The Dictionary Catalog

The 800-volume Dictionary Catalog of the Research Libraries of the New York Public Library, 1911-1972, also known as the "black books" or "retrospective" catalog, contains records of books and periodicals acquired by the Library prior to 1972. It is a photographic copy, in book form, of the Library's card catalog. This catalog is available in many locations throughout the New York Public Library, and in many other libraries around the world.

A typical page comprises 21 cards, each one numbered sequentially at the bottom. Some of the Library's holdings are not included--neither those of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture nor those of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (except for books and serials). Holdings of the Map Division (except for books and serials) and some special collections such as Manuscripts and Archives and the Arents Collection, plus works in non-romanized alphabets from the Jewish, Asian and Middle Eastern, and Slavic and Baltic Divisions are also not included. These collections have separate divisional book catalogs which can be consulted in the Bill Blass Public Catalog Room. In addition, many of these holdings are being added to the Library's online catalog, CATNYP, which represents materials cataloged from 1972-present.

The Dictionary Catalog is primarily an author and subject catalog, with a minimum number of entries for titles, interfiled in one alphabet. Information about the filing order of the catalog may be found at the beginning of each volume. The books and periodicals in the Dictionary Catalog have been converted to machine-readable form and are available in the online catalog, CATNYP. However, there are many thousands of indexing entries that analyze the contents of periodicals and other serial publications and these can only be found in the Dictionary Catalog and the other printed catalogs of The Research Libraries.