(After we reach the book delivery area in the center of the stacks:) The books are delivered to the Main Reading Room by a vertical conveyor system resembling a giant Ferris wheel. And for nearly a century, that knowledge has flowed up to this magnificent room from the seven stories of bookstacks that lie beneath it and literally shore it up. In a way, the structure that replaced it is a reservoir too: A reservoir of knowledge. It was erected on the site of the Croton Reservoir, which had supplied the city with drinking water through much of the 19th century. Next year, we will be celebrating the centennial of the opening of this building. One asked the other, "Is this the New York City Library?" His friend replied, "This is the world’s library."
I once overheard a couple of tourists talking as they came up the Fifth Avenue stairs.
Stacks of books free#
It's true that you now need a library card, which is painlessly obtained, to request materials from our stacks, but the reference books and standard works in this room are free for the perusal of anyone who walks into the building. You don't have to be a New Yorker people can and do come from all over the world to use the materials in this building. This is The New York PUBLIC Library, so called because all our resources are freely available to the public, and that means everyone. In both halls, patrons can also bring their own laptops and access the Internet via WiFi. (These are books that you don't need call slips for.) In the South Hall, there are 27 public Internet computer workstations as well as several that give free access to hundreds of subscription-only electronic databases. Here there is seating for more than 600 readers and an open-shelf reference collection of some 20,000 volumes. It is well over a city block long, and it's one of the country's largest interior spaces that is not interrupted by columns-an architectural feat partly made possible by the seven stories of solid steel and cast iron bookstacks that lie underneath.
This is the jewel in the crown of the New York Public Library. OK, I'm going to talk just a bit about the room you're in now, the Rose Main Reading Room, so named in honor of the generosity of Library trustee Sandra Priest Rose and her family, whose $15 million gift made its restoration possible in 1998. This system has changed little since the days of the card catalog, except that slips are no longer submitted in the Catalog Room and dispatched via pneumatic tubes it became too difficult to replace the capsules for the tubes. You pick them up where you submitted the slips. There they are sorted and sent to the various stack levels, where the books are retrieved and sent by a conveyor system to the Reading Room. The slips are submitted at the side of the enclosure here in the Rose Main Reading Room. Once you've zeroed in on the materials you want, you'll need to fill out a call slip for each item. This room formerly held the card catalog, which was closed in 1972. You've just come through the Bill Blass Public Catalog Room. (As an aside, that's why catalogers are the most important workers in this Library!) And since there's no browsing the shelves, you will need to use our catalog to find materials. Visitors are normally never permitted in the stacks. And second, you cannot get the books yourself they have to be brought to you. First, the books can't be borrowed you have to consult them here. There are two things you should know about research collections. The books in the stacks you're about to see belong to the Library's research collections.
Also, please feel free to interrupt and tell me I'm talking too fast, or not loudly enough, and feel free to ask questions.įirst, a bit about how the Library works. Before we get started, I want to remind everyone to stay with the group, and once we're in the stacks, you are not permitted to take photographs, or of course to touch or remove any books. My name is Kathie Coblentz, and I am a rare books cataloger here. So, good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to The New York Public Library's Holiday Open House! The Stack Tour begins at the far end of the North Hall of the Rose Main Reading Room, and here's how it goes. As a "tour guide" on one of the 18 enormously popular stack tours, I thought it would be fun to share my "patter" with a wider audience. Besides enjoying building-wide party fun, attendees were offered a rare opportunity to glimpse a part of the Library that is normally hidden from public view: the building's central stacks that lie beneath the Rose Main Reading Room. Schwarzman Building was the site of the 2010 Holiday Open House, the Library's annual thank-you celebration for donors at the Friends level ($40) or above.
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