City Readers

Description City Readers is the New York Society Library’s database of historic records, books, and readers. Search, browse, and visualization tools support the discovery and analysis of over 100,000 biographic, bibliographic, and transaction data, derived from digitized content from our archives. Circulation records from 1789 to 1805, when the Library shared Federal Hall with the first American Congress, have been fully digitized and transcribed, and the data is now available for free. By providing detailed metadata for the books and readers documented in the charging ledgers, City Readers is a virtual reconstruction of the Library as a social and literary institution in New York at the turn of the eighteenth century.

AudiencesGraduates, Professionals, Scholars, Undergraduates

Access TermsHistorical libraries, Books and reading

TagsCirculation Records, History of Reading, Library History, Intellectual History