Description of Reading Room and Curatorial Units' Collections

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center
40 Lincoln Center Plaza
New York, N.Y. 10023-7498
Phone: (212) 870-1630
performingarts@nypl.org

Humanities and Social Sciences Library | The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts | Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture | Science, Industry and Business Library

Reading Room Description
Billy Rose Theatre Collection
  • Holdings illuminate every type of performance, from street corner to stage to studio.
  • Subjects include not only theatre, but film, radio, television, circus, magic, puppetry, pageants, and carousels.
  • Extraordinary array of traditional books, reference materials, and online databases.
  • Unparalleled holdings performing arts ephemera and memorabilia: clipping files, company records, correspondence, costume, lighting and set designs for theatre and film, lobby cards, manuscripts, models, pamphlets, periodicals, personal papers, photographs, playbills, posters, prints, scrapbooks, scripts and promptbooks, and souvenir programs.
The Circulating (lending) Collections
  • Coverage encompasses the fields of dance, drama, film and video, television, radio, music, recorded sound, and arts administration.
  • Books, videos, CDs, DVDs, sheet music, scores, acting editions of plays, and dialect tapes for actors can be borrowed and renewed with a New York Public Branch Library Card.
  • Clipping files in music, theatre, dance, film, and arts administration supply up-to-date information on all aspects of contemporary performance.
  • A wide selection of electronic databases and over 300 periodicals allow easy access to current popular and scholarly writing in the performing arts.
  • A special collection of orchestral parts is available to amateur, community and other music organizations for an annual fee.
Jerome Robbins Dance Division
  • Chronicles the art of dance in all its manifestations — ballet, ethnic, modern, social and folk
  • Collects and preserves film, videotape, audiotape, programs, clippings, photographs, manuscripts and memorabilia, as well as books and magazines
  • Serves as a consulting service to the professional dance community
  • Actively documents dance through oral history recordings and performance videography
  • Part museum, part film production center, Dance Division activities extend far beyond typical library functions
Music Division
  • Chronicles the art of music in all its diversity — opera, spirituals, ragtime, jazz, musical comedy, orchestral, rock, and pop music.
  • A leading repository of scores and manuscripts from centuries past.
  • Places major emphasis on capturing the creative output of contemporary composers.
  • Collects the latest published music from around the world.
  • Activities & acquisitions galvanize an extraordinary range of musical scholarship and performance activity and foster dynamic dialogues across cultures.
Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound
  • Over 500,000 sound recordings in every format: cylinder, 78rpm, LP, reel-to-reel tape, cassette, CD, laser disc.
  • Over 1,000 music video cassettes and video discs.
  • All genres of music, including classical, pop, musical theatre, jazz, ethnic, folk, Latin, rock, new wave.
  • Spoken word recordings include plays, dialects and accents for actors, comedy routines, radio drama and other broadcast materials, historic speeches, poetry readings, interviews with performers, composers, producers, directors.
  • Books, magazines, record company catalogs, clipping files, liner notes, record jackets, libretti, discographies, record and sound equipment reviews, music industry statistics and record charts–all documenting the history of recorded sound
  • Non-commercial archival recordings include oral history/interviews, live concerts and rehearsals, and radio broadcasts of musical and entertainment programming.