Trustees & Staff

Trustees

Byron Bell
Charles G. Berry
Ralph S. Brown, Jr.
Margaret Mather Byard
Robert A. Caro
Lyn Chase
Margaret Cook
Henry S.F. Cooper, Jr.
William J. Dean
Benita Eisler
Barbara Goldsmith
Christopher Gray
James Q. Griffin
Shirley Hazzard
Anthony D. Knerr
Jenny Lawrence
Walter Lord
Jean Parker Phifer
Theodore C. Rogers
Constance R. Roosevelt
Jeannette Watson Sanger
Barbara H. Stanton
Fawn White

Staff

FULL-TIME
Stephanie-Ann Bahr
Steven Baumholtz
Susan Chan
Doris Glick
Jane Goldstein
Endang Hertanto
Janet Howard
John McKeown
Susan O'Brien
Mark Piel
Ingrid Richter
Diane Srebnick
Jianmin Wang

PART-TIME
Arevig Caprielian
Krishna Guha
JiYoung Lee
Anne Masterson
Jennifer Perez
Linnea Savapoulas
Howard Stein
Sasha Stumacher
Analise Titus
Christopher Vargas
Cecelia Walsh Russo
Stanley Weinman
Jeanne Yan

Library Committees

(June 1999 - May 2000)

Executive Committee

William J. Dean, Chair
James Q. Griffin, Treasurer
Charles G. Berry, Secretary
James Q. Griffin
Barbara H. Stanton

Building Committee

Christopher Gray, Chair
Henry S.F. Cooper, Jr.
Benita Eisler
Jean Parker Phifer
Theodore C. Rogers
Barbara H. Stanton

Book Committee

Henry S. F. Cooper, Jr., Chair
Marylin Bender Altschul
Richard Aspinwall
Lawrence Bergreen
Lucienne Bloch
Margaret Mather Byard
Lyn Chase
Jules Cohn
Margaret Edsall
Benita Eisler
Helen Evarts
Linda Fritzinger
Malcolm Goldstein
Shirley Hazzard
Richard Herrman
Robert McDonald
Sarah Plimpton
Theodore C. Rogers
Jeannette Watson Sanger
Barbara Wriston

Development Committee

Barbara H. Stanton, Chair
Lyn Chase
Henry S. F. Cooper, Jr.
Jenny Lawrence
Constance R. Roosevelt
Fawn White

Education and Community Outreach Committee

Fawn White, Chair
Mary Allen
Barbara Ann Barker
Katherine Berkowitz
Carolyn Goodrich
June Feldman
Louise Monjo
Nancy Parker
Jean Parker Phifer
Susan Robbins
Jeannette Watson Sanger
Katherine Swett
Abigail Wender Weerasinghe

Finance Committee

James Q. Griffin, Chair
Charles G. Berry
Anthony D. Knerr
Barbara H. Stanton
Theodore C. Rogers

Library Committee

Ralph S. Brown, Jr., Chair
Margaret Mather Byard
Lyn Chase
Margaret Cook
Henry S. F. Cooper, Jr.
Barbara Goldsmith
Christopher Gray
Jenny Lawrence
Walter Lord
Jean Parker Phifer
Constance R. Roosevelt
Theodore C. Rogers
Jeannette Watson Sanger

Long-Range Planning Committee

Ralph S. Brown, Jr., Chair
Byron Bell
Charles G. Berry
Lyn Chase
Henry S.F. Cooper, Jr.
Benita Eisler
Christopher Gray
Jenny Lawrence
Constance R. Roosevelt
Barbara H. Stanton
Fawn White

Nominating Committee

Barbara H. Stanton, Chair
Henry S. F. Cooper, Jr.
Barbara Goldsmith
Jenny Lawrence
Walter Lord
Jean Parker Phifer
Jeannette Watson Sanger

Personnel Committee

James Q. Griffin, Chair
Charles G. Berry
Ralph S. Brown, Jr.
Barbara H. Stanton
Benita Eisler

Visitors' Committee

Lucienne Bloch, Chair
and its members

Charles G. Berry
Library Attorney

Jenny Lawrence
Editor, Library Notes

Report of the Chairman

William J. Dean
(June 1999 - May 2000)

The year 1754. The English and French are at war in North America. The future Louis XVI is born. Jonathan Edwards, David Hume and Rousseau are writing major works. Rastrelli is designing the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.

And in New York City in that very same year, six public-spirited young New Yorkers meet to found the New York Society Library in the belief that a "Publick library would be very useful as well as ornamental to the City." As a result of their deliberations, our Library, the first public library in the city, came into being. Until this time, libraries were found mostly in private homes and churches.

The most perilous moment in our history came during the Revolution when the Library's books were looted by British soldier. Some books were used to make cartridges and others sold for rum. The Library minutes for this period state: "The accidents of the late war having nearly destroyed the former Library, no meeting of the proprietors for the choice of Trustees was held from the last Tuesday in April 1774 until Tuesday ye 20 December, 1788." Four years from now, we celebrate our 250th anniversary. In a world of enormous change, where empires and institutions come and go in the blink of an eye, such longevity is an extraordinary achievement. An upcoming anniversary of such significance also compels us to think long and hard about future directions for the Library. Earlier this year, the Board of Trustees created a Long-Range Planning Committee. We are fortunate to have Library trustee Ralph S. Brown, Jr. serving as chairman of the committee. These are some of the issues being considered by the committee.

Should additions be made to our handsome town house, built by the firm of Trowbridge and Livingston in 1917 and converted in 1937 for the Library's use? If so, should we expand at the back of the building, or upward, or both, for more stacks, reading rooms and staff areas? What would be the cost of building expansion? How would these costs be met?

What changes do we want or need to make in the area of technology? How will technology affect book publishing, readers' preferences, and the operation of our Library?

As more people retire early and fewer work in offices, how will these changes impact members' use of the Library?

How large should our collection be? What should our de-accessioning policy be? Should we store some of the collection offsite to gain precious stack space?

There are issues relating to the quality of the collection. Do we need a review of subject areas to determine what parts of the collection need to be strengthened? Are there some subject areas where we want to concentrate?

A questionnaire has been sent to Library members as part of this deliberative process. The Long-Range Planning Committee welcomes your thoughts on these issues, or any other.

After a quarter of a millennium, we want to ensure that our Library remains "very useful as well as ornamental to the City," and also to our members!

Respectfully submitted,
William J. Dean, Chairman

Report of the Librarian

Mark Piel
(June 1999 - May 2000)

Over the years, many authors have acknowledged use of the Library's holdings. This last year, Adeline R. Tinter, author of Edith Wharton in Context, wrote, "The NYSL in New York City has a fine collection of Paul Bourget's novels and short stories unobtainable in other New York libraries." Shareen Brysac and Karl Meyer, joint authors of Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia, wrote, "The NYSL and its British counterpart, the London Library, were an essential source for rare travel books." And Constance Rosenblum, author of Gold Digger: The Outrageous Life and Times of Peggy Hopkins Joyce, wrote, "I did much of the reading for this project [at the Library], taking advantage of the institution's wonderfully rich idiosyncratic collection."

 
Book Selection

What is the process by which we selected these special volumes? The procedure goes back to our beginnings. In 1754 at the second meeting of the newly-formed Board each trustee pledged to bring a catalogue of books to be ordered. Austin Keep, author of The History of the New York Society Library, conjectures that soon after the formation of the Library, "suggestions had poured in from interested subscribers, and no less from members of their families." Since the number of accessions increased, we can assume that in later years the trustees played a lesser part in selections and the subscribers a greater one.

Today, members still prompt the majority of acquisitions. The selection procedure on the Library's part is channeled largely through the Book Committee. Its twenty members, chaired by Henry S.F. Cooper Jr., meet monthly to make selections in all fields. However, reading tastes have changed. While 18th-century members enjoyed religious, philosophical, scientific, and foreign-language works, contemporary members prefer fiction, biography and social sciences. According to Keep, "an utter absense of light reading" distinguished early purchases; now acquisitions balance the substantial with the less substantial.

 
Acquisitions

In the mid-18th century, colonial printing was restrained by the expense of paper and printing equipment. Few booksellers could challenge the publishing dominance of London; thus the Library was required to retain agent-booksellers in London. At this period breakdowns between the Library and the agent/book seller were common because of misunderstood instructions and unsent or unrequested titles. Books were not priority goods for any shipping merchant, so loading times were unpredictable, and the Library depended on double or triple copies sent on different ships. It could take months for orders and books to cross the Atlantic. What a contrast to today's transactions: Susan O'Brien orders titles via the Internet and they arrive in a few days!

Of course, the next decade may find that book ordering is only the beginning of electronic use. The book itself is now being offered in electronic form. However, for the moment, apart from books on tape, our circulating volumes remain ink on paper.

 
Circulation

The Library circulated 73,921 items in 1999-2000, averaging about 6000 per month. Books on tape continue to grow in popularity, especially during the summer travel months, and they have come to account for more than 200 checkouts each month. Children check out about 600 books a month, making theirs a tenth of the total circulation.

Front-desk staff respond to numerous reference questions, aid members with book selections, and enter innumerable reservations for the most popular titles. They also happily assist as members master the transition to the convenient catalog.

 
Programs

The Library has shown a continued commitment to the Author Series, co-sponsored by Thirteen/WNET, with the underwriting support of the Chase Manhattan Bank. This year offered an enthralling talk by Shirley Hazzard about Graham Greene on Capri. Also, Caroline Alexander cast the spell of adventure, speaking on the Endurance and Shackleton's legendary Antarctic expedition.

In the spring, the Library organized a three-part celebration of writings about New York. Phillip Lopate, editor of Writing New York, led sessions with Louis Begley, Patricia Bosworth, Susan Cheever, Alfred Corn, Angeline Goreau, George Plimpton, Marie Ponsot, and Harvey Shapiro reading diaries, memoirs, and poetry from that anthology.

Reading groups continued to be popular. In the winter and spring of 2000, novelist Ellen Feldman led another chapter of her current fiction group, while biographer Stacy Schiff conducted sessions on the art of writing biography.

Creating an excursion that combined the intellectual with the physical, urban historian Hope Cooke led a walking tour through sites in lower Manhattan associated with Walt Whitman. Participants read aloud from the poet along the way.

The Lecture and Exhibition Committee installed a second engaging exhibition from the collection of Donald Oresman. Following on his previous exhibit, this group of prints, drawings and photographs centered on readers in a variety of imagined or real New York settings.

Responding to the need for a fully-developed children's program, the Library has appointed Carrie Silberman, a full-time children's librarian, to the staff. She will schedule nursery-rhyme and story times for preschoolers, as well as crafts and book discussions for older children, and she is updating the children's collection. The positive response from members' children and grandchildren has already been encouraging.

 
Outreach

The Library's annual prizes for the best books about New York City published during the year were selected by the Award Committee. The 1999 Book of the Year was New York 1880: Architecture and Urbanism in the Gilded Age by Robert A.M. Stern, Thomas Mellins, and David Fishman. The other winners were: for biography, J.P. Morgan: American Financier, by Jean Strouse; for reference, Personal Name Index to The New York Times, 1851-1975, 1975-1996, by Byron Falk, Jr. and Valerie Falk; for a children's book, Sector 7 by David Wiesner, and for a memoir, 'Tis by Frank McCourt.

Through our Education and Community Outreach Committee we continued to sponsor education programs at Public School 107 in Queens. The Living Museum program used the arts to extends students' learning on ancient civilizations. Fawn White hosted a Summit in which students discussed political and social problems as figures from assigned past civilizations. The school has taken this program as a model.

With radio station WYNC the Library co-sponsored a second city-wide poetry contest for children in grades three through six. The winners appeared on WNYC on January 9, 2000.

For a third year the Library took part in the "New York is Book Country" street fair on Fifth Avenue. Edwin Burrows, Benita Eisler, Jules Feiffer, Jeannette Watson Sanger, Lynn Tillman and Mike Wallace talked about their books with visitors to the Library booth, while Howard Stein, the Library's binder, demonstrated his craft.

The Systems department has networked all of the Library's computers, so that the Internet connection, programs, databases, and documents are now shared by any connected machine. Wiring and jacks have been strategically added throughout the building to encompass current and future staff and member needs for access to the catalog, the Internet and other electronic resources as they become available.

Online catalog usage has soared. The average number of searches per day is 204 or 4,295 searches on average per month. About 75% of these searches take place on the Reference Room online terminals.

As the Library's website continues to expand its offerings - with information on books, programs, Library history and Library authors - it is also attracting more visits. The number of web searches has grown by nearly 1000% in the past year. The website will soon become the place where members and non-members will go to search the Library's catalog, use its electronic resources, and communicate with Library staff.

The past year saw a series of technology workshops offering basic instruction in catalog searching, computers, and Internet/e-mail. An average of 24 persons registered for each workshop. Feedback has been positive.

Respectfully submitted,
Mark Piel, Librarian

Report of the Treasurer

James Q. Griffin
(January - December 1999)

The basic financial policies governing the Library are: a balanced budget, a 4½% spending rule from endowment funds (based on the average of the prior three years), a fairly compensated staff and our building property maintained. If all of these occur, the institution is thought to be in financial equilibrium.

Over the past decade we clearly have been in equilibrium as we have been last year. Our objective is to stay that way.

Respectfully submitted,
James Q. Griffin, Treasurer

STATEMENT OF REVENUE & EXPENSES UNRESTRICTED NET ASSETS
31 December 2000 with comparative totals for 1999

Note: This statement includes unrestricted revenue and expenses only. All other funds are accounted for separately. Fully audited financial statements are available at the library. The approximate market value of investments on December 31, 2000 was $27,958,000. While the allocation from endowment was 5% in 1999, the board passed a resolution to change the allocation to 4.5 effective for the year 2000

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