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Volume 24, Number 2, Summer 2017
Books&People
IN THIS ISSUE A Trip to the Stacks
Summer Reading by Carolyn Waters, Head Librarian
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A short while ago, I found member writer Susan Cheever wandering about the
Library and looking a little bit like she had lost something. I asked if everything was
all right. “Yes, but I’m looking for inspiration. If I don’t know what to write next, the
answer is in the stacks.â€
Spring Events and Awards
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Remembering
Christopher Gray
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There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t hear an impassioned paean to our book
stacks. And more often than not, it will be from one of our member writers. The
New York Society Library is not a research library, at least not in the same way that
other institutions that collect primary source materials are. But as the oldest library
in New York City, with a justifiable reputation as a real reader’s collection, our
bookshelves hold incomparable riches that are rarely found in gloriously browsable
open book stacks. All of us, whether we’re writers or readers, have stories about that
accidental but fortuitous discovery on the shelf, the hidden gem sitting one inch
away from the book you were actually looking for. That kind of serendipity just isn’t
possible without open stacks.