• the product of over sixty years of collecting by George Arents
• comprehensive collection on the history, literature, and lore of tobacco
• also contains many historical and literary works in which tobacco receives only incidental mention
• Among the fields represented in the collection are American and English literature and medicine
  
  

• contains over 1,200 items and is one of the best collections assembled on the principle that the books therein appeared serially in separate numbers and are still in their original state.
• Books in parts may be defined as works by an author or authors which are published piecemeal over a period of time, each unit having its separate cover.

• Primary access point for materials which relate to the fine arts, decoration, art history, architectural history, design and theory
• Monographs, exhibition catalogues, auction records, periodicals, monographic series, ephemera, oeuvre and catalogues raisonnes are used by artists, art and architectural historians, students, and other researchers
• Collected in English and Western European languages only

• Edo and Meiji period Japanese printed books, early editions of the Quran, early nineteenth-century plate books illustrating the rediscovery of ancient Egypt by European explorers and scholars, and daily newspapers in numerous languages of Asia and the Near East are among the items found in the Asian and Middle Eastern Division, established in 1897.
• unique among major research libraries in that it houses, in one administrative unit, works in all the languages and cultures of East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and the Ancient Near East.
• division possesses 440,000 books, 1450 newspaper and periodical subscriptions, 6681 microforms in a range of languages that include Chinese, Japanese, Korean, eleven Indian languages, Arabic, Persian, Armenian, Georgian, Tibetan, Manchu, the major languages of the ancient Near East, and several languages of Central Asia.

• one of America's most celebrated collections of first editions, rare books, autograph letters, and manuscripts.
• covers the entire range of English and American Literature, with special emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries.
• Collection strengths include the rare editions and correspondence of Charles Dickens, and manuscripts and rare editions of Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, the Irish Literary Renaissance, W. H. Auden, and Virginia Woolf.
• Among its many treasures are the Westmoreland manuscript of John Donne, a copy of William Blake's Songs of Innocence, John Keats's last letter to Fanny Brawne, and T. S. Eliot's typescript of The Waste Land, with Ezra Pound's handwritten emendations.
• Recent additions include the papers of Vladimir Nabokov and Jack Kerouac.

Dorot Jewish Division

• 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.
• 40 percent of the Division's holdings are in Hebrew characters and the remainder are in other languages, primarily English, German, Russian, and French.
• especially strong in bibliographies and reference works, Jewish Americana, history and social studies, Kabbalistic and Hasidic works, texts by Christian Hebraists, rabbinic responsa, Hebrew and Yiddish literature, and periodicals and newspapers

• The largest division of The Research Libraries with over three million volumes, the General Research Division collects and provides reference assistance with materials on the humanities, social sciences, and general subjects.
• one can do research on current events, famous people, history, literature, natural history, psychology, religion, social issues, and women's studies.
• one can also find general reference works
• The collections are vast and heterogeneous; in addition to the strong holdings of general scholarly works expected of a major research library, popular, rare, ephemeral, and idiosyncratic works have also been sought out and acquired over the years.

Manuscripts and Archives Division

• holds approximately 29,000 linear feet of archival material in over 3,000 collections, dating from the third millennium BCE to the current decade.
• Manuscript collections contain original materials regardless of format, including not only paper documents, but photographs, sound recordings, films, videotapes, artifacts and electronic records.
• greatest strengths of the collections are the papers of individuals, families, and organizations -- including publishers' archives -- primarily from the New York region, dating from the 18th through the 20th centuries.
• Also represented are notable collections pertaining to literature, the American Revolution, the Civil War, and social history.

Map Division

• comprised of some 405,000 maps, 18,000 atlases and books about cartography.
• international in scope, and dates from the 16th century to the present, with a focus on cities, especially New York City history and development.
• Other areas of strength include cartographic history, local geography, and geographic information systems.
• A computer mapping workstation is located in the Map Division for public use by appointment.

• provides access to the microform resources of the General Research Division.
• over 350,000 microfilm reels and 3,000,000 microfiche includes many valuable research collections covering a variety of humanities & social sciences subjects such as Classical Studies, History, Literature, Philosophy, Latin American Studies, Women’s’ History and much more.

Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy

• collects materials documenting United States History on the national, state and local level, Genealogy, Heraldry, Personal and Family Names, and Flags.
• Holdings in United States town, city, county and state histories are national in scope.
• Genealogical materials are international in scope, including foreign language materials in roman alphabets.
• Collection highlights include manuscript and typescript volumes not found elsewhere, extensive microfilm holdings of census records and ships passenger lists, photographic collections, primarily of New York City views, over 300,000 postcards documenting United States local views, local history and political campaign ephemera collections.

The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle

• one of the world's leading repositories for the study of English Romanticism.
• holdings consist of some 25,000 books, manuscripts, letters, and other objects, chiefly from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
• Besides the books and manuscripts of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his contemporaries, the Collection offers a wide range of collateral materials, among which are writings by other literary figures of the period, biographies, criticism, political and scientific treatises, grammars, dictionaries, almanacs, and business directories.

• contains nearly 300,000 original photographic prints, from the medium's 150+ year history, representing an international range of photographers and comprising a thorough survey of subjects and processes.
• documentary focus encompasses social documentation, portraits, topographical views, cityscapes, and events.
• Highlights of the historical collection include: the Robert N. Dennis Collection of Stereoscopic Views, the Spalding Baseball Collection, the Pageant of America Collection, major collections of work by Berenice Abbott and Lewis Hine, and the Romana Javitz Collection which features works by Alice Austen, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Minor White, among others.
• also includes contemporary documentary photography acquired very selectively on an international basis.
• Many of the photographs in the collection are also significant aesthetically or as artifacts, and the collection holds specimen works for the study of the history, development, and application of various photographic technologies.

Print Collection

• specialized reference collection on the history of prints and printmakers of over 15,000 volumes and additional artists' files
• collection of approximately 180,000 original prints: engravings, etchings, lithographs, relief prints and screenprints.
• The collection of original works of art on paper, organized by artist, encompases the history of Western printmaking from the 15th century to the present and of Japanese printmaking from the 10th to the 20th centuries.
• Of special note are the Avery Collection, donated in 1900 by Samuel Putnam Avery, the Print Collection's holdings of 19th century French and British prints, a significant survey of 18th and 19th century American and European political cartoons and caricature, a rich collection of American historical prints, including the Stokes Collection, and early 20th century and contemporary prints.

Rare Books Division

• chief strength of the Rare Books collection is Americana, especially materials published before 1801.
• The holdings of European Americana are particularly rich in the earliest period, 1493 to 1550; in English imprints before 1641; and in publications dealing with the American Revolution.
• There are many outstanding rarities, including the only known copy of the Barcelona printing of the Columbus letter to Luis de Santangel announcing his discovery of the Indies; the Bay Psalm Book (1640), the first book printed in what is now the United States; and the first printing of the Declaration of Independence (Philadelphia, 1776), as well as one of two known copies of the first New York edition, printed by John Holt.
• Other particular strengths of the collection include: voyages and travels; early Bibles; eighteenth century American newspapers and periodicals; American and English literary first and significant editions, with notable collections of Shakespeare, Milton, and Walt Whitman; and private presses.

• locus for the Library's single largest concentration of Slavic and Baltic vernacular language monographic and serial materials, with more than 465,323 volumes, 1200 current serial titles and 21,800 microform titles.
• Of particular significance are the following:
  • many rare small print-run titles and encyclopedias;
  • the largest and most wide-ranging collection of early Slavic imprints in the United States;
  • the collection of manuscripts, books, and ephemera from the period before 1860;
  • collections of resources for the study of the Baltic and Slavic emigrations to North America and Europe between 1918 and 1950 generally, with particularly rich holdings relating to New York Metropolitan area settlements, including nationally significant collections relating to the Belarusian, Bulgarian, Latvian, and Carpatho-Rusyn communities;
  • original photographs, illustrated, and plate books, including many from the personal and palace libraries of the Russian Imperial family; and
  • a collection of books designed by artists of the East European Futurist and Constructivist movements.

• The Spencer Collection, comprised of more than 10,000 objects, surveys the illustrated word and beautiful bindings of all periods and all countries and cultures, from medieval manuscripts, Japanese scrolls, and Indian miniatures to contemporary livres d'artiste.
• Particularly noteworthy are seminal and landmark volumes of Western book illustration, Islamic illustrated books, and manuscripts in indigenous formats and languages from Japan, China, Korea, India, Tibet, Nepal, Indonesia, Malaysia, Burma, and Thailand.
• The collection has become well known for its growing emphasis on major contemporary books by internationally recognized artists and writers.