Built carefully by generations of curators over the past 160 years, the collections of The New York Public Library now exceed 50 million items. In combination with the lending collections, it is the most comprehensive library collection ever brought together for the free use of the public.
The collections have been organized into more than 100 major topics, ranging from “Accents and Dialects” to “Women’s Studies” with others such as “Baseball,” “Computer Science,” “Gay and Lesbian Studies,” “Immigration,” “Judaica,” “Theatre,” and “U.S. History” in between. The Library’s strength in three areas in particular is so great that major facilities have been built to house them: The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (LPA), at Lincoln Center; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, in Harlem; and the Science, Industry and Business Library (SIBL), in midtown Manhattan.
