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137-754: The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library ( SNFL ), popularly known as the Mid-Manhattan Library , is a branch of the New York Public Library (NYPL) at the southeast corner of 40th Street and Fifth Avenue in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City . It is diagonally across from the NYPL's Main Branch and Bryant Park to the northwest. The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library has space for 400,000 volumes across

274-603: A Second Language (ESL) classes. The two online catalogs, LEO (which searches the circulating collections) and CATNYP (which searches the research collections) allow users to search the library's holdings of books, journals and other materials. The LEO system allows cardholders to request books from any branch and have them delivered to any branch. The NYPL gives cardholders free access from home to thousands of current and historical magazines, newspapers, journals and reference books in subscription databases, including EBSCOhost , which contains full text of major magazines; full text of

411-412: A basement and seven above-ground stories. Its design includes 11,000 square feet (1,000 m) of event space and 1,500 seats for library users. The Mid-Manhattan Library opened in 1970 to house the circulating collection formerly located in the NYPL's Main Branch. The branch moved to its current building, a former Arnold Constable & Company department store, in 1981. After a failed attempt to close

548-418: A compact solution to engineers' unwieldy but frequently consulted materials. He proposed that up to 150,000,000 words could be made to fit in a square inch, and that a one-foot cube could contain 1.5 million volumes. In 1906, Paul Otlet and Robert Goldschmidt proposed the livre microphotographique as a way to alleviate the cost and space limitations imposed by the codex format. Otlet's overarching goal

685-500: A computer to settle the returns for each bet once the details of the wager have been 'translated' into the system by an employee. The added efficiency of this digital system has ensured that there are now very few, if indeed any, betting offices continuing to use microfilm cameras in the UK. Visa and National City use microfilm (roll microfilm and fiche) to store financial, personal, and legal records. Source code for computer programs

822-636: A data stream from a computer; this exposes film to produce images as if the stream had been sent to a line printer and the listing had been microfilmed. The process is known as computer output microfilm or computer output microfiche (COM). Using the daguerreotype process, John Benjamin Dancer was one of the first to produce microphotographs , in 1839. He achieved a reduction ratio of 160:1. Dancer refined his reduction procedures with Frederick Scott Archer 's wet collodion process , developed in 1850–51, but he dismissed his decades-long work on microphotographs as

959-476: A dispatch that was tightly rolled and tied with a thread, and then attached to a tail feather of the pigeon. The dispatch was protected by being inserted in the quill, which was then attached to the tail feather. The developments in microphotography continued through the next decades, but it was not until the turn of the century that its potential for practical usage was applied more broadly. In 1896, Canadian engineer Reginald A. Fessenden suggested microforms were

1096-595: A drawing that is 2.00 × 2.80 metres, that is 79 × 110 in. These films are stored as microfiche. 16 mm or 35 mm film to motion picture standard is used, usually unperforated. Roll microfilm is stored on open reels or put into cassettes. The standard lengths for using roll film is 30.48 m (100 ft) for 35 mm rolls, and 100 ft, 130 ft and 215 feet for 16 mm rolls. One roll of 35 mm film may carry 600 images of large engineering drawings or 800 images of broadsheet newspaper pages. 16 mm film may carry 2,400 images of letter-sized images as

1233-538: A gift shop and bookstore in the Mid-Manhattan Library. Arthur Rosenblatt designed the bookstore. Richard Spaulding commissioned a 124-square-inch (800 cm) stained glass window above the branch's main entrance in 1986. The window was funded entirely with private money. At the time, the library had over 8,000 visitors a day. With the opening of the Science, Industry and Business Library (SIBL) at

1370-569: A home in plain view and within reach" in the SNFL, a contrast to the stacks of the main branch. According to James S. Russell of The New York Times , the renovated library "delights book obsessives but also offers lines of computers atop long tables and a dizzying array of" services. New York Public Library The New York Public Library ( NYPL ) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations,

1507-624: A larger opening planned later that year. The sixth-floor library was renamed the Pasculano Learning Center in March 2021 after Richard and Lynne Pasculano donated $ 15 million to the NYPL. The SNFL officially opened for full service on June 1, 2021; the Pasculano Learning Center remained closed until that September, and there were strict capacity limits for the rooftop pavilion. Justin Davidson wrote for Curbed that "books have

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1644-483: A light source; this is the negative of text on paper. COM is sometimes processed normally. Other applications require that image appears as a conventional negative; the film is then reversal processed. This outputs either 16 mm film or fiche pages on a 105 mm roll. Because listing characters are a simple design, a reduction ratio of 50 gives good quality and puts about 300 pages on a microfiche. A microfilm plotter, sometimes called an aperture card plotter, accepts

1781-584: A matrix of microimages. All microfiche are read with their text parallel to the long side of the fiche . Frames may be landscape or portrait in orientation . Along the top of the fiche a title may be recorded for visual identification. The most commonly used format is a portrait image of about 10 × 14 mm. Office-size papers or magazine pages require a reduction of 24 or 25 in size. Microfiche are stored in open-top envelopes, which are put in drawers or boxes as file cards or fitted into pockets in purpose-made books. Ultrafiche (also "ultramicrofiche" )

1918-452: A means of keeping compact records of bets taken. Betting shop customers would sometimes attempt to amend their betting slip receipt to attempt fraud, and so the microphotography camera (which also generally contained its own independent time-piece) found use as a definitive means of recording the exact details of each and every bet taken. The use of microphotography has now largely been replaced by digital 'bet capture' systems, which also allow

2055-605: A member of the Tilden Board, as well as John Cadwalader , on the Astor board. Eventually, John Stewart Kennedy , president of the Lenox board, also came to support the plan. On May 23, 1895, Bigelow, Cadwalader, and George L. Rives agreed to create "The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations". The plan was hailed as an example of private philanthropy for the public good. On December 11, John Shaw Billings

2192-561: A method to microformat dissertations, and in 1934 the United States National Agriculture Library implemented the first microform print-on-demand service, which was quickly followed by a similar commercial concern, Science Service. In 1935, Kodak's Recordak division began filming and publishing The New York Times on reels of 35 millimeter microfilm, ushering in the era of newspaper preservation on film. This method of information storage received

2329-436: A million items. Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates proposed replacing the existing building with a twisting glass tower, while Smith Miller+Hawkinson proposed additional stories supported on a diagonal truss above the existing building. The winning proposal, by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects , included a serpentine glass tower that would have risen above the Mid-Manhattan Library. This renovation never took place, as

2466-620: A number surpassed only by the Library of Congress and the British Library . Telephone Reference, known as ASK NYPL, answers 100,000 questions per year, by phone and online, as well as in The New York Times . The Library website provides access to the library's catalogs, online collections and subscription databases. It also has information about the library's free events, exhibitions, computer classes and English as

2603-537: A period when the NYPL was facing severe fiscal shortfalls. As a result, the telephone reference service at the branch was cut back in 1974. Arnold Constable announced in February 1975 that it would close its location at the end of that March. The NYPL then announced its intent to occupy the remainder of the Arnold Constable building, move out of 10 East 40th Street entirely, and close the connections between

2740-426: A personal hobby and did not document his procedures. The idea that microphotography could be no more than a novelty was an opinion shared in the 1858 Dictionary of Photography , which called the process "somewhat trifling and childish". Microphotography was first suggested as a document preservation method in 1851 by the astronomer James Glaisher , and in 1853 by John Herschel , another astronomer. Both men attended

2877-529: A policy of selling its cultural collections abroad for gold. Related collections include a significant number of important works by Russian photographers, and photographs related to the House of Romanov and Russia expert George Kennan . The military drew extensively from the library's map and book collections in the world wars, including hiring its staff. For example, the Map Division's chief Walter Ristow

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3014-633: A protracted battle and two public interest lawsuits, the plan was abandoned in May 2014 due to pressure by its opponents and the election of Bill de Blasio as mayor. After the abandonment of the Central Library Plan, the trustees announced a new plan in June 2014, which provided for renovations to the Main Branch's stacks and the rehabilitation of the Mid-Manhattan Library. Dutch firm Mecanoo

3151-725: A public lending library through its branch libraries in the Bronx , Manhattan , and Staten Island , including the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library (formerly: Mid-Manhattan Library), the Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library , the circulating collections of the Science, Industry and Business Library , and the circulating collections of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts . The branch libraries comprise

3288-412: A simple, inexpensive ($ 2.00 in 1950), monocular microfilm viewing device, known as the "Seidell viewer", that was sold during the 1940s and 1950s. A microfilm printer contains a xerographic copying process, like a photocopier . The image to be printed is projected with synchronised movement on to the drum. These devices offer either small image preview for the operator or full size image preview, when it

3425-414: A single film may be inserted into a dark slide or the camera may be fitted with a roll film holder which after an exposure advances the film into a box and cuts the frame off the roll for processing as a single film. For engineering drawings, a freestanding open steel structure is often provided. A camera may be moved vertically on a track. Drawings are placed on a large table for filming, with centres under

3562-406: A single stream of microimages along the film set so that lines of text are parallel to the sides of the film or 10,000 small documents, perhaps cheques or betting slips, with both sides of the originals set side by side on the film. Aperture cards are Hollerith cards into which a hole has been cut. A 35 mm microfilm chip is mounted in the hole inside of a clear plastic sleeve or secured over

3699-470: A step and repeat mechanism to advance the film after each exposure. The simpler versions use a dark slide loaded by the operator in a dark room; after exposure the film is individually processed, which may be by hand or using a dental X-ray processor. Cameras for high output are loaded with a roll of 105 mm film. The exposed film is developed as a roll; this is sometimes cut to individual fiche after processing or kept in roll form for duplication. Equipment

3836-689: A storage medium than earlier methods of film information storage, such as the Photoscope, the Film-O-Graph, the Fiske-O-Scope, and filmslides. The year 1938 also saw another major event in the history of microfilm when University Microfilms International (UMI) was established by Eugene Power . For the next half century, UMI would dominate the field, filming and distributing microfilm editions of current and past publications and academic dissertations. After another short-lived name change, UMI

3973-411: A stream that might be sent to a computer pen plotter. It produces corresponding frames of microfilm. These produce microfilm as 35 or 16 mm film or aperture cards. Computer Output Microfiche was used to distribute massive amounts of frequently changed data to institutions or companies which could not afford computer terminals but already used microfiche readers for a variety of reasons. In some cases

4110-595: A three-story circulating area called the Long Room on the second through fourth floors, each of which has an 85-by-17-foot (25.9 by 5.2 m) opening near their eastern end. This allows patrons to see the stacks on the eastern sides of these floors from the ground story. The space contains reading areas, which are connected by bridges on the second and third stories to the stacks. The reading areas have wooden desks and benches that measure up to 66 feet (20 m) long. The study areas and wooden bookshelves are arranged around

4247-479: A vast collection of his Americana , art works, manuscripts, and rare books, including the first Gutenberg Bible in the New World . At its inception, the library charged admission and did not permit physical access to any literary items. Former Governor of New York and presidential candidate Samuel J. Tilden believed that a library with citywide reach was required, and upon his death in 1886, he bequeathed

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4384-416: A whole, the three library systems in the city have 209 branches with 63 million items in their collections. Microfilm Three formats are common: microfilm (reels), microfiche (flat sheets), and aperture cards . Microcards, also known as "micro-opaques", a format no longer produced, were similar to microfiche, but printed on cardboard rather than photographic film. Equipment is available that accepts

4521-585: Is a database of over 900,000 images digitized from the library's collections. The Digital Collections was named one of Time Magazine ' s 50 Coolest Websites of 2005 and Best Research Site of 2006 by an international panel of museum professionals. The Photographers' Identities Catalog (PIC ) is an experimental online service of the Photography Collection in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building . Other databases available only from within

4658-411: Is across 40th Street to the north. 10 East 40th Street , where part of the Mid-Manhattan Library was housed in the 1970s, is immediately adjacent to the east. As designed, the building was originally six stories tall with a frontage of 82 feet (25 m) on Fifth Avenue and 175 feet (53 m) on 40th Street. The Constable store had a one-story annex extending one block south to 39th Street. The facade

4795-443: Is also a "secret garden" overlooking Bryant Park. When the building opened as an Arnold Constable store, the first floor contained brown Circassian walnut floors and was used as a display area for the store. A small square room with white walls was also on the first floor. The second story had mahogany trimming while the third floor had plain oak trimming. The fourth floor and part of the fifth floor contained executive offices, while

4932-482: Is an exceptionally compact version of a microfiche or microfilm, storing analog data at much higher densities. Ultrafiche can be created directly from computers using appropriate peripherals. They are typically used for storing data gathered from extremely data-intensive operations such as remote sensing. Microcards are an opaque, non-reversed format, sometimes known as microopaques. They were invented in 1948 by Fremont Rider and described in his book, The Scholar and

5069-402: Is available that accepts a data stream from a mainframe computer. This exposes film to produce images as if the stream had been sent to a line printer and the listing had been microfilmed. Because of the source one run may represent many thousands of pages. The process is known as computer output microfilm or computer output microfiche (COM). Within the equipment character images are made by

5206-581: Is built into a box. In some versions this is for bench top use, other versions are portable. The operator maintains a stack of material to be filmed in a tray, the camera automatically takes one document after another for advancement through the machine. The camera lens sees the documents as they pass a slot. Film behind the lens advances exactly with the image. Special purpose flow cameras film both sides of documents, putting both images side by side on 16 mm film. These cameras are used to record cheques and betting slips. All microfiche cameras are planetary with

5343-411: Is called a reader printer. Microform printers can accept positive or negative films and positive or negative images on paper. New machines allow the user to scan a microform image and save it as a digital file. 105 × 148 mm flat film is used for microimages of very large engineering drawings. These may carry a title photographed or written along one edge. Typical reduction is about 20, representing

5480-507: Is easily recognizable by its lion statues named Patience and Fortitude that sit either side of the entrance. The branch was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966, and designated a New York City Landmark in 1967. At the behest of Joseph Cogswell , John Jacob Astor placed a codicil in his will to bequeath $ 400,000 (equivalent of $ 14.1 million in 2023) for

5617-423: Is in use. They may offer a choice of magnifications. They usually have motors to advance and rewind film. When coding blips are recorded on the film a reader is used that can read the blips to find any required image. Portable readers are plastic devices that fold for carrying; when open they project an image from microfiche on to a reflective screen. For example, with M. de Saint Rat , Atherton Seidell developed

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5754-422: Is known for having a welcoming environment when its comes to people of diverse backgrounds. The library offers free work and life skills classes. These are offered in conjunction with volunteers and partnerships at the library. In addition, the library offers non-English speakers materials and coaching for them to acclimate to the U.S. For these non-English speakers, the library offers free ESOL classes. An initiative

5891-405: Is made of plain white limestone on a granite base. Four entrances originally led into the building: a main entrance from Fifth Avenue, carriage entrances from 40th and 39th Streets, and a smaller entrance from the 39th Street annex. There are cornices above the second, fifth, and sixth floors. A 1980 renovation replaced the original display windows on the first floor with full-height windows. When

6028-561: Is not, and, so greatly is it lacking in the essentials of a public library, that its stores might almost as well be under lock and key, for any access the masses of the people can get thereto". An act of the New York State Legislature incorporated the Lenox Library in 1870. The library was built on Fifth Avenue , between 70th and 71st Streets, in 1877. Bibliophile and philanthropist James Lenox donated

6165-501: Is provided 16, 35 and 105 mm wide in lengths of 30 metres (100 ft) and longer, and is usually unperforated. Roll film is developed, fixed and washed by continuous processors. Sheet film is supplied in ISO A6 size. This is either processed by hand or using a dental X-ray processor. Camera film is supplied ready mounted in aperture cards. Aperture cards are developed, fixed and washed immediately after exposure by equipment fitted to

6302-520: Is still the heart of the NYPL's research library system. The SIBL, with approximately two million volumes and 60,000 periodicals, is the nation's largest public library devoted solely to science and business. The NYPL's two other research libraries are the Schomburg Center for Research and Black Culture , located at 135th Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem , and the New York Public Library for

6439-787: The New York Times (1995–present), Gale's Ready Reference Shelf which includes the Encyclopedia of Associations and periodical indexes, Books in Print ; and Ulrich's Periodicals Directory . The New York Public Library also links to outside resources, such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics ' Occupational Outlook Handbook , and the CIA 's World Factbook . Databases are available for children, teenagers, and adults of all ages. The NYPL Digital Collections (formerly named Digital Gallery)

6576-656: The Beaux-Arts style, and the structure opened on May 23, 1911. It was the largest marble structure up to that time in the United States. The two stone lions guarding the entrance were sculpted by E.C. Potter and carved by the Piccirilli Brothers . Its main reading room was contemporaneously the largest of its kind in the world at 77 ft (23 m) wide by 295 ft (90 m) long, with 50-foot-high (15 m) ceilings. An expansion in

6713-660: The Brooklyn Public Library and the Queens Public Library . According to the 2006 Mayor's Management Report, New York City's three public library systems had a total library circulation of 35 million: the NYPL and BPL (with 143 branches combined) had a circulation of 15 million , and the Queens system had a circulation of 20 million through its 62 branch libraries. Altogether the three library systems hosted 37 million visitors in 2006. Taken as

6850-467: The Croton Reservoir . John Shaw Billings , the first director of the library, created an initial design that became the basis of the new building containing a huge reading room on top of seven floors of book stacks, combined with a system that was designed to get books into the hands of library users as fast as possible. The architectural firm Carrère and Hastings constructed the structure in

6987-484: The Government of National Defense surrendered, Dagron had delivered 115,000 messages to Paris by carrier pigeon. The chemist Charles-Louis Barreswil proposed the application of photographic methods with prints of a reduced size. The prints were on photographic paper and did not exceed 40 mm, to permit insertion in a goose-quill or thin metal tube, which protected against the elements. The pigeons each carried

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7124-630: The Library of Congress microfilmed more than three million pages of books and manuscripts in the British Library ; in 1929 the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies joined to create a Joint Committee on Materials for Research, chaired for most of its existence by Robert C. Binkley , which looked closely at microform's potential to serve small print runs of academic or technical materials. In 1933, Charles C. Peters developed

7261-748: The National Library of Medicine ), Edwin H. Anderson , Harry M. Lydenberg , Franklin F. Hopper , Ralph A. Beals, and Edward Freehafer (1954–1970). They emphasized expertise, objectivity, and a very broad worldwide range of knowledge in acquiring, preserving, organizing, and making available to the general population nearly 12 million books and 26.5 million additional items. The directors in turn reported to an elite board of trustees, chiefly elderly, well-educated, philanthropic, predominantly Protestant, upper-class white men with commanding positions in American society. They saw their role as protecting

7398-572: The New York metropolitan area . The city's other two boroughs, Brooklyn and Queens , are not served by the New York Public Library system, but rather by their respective borough library systems: the Brooklyn Public Library and the Queens Public Library . The branch libraries are open to the general public and consist of circulating libraries . The New York Public Library also has four research libraries , which are also open to

7535-574: The consolidation of New York City , eschewed the grants offered to them and did not join the NYPL system; they believed that they would not get treatment equal to the Manhattan and the Bronx counterparts. Later, in 1901, Carnegie formally signed a contract with the City of New York to transfer his donation to the city in order to enable it to justify purchasing the land for building the branch libraries. The NYPL Board of trustees hired consultants for

7672-570: The 1851 Great Exhibition in London, where the exhibit on photography greatly influenced Glaisher. He called it "the most remarkable discovery of modern times", and argued in his official report for using microphotography to preserve documents. A pigeon post was in operation during the Siege of Paris (1870-1871). René Dagron photographed pages of newspapers in their entirety which he then converted into miniature photographs. He subsequently removed

7809-505: The 1920s, microfilm began to be used in a commercial setting. New York City banker George McCarthy was issued a patent in 1925 for his "Checkograph" machine, designed to make micrographic copies of cancelled checks for permanent storage by financial institutions. In 1928, the Eastman Kodak Company bought McCarthy's invention and began marketing check microfilming devices under its "Recordak" division. Between 1927 and 1935,

7946-658: The 1970s and 1980s added storage space under Bryant Park , directly west of the library. The structure was given a major restoration from 2007 to 2011, underwritten by a $ 100 million gift from philanthropist Stephen A. Schwarzman , for whom the branch was subsequently renamed. Today, the branch's main reading room is equipped with computers with access to library collections and the Internet as well as docking facilities for laptops. A Fellows program makes reserved rooms available for writers and scholars, selected annually, and many have accomplished important research and writing at

8083-410: The 1980 renovation, the branch's interior received color-coded furniture. The history and social sciences section had blue decor; the science and business section, red decor; and the arts and literature section, yellow and orange decor. A job center was on the first floor, and there was also a law library, 850 science magazine subscriptions, and microfilm reels. An escalator remained from when the building

8220-462: The 1990s, the New York Public Library decided to relocate that portion of the research collection devoted to science, technology, and business to a new location. The library purchased and adapted the former B. Altman & Company Building on 34th Street . In 1995, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the library, the $ 100 million Science, Industry and Business Library (SIBL), designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates of Manhattan, opened to

8357-420: The Arnold Constable store had been in operation, the rooftop had contained a brick penthouse with a recreation room and an employee cafeteria. A high parapet surrounded the roof terrace. On the SNFL's rooftop is a terrace with an event space under a "wizard hat" enclosure painted copper green. The "wizard hat" penthouse, which includes the seventh story, was designed to conceal the mechanical equipment there. There

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8494-502: The Astor and Lenox libraries were struggling financially. Although New York City already had numerous libraries in the 19th century, almost all of them were privately funded and many charged admission or usage fees (a notable exception was Cooper Union , which opened its free reading room to the public in 1859). Bigelow, the most prominent supporter of the plan to merge the two libraries found support in Lewis Cass Ledyard ,

8631-701: The Future of the Research Library . To create microform media, a planetary camera is mounted with the vertical axis above a copy that is stationary during exposure. High volume output is possible with a rotary camera which moves the copy smoothly through the camera to expose film which moves with the reduced image. Alternatively, it may be produced by computers, i.e. COM (computer output microfilm). Normally microfilming uses high resolution panchromatic monochrome stock. Positive color film giving good reproduction and high resolution can also be used. Roll film

8768-550: The Main Branch at 42nd Street. The Mid-Manhattan Library's collection of pictures was also temporarily relocated to the Main Branch. The SIBL would be closed after the Mid-Manhattan Library's renovation was completed. The renovation was intended to meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certifications. The Stavros Niarchos Foundation donated $ 55 million to the branch's renovation in September 2017, shortly after

8905-444: The Main Branch in 1949. The NYPL bought the Arnold Constable building as an investment in 1961. That year, the New York Public Library convened a group of six librarians to determine what types of media the circulating library would have. The librarians decided in 1962 that the new branch should be close to the Main Branch. Arnold Constable stopped leasing the fourth through sixth floors to other tenants in 1964, making them available to

9042-570: The Mid-Manhattan Library in the 2010s, the NYPL announced a major renovation of the branch in 2014. Between 2017 and 2020, the branch was closed for renovations funded by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation , and the library was renamed after the foundation. The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library (SNFL) is a circulating library of the New York Public Library (NYPL) system. It is housed in the former Arnold Constable & Company department store building at 455 Fifth Avenue, on

9179-430: The Mid-Manhattan Library. The Mid-Manhattan Library also took space at the neighboring 10 East 40th Street. The buildings had separate lobbies, but the upper floors were connected, and the elevators in the Arnold Constable building were programmed so that library patrons could only access the fourth floor, then take escalators to the fifth and sixth floors. The branch was the 80th to open in the NYPL system, and opened during

9316-402: The NYPL charged a late fee of $ 0.25 per day per book; other types of items had different late fees, and seniors and disabled patrons paid lower late fees. The library system's president, Anthony Marx , indicated his intention to eliminate late fees after assuming the library's presidency in 2011. The NYPL stopped charging late fees on October 5, 2021. Existing debts have since been cleared from

9453-671: The NYPL faced budget cuts in the wake of the September 11 attacks in Lower Manhattan . By the following year, thirty percent of the Mid-Manhattan Branch's shelves were empty due to the NYPL's budgetary shortfalls. In 2008, the NYPL anticipated that it would sell the Mid-Manhattan and Donnell branches to pay for a renovation of the Main Branch. This led to the announcement of a Central Library Plan, in which

9590-792: The NYPL is granted a charter from the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York and is registered with the New York State Education Department . The basic powers and duties of all library boards of trustees are defined in the Education Law and are subject to Part 90 of Title 8 of the New York Codes, Rules and Regulations . The NYPL's charter, as restated and granted in 1975, gives

9727-549: The NYPL represents 0.02% of the city's 2024 budget of $ 110 billion. Funding for Sunday service was restored in June 2024. In February 2013, the New York and Brooklyn public libraries announced that they would merge their technical services departments. The new department is called BookOps. The proposed merger anticipates a savings of $ 2 million for the Brooklyn Public Library and $ 1.5 million for

9864-475: The NYPL was long housed in the Main Branch. The NYPL had proposed moving the circulating collection to a new branch on 53rd Street (later the Donnell Library ) as early as 1944. While the circulating library was kept in the Main Branch, its single room soon could not hold all of the circulating volumes. The library asked the city to take over responsibility for the circulating and children's collections at

10001-450: The NYPL. The NYPL planned to create a 500,000-volume collection on the three top floors, targeted primarily toward college students, who were overwhelming the capacity of the Main Branch's research facilities. However, the circulating library could not open until the NYPL had raised $ 2.5 million for renovation and $ 1.275 million for media. By the late 1960s, the Main Branch had become overcrowded and could not accommodate additional patrons, and

10138-417: The New York Public Library consisted of 4 research centers and 89 neighborhood branch libraries in the three boroughs served. All libraries in the NYPL system may be used free of charge by all visitors. As of 2019 , the research collections contain 46.8 million items (books, videotapes, maps, etc.), while the branch libraries contain 9.9 million items. Together the collections total nearly 53 million items,

10275-457: The New York Public Library is the second-largest public library in the United States behind the Library of Congress and the fourth-largest public library in the world . It is a private, non-governmental, independently managed, nonprofit corporation operating with both private and public financing. The library has branches in the boroughs of the Bronx , Manhattan , and Staten Island and affiliations with academic and professional libraries in

10412-518: The New York Public Library. Although not currently part of the merger, it is expected that the Queens Public Library will eventually share some resources with the other city libraries. As of 2011, circulation in the New York Public Library systems and Brooklyn Public Library systems has increased by 59%. Located in Long Island City , BookOps was created as a way to save money while improving patrons service. The services of BookOps include

10549-528: The Performing Arts , located at Lincoln Center . In addition to their reference collections, the Library for the Performing Arts and the SIBL also have circulating components that are administered as ordinary branch libraries. The New York Public Library was not created by government statute. From its earliest days, the library was formed from a partnership of city government with private philanthropy. As of 2010,

10686-705: The Selection Team which "acquires, describes, prepares, and delivers new items for the circulating collections of Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) and New York Public Library, and for the general collections of NYPL's research libraries." Under the Selection Team are the Acquisitions Department, the Cataloging Department, The Collections Processing Unit, and the Logistics Department. Before this facility opened, all

10823-627: The Slavic and Baltic Division. A number of innovations in recent years have been criticized. In 2004 NYPL announced participation in the Google Books Library Project . By agreement between Google and major international libraries, selected collections of public domain books would be scanned in their entirety and made available online for free to the public. The negotiations between the two partners called for each to project guesses about ways that libraries are likely to expand in

10960-497: The United States , are also available to anyone in the U.S. via the SimplyE app. In 2006, the library adopted a new strategy that merged branch and research libraries into "One NYPL". The organizational change developed a unified online catalog for all the collections, and one card to that could be used at both branch and research libraries. The 2009 website and online-catalog transition had some initial difficulties, but ultimately

11097-496: The aforementioned departments were housed in different locations with no accountability between them, and items sometimes taking up to two weeks to reach their intended destination. BookOps now has all departments in one building and in 2015 sorted almost eight million items. The building has numerous rooms, including a room dedicated to caring for damaged books. The consolidations and changes in collections have promoted continuing debate and controversy since 2004 when David Ferriero

11234-405: The aperture with adhesive tape. They are used for engineering drawings in all engineering disciplines. There are libraries of these containing over 3 million cards. Aperture cards may be stored in drawers or in freestanding rotary units. A microfiche is a sheet of flat film, 105 × 148 mm in size, the same size as the international standard for paper size ISO A6 . It carries

11371-404: The branch's closure. The NYPL announced that the Mid-Manhattan Library would be renamed after the foundation, becoming known as the SNFL. According to a NYPL press release, the donation was the second-largest in the NYPL's history, behind Stephen A. Schwarzman 's 2008 gift of $ 100 million for the Main Branch's renovation. The remainder of the renovation would be paid using city funds. The SNFL

11508-465: The bulk of his fortune—about $ 2.4 million (equivalent of $ 81 million in 2023)—to "establish and maintain a free library and reading room in the city of New York". This money would sit untouched in a trust for several years, until John Bigelow , a New York attorney, and Andrew Haswell Green , both trustees of the Tilden fortune, came up with an idea to merge two of the city's largest libraries. Both

11645-608: The camera. Early cut sheet microforms and microfilms (to the 1930s) were printed on nitrate film , which poses high risks to their holding institutions, as nitrate film is chemically unstable and a fire hazard. From the late 1930s to the 1980s, microfilms were usually printed on a cellulose acetate base, which is prone to tears, vinegar syndrome , and redox blemishes. Vinegar syndrome is the result of chemical decay and produces "buckling and shrinking, embrittlement, and bubbling". Redox blemishes are yellow, orange or red spots 15–150 micrometres in diameter created by oxidative attacks on

11782-499: The card. This permits automated reproduction, as well as permitting mechanical card-sorting equipment to sort and select microfilm drawings. Aperture card mounted microfilm is roughly 3% of the size and space of conventional paper or vellum engineering drawings. Some military contracts around 1980 began to specify digital storage of engineering and maintenance data because the expenses were even lower than microfilm, but these programs are now finding it difficult to purchase new readers for

11919-652: The catalogues were integrated. NYPL's Community Oral History Project shares New York City's neighborhoods and diverse people by documenting history through collected stories. The Oral History Project includes people living in Greenwich Village, Harlem, Washington Heights and Inwood, Times Square, Hell's Kitchen, Soho, Lower East Side, Chinatown, and Kips Bay as well as Transgender , Latino Americans, Veterans, and Disability Experience. The New York Public Library offers many services to its patrons. Some of these services include services for immigrants. New York City

12056-491: The children's library at the Main Branch had closed due to a lack of space. Bloch & Hesse commenced a renovation of the Arnold Constable building's fourth through sixth floors in 1968, and it was completed in late 1970. The new circulating branch, the Mid-Manhattan Library, opened in the fourth through sixth floors of the building in October 1970. The Main Branch's circulating collection and children's library were moved to

12193-431: The collodion film from the glass base and rolled it tightly into a cylindrical shape which he then inserted into miniature tubes that were transported fastened to the tail feathers of the pigeons. Upon receipt the microphotograph was reattached to a glass frame and was then projected by magic lantern on the wall. The message contained in the microfilm could then be transcribed or copied. By 28 January 1871, when Paris and

12330-468: The consolidation program, the NYPL moved various back-office operations to a new Library Services Center building in Long Island City. A former warehouse was renovated for this purpose for $ 50 million . In the basement, a new, $ 2.3 million book sorter uses bar codes on library items to sort them for delivery to 132 branch libraries. At two-thirds the length of a football field, the machine is

12467-624: The creation of a public library. After Astor's death in 1848, the resulting board of trustees executed the will's conditions and constructed the Astor Library in 1854 in the East Village . The library created was a free reference library; its books were not permitted to circulate. By 1872, the Astor Library was described in a New York Times editorial as a "major reference and research resource", but, "Popular it certainly

12604-553: The digital imaging department (formerly at the Main Branch building) and the manuscripts and archives division, where the air is kept cooler; on the third, the Barbara Goldsmith Preservation Division, with a staff of 10 (as of 2010) but designed for as many as 30 employees. The NYPL maintains a force of NYC special patrolmen, who provide security and protection to various libraries, and NYPL special investigators, who oversee security operations at

12741-580: The dispatches onto paper. Additionally, the US Victory Mail , and the British "Airgraph" system it was based on, were used for delivering mail between those at home and troops serving overseas during World War II . The systems worked by photographing large amounts of censored mail reduced to thumb-nail size onto reels of microfilm, which weighed much less than the originals would have. The film reels were shipped by priority air freight to and from

12878-409: The film, and are largely due to poor storage conditions. The simplest microfilm camera that is still in use is a rail mounted structure at the top of which is a bellows camera for 105 x 148 mm film. A frame or copy board holds the original drawing vertical. The camera has a horizontal axis which passes through the center of the copy. The structure may be moved horizontally on rails. In a darkroom

13015-481: The former department store. A corridor leads from the main entrance on Fifth Avenue and is covered by an awning with wooden beams. A large staircase from the ground floor leads to the basement, which includes a space for children and teenagers. The basement space has a conveyor belt for dropping off books, as well as a public room and a recording studio for teenagers. The basement space also has murals designed by Brooklyn artist Melinda Beck . The rebuilt library contains

13152-488: The future. According to the terms of the agreement, the data cannot be crawled or harvested by any other search engine; no downloading or redistribution is allowed. The partners and a wider community of research libraries can share the content. The sale of the separately endowed former Donnell Library in midtown provoked controversy. The elimination of Donnell was a result of the dissolution of children's, young adult and foreign language collections. The Donnell Media Center

13289-419: The general public. The library, officially chartered as The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations , was developed in the 19th century, founded from an amalgamation of grass-roots libraries and social libraries of bibliophiles and the wealthy, aided by the philanthropy of the wealthiest Americans of their age. The "New York Public Library" name may also refer to its Main Branch , which

13426-431: The home fronts, sent to their prescribed destinations for enlarging at receiving stations near the recipients, and printed out on lightweight photo paper. These facsimiles of the letter-sheets were reproduced about one-quarter the original size and the miniature mails were then delivered to the addressee. Use of these microfilm systems saved significant volumes of cargo capacity needed for war supplies. An additional benefit

13563-480: The largest of its kind in the world, according to library officials. Books located in one branch and requested from another go through the sorter, the use of which has cut waiting times by at least a day. Together with 14 library employees, the machine can sort 7,500 items an hour (or 125 a minute). On the first floor of the Library Services Center is an ordering and cataloging office; on the second,

13700-414: The lens. Fixed lights illuminate the copy. These cameras are often over 4 metres (13 ft) high. These cameras accept roll film stock of 35 or 16 mm. For office documents a similar design may be used but bench standing. This is a smaller version of the camera described above. These are provided either with the choice of 16 or 35 mm film or accepting 16 mm film only. Non adjustable versions of

13837-538: The library facilities. These officials have on-duty arrest authority granted by the New York Penal Law . Some library branches contract for security guards. To celebrate its 125th anniversary in 2020, the NYPL calculated a list of its most checked out books. Topping the list was Ezra Jack Keats ' The Snowy Day , with The Cat in the Hat and Nineteen Eighty-Four rounding out the top three. Until 2021,

13974-474: The library include Nature , IEEE and Wiley science journals , Wall Street Journal archives, and Factiva . Overall, the digital holdings for the Library consist of more than a petabyte of data as of 2015. NYPL cardholders can download free e-books via the SimplyE app and website. As part of the Books for All program, a limited number of books in the NYPL's collection, which have been banned elsewhere in

14111-455: The library's autonomy from politicians as well as bestowing upon it status, resources, and prudent care. Representative of many major board decisions was the purchase in 1931 of the private library of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich (1847–1909), uncle of the last tsar . This was one of the largest acquisitions of Russian books and photographic materials; at the time, the Soviet government had

14248-568: The library. The Main Branch also contains several historic designations. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966, and designated a New York City designated landmark in 1967. Astor Hall, first-to-third-floor stairs, and McGraw Rotunda were designated as interior landmarks in 1974. and the Rose Main Reading Room and Public Catalog Room were separately made New York City designated landmarks in 2017. In

14385-498: The lobby, which operated within 10 East 40th Street in the meantime. The Mid-Manhattan Library started moving back into the Arnold Constable building between 1981 and 1982, officially opening in February 1982. Two months after the official opening, the 2.5 million-item Picture Collection was moved to the Mid-Manhattan Library. By 1983, the NYPL had also signed a contract with the Metropolitan Museum of Art to operate

14522-582: The name of the corporation as The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations . The library is governed by a board of trustees, composed of between 25 and 42 trustees of several classes who collectively choose their own successors, including ex officio the New York City Mayor , New York City Council Speaker and New York City Comptroller . The New York Public Library is one of three separate and independent public library systems in New York City. The other two library systems are

14659-469: The nearby B. Altman and Company Building in 1996, some 40,000 volumes were relocated to the new branch. Ruth Messinger , the borough president of Manhattan, proposed $ 1.63 million in funding for renovation of the Mid-Manhattan Library the following year. Three firms proposed designs for the library's renovation in 2000. The renovation was planned to include 25,000 square feet (2,300 m) of retail space and expanded stacks that could accommodate up to

14796-471: The nearby Mid-Manhattan Library and SIBL would be closed, and the Main Branch would be turned into a circulating library. Over a million books would have been put into storage in a warehouse in New Jersey. Despite the plan, which took place during the financial crisis of 2007–2008 , the NYPL extended hours at the Mid-Manhattan Library in 2009. Library users heavily criticized the Central Library Plan. After

14933-400: The office camera are provided. These have a rigid frame or an enveloping box that holds a camera at a fixed position over a copy board. If this is to work at more than one reduction ratio there are a choice of lenses. Some cameras expose a pattern of light, referred to as blips, to digitally identify each adjacent frame. This pattern is copied whenever the film is copied for searching. A camera

15070-745: The old formats. Microfilm first saw military use during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. During the Siege of Paris , the only way for the provisional government in Tours to communicate with Paris was by pigeon post . As the pigeons could not carry paper dispatches, the Tours government turned to microfilm. Using a microphotography unit evacuated from Paris before the siege, clerks in Tours photographed paper dispatches and compressed them to microfilm, which were carried by homing pigeons into Paris and projected by magic lantern while clerks copied

15207-552: The original columns, which were retained in the renovation. There are also group study rooms on each floor. The ceiling of the Long Room, designed by Turkish artist Hayal Pozanti , contains an alphabet of 31 glyphs . These glyphs correspond to characters of the English alphabet as well as to numeric digits. The fifth floor contains the Thomas Yoseloff Business Center. The business library on that floor

15344-423: The philanthropist design the Astor Library. Irving served as President of the library's Board of Trustees from 1848 until his death in 1859, shaping the library's collecting policies with his strong sensibility regarding European intellectual life. Subsequently, the library hired nationally prominent experts to guide its collections policies; they reported directly to directors John Shaw Billings (who also developed

15481-470: The planning, and accepted their recommendation that a limited number of architectural firms be hired to build the Carnegie libraries; this would ensure uniformity of appearance and minimize cost. The trustees hired McKim, Mead & White , Carrère and Hastings , and Walter Cook to design all the branch libraries. New York author Washington Irving was a close friend of Astor for decades and had helped

15618-561: The public. Upon the creation of the SIBL, the central research library on 42nd Street was renamed the Humanities and Social Sciences Library. Today there are four research libraries that comprise the NYPL's research library system; together they hold approximately 44 million items. Total item holdings, including the collections of the Branch Libraries, are 50.6 million . The Humanities and Social Sciences Library on 42nd Street

15755-421: The quantities involved justified getting a microfiche reader just to read COM fiche. The first COM devices date back to around 1955 and were used in scientific programming as substitutes for paper-based plotters . Then during the 1960s, business applications sought to use COM. This was part of the effort to find alternatives to paper-based reports in dealing with the information explosion . By 1969, some of

15892-553: The records of all NYPL patrons. On November 26, 2023, Sunday services were discontinued at select branches where it was offered; along with reduced programs for adults and children. This followed months of contentious budget negotiations between the City Council and Mayor Eric Adams , with Adams claiming that the New York City migrant housing crisis necessitated the budget cuts. The $ 12.6 million in city spending for

16029-431: The research libraries in the system are largely funded with private money, and the branch or circulating libraries are financed primarily with city government funds. Until 2009, the research and branch libraries operated almost entirely as separate systems, but that year various operations were merged. By early 2010, the NYPL staff had been reduced by about 16 percent, in part through the consolidations. In 2010, as part of

16166-704: The rest of the fifth floor and the whole sixth floor were used for wholesaling. Three staircases outside the building provided emergency exit. There were also four elevators on the south side of the store. Indirect lighting was used throughout the building, as well as steam and indirect heating systems, which at the time of construction were still new technologies. When the Mid-Manhattan Library opened in 1970, it had 100,000 square feet (9,300 m) of floor space and could accommodate 350,000 volumes, with plans to expand to 700,000. At least two copies of almost all non-fiction books were provided. The branch also contained 10,000 microfilm reels and 36,000 non-circulating books. After

16303-776: The sanction of the American Library Association at its annual meeting in 1936, when it officially endorsed microforms. In 1937 Herman H. Fussler of the University of Chicago set up an exhibition of microform at the World Congress of Universal Documentation . Harvard University Library was the first major institution to realize the potential of microfilm to preserve broadsheets printed on high-acid newsprint and it launched its "Foreign Newspaper Project" to preserve such ephemeral publications in 1938. Roll microfilm proved far more satisfactory as

16440-577: The southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 40th Street, in Midtown Manhattan , New York City. Arnold Constable acquired the site in 1914 and hired T. Joseph Bartley to design a department store there, which opened in November 1915. Diagonally across from the building to the northwest are the New York Public Library Main Branch and Bryant Park . 452 Fifth Avenue is across Fifth Avenue to the west while 461 Fifth Avenue

16577-685: The third-largest library in the United States. These circulating libraries offer a wide range of collections, programs, and services, including the renowned Picture Collection at Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library and the Media Center, redistributed from Donnell. The system has 40 libraries in Manhattan, 35 in the Bronx, and 14 in Staten Island. The newest is the Charleston Library, which opened on March 16, 2022. As of 2022,

16714-476: The two buildings. The Vincent Astor Foundation provided a gift to cover the costs of renovation. In 1978, the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York sold $ 8 million in bonds to finance improvements to the Mid-Manhattan branch. Further funds allowed the Mid-Manhattan Library to extend the operating hours of its circulating collection in 1981. During 1980, Giorgio Cavaglieri redesigned

16851-459: Was also a space-saving measure. In his 1945 book, The Scholar and the Future of the Research Library , Fremont Rider calculated that research libraries were doubling in space every sixteen years. His suggested solution was microfilming, specifically with his invention, the microcard. Once items were put onto film, they could be removed from circulation and additional shelf space would be made available for rapidly expanding collections. The microcard

16988-489: Was also dismantled, the bulk of its collection relocated at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts as the Reserve Film and Video Collection, with parts of its collection redistributed. The site was redeveloped for a luxury hotel. Several veteran librarians have retired, and the number of age-level specialists in the boroughs have been cut back. The New York Public Library system maintains commitment as

17125-532: Was appointed as head of the geography section of the War Department's New York Office of Military Intelligence from 1942 to 1945. Ristow and his staff discovered, copied, and loaned thousands of strategic, rare or unique maps to war agencies in need of information not available through other sources. The organizers of the New York Public Library, wanting an imposing main branch, chose a central site along Fifth Avenue between 40th and 42nd Streets, on top of

17262-452: Was made a part of ProQuest Information and Learning in 2001. Systems that mount microfilm images in punched cards have been widely used for archival storage of engineering information. For example, when airlines demand archival engineering drawings to support purchased equipment (in case the vendor goes out of business, for example), they normally specify punch-card-mounted microfilm with an industry-standard indexing system punched into

17399-477: Was named as the library's first director. The newly established library consolidated with the grass-roots New York Free Circulating Library in February 1901. In March, Andrew Carnegie tentatively agreed to donate $ 5.2 million (equivalent of $ 190 million in 2023) to construct sixty-five branch libraries in the city, with the requirement that they be operated and maintained by the City of New York. The Brooklyn and Queens public library systems, which predated

17536-601: Was named the Andrew W. Mellon Director and Chief Executive of the Research Libraries. NYPL had engaged consultants Booz Allen Hamilton to survey the institution, and Ferriero endorsed the survey's report as a big step "in the process of reinventing the library". The consolidation program has resulted in the elimination of subjects such as the Asian and Middle East Division (formerly named Oriental Division), as well as

17673-570: Was originally scheduled to reopen in January 2020, then in May 2020. However, the entire NYPL system was shuttered in March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City . The NYPL subsequently announced that the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library would reopen in July 2020 for book pick-ups and drop-offs only. The branch's first floor opened for pick-up and drop-off service on July 13, 2020, with

17810-413: Was printed to microfiche during the 1970s and distributed to customers in this form. Additionally, microfiche was used to write out long casework for some proofs such as the four color theorem . The medium has numerous characteristics: Desktop readers are boxes with a translucent screen at the front on to which is projected an image from a microform. They have suitable fittings for whatever microform

17947-427: Was selected for the renovation, and the NYPL's board of trustees approved the plans in November 2016. At the time, the branch received 1.7 million visits per year. By then, NYPL president Anthony Marx had started to describe the aging library as an "embarrassment" to the NYPL network. In August 2017, the Mid-Manhattan Library was closed for a $ 200 million renovation, and an interim circulating library opened in

18084-631: Was superseded by microfiche. By the 1960s, microfilming had become standard policy. In 1948, the Australian Joint Copying Project started; the intention to film records and archives from the United Kingdom relating to Australia and the Pacific. Over 10,000 reels were produced, making it one of the largest projects of its kind. Around the same time, Licensed Betting Offices in the UK began using microphotography as

18221-688: Was taken in July 2018, NYC library card holders are allowed to visit Whitney Museum , the Guggenheim and 31 other prominent New York cultural institutions for free. In June 2017, Subway Library was announced. It was an initiative between the New York Public Library, Brooklyn Public Library, Queens Public Library, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority , and Transit Wireless . The Subway Library gave New York City Subway riders access to e-books, excerpts, and short stories. Like all public libraries in New York,

18358-455: Was that the small, lightweight reels of microfilm were almost always transported by air, and as such were delivered much more quickly than any surface mail service could have managed. Libraries began using microfilm in the mid-20th century as a preservation strategy for deteriorating newspaper collections. Books and newspapers that were deemed in danger of decay could be preserved on film and thus access and use could be increased. Microfilming

18495-406: Was to create a World Center Library of Juridical, Social and Cultural Documentation, and he saw microfiche as a way to offer a stable and durable format that was inexpensive, easy to use, easy to reproduce, and extremely compact. In 1925, the team spoke of a massive library where each volume existed as master negatives and positives, and where items were printed on demand for interested patrons. In

18632-402: Was transferred from the collection of the former Science, Industry and Business Library . The sixth floor was turned into an adult education center, the Pasculano Learning Center. On the seventh floor is a 268-seat conference center with a wooden-slatted ceiling. There is also an indoor cafe on the seventh floor, as well as event rooms separated by glass partitions. The circulating collection of

18769-401: Was used as a department store. The renovated Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library has space for 400,000 volumes, as well as 11,000 square feet (1,000 m) of event space and 1,500 seats for library users. The renovation entailed adding 20,000 square feet (1,900 m) compared to the old Mid-Manhattan Library. On the ground floor, revolving doors and larger windows were added as a reminder of

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