A SIS student’s visit to the New York Public Library
Amanda Halfpenny
On a recent trip to New York City, I decided to embrace my new status of librarian nerd and spend a few hours of my precious four-day trip visiting the New York Public Library. Although I must admit that my previous knowledge of the NYPL was restricted to the opening scene in Ghostbusters, I was nonetheless intrigued by the library’s fame, and it seemed like an appropriate tourist destination for two students in information studies.
- Amanda at the NYPL. Photo by Amanada Halfpenny.
My first impression of the library was from the street; architecturally, it was both beautiful and imposing. The main branch, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, was built at the turn of the 20th century and literally stopped me in my tracks when I first caught sight of it. Admittedly, I have a weak spot for old buildings, but the library’s architecture and the fact that it is slightly set back from the street create an impressive visual contrast with the skyscrapers that line the surrounding blocks. Fortitude and Patience, the famous marble lions that guard the entrance, provided us with some fun photo-ops. I should really be careful, though, because I read on the library’s website that the lions are a trademark of the NYPL. So, according to the Simba mask discussion in 601, should I or should I not be posting these photos on Facebook??
Anyone visiting the NYPL should be aware that you must go through a security check before entering or leaving the library. Yes, that means leave your weapons at home. Or perhaps they are more concerned with you getting into the closed stacks and stealing the first Gutenberg Bible to come to North America? I found the whole thing to be a charade, since when I held out my purse to be inspected, the security agent barely glanced at it. Unfortunately, I witnessed what I consider to be racial profiling when the guy in front of me in line had to empty the entire contents of his backpack; let’s just say that he was not a 5’2” blond girl from Canada.
The tour of the NYPL is extremely historic in nature, and our volunteer tour guide, with her stereotypical New York accent, knew her library history inside and out! I was surprised at the number of visitors in our group. Perhaps our choice to visit the library on our vacation was not as nerdy as I had originally thought (or perhaps all these other people were just as nerdy as we were)! I was disappointed to learn that the main branch of the library has closed stacks, so we saw hardly any books on our tour. It is incredible, however, to imagine the sheer number of volumes that are shelved according to the size of the document on the seven floors beneath the library because, to quote our tour guide, these books are literally “holding up the library”.
Although I learned a lot about the history of the NYPL, I would have enjoyed hearing more about the services offered by the library and the new programs that have been developed to attract non-traditional library users (apparently the NYPL organizes video game tournaments). Of course, this couldn’t be the focus of our tour since our guide was not an actual librarian and the other visitors in our group were neither librarians nor students in information studies. In retrospect, it would have been an interesting idea to try to contact a librarian beforehand in order to arrange an informal meeting after the official tour when we could have asked him or her more specific questions related to our field.
New York City has an overwhelming number of things to do and see. However, I strongly encourage any student in information studies to take the time out of a busy trip and visit one of the most famous libraries in the world. For anyone interested in working at the NYPL, there is currently an opening at the Manhattan branch for a librarian with experience cataloging Chinese language rare books using the AACR2. I guess that rules me out for the moment…maybe by the time I graduate next year!
Visit www.nypl.org for more information.