New York Public Library: The New York Public Library Acquires Archive of Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne. “The New York Public Library has acquired the archives of Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne. The dual collection comprises the couple’s literary and personal papers and stands as a rich testament to two of the most successful and important writers in postwar America.”
New York Times: Lesley Gore’s Archive, Open to All, Arrives at the New York Public Library. “As a teenage singer in the 1960s who fit the all-American girl mold, Lesley Gore may have seemed like an unlikely figure to carve out a lasting legacy of feminist resilience and independence. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts has now made the musician’s archive available for anyone interested in her artistic evolution, giving fans a chance to browse through notated music sheets and an unfinished memoir.” The collection is still going through digitizing.
New York Public Library: Books For All: NYPL Supports the Right to Read Banned Books. “The New York Public Library’s mission is rooted in the principles of free and open access to knowledge, information, and all perspectives—in essence, the right to read. In light of recent, prominent efforts to ban books in communities across the United States, we have now partnered with publishers Hachette Book Group, Macmillan Publishers, and Scholastic to make a small selection of commonly banned or challenged books available to anyone who chooses to read them—all for free via our e-reader app, SimplyE.”
BuzzFeed News: <a href=”https://news.yahoo.com/photo-collection-revolutionized-way-look-182535520.html”> The One Place Left On Earth Not Ruled By An Algorithm Is Free To The Public</a>. “The picture collection consists of exactly what you might think — visual information from magazines, postcards, clippings, and photographs collected by the New York Public Library’s staff since 1915. From Singapore to silver mining, Oklahoma to olive oil, there’s a folder containing a century’s worth of photographs for nearly everything. For visitors and artists, one of the most appealing things about the Picture Collection is that it’s one of the few spaces left available to us that is untouched by algorithms.”
Gothamist: Lou Reed’s Archives To Become Major NYPL Exhibit With “Lou Reed: Caught Between the Twisted Stars” . “After acquiring Lou Reed’s archives in 2017, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts opened them up in 2019 for fans and historians interested in sorting through a massive amount of his personal effects, recordings, and business papers. But starting next year, the NYPL will curate those materials into Lou Reed: Caught Between the Twisted Stars, the first large-scale exhibition featuring ‘previously unseen and unheard work from Reed’s incredible archive.’”
Gotham Gazette: How New York City’s Public Libraries Adapted to COVID-19. “Last month, the New York City Council’s Committee on Cultural Affairs and Libraries held an oversight hearing on the city’s public libraries and COVID-19. The committee, chaired by Queens Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer, heard testimony from Anthony Marx, the President, and CEO of New York Public Library, which is the system for Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island; President and CEO of Brooklyn Public Library Linda Johnson; and President and CEO of Queens Public Library Dennis Walcott. The discussion touched on library funding and finances, and how libraries have adjusted during the pandemic, which shut their buildings down for months earlier this year and continues to significantly impact their operations.”
New York Public Library: The New York Public Library Offering “We’re Readin’ Here,” A Month of NYC-Inspired Virtual Storytimes For Kids. “This special collection of videos—launching on Tuesday, December 1 and featuring the City’s reading experts, librarians—recreates the joys of in-person storytimes, which are currently suspended because of the pandemic and are the NYPL’s most popular in-person program under typical circumstances. Each video includes at least one story, as well as literacy tips for families, songs, rhymes, crafts, and activities, all as a love letter to New York City and its resilient residents. ” This kind of makes it sound like it’s geo-restricted content, but I don’t think that’s the case.
Untapped New York: Miss the Sounds of NYC During Pandemic? NYPL’s New Spotify Album Does the Trick. “As many of us sit in our homes in the coronavirus pandemic, we might be starting to forget what New York sounds like. We no longer hear the cacophony of rush hour traffic, the chatter of a crowded restaurant, nor the rumbling of the subway. Today, the New York Public Library dropped a new Spotify album titled Missing Sounds of New York, a collection of audio landscapes evoking the ‘daily urban orchestra’ of New York.”
Artforum: New York Public Library Acquires Archive of Sound Art Pioneer Maryanne Amacher. “The Brooklyn-based nonprofit Blank Forms has announced the formation of the Maryanne Amacher Foundation and the donation of the American composer and sound artist’s archives to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. The material, which was assembled shortly before Amacher’s death in 2009, includes more than one-thousand reel-to-reel tapes, a collection of writings, annotated drafts, project notes, performance materials, concert posters, and ephemera as well as some custom-made electronic music tools, which will be cared for by the foundation.”
Fast Company: Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram. They may be the future. “Designed by the design agency Mother New York, Insta Novels is the winner of Fast Company‘s 2019 Innovation by Design Awards in the Apps & Games category. Since launching in August 2018, more than 300,000 people have read the NYPL’s Insta Novels, and the NYPL’s Instagram account has gained 130,000 followers. While gaining more followers was definitely part of the project’s aim, the NYPL is more excited—and surprised—that people actually read the books that it published on Instagram.”
GeekWire: Interview: NYPL’s chief digital officer says public is better off when libraries are ‘risk averse’ about tech. “First: It’s not just about digitizing books. That’s the biggest misconception that the public has about the role of digital technology in libraries, according to the chief digital officer of what is arguably the world’s largest public library.”
Livemint: Why libraries that digitize and expedite the availability of new content will not die. “…in a world that is becoming increasingly digital, do libraries have a future? The short answer would be: If books have a future, then so do libraries. And libraries are more than just about books. They are safe public spaces where you meet, sit, read and work. Walk into BCL in Delhi and see how crowded it is: young people doing reference work, taking notes from books. Even in the days of internet, a good library is a priceless resource. Sadly, in many parts of the world libraries are struggling for funds; but there are also many enlightened nations where governments are spending millions on new libraries, many of which are designed by world-renowned architects.”
Forbes: What Brands Can Learn From The New York Public Library’s Instagram Stories. “With the rise of social media in the past decade, attention spans have decreased and the addiction to technology has taken away from consuming off-line content. By embracing social channels like Instagram, the New York Public Library found a way to inspire this new generation of readers through creating digital content that expands their knowledge-base of the classics.”
Engadget: New York Public Library turns classic novels into Insta Stories. “The New York Public Library is using Instagram’s Stories feature to make classic novels more accessible and enticing to read, especially to the younger generation. It has teamed up with ad agency Mother in New York to create ‘Insta Novels,’ which turns classic pieces of literature into animated digital novels illustrated by various visual artists. “
The New York Public Library apparently posted this on March 30 and good heavens, how did I miss it? Unlocking the Record of American Creativity—with Your Help. “The New York Public Library (NYPL) is embarking on a pilot project to extract the data from a publication known as the Catalog of Copyright Entries, published annually by the United States Copyright Office. The volumes have already been digitized and are freely available through the Internet Archive; our project aims to extract and parse the data contained in the records in order to create a searchable database that will aid copyright research.”
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