This weekend, I decided to head to the New York Public Library, Mid Manhattan branch. I usually dread going here with a specific book in mind, as I can never find what I’m looking for. Even if the website claims to have it in stock, its just…not…there. The library in NYC is like a huge, labyrinthine abyss that things just disappear into and never emerge from.

HOWEVER, this time I used worldcat.org to look up some of the books and authors I wanted to read. I was secretly hoping some of the books would be at my beloved Brooklyn Public Library, but, alas, they weren’t there. But they were at the NYPL. One of the books was at the research library, which in all my years of living in NYC, I have never used. So, I decided to go for it and headed to the library on Saturday.

Lo and behold, all three books I wanted to check out from the Mid Manhattan branch were there. I was shocked.

Then I walked across the street to the main research branch and after a few bureaucratic twists and turns, I was reading what I came for.

Yeah! I think the next time I decided to go to the main NYPL branch, I will definitely be using worldcat!

The books I checked out:

The Devil’s Lane: Sex and Race in the Early South edited by Catherine Clinton and Michele Gillespie
Gods of the City: Religion and the American Urban Landscape edited by Robert Orsi

In the Shadow of War: The United States since the 1930s by Michael Sherry