Books Win One!

At a time when books, not to mention scholarship, are in perpetual retreat, let's celebrate the surprising (if partial) victory in the battle to maintain the NY Public Library as a place to do meaningful research. For the last year public intellectuals across New York have been mobilized to oppose the Public Library's decision to relocate most of the 4.5 million books currently available to scholars in the 5th Avenue main reading room to a storage facility in New Jersey. Such a move would have made scholarship at the library inconvenient, to say the least.

One of the great pleasures of the NY Public Library (aside from the majestic Rose Reading Room) is the confidence that if you come across a reference you want to check, you can place your request in one of those cute little tubes and know that within 20-30 minutes your book number will appear and you will have your book. It is a magical place to do research, and the decision to replace the books with a more public friendly collection was a real blow to the scholarly community in New York.

So kudos to the Library and its President (and my former boss) Tony Marx for listening to the protests. As the NY Times reports,

Responding to objections raised by scholars, writers, artists and others, the New York Public Library has revised its plan to remove most of the books from its flagship Fifth Avenue research center to make room for a circulating library. Library officials said that an $8 million donation would help pay for enough new storage space to keep 3.3 million of its 4.5 volumes at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, at 42nd Street.

—RB