Tag Archives: New York Public Library

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The Archives of the East Village Eye Go to the New York Public Library | The New Yorker

Leonard Abrams started the paper, which chronicled the cultural life of downtown New York, in 1979. After trying for eight years to place its archives, he handed them off to the library last fall.

By Hannah Gold, February 7, 2023

“You could read the Eye and feel fully fed, with all cultural, sensory, and political bases covered,” the cultural historian Tim Lawrence noted.Source photographs courtesy East Village Eye

In November, Leonard Abrams opened every box in his storage locker in Ridgewood, Queens, and inspected its contents. Half contained his personal belongings.

In the other half were seventy-two yellowing issues of the East Village Eye. The newspaper, which Abrams published and edited from 1979 to 1987, covered the era’s monumental art scene, the gentrification of downtown Manhattan, and the swelling AIDS crisis in real time. This was the day he would finally part with its physical remnants, having sold his archive to the New York Public Library.

I watched as Abrams made his way through each of the cardboard boxes: one was a wine box, one was from Amazon, some were ripping along the folds. He unearthed a menorah, a ceramic peach, a dress coat he’d meant to wear to a recent wedding, and an old address book, in which he showed me the entry for the famed drag queen Ethyl Eichelberger.

Abrams’s archival broker, Arthur Fournier, held a clipboard, checking off each of the nineteen official boxes and accordion folders as Abrams located them in the piles stacked taller than any of us. When the full inventory was accounted for, the two men loaded the boxes onto a dolly, and then into Abrams’s cherry-red minivan.

Source: The Archives of the East Village Eye Go to the New York Public Library | The New Yorker

Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Libraries, Pleasures

New York Public Library: The best books of 2022 | Time Out

Including books for adults, for kids and teens.

Written by Anna Rahmanan, Tuesday November 29 2022

Photograph: Shutterstock

The Brooklyn Public Library recently revealed its list of most borrowed books of all time, but if you still need some literary inspiration (or holiday gift ideas!), we suggest you consult the New York Public Library’s just-released recommendations for best books of the year.

The institution’s lists have become an annual tradition for the past century and, in recent years, the pundits have even issued directories of tomes for teens and others written in Spanish.

Expert librarians have looked through almost 3,000 titles and settled on a fraction of them to make up four lists this year: best new books for adults, best new books for kids, best new books for teens and best books in Spanish for kids.

You can browse through each category in full right here and, below, find a selection of some entries in each group.

Best books for adults

  • The Genesis of Misery by Neon Yang
  • The High Desert: Black. Punk. Nowhere–A Memoir by James Spooner
  • A Lady For a Duke by Alexis Hall
  • Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher
  • Path of Totality: Poems by Niina Pollari
  • Shutter: A Novel by Ramona Emerson
  • Solito: A Memoir by Javier Zamora
  • The Song of the Cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin by Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird & Tom Waltz
  • Vladimir: A Novel by Julia May Jonas

Editor’s Note: Read more, see link below for original item… see video at link…

Source: New York Public Library: The best books of 2022

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Libraries

The New York Public Library is giving away 500,000 books this summer – CNN

By Yenny Sanchez, CNN, Updated 8:37 AM ET, Sun June 19, 2022

The free books are available at any of the library’s 92 locations in Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island.

(CNN) New Yorkers of all ages can now treat their shelves to a new book.

The New York Public Library (NYPL) has announced that it will give away 500,000 books to city residents to keep as part of its “Summer at the Library Program.”

Its goal is to help kids, teens and adults build their home libraries, as well as keep youth productive through the summer break.

The books are available at any of the library’s 92 locations in Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island. Some locations will even offer Spanish, Chinese, and large print titles.

“New York City students and families have been through so much over the last two years. It’s critical that, during this period of recovery and renewal, our ecosystem of learning do all it can to support and engage them,” Brian Bannon, NYPL’s Merryl and James Tisch director of branch libraries and education, said in a statement earlier this month.

“Public libraries are uniquely positioned to do this while students are out of the classroom over the summer months, providing quality, free programs to engage their minds while also getting them excited about books, reading, learning, and their communities.”

Source: The New York Public Library is giving away 500,000 books this summer – CNN

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New York Public Library makes banned books available for free : NPR

By Deepa Shivaram, April 15, 20225:18 PM ET

Visitors look at a globe in the map division at the main branch of the New York Public Library in New York. The library announced an effort this week to make commonly banned books available through their app.
Seth Wenig/AP

In response to the more than 1,500 books challenged to be removed from libraries in the last year, the New York Public Library launched an effort to make some banned books available for everyone — for free.

The initiative is called Books for All and allows any reader aged 13 and older to access commonly banned books through the library’s app until the end of May. There are no wait times to access the books and no fines, the library said. Typically, access to books at the New York Public Library are only available to New Yorkers with a library card.

“The recent instances of both attempted and successful book banning —primarily on titles that explore race, LGBTQ+ issues, religion, and history — are extremely disturbing and amount to an all-out attack on the very foundation of our democracy,” said Tony Marx, president of the New York Public Library.

“Knowledge is power; ignorance is dangerous, breeding hate and division … Since their inception, public libraries have worked to combat these forces simply by making all perspectives and ideas accessible to all,” Marx said.

The New York Public Library’s efforts launched on April 13. The books currently available are Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, King and the Dragonflies by Kacen Callender, Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi, and The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.

Source: New York Public Library makes banned books available for free : NPR

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Libraries, Times They Are A-Changing, Web & Technology

An App Called Libby and the Surprisingly Big Business of Library E-books | The New Yorker

Increasingly, books are something that libraries do not own but borrow from the corporations that do.

By Daniel A. Gross, September 2, 2021

Illustration by Seba Cestaro

Steve Potash, the bearded and bespectacled president and C.E.O. of OverDrive, spent the second week of March, 2020, on a business trip to New York City.

OverDrive distributes e-books and audiobooks—i.e., “digital content.” In New York, Potash met with two clients: the New York Public Library and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

By then, Potash had already heard what he described to me recently as “heart-wrenching stories” from colleagues in China, about neighborhoods that were shut down owing to the coronavirus. He had an inkling that his business might be in for big changes when, toward the end of the week, on March 13th, the N.Y.P.L. closed down and issued a statement: “The responsible thing to do—and the best way to serve our patrons right now—is to help minimize the spread of COVID-19.”

The library added, “We will continue to offer access to e-books.”

Source: An App Called Libby and the Surprisingly Big Business of Library E-books | The New Yorker

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Libraries

Let’s Dig Through The NYPL’s Most Treasured Items – Gothamist

by Jen Carlson, Aug 23, 5:49 PM

Gottesman Hall at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building being prepared for Treasures
Jonathan Blanc / NYPL

Over the years we have dipped into the unending well of treasures stored away at the New York Public Library time and again — in doing so, we’ve gotten an extremely rare look at Sylvia Plath’s childhood manuscripts; listened to Shirley Chisholm’s victory speech upon becoming the first Black congresswoman in U.S. history; dug through 1970s photos of Brooklyn homes; discovered that Charles Dickens’s cat’s paw is tucked away in the Berg Collection and still shedding; and even found the answer to the age-old question: is the 1960s World’s Fair Underground Home still buried in Queens?

The NYPL’s 5th Avenue building itself is even a historical treasure, with remnants of the old Croton Reservoir hiding in plain sight.

Editor’s Note: Read more, see link below for original item… see video at link…

Source: Let’s Dig Through The NYPL’s Most Treasured Items – Gothamist