Bring Back the Books!
Rose Reading Room – CLOSED
Gottesman Exhibition Hall – CLOSED
Bookstacks – EMPTY
Readers, scholars, and library users at the 42nd Street Library report that delivery of requested books is often delayed for days or weeks. Some books are reported missing. In 2013 NYPL hastily moved 3 million books from its stacks at 42nd Street to remote temporary storage in upstate New York before additional space in Princeton New Jersey was ready. Then they moved the books again. We worry that important parts of the research collection have been lost in the shuffle making them unavailable to readers who rely on the library. NYPL officials continue to claim that books are delivered in 24 hours. We urge library users to report delayed or missing books to: info@SaveNYPL.org
The Rose Reading Room has been closed since June 2014, when a piece of the decorative ceiling crashed to the floor. It has taken eight months just to erect scaffolds for safety inspections. In the meantime, readers are crowded into small, poorly lit and ventilated rooms with ad hoc provision for computers. Now a piece of the Gottesman Exhibition Hall’s intricately carved Maurice Grieve ceiling has fallen, and it too has been closed for two to three months.
How long will the 42nd Street library go with closed rooms and absent books? Does NYPL care?