New York Public Library. Picture Collection.

The New York Public Library Picture Collection, comprised of clipped illustrations from books, newspapers and magazines as well as loose photographs, prints and postcards, was established in 1914.

The Library assigned Ellen Perkins, a chief cataloger in the Circulation Department, to oversee the program's development. In 1929, Romana Javitz succeeded Perkins as Head of the Picture Collection. During Javitz's long tenure, the collection grew tremendously, access was improved, and use expanded. Javitz retired in 1968 and was succeeded by Lenore Cowan. The Picture Collection was eventually moved from the Central Building to the Mid-Manhattan Library at 5th Avenue and 40th Street.

The New York Public Library Picture Collection, comprised of clipped illustrations from books, newspapers and magazines as well as loose photographs, prints and postcards, was established in 1914. Encyclopedic in scope and arranged by subject, this circulating collection has provided inspiration and visual information for a broad range of endeavors - commercial art, mass market publishing, advertising, fashion design, film, theater and popular entertainment.

The NYPL Circulation Department, forerunner of today's Branch Libraries, began saving plates, posters, postcards, photographs in 1914. Within a few years, over 17,000 images had been prepared for circulation. Many of these pictures came from old magazines and books that might otherwise have been sold for scrap paper. The Library assigned Ellen Perkins, a chief cataloger in the Circulation Department, to oversee the program's development. By 1926 the growing collection was housed in Room 67 of the NYPL central building.

In 1929, Romana Javitz succeeded Perkins as Head of the Picture Collection. During Javitz's long tenure, the collection grew tremendously, access was improved, and use expanded. In 1931, Javitz overcame a language barrier faced by non-English speaking users of the collection by instituting a policy requiring the public to record their requests for pictures by describing, or drawing, them on a call slip. During the 1930s, Javitz addressed the need to devise a better system of subject access for the ever-growing collection, which then numbered 667,967 items. The collection also needed to be weeded, sorted, updated, cross-indexed - tasks that required artist-trained workers. Javitz found such artists through the Works Progress Administration, which initially provided thirty-one workers (later increased to forty). This team systematically eliminated outdated materials from the collections, added newer, more modern images, and streamlined the process of getting material to the public and then back on the shelves. Numbers written or stamped on each picture led the user to a catalog card index of original sources. Javitz and her staff adopted a flexible arrangement scheme based on Regions, Styles, Types, and Year. Subheading arrangements depended on the subjects' geographical, stylistic, or chronological identities.

During the 1930s-1940s, several major acquisitions helped to build the Picture Collection into a world-class resource. Movie studios used the Picture Collection often and recognized its importance by establishing depository arrangements with the Library. Several newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times and Newsweek, donated current news photographs from their files. Ten thousand photographs of paintings were purchased in 1936 from the Frick Collection.

Exhibitions were staged to highlight aspects of the collection; typical was an exhibit entitled "Romance of the Railroad" for which several railroad companies donated photographs illustrating all aspects of the industry. Eager to represent current lifestyles and trends, the Picture Collection, through the cooperation of local businesses, obtained photographs of outstanding window displays, architecture, vehicles, fashions, vaudeville acts, and the dance. In 1934, the Public Works Art Project donated ninety-one fine prints and twenty paintings that would form the beginning of a circulating collection of framed pictures for use in the branch libraries. In addition, Javitz began to purchase books, pamphlets, and periodicals specifically for the purpose of cutting out the plates and illustrations, to selectively enhance the collection in subject areas that had been inadequately documented. While this deconstruction of material often horrified other librarians, Javitz reveled in the practice. To her thinking, dismembering a book not only allowed for redistribution of its pieces toward other, perhaps better, purposes, but also demystified the book as an object.

Among the thousands of items donated to the Picture Collection during 1936-1937 were photographs from the United States government's Resettlement Administration (RA). This was a New Deal program to assist farmers and their tenants who had been displaced by drought and economic ruin. The Photographic Section of the RA, later renamed the Farm Security Administration (FSA), was created to document the plight of those in need. Roy E. Stryker, the head of the Photographic Section, hired several talented photographers to cover the rural and urban communities affected by the Depression. At the suggestion of the painter Ben Shahn (1898-1969), one of the photographers he hired, Stryker began regularly to send duplicate photographs from the Resettlement Administration to the Picture Collection. In 1957-1958, the Library of Congress provided thousands of duplicate copyright deposits of prints and photographs to the Picture Collection in exchange for copy prints and microfilm reels from the New York Public Library's holdings. Among the materials from the Library of Congress were nineteenth-century Civil War and Spanish-American War scenes, cartes-de-visite and cabinet card portraits, travel views, and early American landscapes. Twentieth-century views included works by the photographers Alvin Langdon Coburn, Francis Bruguiere, Carl Moon, Laura Gilpin, and Margaret Bourke-White. Hundreds of images by amateur or aspiring photographers were also included. (Most of these FSA and LC photographs were transferred to the NYPL Research Libraries during the 1980s.)

Romana Javitz retired in 1968 and was succeeded by Lenore Cowan. The Picture Collection was eventually moved from the Central Building to the Mid-Manhattan Library at 5th Avenue and 40th Street. The collection remains an essential resource for New York City's creative communities, and has expanded into the digital realm. The Picture Collection Online is a select group of images available to researchers through the NYPL web site.

[This Historical Note is based substantially on: Troncale, Anthony T. "Worth Beyond Words: Romana Javitz and The New York Public Library's Picture Collection," Biblion: The Bulletin of The New York Public Library, Volume 4, Number 1, Fall 1995.]