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Interpretations of Timothy O’Sullivan’s "Ancient Ruins"
Maya Wali Richardson is a student at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. This blog post is derived from her work in Shelley Rice’s class "Aesthetic History of Photography."No. 10. Ancient...
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Researching New York City Neighborhoods
Hester Street, 1905. Image ID: 837001New York City encompasses over 400 neighborhoods of varying size and structure. With notoriously murky boundaries, the city’s neighborhoods are continuously...
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The Great War and Modern Mapping: WWI in the Map Division
Surveying Landscape for Enemy. Image ID: 115706This past August we marked the centennial of the Great War, a cataclysm that forever altered our political map. In the course of the war, no less than...
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Despotic Characters: Researching Shorthand at the New York Public Library
What do Pliny the Younger, Charles Dickens, George Bernard Shaw, and Tom Wolfe have in common?Or in longform: they all knew shorthand. Whether you call it stenography (narrow-writing), brachygraphy...
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Names Have Meaning: A Research Guide for Baby Names and Family Names
Registering Names at Castle Garden, 1871. Image ID: 800772Like any word in the dictionary, a person’s name has meaning. The study of names is called onomastics or onomatology. Onomastics covers the...
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Celebrating Jewish LGBT Pride
In honor of LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) Pride Month in June, the Dorot Jewish Division recognizes the achievements of LGBT Jews in history and in the Library’s collection. Here are...
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The Mythology of Bruno Schulz
Drohobycz. Image ID: 1226408How did a Jewish writer, who wrote exclusively in Polish and who died in the Holocaust, become practically a cult figure of mid-20th century literature? From Drohobych (in...
View ArticleRecent Acquisitions in the Jewish Division: June 2015
The following titles on our Recent Acquisitions Display are just a few of our new books, which are available at the reference desk in the Dorot Jewish Division. Catalog entries for the books can be...
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George Chalmers and the History Wars of the American Revolutionary Era
George Chalmers was a sore loser. Born in Scotland in 1742, Chalmers came to Maryland in 1763 and practiced as an attorney until 1775. Hostilities between Britain and its colonies drove the ardent...
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Romantic Interests: Sex, Lies and Poetry Redux, Part 1
Detail from Robert Cruikshank's 1820 satirical print, "Public Opinion!" Here, the loyalty of the British people to the Queen outweighs the secrets, spies and hypocrisy of the King.Twenty years ago, as...
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The Olive Branch and the Declaration of Independence
Was the Declaration of Independence really necessary? Or was it widely understood by the end of 1775 that the American colonies were already engaged in a war for independence? The key to answering...
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Independence Day Booths: Fourth of July Feasting in 19th Century New York
“Have we improved upon our manner of celebrating the Fourth?” Looking south on Broadway from the corner of Cortlandt Street, 1834. Harper’s Weekly, July 7, 1894. Ready for Fourth of July barbeques? Of...
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Romantic Interests: Sex, Lies and Poetry Redux, Part 2
Detail from William Elmes's satirical print, "A Kick Up in a Great House"; here, the Queen mounts a bucking John Bull, a symbol of the common British person. This post is a continuation of Part 1 of a...
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Historic Central Park Maps
Martel's New York Central Park, 1864. Image ID: 55031I recently completed a project in which I had the pleasure of cataloging a large number of NYPL’s historic maps of Central Park. Several of these...
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Finding Yiddish Music: A Quick Online Guide
Molly Picon. Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library. Image ID: TH-43802Use these resources to find Yiddish music online and in libraries and archives: search for sheet music, audio...
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Occupying Ellis Island: Protests In the Years Between Immigration Station and...
Ellis Island, New York. Image ID: 836571Ellis Island is powerfully symbolic in American culture. For legions of Americans, it is the beginning of their American identity. For two groups that don’t tie...
View ArticleRecent Acquisitions in the Jewish Division: July 2015
The following titles on our Recent Acquisitions Display are just a few of our new books, which are available at the reference desk in the Dorot Jewish Division. Catalog entries for the books can be...
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Baudelaire, a Skeptic, Shares His Photo
Nele Mayer, a student at NYU, was recently awarded the H.W. Janson scholarship for excellence in the field of art history. This blog post is derived from her work in Shelley Rice’s class "Aesthetic...
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Letterbooks, Indexes, and Learning about Early American Business
Like many other libraries and historical societies, The New York Public Library is in the process of digitizing sizable portions of its manuscript collections. In addition to making it easier for...
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Sea Blazers and Early Scriveners: The First Guidebooks to New York City
This post is Part 1 of an ongoing Research Guide to New York City Guidebooks in the collections of the Milstein Division of United States History, Local History & Genealogy.Table of...
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