Blog Posts by Subject: Consumers

Celebrate Health Literacy Month: Be Your Own Healthcare Advocate

Understanding and managing our healthcare system can feel overwhelming. With appointments, medical information, and insurance and billing issues, there are a myriad of concerns to consider. Having an healthcare advocate, or becoming your own healthcare advocate, can be a tremendous help.

Getting Free E-Audiobooks On Your Phone

If you enjoy audiobooks, we have some great ways to browse titles, hear samples, and listen to an audiobook right on your phone. All you'll need to get an e-audiobook is a mobile app and a library card.

Spring Cleaning in 5 Steps

Get inspired to freshen up your space this spring with the help of these free books from the library.

Back in the U.S.S.R.: The Color Red in Early Advertising

How and why does red make us want to buy?

130 Years of Good Housekeeping Tips

On May 2, 1885, the first issue of Good Housekeeping was published, and today it is one of the five surviving "Seven Sisters" of women's magazines. In some ways, the word "housekeeping" alone seems like an artifact, but you don't need to be a gourmet chef or interior decorating savant to enjoy these highlights from the last one hundred and thirty years of Good Housekeeping.

Preservation Week 2015: Taking Care of Your Collections at Home

You have collections at home—drawers full of video tapes, shelves packed with CDs, DVDs and books, files stuffed with photos and documents, hard drives filled with data… How can you take care of your own collections, to make sure they're protected, to make sure they last?

Booktalking "Get Real" by Mara Rockliff

Cheap stuff wreaks havoc on the environment.

How to Clean Things

How did you learn how to clean? I guess my parents taught me, and after a few years of chores it just became second nature. Don't mix ammonia and bleach. Sort laundry into light and dark colors. Sweep first before mopping. Make the bed!

Palaces of Consumption: The History of Department Stores

A.T. Stewart opened New York City’s first department store in 1846. New Yorkers flocked to the palazzo style “Marble Palace," on Broadway between Chambers and Reade Street to browse through a wide array of merchandise arranged by department.

Make Your Move

There is a good chance that you are starting your summer off in a new home. May, which has been referred to as National Moving Month, kicked off the relocation season. Anyone who has ever moved knows that it is a very involved process. It is so involved, that at times (perhaps while figuring out pet transportation or carrying boxes full of books), you might want to rethink the whole thing. Flooded basement filled with zombies? A wacky obstacle you might rather live with instead of 

Booktalking "Human Footprint" by Ellen Kirk

People may not be aware of how much they eat, wear, buy and throw out in their lifetimes. This book brings in the numbers.

In your lifetime, you will drive 627,000 miles in a car, eat enough bread to equal your body weight every three years, take 28,433 showers, and eat 12,888 oranges. You will spend $52,972 on clothes, and you will likely own 12 

Environmental Special Libraries and Museums

Ever since I was young, spurred on by my Recycling Queen aunt, my brother and I become very conscious of recycling and our global footprints. I started recycling papers, cans, bottles and reusing anything that could possibly be reused. I bought natural cotton clothing and started shopping at the Goodwill. I do not buy overpackaged products or waste water or electricity. Below are some earth-friendly libraries and museums that I found.

Special Libraries

from the

Bookstore Mystique: Martin Boyd, Joyce Cary, and Elizabeth Bowen

There was a time — in what has come to seem more and more a mythical past — when books were everywhere. Along the relatively short stretch of Fifth Avenue between the New York Public Library and Central Park were three magnificent bookstores: Doubleday, Brentano's, and the most architecturally stunning of them all, Scribner's. Around the corner on 47th Street was

Conquer Clutter in 2013

Happy New Year's Eve! This year remember that the New York Public Library can help you in achieving any of your self-improvement or lifelong learning goals.

One of my favorite things about being a library user is that I don't have to go bankrupt with my info obsession. I can simply borrow anything that interests me, even a little bit! If it turns out to be a reference book or a

Education and Employment: Online Diploma Mills

In an environment of globalization, economic volatility and rapid advancement of technologies, the American world of work is evolving with an upward spiral of academic requirements and qualifications. In preparing for the 21st century workplace, an increasing number of students are enrolling in both public and private higher education institutions. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, education pays.

The U.S. higher education industry is growing at a tremendous rate especially 

Beyond Black Friday and Cyber Monday: Be an Educated Consumer All Year Long

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have entered our lexicon as the first days of the traditional holiday shopping season, marked by door-busters and free shipping for online purchases. The deals come fast and furious, almost keeping pace with our ever-expanding shopping lists...

Why not give yourself a gift you can enjoy when reviewing your bank and credit card statements in January? The gift of consumer-savvy! The library can help.

Ratings and 

Adventures in Marketing Research: SimplyMap

It's already been a couple of months since I and a colleague attended a morning of presentations by budding entrepreneurs finishing up their session of FastTrac® NewVenture™. Two weeks before that event my colleague and I did a presentation here at SIBL for them - our Market Research and library resources "boot camp". Now we had a great opportunity to see for ourselves how, and to what extent, these folks have used our SIBL resources to help create a five minute "pitch" of their 

Earth Day Booklist

The first Earth Day was proclaimed on April 22, 1970 by one of its principal founders, Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin. Already frustrated by the attitudes of big business, Senator Nelson, as the chairman of the White House Conference on Small Business, wisely noted that "the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around." He became greatly influenced by John McConnell, a grassroots organizer from San Francisco and Harvard graduate student, Denis Hayes. He asked the latter 

Precarity: A Reader's Guide

It is striking the United States has not developed a discourse of precarity. Today, the gap between rich and poor stands at its widest in history, and the unemployment rate hangs around at 8.9%; this statistic does not include the long-term unemployed, the underemployed (those working in part-time positions), and those simply not seeking work at all. There is no discourse or vocabulary for precarity, yet 

Start Traveling with the Help From NYPL’s Periodical Collections!

Sick of NYC’s cold weather?  Got the traveling bug in you?  Why not stop by the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building to check out our latest travel magazines for the newest tips, trips, and activities abroad?  With over 100 international, regional and local traveling magazines, the DeWitt Wallace Periodicals Division can help you plan your next destinations! 

We have magazines from