Travelling Librarian: New York University

New York was the final destination on my tour and I started with a visit to New York University. The Bobst Library is NYU's main library and was built in 1972 to a design by architects Philip Johnson and Richard Foster. A noticeable feature is the large internal atrium.

NYU's Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies began in the 1960’s but in depth collecting in the Caribbean region started later in the mid 1980s. Despite this more recent interest NYU houses a strong collection of material, aided in part by the donation of the Research Institute for the Study of Man. Library, archive and vertical file material up to 1985 was donated to the NYU Library to improve access and help preserve this material. All the library material has been added to the NYU catalogue and other collections listed. Details about the RISM collections are available in a guide to the collections.

It was interesting to spend a little time with the collections - noting that some of the RISM volumes had originally been sent from the Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library, as duplicates from the West India Committee Library collections. In my conversations with Angela Carreno, the subject specialist, we dicussed collaboration between New York libraries, sources for Caribbean materials, and the NYU ongoing renovation programme.