Smalls describes Central Library archives and other collections
Smalls outlines QPL's Central Library archives, including 36,000 books, 4,500 maps, and 105,000 photographs. She also describes the Carter G. Woodson Reference Collection, Augusta Baker Collection, and International Language Collection.
Queens Public Library's Central Library supports our 66 locations across the borough and serves as a destination for research.
Open seven days a week, the archives at QPL contain primary and secondary resources documenting local history available to anyone who visits.
In addition, our staff is regularly digitizing and cataloging the archives content, which includes approximately 36,000
1,000 books and volumes of serials, 4,500 maps, and 105,000 photographs and other documents.
The Carter G.
Woodson Reference Collection is comprised of more than 4,000 reference materials covering various aspects of African American culture and life with a focus on slavery,
contemporary African American life, slave narratives, and the papers of the nation's most influential black leaders, including Frederick Douglass and Booker T.
Washington.
Located in our Children's Library Discovery Center, the Augusta Baker Collection examines the history of the African American experience through the lens of children's literature.
A pioneering children's librarian, master storyteller, and native of St.
Albans, Queens, Augusta Baker built the collection throughout her life, which culminated in 500 titles spanning from the 1940s to the late 20th century.
It also features books about Negro life for children, a resource guide Baker published in 1963 to assist librarians and library users in finding reading materials that depict black without bias.
Additionally, at Central Library, individuals can study the Belcher Hyde and Sanborn Company maps that detail the building structures in Queens and Greater Long Island,
including their size, address, building materials, and other information dating back to 1898.
The Long Island Daily Press photographed more collections.
a newspaper that was established in 1821 and published in the Jamaica neighborhood until 1977.
The International Language Collection, an essential asset for the library system serving the world's borough.
It has fiction and nonfiction materials in 35 languages, including Bengali, Japanese, Polish, Spanish, and Urdu.
It also includes the Graceman Memorial Collection, which contains more than 1,350 reference books honoring the Chinese language.
And QPL's Music Score Collection, which is publicly circulated and has more than 44,000 volumes of sheet music, lyrics, teaching resources, and more, spanning different genres, languages, and instruments.