New York Public Library's Manuscripts & Archives Division
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[edit] Address and Contact Info
Address:
New York Public Library
Humanities and Social Science Library, Room 324
Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street
New York, NY 10018-2788.
Telephone:
212-930-0801
Website:
http://www.nypl.org/mss
Finding Aids:
http://www.nypl.org/amat
E-mail reference form:
http://www.nypl.org/mssref
Reminder:
All readers should contact the Division in advance to insure that the material they wish to consult can be made available to them. Please check all bags and coats at the coat check on the library's first floor.
[edit] Hours and Usage Restrictions
Tuesday & Wednesday: 11 am to 7:30 pm,
Thursday, Friday & Saturday: 11 to 6 pm,
Closed Sundays & Mondays.
[edit] Online Catalogs and Finding Aids
Finding materials in the Manuscripts and Archives Division is a multi-step process. While our website provides some access to our collections, using all of the discovery tools described below will help ensure that you do not overlook an important source for your research.
The Collection Descriptions and Guides page http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/spe/rbk/collect.cfm provides access to nearly 1300 collection-level catalog records and over 250 finding aids. These two types of descriptions can be searched simultaneously. This page also offers the options of searching only the collection names or browsing an alphabetical list of collections.
While powerful, these searches yield results that are by no means complete for several reasons: many of our collections are described only in the paper guides described below; finding aids do not always lend themselves to fruitful keyword searching; and, while Manuscripts and Archives holds more than half of all the archival material in the Research Libraries, there are substantial archival resources in other divisions.
Survey and Miscellaneous Files
Researchers wishing to locate letters and other documents of a specific person should also consult the survey files. http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/spe/rbk/surveys.cfm These surveys are arranged alphabetically and list all of the materials (which we happen to have located) by a specific individual throughout our collections. The surveys are not comprehensive –they are meant to serve as a time-saving device so that the same collections need not be searched numerous times for the same material. Researchers are encouraged to search other collections that may prove fruitful for their research as the survey files have not been rigorously updated in recent years. Miscellaneous Files
Uncataloged materials arranged by subject, geographic location, and personal name can be found in the Miscellaneous Files. http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/spe/rbk/faids/misc/browse.cfm The contents of these files can range from a single clipping in a personal name file to several boxes of documents relating to the history of New York. Readers may consult three loose-leaf notebooks containing a list of personal names files. There are also files for each of the fifty states and several nations.
CATNYP
Search CATNYP http://catnyp.nypl.org/ to find collection-level descriptions of most of the large manuscript collections in the Manuscripts and Archives Division. Note that CATNYP searches can be limited by "material type" to retrieve only archival materials.
CATNYP should be used in conjunction with the Division’s card catalog. The card catalog of the Manuscripts and Archives Division is the most comprehensive guide to materials acquired through 1985. It is alphabetically arranged and contains entries for names, subjects, geographic locations and types of documents (diaries, account books, logbooks, maps, literary typescripts, etc.). Descriptions of collections acquired after 1985 can be found in CATNYP.
Printed Works
The two-volume Dictionary Catalog of the Manuscript Division, (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1967) reproduces the card catalog of manuscript collections as it appeared in 1966. Although it is no longer comprehensive, this important guide to our collections is available in research libraries throughout the world.
Once a reader discovers particular collections of interest, s/he should consult the inventory of that collection if one exists. The inventory contains a more detailed description of the collection and includes a container list that provides a box by box breakdown of the collection's contents. Occasionally, the inventory will include a list of correspondents represented in the collection or an index to the contents. There are inventories for most major collections available in the reading room. A growing selection of collection inventories may be consulted on the Division’s web site. Published Guides
In some cases, a published guide can be consulted in lieu of an inventory. Published guides to our manuscript collections include the Calendar of the Emmet Collection of Manuscripts etc. Relating to American History (New York: The New York Public Library, 1959); Colonial Latin American Manuscripts in the Rich Collection by Edwin Blake Brownrigg (New York: The New York Public Library, 1978), Guide to the Budke Collection by John H. Bennett (Nyack: Benlind, 1975), Report on American Manuscripts in the Royal Institution of Great Britain (London: Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, 1904-1909), Catalogue of Cuneiform Tablets of the Wilberforce Eames Babylonian Collection by A. Leo Oppenheim (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1948), and Islamic Manuscripts in the New York Public Library by Barbara Schmitz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). Surveys
[edit] Collection Summary
The Manuscripts and Archives Division holds approximately 29,000 linear feet of archival material in over 3,000 collections, dating from the third millennium BCE to the current decade. Manuscript collections contain original materials regardless of format, including not only paper documents, but photographs, sound recordings, films, videotapes, artifacts and electronic records. The greatest strengths of the Manuscripts and Archives Division, however, are the papers of individuals, families, and organizations, primarily from the New York region, dating from the 18th through the 20th centuries. Particularly important collections on the American Revolution and early U.S. history are the Chalmers, Bancroft, Livingston, Schuyler, Emmet, Myers and Gansevoort-Lansing collections, and, for early colonial Latin American history, the Obadiah Rich Collection. Civil War history is particularly well documented in the extensive records of the United States Sanitary Commission.
Notable collections pertaining to literature include the papers of Washington Irving, H.L. Mencken, Genevieve Taggard, Carl Van Vechten, Edgar Lee Masters, Babette Deutsch and Truman Capote, as well as numerous letters and manuscripts by such writers as William Cullen Bryant, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, James Joyce and Ezra Pound in other collections. Publishers' archives include the records of the Century Company, Crowell-Collier, Macmillan, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc., and The New Yorker.
[edit] Usage Discussion
Pending public perspectives
[edit] Fellowships and Funding Opportunities
[edit] Major Topic Areas
Political, economic and social history collections include the papers of Norman Thomas, Fiorello H. LaGuardia, Robert Moses, Lillian Wald, Rose Pesotta, Frank Walsh, Fannia Cohn and Vito Marcantonio, and the records of the Emigrant Savings Bank, The Emergency Committee In Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars, the National Civic Federation, the Committee of Fifteen, the Committee of Fourteen, the International Gay Information Center, the New York Central Railroad, CARE, the National Audubon Society, and the New York World's Fairs of 1939/1940 and 1964/1965.
Documents relating to the history of The Library and its predecessor institutions can be found in The New York Public Library Archives. Archives holdings include early records of The Library, as well as those of the Astor Library, Lenox Library and Tilden Trust whose resources were combined to form The New York Public Library in 1895.
The Manuscripts and Archives Division is one of several units of the Research Libraries holding original materials. Similar collections are located at The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division and Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division) and The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (Dance, Theatre, and Music Divisions, and Rodgers & Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound). The Berg Collection contains vast holdings of literary manuscripts and authors' correspondence. The Spencer Collection includes numerous illuminated manuscripts. Photographs received as part of manuscript and archival collections remain with those collections, but significant related photographs may often be located in the Photography Collection and the U.S. History, Local History and Genealogy Division. The Manuscripts and Archives Division does not collect facsimiles, microfilms of collections in other repositories, or most printed works about manuscript collections in other libraries; most of these are located in the General Research Division.
