This profile is part of a series of interviews chronicling the experiences of researchers who use The New York Public Library's collections for the development of their work.

Lydia Pyne is a writer and historian of science. She enjoys writing about fossils, material culture, museums, and artifacts.

What brought you to the Library?

The physical postcards in the NYPL’s Picture Collection.

Describe your research routine. 

I’m interested in the relationship between print and people. Postcards are a really fun example of print that requires participation, multiple times over—it’s print that requires a buyer, a sender, and a recipient, but also people to make the postcards in the first place.  

For my postcard research, I focused on various printing technologies; for example, how the same monument was photographed and printed in different decades. I would pull different postcards and lay them out on the tables to photograph and to type notes and observations. I was also interested in postcards from countries that don’t exist anymore, so when I took notes on those postcards, I would have several atlases open in front of me as references. 

What's your favorite spot in the Library? 

I am partial to the Picture Collection room.

When did you first get the idea for your research project? 

I actually got the idea for a book about postcards from the NYPL’s collection in 2015! I came across the postcards before they moved to the Schwarzman Building when I was researching material for a previous book, Bookshelf. I loved the collection and was fascinated by the postcards—when I started reading some, it felt like reading someone’s text messages, tweets, or Instagram posts  from a hundred years ago. The collection prompted me to start thinking about postcards as a social network.

What’s the most unexpected item you encountered in your research? 

I found embroidered postcards from World War I. (Not part of the NYPL collections…) The hand-stitching is beautiful.   

What’s the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently?  

Between June 1907-June 1908, Americans mailed 667 million postcards in the United States.  (American Holiday Postcards, 1905-1915: Imagery and Context by Daniel Gifford.)

What's an essential item or tool you need when you're in research mode? 

 Laptop and external battery for charging camera/phone. 

Describe a moment when your research took an unexpected turn. 

Postcards are a type of print that requires "audience participation" to fill them out—to write a message, an address, etc. I was reading about the history of early print to understand how "participation"in print came to exist and a colleague suggested that I look at Gutenburg’s printed indulgences as an early example of a print genre that had a set way for people to fill it out and interact with it. I was shocked by how much overlap there was in the idea of how to "fill out" an indulgence from the 1540s and early 20th century postcards. 

How do you maintain your research momentum? 

I try and set aside a certain set of hours each day to write and others to research to keep my pacing and not burn out.

What's your guilty pleasure distraction? 

I love Netflix’s telenovelas.  I think I watched all four seasons of Velvet straight through while researching and writing about postcards.

After a day of working/researching, what do you do to unwind?

 I enjoy rock climbing and mountain biking.

What tabs are currently open on your computer? 

Google calendar, thesaurus.com, Trello, NYT.com, NewYorker.com, Trello (again), Pandora

Where is your favorite place to eat in the neighborhood? 

In Austin (where I live), I enjoy Thai Fresh Cafe.

Is there anything you'd like to tell someone looking to get started? 

Keep a journal of ideas that you think would be fun stories to research and write about—these stories have ways of coming back and being relevant.