jenniferying

source: http://www.endlessbookshelf.net/bklynhistsoclib.jpg

Last week, our class met up at the Brooklyn Historical Society to learn about how we can find the history of certain places and buildings. We were taught by Elizabeth, the librarian that guided us, on how to do house and building research. I learned that there are so many ways we can dig up the history of just one building. There are historic atlases which are fire insurance maps and it shows Brooklyn block by block. Then there are land conveyances, which are documents that show the seller and buyers information of the building that was being sold. At the Brooklyn Historical Society, there are so many information providers such as Brooklyn directories, image database, architecture books. There is not only 1 Brooklyn directory; there are 3 types you can choose from for your research. You can search by Name or Address or even by Blue books which is a collection of social directories. We also have access to the Brooklyn & Long Island Scrapbook Collection and Real Estate Brochure Collection. The Brooklyn and Long Island Scrapbook Collection is a collection of newspaper articles from the 1860’s to the 1960’s. The articles are put into microfiche today. Microfiche is like a small sheet of microfilm that can store pages to preserve them. The Real Estate Brochure Collection holds real estate brochures, mostly is organized by neighborhood that advertise new apartment buildings from the 1920’s to the 1950’s.

This was my first time visiting the Brooklyn Historic Society and I was very particular fascinated by the architectural designs of the library located on the second floor. It looked like everything was made out of wood, and the stacks on the shelf I can tell was very old books. It looked very vintage but at the same time, it appealed like a grand library to me. When I was walking around the library, I can tell it holds a lot of history. This was a great experience for me; I learned a lot of new things, new methods of researching and also new sources that I can research from.