Guide to Finding Items from the NYG&B Collection at the New York Public Library

All items donated by the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society to the New York Public Library may be found at its Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, which is located at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street in New York City.  Much of the collection may be found in the Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, Room 121; other portions may be found in the Microforms Section, Room 100; the Map Division, Room 117; and the Manuscript Division, Room 328. 

Please note that some material is stored offsite and, therefore, may not be immediately available; these items will be identified in the Catalog as "Offsite-Request in Advance." To submit a request in advance, send an email to history@nypl.org.

Search the NYPL Catalog

All NYG&B materials have been added to the Library’s online Catalog at http://catalog.nypl.org/search.  In the Catalog, you can search by Keyword, if title is not known, or by exact Title or Author. 
 
Subject heading searches can be useful and a bit more focused.  For example, if you are looking for family histories, try a Subject search for: surname family
 
                Example: Bacon Family
 
For location, try a Subject search for: location
 
                Example: Rockland County N.Y. Genealogy
                                Buffalo N.Y. Genealogy
                                New Jersey Genealogy
 
However, Keyword searching can work just fine, too.  There is also an Advanced Search option on the left-hand menu which allows you to narrow your search to a particular kind of material (e.g. book, manuscript, microform, etc.) 
 

Find Archival Materials

Additional details, especially for manuscript-type materials, can also be searched at "Find Archival Materials": archives.nypl.org.

The NYPL has created numerous finding aids to archival collections that were donated by the NYG&B. Enter the search term “NYGB” to return a list of collections; click on a collection; then click on View Finding Aid.

For finding aids to NYG&B Archival Collections at the New York Public Library, click here.
 

Find NYG&B Titles

Titles donated by the NYG&B retain “NYGB” as part of their call numbers.  For example, you can search NYGB Map to see all the NYGB maps in the Map Division, or NYGB Coll to search a genealogist's papers.   Manuscripts follow a different convention: MssCol NYGB.  
 
While items from the collection list the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society Collection as an additional author, it is not possible to obtain a complete list of NYG&B titles from the NYPL Catalog through a search on Author because the NYPL Catalog has a search result limit of 32,000. 
 

Get Help:  If you are unable to find an item that you believe should be in the NYPL catalog, please contact the staff of the Milstein Division at history@nypl.org or 212-930-0828.