Trustees & Staff

Trustees

Byron Bell
Laurence Bergreen
Charles G. Berry
Ralph S. Brown Jr.
Robert A. Caro
Lyn Chase
Henry S.F. Cooper Jr.
William J. Dean
Benita Eisler
George L.K. Frelinghuysen
James Q. Griffin
Shirley Hazzard
John K. Howat
Ellen M. Iseman
Anthony D. Knerr
Jenny Lawrence
Linn Cary Mehta
Jean Parker Phifer
Susan L. Robbins
Theodore C. Rogers
Constance R. Roosevelt
Daniel M. Rossner
Jeannette Watson Sanger
Barbara H. Stanton

Staff

FULL-TIME
Mark Bartlett
Susan Chan
Keren Fleshler
Jane Goldstein
Endang Hertanto
Janet Howard
Steven McGuirl
John McKeown
Thomas Meaney
Laura O'Keefe
Patrick Rayner
Ingrid Richter
Diane Srebnick
Brandi Tambasco

PART-TIME
Harry Abarca
Ingrid Abrams
Juliet Arkin
Joseph Cahill
Arevig Caprielian
Timothy Conley
Sara Elliott Holliday
Marie Honan
Lauren Kratz
Matthew J. Lentz
Randi Levy
Kira Limer
Pierre-Antoine Louis
Sayeed Manick
Georgiana Mukasa
George MuÒoz
Sarah Murphy
Sophie Novack
Jessica Pigza
Lucy Ross
Peggy Levin Salwen
Linnea Holman Savapoulas
Carrie Silberman
Matthew Snee
Grace Elaine Suh
Tinamarie Vella
Carolyn Waters
Stanley Weinman

VOLUNTEERS
Jules Cohn
Edmée Reit

Library Committees

(June 2006 - May 2007)

Executive Committee

Charles G. Berry, Chair
George L.K. Frelinghuysen, Treasurer
Daniel M. Rossner, Secretary
Ralph S. Brown, Jr.
Barbara H. Stanton

Audit Committee

Ralph S. Brown Jr., Chair
George L.K. Frelinghuysen
Daniel M. Rossner

Finance Committee

George L.K. Frelinghuysen, Chair
Mark Bartlett
Ralph S. Brown Jr.
James Q. Griffin
Anthony D. Knerr
Daniel M. Rossner
Barbara H. Stanton

Nominating Committee

Jean Parker Phifer, Chair
Henry S.F. Cooper Jr.
George L.K. Frelinghuysen
Jenny Lawrence
Linn Cary Mehta
Jeannette Watson Sanger
Barbara H. Stanton

Development Committee

Charles G. Berry, Chair
Mark Bartlett
Lyn Chase
William J. Dean
George L.K. Frelinghuysen
John K. Howat
Edward C. Lord
Roger Pasquier
Susan L. Robbins
Theodore C. Rogers
Daniel M. Rossner
Jeannette Watson Sanger
Diane Srebnick
Barbara H. Stanton

Building and Renovation Committee

Jean Parker Phifer, Chair
Mark Bartlett
Byron Bell
Ralph S. Brown Jr.
Henry S.F. Cooper Jr.
William J. Dean
Jane Goldstein
Barbara H. Stanton

Lecture and Exhibition Committee

Jeannette Watson Sanger, Chair
Mark Bartlett
Lyn Chase
Henry S. F. Cooper Jr.
William J. Dean
Sara Elliott Holliday
Jenny Lawrence
Barbara H. Stanton

Book Committee

Benita Eisler, Chair
Marylin Bender Altschul
Richard Aspinwall
Mark Bartlett
Lucienne Bloch
Peter Cannon
Lyn Chase
Jules Cohn
Henry S.F. Cooper Jr.
Margaret Edsall
Helen Evarts
Linda Fritzinger
Malcolm Goldstein
Shirley Hazzard
Steven McGuirl
Sarah Plimpton
Daniel M. Rossner
Cynthia Saltzman

Children's Library Committee

Susan L. Robbins, Chair
Andrea Labov Clark
Peggy Ellis
Carolyn Goodrich
Jan Grossman
Pat Langer
Randi Levy
Louise Monjo
Jenny Price
Jeannette Watson Sanger
Carrie Silberman
Edra Ziesk

Member Relations

Linn Cary Mehta, Co-Chair
Jane Goldstein, Co-Chair
Mark Bartlett
Ralph S. Brown Jr.
Jules Cohn
Margaret Edsall
Ellen Feldman
Sara Elliott Holliday
Maggie Jackson
Edward C. Lord
Nancy Preston
Daniel M. Rossner
Kenneth Wang

Project Cicero Organizing Committee

Laureine Greenbaum, Co-chair
Susan L. Robbins, Co-chair
Silda Wall, Co-chair
Lynn Abraham
Rona Berg
DeDe Brown
Andrea Labov Clark
Kimberly David
Roz Edelman
Tory Edelman
Emma Edelson
Peggy Ellis
Claudia Gelfond
Linda Gelfond
Pat Langer
JoAnn Goodspeed
Penny Gorman
Carolyn McGown
Ellen Hay Newman
Lily Newman
Sophie Novack
Cynthia Rothman
Jeryl Rothschild
Carrie Silberman
Elyssa Spitzer

New York City Book Awards Committee

Constance R. Roosevelt, Chair
Lucienne Bloch
Barbara Cohen
Jules Cohn
Joan K. Davidson
Ellen Feldman
Martin Filler
Roger Pasquier
Elizabeth Barlow Rogers
Daniel M. Rossner
Meg Wolitzer

Library Awards

(June 2006-May 2007)

THE ELEVENTH ANNUAL
NEW YORK CITY BOOK AWARDS, 2006

The New York City Book Awards, established in 1996, honor books of literary quality or historical importance that, in the opinion of the selection committee, evoke the spirit or enhance appreciation of New York City.

• Award for Art: Rebecca Zurier
  Picturing the City: Urban Vision and the Ashcan School
  (University of California Press)

   

• Award for Social History: Andrew Dolkart
  Biography of a Tenement House in New York City: An Architectural History of 97 Orchard Street
  (University of Virginia Press)

   

• Award for Architecture: Jewel Stern and John A. Stuart
  Ely Jacques Kahn, Architect: Beaux-Arts to Modernism in New York
  (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.)

THE FIFTH ANNUAL
YOUNG WRITERS AWARDS, 2007

The Young Writers Awards honor excellent writing by young Library members. Entries include essays, short stories, and poems that evoke the spirit of New York City.

• Third and Fourth Grade Poetry, Winner: Billie Fabrikant, "Life"
• Third and Fourth Grade Prose, Winner: Sydney A. Jennison, "Double Fan"

   

• Third and Fourth Grade Prose, Honorable Mention: Lucy Tantum, "Moving to New York City"

   

• Fifth and Sixth Grade Poetry, Winner: Theo Naylor, "Daybreak"
• Fifth and Sixth Grade Prose, Winner: Jonathan Silverman, "Deep in the Heart of a Great Apple"

   

• Fifth and Sixth Grade Poetry, Honorable Mention: David Mokhtarzadeh, "Riding a Big Apple"
• Fifth and Sixth Grade Poetry, Honorable Mention: Simone Amar Ouimet, "Revolving"
• Fifth and Sixth Grade Prose, Honorable Mention: Theo Naylor, "Iandry"

• Seventh and Eighth Grade Prose, Winner: Dan Rubins, "A Terrible Case of Hobophobia"

Report of the Chairman

Charles G. Berry
(June 2006 - May 2007)

It is a pleasure to report to you on some of the important events of the past year, and to reflect on some of what the coming year may hold in store.

This has been a year of both stability and progress for us. We have survived renovations and carried on with our broad range of programs and service to our members with energy, enthusiasm, and imagination. This has been a testament to the work of our dedicated staff and also shows the remarkable support of our Board and the interest and involvement of our membership.

We have been very fortunate to have the capable and caring leadership of our Head Librarian, Mark Bartlett. Above all, he has appreciated and fostered the sense of community that makes our Library so unique and such a resource and pleasure for us all.

Our dedicated Board members continue to provide exceptional service, each contributing in significant ways to our success. I would like to single out a few for particular thanks.

First is Barbara Stanton, who has as much institutional knowledge of the Library as virtually anyone. She has spearheaded our development efforts in the past and, in a quiet but effective way, steered so many of the Library's activities with her tact, good judgment, and good cheer. We are most fortunate to have her steady hand and intelligent experience.

I have also greatly appreciated the help of Dan Rossner and George Frelinghuysen. Dan's cheerful, energetic, and thoughtful input has been invaluable. A reader with an encyclopedic range of interests, he recently assumed the chair of our Book Committee, which was capably held for so many years by Benita Eisler. George, who stepped in two years ago to fill the large shoes of longtime Treasurer Jim Griffin, brings a consistently prudent sense of fiscal management that will serve us well as we undertake the expenditures to continue serving our membership's growing needs.

There are a few other Board members whose remarkable contributions I would like to note. Susan Robbins chairs our Children's Library Committee and is one of the founders and leaders of the wonderful charitable program incubated here at the Library, Project Cicero. This program, now in its seventh year, conducts an annual drive to collect books and distribute them to classrooms in public schools throughout New York's five boroughs. To date, Project Cicero has put more than one million books in the hands of more than 180,000 public-school children. Not all of our members are aware of this important project, but it is a wonderful service to the city and a program most fitting for a library that has dedicated readers at its core.

Jeannette Watson Sanger heads our Lecture and Exhibition Committee and, with the imaginative help of Events Coordinator Sara Elliott Holliday, helps ensure that our programs are lively, instructive and inspiring. Jean Parker Phifer has done tireless work as chair of the Building and Renovation Committee, and, with particular help from fellow architect Byron Bell, has not only supervised the extensive renovations of the past two years but also provided key input for our important plans for future expansion. Connie Roosevelt chairs our New York City Book Awards jury, which selects for recognition a fascinating range of fiction and nonfiction books from the scores published about the city each year. Linn Cary Mehta has done an excellent job, with Assistant Head Librarian Jane Goldstein, leading our Member Relations Committee, which serves as a sounding board for the readers and writers who use the Library most frequently.

We were pleased to welcome two new Board members in 2006: Ellen Iseman and Laurence Bergreen. Ellen, who chairs the Library Committee at the Yale Club, brings great energy and broad intellectual and artistic interests to our Lecture and Exhibition Committee and Development Committee. Larry is the author of books on subjects as diverse as Irving Berlin, Magellan, and Mars. We eagerly anticipate the publication of his new book on Marco Polo and its predicted adaptation into a film.

We have also been blessed by remarkable philanthropy from our members. In addition to the continued exemplary generosity of our Board, we were delighted to receive two significant gifts from Deborah Pease, a poet of distinction who was publisher of the Paris Review and has been a loyal member for many years. We also received bequests from the estates of members June Teufel and Robert C. Kennedy. And in June 2007, we were excited to announce a very substantial gift from Professor Ada Peluso and her brother, Romano Peluso, in honor of their parents, Ignazio and Assunta Peluso. Our exhibition gallery, which will officially open in the new year, will be named in their memory.

A few words about the future are in order. We are dedicated to continuing to serve our members. This means continuing to develop our collection and furnish books that our members want to read. It means continuing with our series of lectures, readings, and exhibitions that serve not only our literary appetites but also our interests in history and current events. We also aim importantly to continue and expand our service to the remarkable community of writers who are - and always have been - such an important part of what we are about. We have in mind establishing a Writers' Council to recognize and involve our member authors, perhaps with an annual event featuring recent publications by this distinguished group. Valuable suggestions for launching this program have been received by various Board members, including Linn Cary Mehta, Barbara Stanton, Lyn Chase (former chair of the Academy of American Poets and longtime loyal supporter of the Library) and Jenny Lawrence (an editor and co-author, with Henry Cooper, of our delightful 250th anniversary book).

Eager as we are to preserve our heritage and the unique aspects of our building, collection, and services, we cannot simply maintain the status quo. We will grow with our membership and with the times. Among other priorities, we need to attract more younger members. We have had great success in growing our Children's Library and its programs, and we are pleased to include many young families among our members. But I would also like to see more young adults among our readers, writers, researchers and regular users of the Library. There is more we can do to attract and serve these members, who will necessarily be custodians of our future success.

An important aspect of developing the Library is broadening the representation on our Board. We will seek opportunities for greater diversity of all kinds, representative of the diversity that characterizes the great city we love and serve.

We also need to take a prudent approach to the physical needs and potential of our beautiful building. Our recent renovations have been invigorating, but they have also highlighted increasing space constraints. We need to address the need for increased stack space in thieh building, offsite storage possibilities, wheelchair access, and more office space. In due course, we hope to be able to pursue the plans we set for ourselves a few years ago to add a floor to the building and fill in the lightwell, but we can only do that with sufficient funds and careful planning.

We also need to build our collections and services with an eye towards taking advantage of all that technology has to offer. We have a remarkable resource in Ingrid Richter, our Head of Systems, who is in charge of our computer systems and is also the webmaster primarily responsible for our attractive, useful, and increasingly busy website. The Internet age is not going to destroy libraries, but its amazing resources are already changing them. In fact, the Internet multiplies the opportunities for readers, hugely facilitates research, and opens up wonderful new avenues for expanding the pleasure and improvement we all derive from reading.

Our venerable Library has succeeded for 253 years because it has been consistent in its mission of serving its readers and writers and responsive to their changing tastes and needs. I am sure that in the years ahead we will accommodate our members by providing electronic resources that will increasingly become part of our everyday lives.

Italo Calvino wrote, "Reading is approaching something that is just coming into being." In many ways, the same can be said about our Library as we progress in our 254th year.

Respectfully submitted,
Charles G. Berry, Chairman

Report of the Librarian

Mark Bartlett
(June 2006 - May 2007)

There are a lot of people in the reading room; but one is not aware of them. They are in the books. Sometimes they move in the pages, like sleepers who turn over between two dreams. Ah, how good it is to be among reading people. Why are they not always like that?

- Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

Every three weeks the department heads, the Assistant Head Librarian, and I meet in the Marshall Room. These are very productive meetings in which we update each other on happenings in the departments, share procedure or policy changes that will affect services to members, and solve problems. This helps me keep abreast of everything going on in the building, and usually shows how healthy an institution we are and how many interesting things are happening.

 
Member Services and Staff Developments

The style of the Circulation Department and its relationship to members and the public sets the tone for the whole Library. The Circulation Desk is the front line of the action in the building. It is where our members book writing rooms, ask about a volume missing from the shelf, or tell us that the Members Room is too warm or too cold. The desk is also where the majority of the phone calls come into the Library. In preparing this report, I came across our Library's annual report from the year 1900. In bold, red lettering on the cover we announced "Telephone Connection". 107 years ago our first telephone line was operating in our University Place building. Phone calls and every other activity have increased a lot since then. In 2006-07, the most significant increase was of the staff.

This January I was very pleased to appoint Jane Goldstein to the position of Assistant Head Librarian. Jane first came to the Library 35 years ago as a Circulation Assistant. She has worked in the Library under four different head librarians and was the Head of Circulation for nine years. As well as sitting on Library committees and working at the reference and circulation desks, Jane now helps with the with the myriad administrative functions of a modern Library --- from maintaining personnel files and coordinating insurance and benefit policies to responding to member concerns and complaints.

With Jane's promotion to Assistant Head Librarian, Patrick Rayner became the new Circulation Supervisor. He is doing a fine job managing his staff and the varied circulation services. I also know from watching Patrick at the front desk that he is one of our very best at reader's advisory, the age-old library tradition of putting a reader in touch with that next book. Many a member will ask at the front desk "Where's Patrick? He knows what I read."

Many new staff joined the Library this year: Tim Conley, Matthew Lentz, Brandi Tambasco, Carolyn Waters and Lawrence Yates (Circulation), Ingrid Abrams (Children's Library), Lucy Ross (Systems), and Sarah Murphy and Laura O'Keefe (Cataloging). The Library is proud to have two staff members who recently finished their Master's degrees in Library and Information science. Congratulations to Keren Fleshler and Jessica Pigza, who both graduated this past December. An exciting development in the Acquisitions Department was Jules Cohn coming on board as a volunteer, expanding his longstanding work with the Library's Book Committee and working closely with Steve McGuirl and Janet Howard on book selection.

In 2006, just over 80,702 books were checked out, down only slightly from the previous year. The Library's two weeks of being closed in July, the extended summer loan period, and the renovation conditions no doubt had an effect on our book circulation count in 2006. Among the many new lobby books, such fiction titles as Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise, Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children, Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics and Ruth Rendell's End in Tears were very popular, but literature, the classics, and non-fiction from our stacks continue to circulate heavily. Our interlibrary loan service, ably handled by Brandi Tambasco, was busy this past year. We borrowed 123 books and journal articles from over 50 different libraries in the country. We also helped 43 other libraries by lending 79 items. The most requested items are our mystery novels, particularly British mysteries, closely followed by books about New York.

As of May, we have 2,983 active memberships. Our attitude of service orientation and friendliness, as well as improved communication with members, results in positive feedback and support from Library members.

Each year we receive many gift books from members. This year we added 766 gift volumes to the collection. One very special gift book was a pristine 17th-century New Testament in Greek; it was generously donated by longtime member Marion Edel. The Bible is bound in vellum and was printed in Amsterdam in 1678 by Louis (1604-1670) and Daniel (1626-1680) Elzevir, members of a family of much-sought-after printers.

Our modest but impressive art collection also received a generous gift this year. When Reference Room renovations required us to remove the portraits and maps there, members William and Molly Ambler arranged for full cleaning and restoration for the portrait of Mr. Ambler's ancestor Frederic De Peyster. De Peyster served as a Library Trustee 1874-1905 and Chairman 1890-1892.

This year we received many substantial donations to the annual appeal. We acknowledge our benefactor Deborah Pease and bequests received from the estates of June Teufel and Robert C. Kennedy. Both Ms. Teufel and Mr. Kennedy were regular users of the Library. Word has spread about the Library's rich archives, and we recently received a generous donation towards the preservation and digitization of our first charging ledger (1789-1792), the record of borrowing activity of Library members including George Washington, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and many others. Our trustee William Dean wrote in his New York Law Journal column "Book Selections of Founding Fathers" that the first ledger is "a priceless but crumbling possession." In the coming year we will be contracting with the Northeast Document Conservation Center in Andover, Massachusetts to preserve and digitize the first ledger. It is an important part of our Library's collection, and a window on the reading tastes and intellectual curiosity of prominent New Yorkers. A long-term goal is to have an Internet image database of the ledger pages, with a text translation of each circulation entry.

The Library has also started to reinvigorate its fundraising and development operations. Diane Srebnick, who first came to the Library in 1997, has been promoted to the position of Development Assistant. Diane prepares acknowledgement letters for gifts received, updates our development database, and manages the many details of our membership records. We plan for a Director of Development to be sitting in the chair next to her very shortly, and hope that our Development Office will flourish over the coming years.

 
Events and Outreach

Special events happen internally by and for our membership, and externally in our relations to other organizations. Last fall I visited the Salem Athenaeum in Massachusetts to attend the Membership Libraries Group, an annual meeting at which the library directors get together to share news, exchange ideas, and talk about the future of our libraries. We discussed the increasing importance of events and programs to our members and for our profile in the community. During the past year, I made it a priority to attend as many Library events as possible and was very pleased with the enthusiastic response and attendance numbers.

Society Library events are succeeding because of the hard work and careful planning of Chair Jeannette Watson Sanger, Events Coordinator Sara Elliott Holliday and the Lecture and Exhibition Committee, and Chair Susan Robbins and the Children's Library Committee. It has been a full year of events, with the range of fiction, literature, drama, history, biography, and politics expected by our members. The Channel 13/WNET co-sponsored Authors Series featured Columbia University Professor and Melville scholar Andrew Delbanco speaking from his Melville: His World and Work; Rafe Esquith, elementary school teacher and author of Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire, leading his student group, the Hobart Shakespeareans; Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert speaking to a large and enthusiastic crowd about her spiritual journey and travels to Italy, Indonesia, and India; humanitarian Paul Rusesabagina, who saved over 1000 people during the Rwandan genocide, speaking passionately about his country, his life experience and the film Hotel Rwanda; and National Book Award-winner Nathaniel Philbrick lecturing from his new history of Plymouth Colony, Mayflower : A Story of Courage, Community and War.

Members' Room lectures were also very successful this past year. Barnet Schechter shared little-known facts about the Draft Riots with his book The Devil's Own Work. Benita Eisler revealed the political face of George Sand, and led a lively debate in response, based on her latest work, Naked in the Marketplace. Eminent Japan scholar Donald Keene, author of The Frog in the Well: Portraits of Japan by Watanabe Kazan, 1793-1841, introduced the life and work of nineteenth-century artist and patriot Kazan. The Library Lectures series finished with a powerful address and question and answer session with Ishmael Beah, former Sierre Leone child soldier and author of the riveting memoir A Long Way Gone.

Our Members' Room is an excellent space not only for lectures and readings, but for other kinds of events as well. In October, Linda Selman led a magical reading of her new play Bunner Sisters, based on the novella by Edith Wharton. Ms. Selman did much of the research for the play and her accompanying remarks at the Library. Award-winning translator and audiobook reader Edith Grossman and George Guidall presented another standing-room-only event on March 1, on the translation of Cervantes' Don Quixote. An inspiring evening of poetry with New York City poet Marie Ponsot and a beautiful Sunday afternoon of words and music, "Over There: The Songs of World War I," with Michael Lasser, Sara Elliott Holliday, and Brenna Sage completed our Members' Room programming for the year.

Highlights of the spring always include the New York City Book Awards ceremony, held this year on May 3, and the Young Writers Awards ceremony, held May 10. The Book Awards bring together winning authors, their publishers, friends, and families with Library members and others in the world of New York books. We were particularly fortunate to have New York City historian (and past winner) Mike Wallace as the host of this year's awards, plus presenters Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, Jules Cohn, and Christopher Gray. The Young Writers Awards, now in its fifth year of honoring prose and poetry by children in member families and schools, was an exciting event involving the winners, their families, and author-judges Dave Johnson, Robert Quackenbush, and Carol Weston. A full list of winners for both sets of awards is on page TK.

I believe that keeping members informed in a timely and thorough fashion is one key to filling the chairs at each event. Starting this January, we publish the newsletter Library Notes five times a year, January/February, March/April, May/Summer, September/October, and November/December. Feedback on the newsletter has been positive. Members have told me that they like reading the regular columns by the Chairman and the Head Librarian. Beyond notification of each event in the newsletter, we have used email to issue event reminders and we have also sent poster invitations to members. In the busy world we live in, varied advertising is important. We think it is working.

 
Exhibitions

Once the long-awaited work on the east elevator was completed, we were pleased to exhibit more books from our rare collection, entitled Bringing Home the Exotic: Europeans as Foreigners 1670-1840. The exhibition opening and reception were held on April 9 and an enthusiastic crowd listened to remarks by Trustee Laurence Bergreen, author of books on Magellan and Marco Polo, and the current exhibition's researcher, Sara Elliott Holliday. The exhibition profiles travel and exploration books by men and women from Western Europe who visited India, the Middle East, Tibet and other distant places. Credit is due to Sara, Rare Book Librarian Arevig Caprielian, and Conservator George Muñoz for their combined efforts. A brief checklist with bibliographic and historical information on the books and their authors accompanies the exhibition.

 
Children's Library and Project Cicero

A major change on the third floor is seven-day-a-week service (September-June) with the two librarians, Carrie Silberman and Randi Levy, and a part-time assistant, Ingrid Abrams. This year more than 122 families with children became Library members. Close to 10,000 of the 80,000 book circulations in the Library were from the Children's collection. Story-telling and author visits continued this past year and featured speakers Maryann MacDonald, Johanna Hurwitz, Elizabeth Winthrop, Chris Raschka, Susan Buckley, and Elspeth Leacock.

No annual report is complete without a mention of the continued success of Project Cicero, which held its seventh annual book drive in March. As stated on its website www.projectcicero.org, Cicero is "an annual non-profit book drive designed to create or supplement school and classroom libraries for children in under-resourced New York City public schools. Cicero is a partnership of New York City parent and student volunteers, The New York Society Library, Children for Children Foundation, Vornado Realty Trust, and The New York Post, in association with the New York City Teaching Fellows and Teach for America New York." The 2007 drive reached 1,000 teachers and distributed 130,000 books, a thirty per cent increase over the previous year. The Library is proud to continue its role in this project.

 
Technology and Electronic Resources

Our collection of electronic resources and full-text databases continues to flourish. Ingrid Richter, Head of Systems, reports that we had close to 700,000 uses of these services from January through December 2006. The online archive of the New York Times continued to be our most heavily used electronic resource. New electronic resources in the past year included Oxford University Press's Dictionary of National Biography, which includes everything in the 2004 print edition (60 volumes), plus the full-text of the original DNB and all of its supplements. Online updates are published three times a year. Also started in the last year was JSTOR: the Scholarly Journal Archive, a robust and searchable full-text archive of hundreds of scholarly periodicals.

This year's technology and library workshops included Online Newspapers, Booking Travel Online, Microsoft Word and Excel, Windows XP Tips and Tricks, Blogs, Podcasts and RSS Feeds, Creating a Web Page, Copying Files and Burning CDs, Advanced Features of Google, and Navigating New York Online. Member comments on the classes continue to be positive - "an invaluable feature of membership in the Society Library", and "definitely worthwhile". I thank our instructors from the last year: Keren Fleshler, Marie Honan, Thomas Meaney, Patrick Rayner, Ingrid Richter and Brandi Tambasco. For the benefit of members unable to attend the classes, and those curious to explore this part of the Library's services, we archive the handouts and slides at http://www.nysoclib.org/tech/index.html

 
Books and Collections

To talk about the growth of our print collection, I can do no better tonight than to quote the Acquisitions Department annual report by librarian Steve McGuirl. Steve writes that his department continues its "commitment to purchasing books demanded by our members, as well as high-quality titles that will be of long-term use - books that will educate, entertain, and perhaps enlighten our members for many years to come. But each year brings thousands of exciting new titles, myriad book requests from members, and interesting recommendations from the Books Committee." 3,995 permanent titles were purchased and 766 gift titles were added to the stacks collection. An additional 524 purchased items included replacements for lost and irreparably damaged books, extra copies of current titles with numerous holds and copies for Children's programs. The Library continues to build on the collection's strengths, and the subject areas where the most purchases were made are consistent with Library tradition: the arts; literature, poetry and criticism; new fiction; biographies; travel; social sciences; politics and government; and American and European history. Acquisitions spending was up approximately 30 percent in 2006 compared to 2005. A critically acclaimed 9-volume set of the selected works of William Hazlitt was purchased early in the year, and selected volumes of the University of California Press's definitive and scholarly Works of John Dryden series supplemented our holdings. A new four-volume edition of Johnson's Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets was also added to the collection, along with the second edition of Encyclopedia Judaica (22 volumes), the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics (4 volumes), the New Dictionary of the History of Ideas (6 volumes), and the first English translation of the monumental Benozit's Dictionary of Artists (14 volumes).

It was ten years ago that Patricia M. Myrer donated $25,000 to the Library's collection budget in memory of her husband Anton Myrer. He was a long-time Library supporter and author of many important works (including the novels Once an Eagle and The Last Convertible), whose themes were America's loss of innocence and the use and abuse of power. The Myrer fund supported the purchase and preservation of quality fiction published until the death of Henry James (1916), as well as serious literary criticism. This year the Library completed the spending of the Myrer fund. The Library expresses its gratitude to the Myrer family for the generous and thoughtful gift in his memory.

Members, readers, writers, and traveling scholars continue to visit the Marshall Room to use our varied special collections. Milica Pavlovic from the University of Zurich was here for several weeks last summer using our Winthrop collection. We are looking forward to receiving a copy of her doctoral thesis, Alchemy in the New World: John Winthrop Jr. and His Library. We welcomed many other researchers working on a variety of projects: a new book on prison reform using our 19th century pamphlets, a descriptive bibliography of all known New Jersey printing before 1801 (the researcher used 16 New Jersey imprints from our rare books collection), and a scholarly paper on books with restricted access.

Last year's annual report noted that the Jewish Museum of Vienna borrowed six volumes of the Library's much treasured Da Ponte Collection for its exhibition Lorenzo Da Ponte: Challenging the New World. A year later I am pleased to let you know that all our Da Ponte holdings are now in the catalog. There are 54 bibliographic titles in the collection, and a greater number of physical volumes (many titles being multivolume sets). Da Ponte's books continue to be used by visiting scholars and researchers and form an important part of the Library's special collections. Our most recent visitor was Katherine Wallington, a Doctoral research student from the Italian Department, University of Cambridge. Ms. Wallington was here in New York for over six weeks.

 
Member Writers

A tradition of the Library is its support of the writing, editing, research, and publishing activity of our members and trustees. The 2006 year list of works written, edited, or translated by our Library trustees and members includes:

• Everett Aison, Artrage
• Louis Auchincloss, The Young Apollo and Other Stories
• Lucienne Bloch, "An Island Education" in the literary journal Raritan
• Catherine Coleman Brawer, The Studio Building, 131 East 66th Street : Centennial of a New York Landmark
• Susan Cheever, American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, & Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work

   

• Bernice Cullinan (co-author), Literature and the Child
• Benita Eisler, Naked in the Marketplace: the Lives of George Sand
• Thomas Fleming, The Secret Trial of Robert E. Lee
• Jonathan Franzen, The Discomfort Zone: a Personal History
• Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Louis Comfort Tiffany and Laurelton Hall: an Artist's Country Estate

   

• Linda Fritzinger, Diplomat Without Portfolio: Valentine Chirol, His Life and the Times
• Judith Goldstein, Inventing Great Neck: Jewish Identity and the American Dream
• Hilary Lewis, Think New York: a Ground Zero Diary
• Mauro Lucentini, Rome: a Practical Guide to the History and Culture of the Eternal City
• Trish Marx, Jeannette Rankin: First Lady of Congress

   

• Richard Peck, Here Lies the Librarian
• Sally Svenson, Adirondack Churches: a History of Design and Building
• Catherine Temerson (translator), Isaac B. Singer: a Life by Florence Noiville
• Shari Thompson, The Artful Dog: Canines from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Wendy Wasserstein, Elements of Style

   

• Elizabeth Winthrop, Counting on Grace and The First Christmas Stocking
• Hilma Wolitzer, The Doctor's Daughter

 
Building Renovation

Last but not least, 2006-07 will be remembered as a year of renovation. Support from members, planning by chair Jean Phifer and the Building and Renovation Committee, and the hard work of building superintendent John McKeown and porter Harry Abarca helped complete the project.

Renovation work started in spring 2006. In July the Library closed to members for two weeks to allow for the major renovation work on the entrance, circulation lobby, reference room, stairwell, landing, and Members? Room. Upon re-opening the building to members, circulation workroom staff packed their belongings and moved into the renovated reference room in order to allow for the much overdue facelift of the workroom. The Members? Room renovation includes the cleaned and French polished walls, new ceiling lights and carpet, reupholstered chairs and couches, freshened and cleaned desks and tables, and stabilized shelves for its book collection. We hope that we have improved the room greatly, but maintained its elegance and charm.

Early on the morning of May 6, 2007, a crane lifted a new cooling tower to the Library's roof, providing a solution to the years of inconsistent air-conditioning throughout the building.

We thank all of our Library members and trustees whose contributions to the Library have helped fund these projects.

 
Closing Thoughts

I want to extend heartfelt personal and professional thanks to Arevig Caprielian, who acted as the Head of Cataloging over a 15 month period in 2006-07. Arevig managed the Cataloging department, attended meetings, fielded questions from and prepared rare book materials for readers in the Marshall Room, corrected thousands of cataloging records of the fourth floor staff, and worked on the exhibition. During all this varied work, she somehow managed to continue her own cataloging of books from our rare collections and new gifts, including the Elzevir Bible.

I thank all of the Library staff for their continued services to our Society Library members. At our Annual Meeting in April, we acknowledged the long service of Jane Goldstein (35 years) and Diane Srebnick (10 years). All the staff have supported me as I settle in as Head Librarian and build a foundation of a growing staff and a professional and flexible service-orientation that will keep our Library relevant to our members. The Board of Trustees, the various Library committees, and my Advisory Committee have also been very supportive. I hope that we can all continue to work together creatively, to make appropriate changes, and to respond to the reading and research interests of our membership. This past year we registered over 350 new members, and I truly hope that after a year's time we will hear each one say, "I'm so glad I joined."

How good it is to be among reading people.

Respectfully submitted,
Mark Bartlett, Head Librarian

Report of the Treasurer

George L.K. Frelinghuysen
(January - December 2006)

Unedited overall operating results for calendar year 2006 performed substantially better than expectations with a surplus before non-cash expense of $172,101 as compared to a budgeted surplus of $67,200. Core revenues increased sharply year-over-year. Membership subscription revenues were above plan as a new schedule of fees was put into effect on July 1. The bulk of the improvement, however, was the dramatic jump in annual donations. Approximately one-half of the increase was due to 2005 donations being received early in 2006, and the balance from the Library sending out its appeal earlier than in prior years. Core expenses were up 2.5% due to higher payroll and administrative expense.

The Library's endowment at the end of 2006 was $32.2 million. The draw from the endowment offset some of the market appreciation. The portfolios of both investment managers turned in strong performances. As of December 31, 2006, 88 percent of the endowment was held in a balanced account and 12% was invested in an international equity portfolio. With its responsible investment and spending strategy combined with the generosity of its supporters, the Library is on sound financial footing and should continue to be so in the future.

Respectfully submitted,
George L.K. Frelinghuysen, Treasurer

STATEMENT OF REVENUE & EXPENSES UNRESTRICTED NET ASSETS
31 December 2006 with comparative totals for 2005

The approximate market value of investments on December 31, 2006 was $32,185,000.Note: This statement includes unrestricted revenue and expenses only. All other funds are accounted for separately. Fully audited financial statements are available at the library.