Website
The New York Public Library websiteprovides access to the library's catalogs, online collections and subscription databases, and has information about the library's free events, exhibitions, computer classes and English as a Second Language classes.[51] The two online catalogs, LEO[52] (which searches the circulating collections) and CATNYP (which searches the research collections) allow users to search the library's holdings of books, journals and other materials. The LEO system allows cardholders to request books from any branch and have them delivered to any branch.

The NYPL gives cardholders free access from home[53] to thousands of current and historical magazines, newspapers, journals and reference books in subscription databases, including EBSCOhost,[54] which contains full text of major magazines; full text of the New York Times[55] (1995–present), Gale's Ready Reference Shelf[56] which includes the Encyclopedia of Associations and periodical indexes, Books in Print;[57] and Ulrich's Periodicals Directory.[58]

The NYPL Digital Gallery[59] is a database of over 700,000 images digitized from the library's collections. The Digital Gallery was named one of Time Magazine's 50 Coolest Websites of 2005[60] and Best Research Site of 2006[61] by an international panel of museum professionals.

Other databases available only from within the library[62] include Nature, IEEE and Wiley science journals, Wall Street Journal archives, and Factiva.

Controversies
A new NYPL strategy adopted in 2006 anticipated merging branch and research libraries into "One NYPL". The organizational change anticipated a unified online catalog for all the collections, as well as one card for both branch and research libraries.[44]

Despite public relations' assurances, the 2009 website and online-catalog transition did not proceed smoothly, with patrons and staff equally at a loss for how to work effectively with the new system. Reassuring press releases followed the initial implementation, and notices were posted in branch and research libraries.[63] A further revision to the catalog and library interfaces was made subsequently, with a major redesign in 2013.
 

New York Public Library Elevation

In popular culture
The historian David McCullough has described the New York Public Library as one of the five most important libraries in the United States, the others being theLibrary of Congress, the Boston Public Library, and the university libraries of Harvard andYale.[64]

Film
• The NYPL has appeared in feature films. It serves as the backdrop for a central plot development in the 2002 film Spider-Man and a location in the 2004 apocalyptic science fiction film The Day After Tomorrow. In the 1978 film, The Wiz, Dorothy and Toto stumble across it, one of its lions comes to life, and joins them on their journey out of Oz.

• It is also featured prominently in the 1984 film Ghostbusters with three of the titular protagonists encountering the ghost of a librarian named Eleanor Twitty, who becomes violent when approached. Her origins and the library's prominent standing are explored in the video game sequel, Ghostbusters: The Video Game. In May 2010, the library invited comedy group Improv Everywhere to put on a brief performance in the main reading room based on ghostbusters as a promotional stunt.[65]

• Other films in which the library appears include 42nd Street (1933), Portrait of Jennie(1948), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), You're a Big Boy Now (1966), A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969), Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Chapter Two (1979), Escape from New York (1981), Prizzi's Honor (1985), Regarding Henry (1991), The Thomas Crown Affair(1999), The Time Machine (2002), and Sex and the City (2008).[66]

• A thinly disguised NYPL is the employer of a librarian with access to many mythical objects imparting magical powers for fighting evil in a series of films starring Noah Wyle. The first of the series is The Librarian: Quest for the Spear.
• NYPL is featured in the 1972 Alice Cooper rock/pop video for Elected.
Television
• It was in the pilot episode of the ABC series Traveler as the Drexler Museum of Art.
• The animated television series Futurama has Fry confronting a giant brain there in the episode "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid".
• In an episode of Seinfeld, Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards) dates an NYPL librarian, Jerry Seinfeld is accosted by a library cop (Philip Baker Hall) for late fees, and George Costanza (Jason Alexander) encounters his high school gym teacher living homeless on its steps.
• It is the setting for much of "The Persistence of Memory", the eleventh part of Carl Sagan's Cosmos TV series.
Literature
• Lynne Sharon Schwartz's The Writing on the Wall (2005) features a language researcher at NYPL who grapples with her past following the September 11, 2001, attacks.
• Cynthia Ozick's 2004 novel Heir to the Glimmering World, set just prior to World War II, involves a refugee-scholar from Hitler's Germany researching the Karaite Jews at NYPL.
• In the 1996 novel Contest by Matthew Reilly, the NYPL is the setting for an intergalacticgladiatorial fight that results in the building's total destruction.
• In the 1984 murder mystery by Jane Smiley, Duplicate Keys, an NYPL librarian stumbles on two dead bodies, c. 1930.
• In Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, the main character visits the NYPL to look up her condition in the dictionary.
• Allen Kurzweil's The Grand Complication is the story of an NYPL librarian whose research skills are put to work finding a missing museum object.
• Lawrence Blochman's 1942 mystery Death Walks in Marble Halls features a murder committed using a brass spindle from a catalog drawer.
• A lightly fictionalized portrait of the Jewish Division's[67] first chief, Abraham Solomon Freidus,[68] is found in a chapter of Abraham Cahan's The Rise of David Levinsky(1917).
• Linda Fairstein's Lethal Legacy (2009) is mainly centered around the library.
• Laura Ruby's The Chaos King centers around the library.
• Smaller mentions of the library can be found in:
• Henry Sydnor Harrison's V.V.'s Eyes (1913)
• P. G. Wodehouse's A Damsel in Distress (1919)
• Christopher Morley's short story "Owd Bob" in his humor book Mince Pie (1919)
• James Baldwin's Go Tell It On the Mountain (1953)
• Bernard Malamud's short story "The German Refugee" (in his Complete Stories [1997]; originally published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1963)
• Stephen King's Firestarter (1980)
• Beatrice Joy Chute's The Good Woman (1986)
• Sarah Schulman's Girls, Visions and Everything (1986)
• Isaac Bashevis Singer's posthumous Shadows on the Hudson (1998)

Poetry
Both branches and the central building have been immortalized in numerous poems, including:
• Richard Eberhart's "Reading Room, The New York Public Library" (in his Collected Poems, 1930–1986 [1988])
• Arthur Guiterman's "The Book Line; Rivington Street Branch, New York Public Library" (in his Ballads of Old New York [1920])
• Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "Library Scene, Manhattan" (in his How to Paint Sunlight [2001])
• Muriel Rukeyser's "Nuns in the Wind" (in The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser [2005])
• Paul Blackburn's "Graffiti" (in The Collected Poems of Paul Blackburn [1985])
• E.B. White's "Reading Room" (Poems and Sketches of E.B. White [1981])
• Susan Thomas' "New York Public Library" (the anthology American Diaspora [2001])
• Aaron Zeitlin's poem about going to the library, included in his 2-volume Ale lider un poemes [Complete Lyrics and Poems] (1967 and 1970)
Other
• Excerpts from several of the many memoirs and essays mentioning the New York Public Library are included in the anthology Reading Rooms (1991), including reminiscences byAlfredKazin, Henry Miller, and Kate Simon.
• A replica of the library is also featured in Universal Studios Singapore and Universal Studios Florida

Other New York City library systems
The New York Public Library, serving Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island, is one of three separate and independent public library systems in New York City. The other two library systems are the Brooklyn Public Library and the Queens Borough Public Library.

According to the latest Mayor's Management Report, New York City's three public library systems had a total library circulation of 35 million broken down as follows: the NYPL and BPL (with 143 branches combined) had a circulation of 15 million, and the Queens system had a circulation of 20 million through its 62 branch libraries. Altogether the three library systems hosted 37 million visitors in 2006.

Other libraries in New York City, some of which can be used by the public, are listed in the Directory of Special Libraries and Information Centers.[69]

• Benjamin Miller Collection NYPL Collection of Postage Stamps
• Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs

References
Notes
1. ^ a b "New York Public Library General Fact Sheet". Nypl.org. Retrieved 2012-11-24. Unknown parameter |file=ignored (help)
2. ^ "Contact List – The New York Public Library". Nypl.org. Retrieved May 23, 2010.
3. ^ "Dr. Anthony W. Marx". Nypl.org. Retrieved 2012-11-24.
4. ^ Harry Miller Lydenberg (July and August 1916). "History of the New York Public Library". Bulletin of the New York Public Library 20: 556–563.
5. ^ Harry Miller Lydenberg (July and August 1916). "History of the New York Public Library". Bulletin of the New York Public Library 20: 563–573.
6. ^ Harry Miller Lydenberg (July and August 1916). "History of the New York Public Library". Bulletin of the New York Public Library 20: 573–574.
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i "History of the New York Public Library". nypl.org. Retrieved June 12, 2011.
8. ^ "Editorial: Free Public Libraries".The New York Times. January 14, 1872. Retrieved May 19, 2011.
9. ^ Harry Miller Lydenberg (July and August 1916). "History of the New York Public Library: Part III". Bulletin of the New York Public Library 20: 688.; A Superb Gift
10. ^ Harry Miller Lydenberg (July and August 1916). "History of the New York Public Library: Part III". Bulletin of the New York Public Library 20: 685–689.
11. ^ Harry Miller Lydenberg (July and August 1916). "History of the New York Public Library". Bulletin of the New York Public Library: Part III 20: 690, 694–695.
12. ^ "Lent Eleven Million Books". New-York Tribune. April 14, 1901. p. 16.
13. ^ "Carnegie Offers City Big Gift".New-York Tribune. March 16, 1901. pp. 1–2.
14. ^ "Library Plans All Right Now: Carnegie Approves Controller Coler Contracts". The Evening World. September 9, 1901. p. 3.; Carnegie Approves the Contracts, Mr. Carnegie's Libraries (New York Times September 10, 1901)
15. ^ Van Slyck (1995), pp. 113–114
16. ^ Andrew Myers, "Washington Irving and the Astor Library," Bulletin of the New York Public Library, 1968, Vol. 72 Issue 6, pp 378–399
17. ^ Gilbert W. Chapman, "Edward G. Freehafer: An Appreciation," Bulletin of the New York Public Library, 1970, Vol. 74 Issue 10, pp 625–628
18. ^ Phyllis Dain, "'A Coral Island': A Century of Collection Development in the Research Libraries of the New York Public Library," Biblion, 1995, Vol. 3 Issue 2, pp 5–75
19. ^ Phyllis Dain, "Public Library Governance and a Changing New York City," Libraries & Culture, March 1991, Vol. 26 Issue 2, pp 219–250
20. ^ Edward Kasinec, and Robert H. Davis, Jr., "Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich (1847–1909) and His Library," Journal of the History of Collections, 1990, Vol. 2 Issue 2, pp 135–142
21. ^ Alice C. Hudson, "The Library's Map Division Goes to War, 1941–45,"Biblion, 1995, Vol. 3 Issue 2, pp 126–147
22. ^ "Public Library Plans". New-York Tribune. December 5, 1897. p. 13.;'Winners of the Prize'
23. ^ a b "The New York Public Library".The Sun. April 9, 1911. p. 9.
24. ^ "50,000 People at the Dedication of the City's Great Library; Taft and Dix Take Part". The Evening World. May 23, 1911. p. 1.; New Public Library Formally Dedicated
25. ^ "Our New Library Dedicated". The New York Sun. May 24, 1911. p. 5.
26. ^ a b Pogrebin, Robin (December 20, 2007). "A Centennial Face-Lift for a Beaux-Arts Gem". New York Times. Archived from the original on January 16, 2012. Retrieved January 6, 2012.
27. ^ "Sculptor Potter Hurt". The Evening World. November 2, 1911. p. 9.; cf.Cupid Turns Him from Study of Theology to Art, The Library Lions
28. ^ Dain, Phyllis (1977-10). "Harry M. Lydenberg and American Library Resources: A Study in Modern Library Leadership". The Library Quarterly 47(4): 451–469. Retrieved December 31, 2011.
29. ^ "New York Public Library". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. September 16, 2007.
30. ^ "The New York Public Library Will Restore its Fifth Avenue Building's Historic Facade / Project to be Completed in Time for Building's 2011 Centennial," 2007-12-20, at the New York Public Library Web site, accessed December 20, 2007.
31. ^ "New York Public Library gets a ,0M facelift for 100th birthday," New York Daily News, 2011-02-02, accessed February 5, 2011.
32. ^ Robin Pogrebin, "A Centennial Face-Lift for a Beaux-Arts Gem," New York Times accessed March 30, 2009.
33. ^ Marc Santora, "After Big Gift, a New Name for the Library," New York Public Library website, April 23, 2008.
34. ^ "Science, Industry and Business Library", June 19, 2003 Press Release, New York Public Library. Retrieved June 13, 2010.
35. ^ a b Taylor, Kate, "That Mighty Sorting Machine Is Certainly One for the Books", article, New York Times, April 21, 2010, retrieved same day
36. ^ Meredith Schwartz, "NYPL, Brooklyn Merge Technical Services," Library Journal February 22, 2013.
37. ^ Norman Oder, "One NYPL," Many Questions, Library Journal, November 1, 2007.
38. ^ Oder, Norman. "NYPL Reorganization Coming", Library Journal (October 1, 2007). Vol. 132, Issue 16, p. 12.
39. ^ Sherman, Scott (December 19 2011)."Upheaval at the New York Public Library". The Nation.
40. ^ New York Public Library + Google
41. ^ Rothstein, Edward. "If Books Are on Google, Who Gains and Who Loses?" New York Times. November 14, 2005.
42. ^ Library and Information Technology Association, "Contracting for Content in a Digital World"
43. ^ Chan, Sewell. "Sale of Former Donnell Library Is Back on Track", New York Times. July 9, 2009.
44. ^ a b LeClerc, Paul. "Answers About the New York Public Library, Part 3", New York Times. December 12, 2008.
45. ^ Oder, Norman. "NYPL: Synergy on the Way?" Library Journal (February 1, 2005), Vol. 130, Issue 2
46. ^ "NYPL head = Natl. archivist; New Catalog, Restructuring", Library Journal (August 1, 2009, Vol. 134, Issue 13.
47. ^ "American Library Association: The Nation's Largest Libraries". Ala.org. Retrieved March 17, 2009.
48. ^ "2010 Annual Report". Annualreports.nypl.org. Retrieved 2012-11-24. Unknown parameter |file= ignored (help)
49. ^ The New York Public Library. "Get Help / Ask NYPL | The New York Public Library". Nypl.org. Retrieved 2012-11-24.
50. ^ "Library Phone Answerers Survive the Internet". The New York Times. June 19, 2006.
51. ^ The New York Public Library. "Welcome to The New York Public Library". Nypl.org. Retrieved 2012-11-24.
52. ^ "New York Public Library Catalog". Leopac.nypl.org. Retrieved 2012-11-24.
53. ^ The New York Public Library (2012-11-13). "Articles and Databases | The New York Public Library". Nypl.org. Retrieved 2012-11-24.
54. ^ The New York Public Library (2012-11-13). "Articles and Databases | The New York Public Library". Nypl.org. Retrieved 2012-11-24.
55. ^ The New York Public Library (2012-11-13). "Articles and Databases | The New York Public Library". Nypl.org. Retrieved 2012-11-24.
56. ^ The New York Public Library (2012-11-13). "Articles and Databases | The New York Public Library". Nypl.org. Retrieved 2012-11-24.
57. ^ The New York Public Library (2012-11-13). "Articles and Databases | The New York Public Library". Nypl.org. Retrieved 2012-11-24.
58. ^ The New York Public Library (2012-11-13). "Articles and Databases | The New York Public Library". Nypl.org. Retrieved 2012-11-24.
59. ^ "NYPL Digital Gallery | Home". Digitalgallery.nypl.org. Retrieved 2012-11-24.
60. ^ [1][dead link]
61. ^ "Best of the Web: Categories: Research (Best Research Site)". Archimuse.com. Retrieved 2012-11-24.
62. ^ [2][dead link]
63. ^ Slotnik, Daniel E. "Library System Resolves Catalog Problems", New York Times. July 20, 2009.
64. ^ "Simon &Schuster:David McCullough". Archived from the original on September 29, 2006. Retrieved October 12, 2007
65. ^ "Who You Gonna Call?".Improv Everywhere. 2010-05-18. Retrieved 2012-11-24.
66. ^ The New York Public Library (2012-11-13). "Selected Movies and Television Shows Filmed at The New York Public Library | The New York Public Library". Nypl.org. Retrieved 2012-11-24.
67. ^ [3][dead link]
68. ^ [4][dead link]
69. ^ The New York Public Library (2012-11-13). "Directory of Special Libraries and Information Centers | The New York Public Library". Nypl.org. Retrieved 2012-11-24.