Bibliographies

Staff of the New York Public Library recently hand picked a set of nearly 500 images, collected from across our Digital Gallery, composing them as a curated set of images at the Commons on Flickr. They represent the Hudson River Valley through several hundred years of history and complement Mapping New York's Shoreline, 1609-2009, now up in the Gottesman Exhibition Hall at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.

The images depict landscape scenes in stereoscopic vision, a popular 19th century format; everyday and commemorative menus from restaurants and catering halls; postcards of scenic places and buildings; and engravings of important estates, prominent citizens and dramatic turning points in historical events. These images have been geocoded and are part of map-based bibliography, The Storied River, coming soon to the NYPL. Stay tuned, the launch will be posted on the NYPL's map blog...

In the meantime, enjoy the same photos at the Commons on Flickr, perused as a gallery of images... Mapping New York's Shoreline: The Storied River

...or, my favorite, pinned to a map on the Flickr website.

Learn more about the NYPL Map Division.

As a librarian, I am a list maker, and lately I have been lucky enough to review the bibliography titles in the Mid-Manhattan Library Art Collection. Bibliographies are elaborate lists that contain citations, and sometimes abstracts, of other books, journal articles, etc., that relate to a focused subject. If you have ever written a research paper, you probably created a bibliography at the end, listing the publication information of the materials you used in your research process.

An example that I find particularly charming is a two volume work entitled Early American Book Illustrators and Wood Engravers 1670-1870 by Sinclair Hamilton. It contains a catalog of works about illustrators and engravers organized first by year, then by artist, of books and articles relating to the title. This bibliography is especially generous because it also reproduces illustrations of some of the works cited. The picture here is from The Progress of Sin, or the Travels of Ungodliness... by Benjamin Keach (click to enlarge).  read more »