New York Public Library Research Articles

The Legacy of Carleton Sprague Smith: Pan-American Holdings in the Music Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

Carleton Sprague Smith (1905-1994) was chief of the Music Division of the New York Public Library (NYPL) from 1931 to 1959. The first fifteen of those years are remembered as a period of economic turmoil and war, yet Smith-through his vision, broad education, and keen intellect-helped turn the challenges of his time into great opportunities for the New York Public Library and the communities which it served. While chief of the Music Division, he helped expand the repertoire of music available to the public, and through public programs and special projects he enlarged the audiences for a variety of repertoires, such as early music from England and America. He not only promoted awareness of the music of the United States, but as a diplomat he also facilitated cultural exchanges with Latin American countries, and enhanced the Music Division's holdings of music from those nations. In 1932, Smith conceived of a music museum in New York City;1 through his dogged persistence, this idea was expanded and realized as the Library and Museum of the Performing Arts, which opened at Lincoln Center in 1965.2 Smith was directly responsible for the creation of the Americana Section and Dance Collection within the Music Division. The Americana Section (now known as the American Music Collection) has steadily grown into an indispensable resource for American music history, with holdings that now include the twentieth-century score collection of the American Music Center-the official music information center of the United States -and archival collections devoted to jazz, popular music, and musical theater. Ultimately, the world-class Dance Collection-now the Jerome Robbins Dance Division-became independent of, and on an equal administrative footing with, the Music Division. A founding member of both the Music Library Association (MLA) and the American Musico-logical Society (AMS), Smith became president of each organization, from 1937 to 1939 and from 1939 to 1940, respectively. Smith was a consultant in the formation of the International Music Council of UNESCO, and in the planning for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, as well as serving on the boards of directors of several cultural institutions and performing organizations. Carleton Sprague Smith's achievements in collection development-and, indeed, in library development-were made possible partly by his upbringing in homes (the family had residences in Manhattan and in Washington, Connecticut) where literature and the arts were cherished, and by his broad and deep education, which included music but ranged far beyond it. His father, Clarence Bishop Smith, was a New York admiralty lawyer, and his mother, Catharine Cook Smith, was an author of two books,3 and a patron of the arts.4 (The following short summary of Carleton Sprague Smith's education is drawn from a tribute by Israel J. Katz, who drew from an unpublished essay by Smith himself.5) At the age of twelve, Carleton Sprague Smith began studying flute at the Institute for Musical Art (later to become the Juilliard School) with a student of Georges Barrere. In 1922, after graduating from secondary school (the Hackley School for Boys in Tarrytown, New York), he continued flute studies with Louis Fleury in Paris while studying French at the Ecole Yersin. He entered Harvard University the following year and broadened his study of music history and literature, while studying flute with Georges Laurent, the principal flutist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He also continued his study of French language and literature, but his studies moved increasingly in a new direction-Spanish and Portuguese literature and history. He enrolled at the University of Vienna in 1928, and in 1930 completed his doctorate in history with a dissertation in German on the seventeenth-century Spanish Habsburgs. In January of 1931, after his return to New York, Dr. Smith accepted two concurrent appointments-as an instructor in the History Department of Columbia University, and as chief of the Music Division in the Reference Department of the New York Public Library. …

What you see before your eyes: documenting Raphael Lemkin's life by exploring his archival Papers, 1900–1959

There's a serious risk that a commemoration of Raphael Lemkin's work will not become an act of remembering, but an act of forgetting, obliterating what was so singular about his achievement. (Micha...

“Gotta Get a Gimmick”: The Burlesque Career of Millie De Leon

can pull all stops out Till they call cops out Grind your behind till you're banned But ya gotta get a gimmick If you wanna get a hand .... You Gotta Get a (Sondheim) Although Stephen Sondheim's lyrics were sung by a fictitious burlesque performer of late 1920s in musical Gypsy, they may have just as easily come from mouth of Millie De Leon several decades earlier. De Leon, billed as Girl in Blue, would have been more accurately billed as Gimmick Girl. Arrested numerous times from 1903 to 1915, Mlle. De Leon was a master of stirring public scandal and thereby gaining free publicity at a time when newspapers were clamoring for sensational stories. Over seventy-five newspaper clippings at Theatre Collection of New York Public Library (NYPL) chronicle De Leon's success at attracting both press and an audience with her controversial behavior inside and outside of theatre. Extolled as the first real queen of American (Toll 230), burlesque's first truly national sex symbol (Toll 226), the reigning burlesque 'classic' (Zeidman 13), and the best in her line (New York Clipper 30), De Leon is too often forgotten by theatre and dance historians.1 Well before Gypsy Rose Lee started stripping with style, Millie De Leon became a prominent figure in battle over public decency in entertainment. Among other interesting facets, Millie De Leon's career provides a provocative glimpse at character of burlesque dancing in early twentieth century, limits of so-called public decency at that time, and use of newspapers as a tool for sensationalistic self-promotion. More importantly, this study demonstrates that De Leon deserves to be remembered for her role as a figure (quite literally) in public spotlight. The Origin of Cooch Dancing in Burlesque history of American burlesque begins with a Greek classic and ends with a leg show, according to Bernard Sobel (Burleycue 3). Although parody, original intent of burlesque, can be traced back to Aristophanes, nearest cousin to modem burlesque is linked to Lydia Thompson and her British Blondes, who brought Americans a combination of clever parody and shapely feminine legs in 1860s and '70s. As with music halls and vaudeville, burlesque of 1890s incorporated a variety of entertainment, including comic sketches, songs, and dances. However, by turn of century, became scandalous, with advent of belly dance, or dance, as it came to be called. The advent of cooch was integral to decline of burlesque; by mid to late 1920s, burlesque had degenerated to little more than raunchy jokes and striptease.2 Cooch dancing first caught attention of American audiences when Little Egypt and others danced at Chicago World's Fair of 1893. The fair featured exhibits of various world cultures, ranging from primitive African and Indian cultures to civilized White City. Somewhere in between lay Middle Eastern and Asian exhibits, complete with belly dancers. In his book Horrible Prettiness, Robert C. Allen explains what made cooch dance taboo to American audiences: The cooch, or cootch, or hootchy-kootchy phenomenon-as belly dancing quickly came to be called-points out contradictory nature of fair's construction of femininity. Inside White City, women's accomplishments were granted a more prominent place than at any previous international exposition.... At same time, on other, side of fair, all that had been suppressed in White City's representation of female body as frozen, solemn, and chaste reemerged in undulations of cooch dancer... a reminder of atavistic nature of women in a semi-civilized state. (228) Burleque and cooch appeared to be a perfect match. Very quickly, cooch dancer became a highly popular feature of burlesque, and imitators of Little Egypt flourished with their Oriental dances and Salome dances of seven veils. …

The Croatian Collection at the New York Public Library

It is generally known that the New York Public Library (NYPL) is one of the most important repositories of Slavic intellectual and cultural documents, literature, and scholarly writings outside Europe. The specifics of the Croatian collection are not so well known, however. In an attempt to provide scholars with an overview of the NYPL's resources, this report describes the holdings of three of the Library's research divisions: the Slavic and Baltic Division, the General Research Division, and the Map Division, which are located at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street in Manhattan. Although the divisions function autonomously and are at a physical remove from each other within the institution, their Croatian holdings are uniformly cataloged within one electronic database (CATNYP), which can be accessed via the web at http://catnyp.nypl.org. This article was originally published by the Croatian Academy of America Inc. in the Journal of Croatian Studies, 1997, Vol. 38, ...

The Eurasian Nationalities Collection in Non-Slavic Languages Held by the Slavic and Baltic Division of the New York Public Library

The Slavic and Baltic Division of the New York Public Library (NYPL) possesses a valuable collection of pamphlets, books and journals which numbers approximately three thousand items in various languages of the Eurasian nationalities. Bibliographical records of the collection were completed in the 1960s by Edward Allworth, Sakine Berengian, David Nissman and Azamat Altay. Each record contains bibliographic information in original script or in transliteration and a short annotation in English.

MARGIN OF EXCELLENCE:The Development Office at the New York Public Library

People are talking about fundraising for libraries with much greater frequency and regularity than ever before, and the New York Public Library (NYPL) has become the institution they point to when the topic is discussed. In a recent interview, Jennifer Herring, Vice President for Development at NYPL, talked about the broad scope of the library's development effort and its mission to create “the margin of excellence” for NYPL.

MARTINO DA MODENA'S FIRST WORK?: A BOOK OF HOURS IN THE SPENCER COLLECTION

script, in Bologna, dates from 1477, and he assisted his more famous father, Giorgio d'Allegmana, on unspecified miniatures in two psalters in Modena in 1473 and 1474.1 A missal in Parma, completed by 1471, re mains the only generally accepted early manuscript by Martino.2 Other proposed works from this period are an illumination of Daniel in a Mariegola dei Merciaidi dated 1471, a missal in Milan, a Book of Hours in Venice, and a psalter in London.3 An unpublished Book of Hours in New York, attributed to Martino by Levi-D'An cona, bears close stylistic similarities to many of these illuminations and, therefore, provides evidence that all are by the same hand (Spencer Collection, New York Pub lic Library; see Figs. 1-3).4 The Spencer Book of Hours contains five large historiated initials and eight small ones. The first large initial depicts the Madonna and Child in a landscape (Matins, fol. 7v; see Fig. 1). The elaborate floral border contains in each corner a

OCLC News

The New York Public Library (NYPL) has become the first institution to link its internal network with the new OCLC telecommunications network using the X.25 Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) standard. The telecommunications link will connect NYPL research libraries and branch libraries to the OCLC system for cataloging and resource sharing.

PRESERVING THE EPHEMERAL: NEW ACCESS TO ARTISTS' FILES, VERTICAL FILES AND SCRAPBOOKS

Previous articleNext article No AccessPRESERVING THE EPHEMERAL: NEW ACCESS TO ARTISTS' FILES, VERTICAL FILES AND SCRAPBOOKSMilan HughstonMilan Hughston Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Art Documentation Volume 9, Number 4Winter 1990 Published for the Art Libraries Society of North America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/adx.9.4.27948270 Views: 11Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright © 1990 ARLIS/NAPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Kai Alexis Smith Digitizing Ephemera Reloaded: A Digitization Plan for an Art Museum Library, Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America 35, no.22 (Oct 2016): 329–338.https://doi.org/10.1086/688732

Online Public Access to Microform Records at the New York Public Library

Le reseau de bibliotheques publiques de New York offre un acces en ligne aux references bibliographiques de microformes, par un systeme connu sous le nom de CATNYP. Des index speciaux permettent au public d'orienter leurs recherches vers des types particuliers de microformes

Microform Resources for Roots Research at the New York Public Library

Cet article presente les sources d'informations disponibles sur microformes concernant les recherches genealogiques en general, et notamment a la New York Public Library

The Science Fiction Microfilming Project at the New York Public Library

Les problemes de cout, de catalogage, et de la gestion d'ensemble d'un vaste projet de microfilmage d'une collection unique et fragile d'ouvrages et de periodiques de science-fiction a la bibliotheque publique de New-York sont envisages. Les moyens mis en œuvre pour completer cette collection grâce a de nouvelles acquisitions sont egalement presentes

The Mellon Microform Master Project at the New York Public Library

L'archivage sur microformes prend actuellement dans cette bibliotheque deux directions. Un controle et un acces plus fiable aux collections concretises par des signalements, des mises a jour et la participation au reseau RLIN seront mis en place ainsi qu'une participation accrue aux activites normatives nationales dans ce domaine

The New York Public Library Register of Microform Masters: Monographs

Catalogue sur microfiches des monographies de 1938 a 1983. L'histoire du catalogue et de la redaction de ses entrees est retracee; les acces actuels du catalogue sont decrits

Statistics in Army Research Development and Testing

Statistics in Army Research Development and Testing

Gallery Notes

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY and the Brooklyn Museum are holding exhibitions of drawings, etchings and lithographs by the late “Pop” Hart. The Downtown Gallery's showing of Hart's work has recently closed, although this gallery is showing an aquatint and four of his lithographs, including the splendid Mexican Orchestra, in the annual exhibition of the American Print Makers of which Hart was one of the organizers. No man who uses a humorous nickname in place of his real one to such an extent that he even uses it to sign his work, could be anything else but a man with endearing qualities for many friends, and a man without pretentious. This personal amiability and casualness creeps into all his work; it is in his generous, free lines, and in his unconventional use of wash and color to accent his forms. In his industrious travelling, in Spain, Morocco, Mexico, the West Indies, and in the Southern states, he watched human doings and he saw that they are as full of laziness and content and accidental humor, as they are full of drama and destiny, and he preferred them on their lighter side. It is this lighter side he never tired of setting on paper, and for this, as well as for his skill, we should be grateful to him.