Education in New York City - Libraries

Libraries

New York City has three public library systems, the New York Public Library, serving Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island; the Brooklyn Public Library; and the Queens Borough Public Library. The New York Public Library comprises simultaneously a set of scholarly research collections and a network of community libraries and is the busiest public library system in the world. Over 15.5 million patrons checked out books, periodicals, and other materials from the library's 82 branches in the 2004–2005 fiscal year. The Library has four major research centers. The largest is the Library for the Humanities, which ranks in importance with the Library of Congress, the British Library, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. It has 39 million items in its collection, among them a Gutenberg Bible, the first five folios of Shakespeare's plays, ancient Torah scrolls, a handwritten copy of George Washington's Farewell Address and Alexander Hamilton's handwritten draft of the United States Constitution. It also has a large map room and a significant art collection.

The Brooklyn Public Library is the fourth-largest library system in the country, serving more than two million people each year. The Central Library is its main reference center, with an additional 58 branches in as many neighborhoods. Foreign language collections in 70 different languages, from Arabic to Creole to Vietnamese, are tailored to the neighborhoods they serve.

The Queens Library is the No. 1 library system in the United States by circulation, having loaned 20.2 million items in the 2006 fiscal year. The Queens Library serves the city's most diverse borough with a full range of services and programs for adults and children at the central reference library on Merrick Boulevard in Jamaica, Queens and at its 62 branches. Collections include books, periodicals, compact discs and videos. All branches have a computerized catalogue of the library's holdings, as well as access to the Internet. Lectures, performances and special events are presented by neighborhood branches.

The $50 million Bronx Library Center is the newest major New York City library building to be built. It is the first "green" public library in the city, built with ecologically-sound recycled materials and designed to promote energy efficiency, usage of natural daylight, waste reduction, and improvement in air quality. It has 200,000 print and audiovisual materials available for checkout and features a 150-seat auditorium for public performances, a story hour room for readings to children, and individualized career and educational counseling. 127 computers throughout the building are wired for Internet access. The library also has wireless capabilities, and provides 30 laptops that patrons can use anywhere on the premises.

There are several other important libraries in the city. Among them is the Morgan Library, originally the private library of J. P. Morgan and made a public institution by his son, John Pierpont Morgan. It is now a research library with an important collection, including material from ancient Egypt, Emile Zola, William Blake's original drawings for his edition of the Book of Job; a Percy Bysshe Shelley notebook; originals of poems by Robert Burns; a Charles Dickens manuscript of A Christmas Carol; 30 shelves of Bibles; a journal by Henry David Thoreau; Mozart's Haffner Symphony in D Major; and manuscripts for George Sand, William Makepeace Thackeray, Lord Byron, Charlotte Brontë and nine of Sir Walter Scott's novels, including Ivanhoe. The library is currently undergoing a significant expansion designed by Renzo Piano.