Collection, described in greater detail below, 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, among them the Slavonic Library in Prague, the Russian National Library, and The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and, the Helsinki University Library.