Library & Museum Studies

An “exquisite” (The Washington Post) “hauntingly beautiful” (Associated Press) portrait of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its treasures by a former New Yorker staffer who spent a decade as a museum guard.

Isabella Stewart Gardner’s museum, with its plain exterior enfolding an astonishing four-story Italian palazzo, rose from Boston’s Fens at the turn of the twentieth century. Its treasures encompassed not only masterwork paintings but tapestries, rare books, prints, porcelains, and fine furniture....

On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual false alarm....

At the same time Adolf Hitler was attempting to take over the western world, his armies were methodically seeking and hoarding the finest art treasures in Europe.....

James Gleick, the author of the best sellers Chaos and Genius, now brings us a work just as astonishing and masterly: A revelatory chronicle and meditation that shows how information has become the modern era’s defining quality....

Perfect for book lovers, this is a fascinating exploration of the history of libraries and the people who built them, from the ancient world to the digital age....

A manifesto on the state of the non-profit arts sector and the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity leaders have to redefine the business as an investment in our shared humanity.

Flight is the hilarious and tragic story of an orphaned Indian boy who travels back and forth through time in a charged search for his true identity....

Do you love working with books? Of course you do! Do you also love working with people? Do you want to better your community? Interested in planning big events for people in your community? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this book is for you....

In its first four months of operation, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture surpassed one million visits and quickly became a cherished, vital monument to the African American experience. And yet this accomplishment was never assured....

Coming face to face with an important illuminated manuscript in the original is rather like meeting a very famous person....

The book that changed the conversation on the contemporary museum....

The Art of Relevance is your guide to mattering more to more people....

Sitting on the banks of the river Seine, in the very heart of Paris, the Musée d'Orsay is known worldwide for its...

Art today is defined by its relationship to money as never before.....

A good art collection is always much more than the sum of its parts. This applies with especial force to collections of contemporary work. A collection of this kind, whether the collector intends it to be so or not, is always a portrait....

Renowned art conservator Rosa Lowinger spent a difficult childhood in Miami among people whose losses in the Cuban revolution, and earlier by the decimation of family in the Holocaust, clouded all family life....

From a New York Times best-selling historian comes the story of how the alphabet ordered our world. A Place for Everything is the first-ever history of alphabetization, from the Library of Alexandria to Wikipedia....

A thoughtful meditation on the value of care and attention in an age of disappearing things, Fewer, Better Things invites us to reconnect with the physical world and its objects.

Today, hundreds of tribes use the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to recover heritage from museums across the country. Chip Colwell navigated firsthand questions of how to weigh the religious freedom of Native Americans against the academic freedom of scientists....

Librarians spend their lives weeding - not weeds, but books - books that have reached the end of their shelf life both literally and figuratively. Annie Spence addresses those books directly....

At first glance, Josh Hanagarne seems an improbable librarian. He stands 6'7", competes in strongman contests, and was diagnosed in high school with Tourette's syndrome....

In Cataloging the World, Alex Wright introduces us to a figure who stands out in the long line of thinkers and idealists who devoted themselves to the task....

At the same time Adolf Hitler was attempting to take over the Western world, his armies were methodically seeking and hoarding the finest art treasures in Europe.....

The cat that captured America's hearts returns, with two new tales and seven more tails....