My Library

Jerilyn is a painter of American history, and teaches drawing at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers and Spring Studio, and collage at The Cooper Union Department of Continuing Education.

Hearing the capstone presentations of 20 aspiring business owners in a FastTrac New Ventures program last week inspired me to talk to Shagun Malhotra, who recently told Crain's New York Business what she learned at FastTrac en route to taking second place in SIBL's 2010 New York StartUP! Business Plan Competition.

In the heart of Lincoln Center, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, nestled between the Metropolitan Opera and the Vivian Beaumont Theatre, thrives in its role as a vibrant circuit between historical research and cutting-edge performance. And few researchers illustrate the Library's unique vitality for the performing arts community better than Ben West.

Ben West is a regular at LPA, where theatre professionals who shape the performing arts scene come for inspiration through their research in the LPA’s vast archives. Ben is the artistic director of UnsungMusicalsCo. Inc., and in that capacity he searches for lost musicals from Broadway’s golden age, 

Inspiring America's youth to study engineering is an Obama administration priority. Many professionals—from trade associations to campus-based groups—focus specifically on getting more women into the engineering pipeline. Participants in Dow's recent virtual conference undercored the importance of exposing young women to ways you can use chemistry and engineering degrees. In this spirit, I chatted with Jennifer Chu, the first place winner (a $15,000 cash prize), in the 2010 New York StartUP Business Plan Competition, funded by the Citi Foundation and hosted by NYPL's Science, Industry and Business Library, SIBL.

On the first Wednesday of every month, the Mid-Manhattan Library hosts a monthly screening of anime. This spring and throughout the summer, we will be featuring patrons who have been attending Anime Night. Over twenty people came last night to see a screening of Bamboo Blade. Want to get in on the fun? Next month on May 4th, NYPL at Nite will be showing Trigun at 7:00 PM. Bring your friends!

April showers bring Sydelle's flowers at Ottendorfer!

Did you know that the Jefferson Market library has an archive of images, papers and press clippings dating back to the 1800s?  This collection of Greenwich Village history has recently been processed and made available to the public by archivist and librarian Barbara Knowles-Pinches, who began working at Jefferson Market in 2009.  The digitizing process has just begun; images and a finding aid will be available online in the near future. Here, Barbara tells us about some of her favorite items from the archive. 

Debbie is a literary agent and all-around superpatron at Jefferson Market.

Karoline Barwinski is currently teaching our 4 session Intro to Yoga series.  Here's the interview we did with her:

Danielle Lanyard has channeled her passion for resource-sharing across the small business community into a powerful presentation, Launch Your Start Up on Your Lunch Hour, which she offers, pro bono, at SIBL each month. I caught up with her after last Friday’s session which one attendee aptly described as “Fabulous! Pure gold!”   

There aren't many people who can say they've been living and creating artwork in the same Lower East Side apartment for 30 years, but we found one and his name is Robert Gulley. During December and January we exhibited Mr. Gulley's recent paintings and sculpture in our main reading room. You can see photos of the exhibit in this post and higher quality photos of his work at petermuscato.com. One day I sat down with Mr. Gulley to get the story behind his artwork.

Not all New York City residents are well enough to make it to the library. The New York Public Library provides these homebound patrons with books and other materials through its Books by Mail service.  Juanita is one of the Books by Mail users we speak to regularly at Jefferson Market.

With one of the coldest winters in recent memory upon us what better time to learn the art of knitting? I joined some of the ladies of the Ottendorfer Branch knitting circle on one blustery cold Saturday afternoon to chat.

Janice likes checking out classic films and exercise DVDs. She also clearly enjoys spoiling the Jefferson Market staff with her cooking!

Bill is a volunteer at Jefferson Market who is a voracious reader (and shelf organizer!)

One of the three components to NYPL's mission statement is to "strengthen our communities." At Jefferson Market Library we decided that one way to strengthen our community is to highlight the talents of those that live here. So, we created the Non-Print Indie Film Series. Every Monday in January and February a different local filmmaker will showcase their work. There will be screenings, panels, and interviews with a diverse group of New York City's own indie filmmakers.  In addition, we will be posting short interviews with the filmmakers each week on our blog.

There's not much time left to make it to NYPL's many NaNoWriMo monthly write-ins! How is your novel coming along? What is your word count? Are you ahead of the curve or do you have some catching up to do?

Need some encouragement or inspiration? Here's another look at a NaNoWriMoer for 2010!

Please visit nanowrimo.org for more information.

Pedro, a native New Yorker, faced up to a number of personal challenges before he enrolled in the Tompkins Square Center for Reading and Writing (CRW), the library's adult literacy program last year. I asked Pedro about his journey this past year as a student.

Throughout the month, we'll be profiling some NYPL patrons who are participating in this year's National Novel Writing Month. Please visit nanowrimo.org for more information and inspiration, and get writing!