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.