Collection Development and Population

Community Analysis Report of the New York Public Library

For more than a century, the New York Public Library has supplied knowledge, information, free books and ideas to New Yorkers. NYPL was established in 1895 and its America's biggest public library network boasting 88 scattered branches and four research centres for scholars which provides an unprecedented amount of resources and opportunities to everyone (The New York Public Library, 2017).

NYPL services an estimated 17 million people annually and an even higher number online, it has over 55 million resources such as e-books, books, DVDs and even esteemed research materials which scholars all across the world use in one way or the other. In its iconic 42nd Street located and its three separate research institutes, NYPL is home to a number of historical items including Christopher Columbus's letter of 1493 which announced his finding of the New World, the handwritten score of "Lover Man" by John Coltrane and the original Farewell Address given by George Washington.

One of the parts of the NYPL is the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building in addition to the other 88 branches and four research centres situated in Staten Island, Manhattan and the Bronx. The Beaux-Arts landmark facility located on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street houses is often called the "major branch" and it contains extraordinary research items for the social sciences, humanities and even a circulating collection for children. A merger of the Astor and Lenox Libraries brought about the original non-circulating post-graduate collections which have grown to become a world class resource source for understanding human behaviour, thoughts and life experiences such as religion, literature, archaeology, anthropology, sports and world history.

Presently, the NYPL is redeveloping the Schwarzman Building so that it can serve its initial purpose of making available a high-quality library for "the free use of all the people." The building is well known for the impressive completeness of its past resources and its dedication towards ensuring everyone has unrestricted and even access to the resources contained in its buildings. The Stephen A. Schwarzman Building contains over 15 million resources which include prehistoric Japanese scrolls, priceless primitive manuscripts, present day novels and poems, comic books, baseball cards and dime novels.

Demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the library patrons and of the community it serves

The library users form the major factor of consideration before a collection is built (Johnson, 2014). The statistics of New York City reveals that it covers a massive land area and contains people from various ethnic origins (Gordon, Travers, & Whitehead, 2007). Its America's largest city and it has always been a preferred immigration destination. Its population in 2014 was almost 8.5 million which is more than 40% of New York State's population and only a slightly reduced percentage of the entire New York urban area, which houses about 23.6 million people. In the last 10 years, New York City has enjoyed faster growth than its region which still has a huge lead on the chart of urban gateways for legitimate immigrants entering the U.S.

Coming to religion, 59% of New Yorkers are Christians (33% of them Catholics) and this is the major religion practised as at the year 2014. The next most prevalent religion is Judaism and an estimated 1.2 million Jews reside in New York City, almost 14% of the entire population. Other practised religions include Buddhism, Hinduism, Atheism, Islam and Sikhism. 24% of the New York City's population stated that they weren't members of any organized religious groups in the year 2014.

In the census carried out in year 2000, 2,021,588 households were counted and they had average yearly earnings of $38,293. 30% of these households had young children (

The Manhattan district has been enjoying a "baby boom" which is quite rare in the U.S. Since the year 2000, the children under 5 years residing in Manhattan has seen a rise in their numbers by over 32%. This rise is mostly as a result of the rich white families who boast average yearly earnings higher than $300,000.

25.1% of the New York City's population are migrant African-Americans, Africans and Caribbeans. 2,086,566 blacks are living in the City, based on the U.S. Census Bureau figures. 0.4% of the City's population are Native Americans while 11.8% are Asian-Americans. From the population survey, it was discovered that 976,807 Asian-Americans live in New York City. 44.6% of the City's population are White Americans and they are 3,704,243 in number. Non-Hispanic White Americans account for 35.1% of New York City's population with their exact number being 2,918,976. A large percentage of the European-Americans living in the City are of German, Polish, Irish, English, Italian, Greek and Russian ancestry.

From the 2010 Census, it has been established that the City of New York boasts the highest number of black people compared to other American cities with more than 2 million blacks living in the City though this is even a slightly lower number compared to that of 2000. Until the census of 1980, New York City housed a higher number of blacks than California. The blacks were immigrants and their offspring from Africa as well as the Caribbean. Native African-Americans also made up this number. Most of the blacks living in the City reside in The Bronx and Brooklyn. The biggest native Chinese population away from the Asian continent is found in the New York City Metropolitan Area with an approximated population of 735,019 as at the year 2012 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012).

What are some of the larger departments in the university or college?

The NYPL as well as the New York University and Columbia University libraries, which are three esteemed research centres located on the Manhattan Island, have commenced a move towards growing their collections and providing more value to their users. This program is in line with one of the many objectives a library tries to achieve which includes; picking materials available in every form for procurement, access, analysis and bargaining on the contracts for procuring or accessing online resources (Johnson, 2014). This collective effort, christened the Manhattan Research Library Initiative, or MaRLI, has the objective of increasing the access of these institutions to research documents, increasing their use of exclusive information databases and maximizing the collected dollars for accessing research databases. The concerned institutions will organize their methods of research collection in order to prevent collection of similar materials and to identify possibilities of shared collection. This will be possible by providing access of their collections to researchers. Even though this could be referred to as an uncomplicated expansion opening the NYPL would take advantage of, it really demands a thorough understanding of the users of the library and its personnel and financial capabilities, its ethics, objectives and its aspiration to satisfy whatever needs they have. Due to this, the NYPL is going to support the Humanities and Social Sciences Library located on 42nd Street as it still remains the cornerstone of the NYPL research library network. With an estimated 2 million books and 60,000 journals, the SIBL is America's biggest public science and business library. The other two research centres of the NYPL are the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, situated at Lincoln Center and the Schomburg Center for Research and Black Culture, situated at 135th Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem. Apart from their huge reference volumes, the SIBL and the Library for the Performing Arts also possess circulating components which are assigned as normal library divisions.

What access do patrons have to outside resources - interlibrary loans, computer databases, etc.?

According to Johnson (2014), "Every collection development association should have an objective of adding to the library collections which are in line with the immediate needs of its users with financial and personnel restrictions fully respected." In this fast-moving digital age, the NYPL has kept up with the times by providing its users globally with effective online methods of accessing its comprehensive volumes and services. On the library's website, nypl.org, online visitors can go through the mammoth collections, access over 700,000 items in the acclaimed Digital Collections and download e-books. Via the Library's latest e-reader application known as SimplyE, visitors can rapidly lend any of the Library's 300,000 unrestricted e-books following a short sequence of steps. Via Ask NYPL, librarians are readily present to provide answers to all queries by visitors on whatever topic around the clock. With the backing of private donations and of course government funds, the NYPL is focused on its succeeding 100 years and aims to satisfy all the various needs of its visitors. As for all the millions of people who are dependent on us in the world's most diverse and functional city, the NYPL importance cannot be overemphasized.

The NYPL ranks high on the list of global public libraries in times of size and it boasts over 18 million annual visitors, 93 scattered branches and a yearly budget amounting to about $300m. It has volumes for just about everyone including prestigious novel writers, fresh immigrants, babies and their caretakers, scholars and constant learners. Even though it is located in New York City, the Library services tourists and researches from all over the world (Strong & Kennedy, 2016).

Metro

METRO referral cards give courtesy rights to access several school, academic, public and exclusive libraries located in New York City as well as Westchester County. READ MORE >

Marli

The Manhattan Research Libraries Initiative (MaRLI) gives official NYPL cardholders permission to use and lend volumes not available in the NYPL's archives of the libraries in Columbia and NYU. READ MORE >

HathiTrust

HathiTrust can be referred to as a huge digital content store which is operated by over 80 libraries. Its objective is to safely keep content without any risk of a confidentiality breach and also to be a central medium of accessing this concerned content. Presently, HathiTrust is managed by the University of Michigan though its operation is supervised by an executive board of library representatives. READ MORE >