The Library was proud to offer twenty major Members' Room events in the first half of 2016, plus offsite lectures, seminars, special receptions, children's events, and more. Most of our Members' Room events are recorded and made available for streaming from our website and YouTube a few days after the event itself. We appreciate the generosity of our speakers in permitting us to share their events with those who couldn't attend in person. Here are some handy links for watching, hearing, or reliving past Library events.

Here is the Library's YouTube channel, hosting all the videorecorded events of the last several years. YouTube users can subscribe to our channel and receive notification of new additions.

Here is the list on our website of all past events with available audio and/or video.

To find a specific past event, you can always search for the speaker's name in the search box at the top right of our homepage.

A few highlights:

Library Records in the Digital Age: A Symposium on Teaching and New Research

From New York's Bibliography Week, scholars Catherine Parisian, Mark Towsey, Jennifer Furlong, and Robert Koehler discuss America's early reading history and the founding of the Library. (January)

David Jaher, The Witch of Lime Street: Séance, Seduction, and Houdini in the Spirit World

History comes alive in this textured account of the rivalry between Harry Houdini and the so-called Witch of Lime Street, whose iconic lives intersected at a time when science was on the verge of embracing the paranormal. (March)

Ellen Feldman, Terrible Virtue

The provocative and compelling story of one of the most fascinating and influential figures of the twentieth century: Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood—an indomitable woman who, more than any other, and at great personal cost, shaped the sexual landscape we inhabit today. (March)

Andrea Wulf, The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World

The bestselling author of Founding Gardeners reveals the forgotten life of Alexander von Humboldt, the visionary German naturalist whose ideas changed the way we see the natural world—and in the process created modern environmentalism. (April)

Michael Dirda, Browsings: A Year of Reading, Collecting, and Living with Books

Michael Dirda has been hailed as “the best-read person in America” (The Paris Review) and “the best book critic in America” (The New York Observer). In addition to the Pulitzer Prize he was awarded for his reviews in the Washington Post, he picked up an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America for his most recent book, On Conan Doyle. Dirda’s latest volume collects fifty of his witty and wide-ranging reflections on literary journalism, book collecting, and the writers he loves. (April)

Mary Norris, Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen

Mary Norris has spent more than three decades in the New Yorker’s copy department, maintaining its celebrated high standards. Now she brings her vast experience, good cheer, and finely sharpened pencils to help the rest of us in a boisterous language book as full of life as it is of practical advice. (April)

Catie Marron with Adam Gopnik, City Squares: Eighteen Writers on the Spirit and Significance of Squares Around the World

Over half of the world’s citizens now live in cities, and this number is rapidly growing. At the heart of these municipalities is the square—the defining urban public space since the dawn of democracy in Ancient Greece. Each of the eighteen squares profiled in this book stands for a larger theme in history: cultural, geopolitical, anthropological, or architectural, and each of the eighteen luminary writers has contributed his or her own innate talent, prodigious research, and local knowledge. This significant anthology shows the city square in new light. City Squares editor Catie Marron was joined in conversation by Adam Gopnik, whose contribution to the book considers the Place des Vosges. (May)

Poetry: Paul Muldoon, One Thousand Things Worth Knowing: Poems

Another wild, expansive collection from the eternally surprising Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. Paul Muldoon (shown in sidebar) is the author of eleven previous books of poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Moy Sand and Gravel (FSG, 2002). He is the Howard G. B. Clark University Professor at Princeton. (June)