Page 1 - Books & People, Spring 2016
P. 1

Volume 23, Number 1, Spring 2016



                                         Books&People



             IN THIS ISSUE               Long Live the New Books List!



                      Staff News         by Erin Schreiner



                                PAGE 4   The New Books List as we know it

                                         was born in 1896. On February 1

           Special Event Photos          of that year, the Library issued the

                                         first of hundreds of these pamphlets

                                 PAGE 5  listing the latest titles to appear on

                                         the shelves. As members well know,

  50 Reasons to                          the tradition is still alive today. At

Love the Library                         the beginning of the month, mem-

                                         bers ask “Is this the new one?” when

                                PAGE 6   reaching for the unassuming little

                                         pamphlet peeking out of the box on

                                         the Reference Desk. Many of you

                                         probably have a New Books List

                                         routine: perhaps you sit down with

                                         pencil and pamphlet in the Mem-

                                         bers’ Room to mark up the titles

                                         you want to borrow, then return

                                         to the Circulation Desk to bulk up

                                         your holds list or browse the Lobby

                                         shelves for something that caught

                                         your eye. Whatever you do, know

                                         that you are part of a long history

                                         of Library readers who use a book

                                         list to make your way through

                                         the stacks.



                                         Just how long is that history? The very first such list, simply titled A Continuation of

                                         the Catalog, appeared in 1791. This was literally a continuation of the 1789 catalog—

                                         the first comprehensive record of the collection after the Revolutionary War—with

                                         its first page numbered 81 so that it could be bound up after its printed parent’s 80

                                         pages. Working from our oldest book lists, the Library’s archive and City Readers

                                         (the Library’s new tool for digital research on borrowing activity, membership, and

                                         collections) we can start to get a sense of how Library members have put New Books

                                         Lists to use, and what happened to our collections when they did.
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