In this episode, NYPL's Elizabeth Cronin spoke with writer Lydia Pyne about her book Postcards: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Social Network. So much more than notes that say, “Wish you were here!,” postcards are fundamentally about creating personal connections easily and inexpensively: links between people, places, and beliefs. Elizabeth and Lydia discussed how these personal connections can be traced within the Library's beloved Picture Collection.

Episode Recording and Transcript

Work/Cited Episode 13: The Interconnected World of Postcards from The New York Public Library on Vimeo.

A transcript of this event is available here.

Related Resources

• Website for the author Lydia Pyne: http://www.pynecone.org/

• The Photography Collection’s Detroit Publishing Company Postcards

• The Picture Collection’s digitized postcards

There is a vast amount on postcards, much of it devoted to postcards of specific countries or places. Here are a few related books that deal with the history of postcards:

• Cure, Monica. Picturing the Postcard: A New Media Crisis at the Turn of the Century. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018.

• Fürst, Thomas Michael. Picture Postcards - A Bibliography: Supplemented by a History of Deltiology. Schwamtal, Germany: Phil Creativ, 2016.

• Prochaska, David and Jordana Mendelson, eds. Postcards: Ephemeral Histories of Modernity. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2010.

About the Work/Cited Series

Work/Cited is a program series that showcases the latest scholarship supported by the rich collections of The New York Public Library with a behind-the-scenes look at how the finished product was inspired, researched, and created. Catch up on previous episodes on the NYPL blog, where videos and links to related resources are posted shortly after each program. Sign up for NYPL's Research Newsletter or view the events calendar to hear about future programs as they are announced.