Posts from the General Research Division

In this episode, two NYPL curators discussed the origins, content, distribution, and legacy of a 1493 letter from Christopher Columbus and offered innovative ideas on how to incorporate the document into teaching about the origins of colonialism in the Americas.

The General Research Librarians have created a research guide of the most heavily used newspapers from this collection, comprised of titles from multiple cities in over 70 countries.

In this episode, NYPL's Melanie Locay and Amy Sohn, New York Times bestselling author of The Man Who Hated Women: Sex, Censorship & Civil Liberties in the Gilded Age, discussed Sohn's research into a critical moment in the history of anti-censorship and reproductive rights activism in America. In 1873, the Comstock law passed, penalizing the mailing of contraception and obscenity with harsh sentences and steep fines.  Anthony Comstock, special agent to the Post Office and the law's namesake, viewed reproductive rights as a threat to the American family. Between 1873 and the 

In this episode, NYPL's Paloma Celis Carbajal and Jelicia Jimenez were joined by Bronwen Maxson of the University of Oregon to discuss how issues of identity, particularly as relates to immigrant communities in the U.S., have shaped discovery tools such as library catalogs in far-reaching ways. They also examined the role of student activism in catalyzing change.

In this episode, Bogdan Horbal, Curator of the NYPL's Slavic and East European Collections, and Yasha Klots, Assistant Professor of Russian Literature at Hunter College, CUNY, discussed tamizdat, the contraband Russian literature published outside of the Soviet Union.

Lista de recursos en línea gratuitos para ayudarle a profundizar en los muchos aspectos de la historia y la cultura latinx e hispana, todo gratis con una tarjeta de la biblioteca.

List of free online resources to help you delve into the many aspects of Latinx & Hispanic history and culture, all free with a library card.

"Jump in and let your enthusiasm be your guide. Just because somebody hasn’t written about a piece of information yet doesn’t mean it isn’t out there—it’s amazing what is just waiting to be discovered."

In this episode, NYPL's Paloma Celis Carbajal and Óscar A. Pérez, Assistant Professor of Spanish at Skidmore College, explored cultural expressions in Mexico during the influenza pandemics of 1918 and 2009 through newspapers and other digitized materials.

The treaty was signed between Poland on one side and Russian and Ukrainian Soviet republics on the other. It ended the Russo-Polish War of 1919–20 and established a new Polish border.

It was only beginning in 1917 that the process to introduce women's right to vote picked up momentum worldwide resulting in women's suffrage becoming a reality in an increasing amount of states, including Slavic and East European countries. Below are some books written in the late 19th and early 20th century (all digitized) which were published to raise an awareness and appreciation of women's contributions to society.

In this episode we're joined by Amaka Okechukwu, professor of sociology at George Mason University, to analyze excerpts from 'Black Dialogue' and discuss the historical context in which the magazine was written, published, and circulated.

In this episode, we were joined by Barbara Heller and Anna Pinto who worked on a new edition of 'Pride and Prejudice' filled with reproductions of the book's Regency-era correspondence.

In the final Doc Chat of the year, we dug into the stories behind photographs of radical demonstrations in early 20th-century New York City.

In this episode, NYPL curators Ian Fowler and Julie Golia analyzed maps, illustrations, and other primary sources from NYPL’s collections to look at the transformation of Brooklyn’s waterfront economy and built environment

In its inaugural episode, NYPL's Meredith Mann and Alicia Cheng, author of 'This Is What Democracy Looked Like: A Visual History of the Printed Ballot', discussed American ballots' evolving graphic design and what they can tell us about the history of voting and elections.

Revolution was in the air on October 8, 2020, when the Doc Chat community traveled back in time to New York City in the 1960s to learn about the vibrant radical literary culture of the Lower East Side.

NYPL’s Julie Golia and Bronx Community College Professor and public historian Prithi Kanakamedala discussed one anti-slavery illustration and what it can tell us about the racial politics of abolitionism.

A brief and interesting history of the evolving language used to identify people with ancestry from Spanish speaking territories or from countries south of the U.S.-Mexican border.