Blog Posts by Subject: Library Catalogs

PIC is a collection of biographical data for over 115,000 photographers, studios, manufacturers, dealers, and others involved in the production of photographs.

Here's a #libraryhack to get on top of the holds list for the latest movies... who needs a streaming subscription?

During the holiday shopping season, the weather outside may be frightful — not to mention the crowds and the credit card statements — but your NYPL library card is so delightful!

Digital Collections contains more than 800,000 digitized items, and that number grows every day. While that’s a small fraction of the New York Public Library’s overall holdings, the aim of Digital Collections is to provide context for the materials we have digitized and to inspire people to use and reuse the media and data on offer there to advance knowledge and create new works.

At NYPL Labs, we are fascinated with our catalog and the possibilities its data represents. Just as the catalog has changed in the past we wonder what other possible forms it could take today, and in the future. With this driving thought we conducted a preliminary experiment: what if the catalog had a "See All" button?

Over a century ago, The New York Public Library was founded with a basic purpose: to provide free access to information, literature, and cultural resources for the enjoyment and enrichment of all New Yorkers.

In the late 19th century, this meant accumulating vast collections spanning all subjects and languages, erecting beautiful buildings to store these books, and hiring brilliant, dedicated librarians to serve them to the public. But what would it look like if we founded The New York Public Library today?

Look around you and you’ll notice that 

Most of the collections at the Stephen A. Schwarzman building are closed-stacked, i.e., we bring them to you. But on the 3rd floor, the Rose Main Reading Room maintains open, very open stacks of about 30,000 volumes on every subject, not just the humanities and social sciences which is our collection strength.

Here is a picture of the Shakespeare section, on the short shelves at the north-east corner. In addition to the complete works, it holds critical editions, 

DeWitt Wallace Periodicals Reading Room

In the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, there is a reading room with high wooden carved ceiling called the DeWitt Wallace Periodical Reading Room. You may have seen the historical room decorated with large murals reflecting major publishers of periodicals, newspapers and books at the turn of the century by

Great news for Nook tablet owners and readers looking for more new titles in ebook format.

OverDrive Media Console is now available for

NOOK HD NOOK HD+ NOOK Tablet™ NOOK Color™

You can get it right from the Barnes & Noble NOOK Apps storefront on your device.

This means you no longer have to "side-load" ebooks using your computer. You can download library ebooks direct from our catalog 

You know who you are. Your hold requests are always maxed out. You have "nypl.bibliocommons.com" saved in your browser. You read a book review in the paper or hear an author interviewed on the radio and immediately think, "I should see if NYPL has that yet." You are a mystery nut, a nonfiction devotee, or a knitting enthusiast, always tracking down the latest titles by your favorite writers or on the subjects that matter to you most.

You are a library catalog power user, and we salute you!

A brand new feature now allows you to 

History has secrets... but secrets don’t stay hidden if you know where to look...

The Library's Milstein Division staff are very excited to present a movie trailer-style promotional video, which debuted this week on YouTube. We've loved the videos that other NYPL divisions and neighborhood libraries have made — especially Jefferson 

Growing up in St. Louis, Missouri, my favorite part of the week was visiting the Florissant Valley Public Library and checking out cast recordings. I remember flipping through the bins of LPs, staring down at the big black album with glowing cat eyes, and wondering what in the world that show might be about. It was always a little disappointing when the liner notes were missing or the plot summaries were 

Interlibrary Loan provides access to library materials that are not available in NYPL's collections. We've recently redesigned the Online Request Form to make submitting and managing requests more accessible.

You can still approach any information desk for help submitting a request, but you can also create an account and submit your own requests online! This

While I've taught a number of classes about how one would begin culinary research at the New York Public Library, I understand that people can't always make it to midtown in the middle of the day, nor does everyone live in New York. For those reasons and more, I've put together a brief tutorial on how to begin culinary research at a library and I will attempt to make this as universally applicable to other libraries as possible. 

Cookery is the Word

Perhaps the most important trick when looking up cookbooks in a library catalog is to use the term