Bivens details NYPL collections, RECAP, and accessibility
Bivens describes NYPL's 55 million items, 300 databases, and partnership with RECAP. She highlights that anyone with a library card can access the collections, which are open to all New Yorkers.
So my comments go really kind of broad and then more about the Schomburg Center.
Our collections at the library are developed by expert curators and subject specialists.
We acquire both general collections comprising currently published books, serials, databases, as well as special collections.
Together, NYPL's research collections total more than 55 million items, with over 70,000 books, 6,000 serials, and 1,500 linear feet of
of special collections added annually.
These are increasingly acquired in digital formats that can be accessed remotely by students and researchers across the city.
We also subscribe to more than 300 databases, providing online access to specialized resources in the humanities, social sciences, fine and performing arts,
Africana Studies, and Business.
Our collecting scope is global, with major investments in materials from Western and Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, China, and India.
The library also, pardon me,
partners with Research Collections and Preservation Consortium, pardon me, I'm gonna say that again, the Research Collections and Preservation Consortium, also known as RECAP,
which includes Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale universities, to provide access to an additional
23 million volumes of materials to our users.
What distinguishes NYPL's research offerings from those other libraries is accessibility.
We are a public research library and open access to our extraordinary collections, staff expertise,
Research services mean that anyone with a library card has access to the history we preserve, to the world of knowledge that we
be steward.
And as this committee knows, that means anyone who lives, works, or goes to school in New York State can freely engage with all of our collections and programs.
Now that's all of us.