Nonprofit Profile | For Nearly a Century, Contributing to America’s Intellectual Life
Anybody else get a rush when you walk into a library? All that … stuff. And great stuff, too! And all of it for free, at your fingertips. Knowledge and trivia and discoveries and literature and art, yours for the taking.
One of the world’s great libraries, the New York Public Library, was dedicated on this day 97 years ago. Wikipedia reports that the system’s 20 million-plus books is third most in the world, trailing only the number of volumes in the Library of Congress and the British Library.
It boggles the mind: How many great books were researched here? How many writers were introduced to their craft by reading the tomes contained here? How many scholars and journalists perused the shelves in search of resources to help them publish groundbreaking work?
Its mission statement alone is worth reproducing in full:
The New York Public Library is one of the cornerstones of the American tradition of equal opportunity. It provides free and open access to the accumulated wisdom of the world, without distinction as to income, religion, nationality, or other human condition. It is everyone’s university; the scholar’s and author’s haven; the statesman’s, scientist’s, and businessman’s essential resource; the nation’s memory. It guarantees freedom of information and independence of thought. It enables each individual to pursue learning at his/her own personal level of interest, preparation, ability, and desire. It helps ensure the free trade in ideas and the right of dissent.
The mission of The New York Public Library is to use its available resources in a balanced program of collecting, cataloging, and conserving books and other materials, and providing ready access directly to individual library users and to users elsewhere through cooperating libraries and library networks. The New York Public Library’s responsibility is to serve as a great storehouse of knowledge at the heart of one of the world’s information centers, and to function as an integral part of a fabric of information and learning that stretches across the nation and the world.
What a seminal nonprofit in this country’s intellectual history. Happy birthday, and happy reading! | 501(c)
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