The Afro-Argentine Diaspora oral history project is designed to uncover the history of the Afro-Argentine diaspora community in Argentina and NYC. A common narrative promoted within Argentina and globally is that there are no Black people in Argentina. This narrative of erasure around the African roots of many elements of Argentine culture, includi…

Brooklyn Public Library seeks to create a podcast series entitled Borrowed & Banned that tells the story of America’s ideological war with its bookshelves. This important narrative will be told in the voices of teachers and librarians whose livelihoods are endangered when they speak up, the writers whose work has become a political battleg…

Asian American Arts Centre in New York City (AAAC) and Pratt Institute’s Semantic Lab will work together to ensure continued online access to resources documenting AAAC’s work. The project team will digitize, describe through Wikidata records, and contribute AAAC’s full collection of approximately one hundred exhibition flyers to the open repositor…

CUNY Graduate Center and NYU Libraries will join forces to create an oral history collection that documents the stories of individuals and groups who are engaged in developing and implementing alternative library classification schemes or controlled vocabularies. In addition to creating a fully transcribed and cataloged oral history collection, the…

The Lesbian Herstory Archives and the LGBT Community Center National History Archive will partner on a project to create a research guide to materials about Black Lesbians in each collection. The archive researcher entrusted with this task will survey, create metadata for, and digitize on an as-needed basis both organizations’ collections, which en…

New York Public Radio will implement a Field Recording Cataloging Project to describe approximately 1,278 MiniDiscs. This cataloging project will assist in the preservation of field recordings made by WNYC reporters whose ‘beats’ focused on underserved communities, communities of color, the homeless, health, the environment, social services, the po…

Collection: The CUNY Dominican Studies Institute Recorded Lectures Digital Project 1992-2001 Description: Since 1992, CUNY DSI has sponsored, singly or jointly, conferences, lectures, and symposia on diverse topics ranging various disciplines. Generally well attended by enthusiastic audiences made up of students, faculty, and community…

Collection: Ledgers and Orders of the Great Hall Description: The Great Hall is one of The Cooper Union’s most storied and treasured resources. Since it first opened in 1858, it has played host to intellectuals, artists, musicians, inventors, and political leaders who have gathered to express, discuss and debate the most important issu…

Collection: NYPR Program Guide Digitization Project (1937-2000) Description: New York Public Radio (NYPR)’s Program Guide collection contains WNYC program guides from 1938 – 2000 and WQXR guides from 1937 – 1963. Before program information was available on the world wide web, access to WNYC and WQXR programming schedules were available…

Collection: MoCHA Collection - Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art Collection Description: The Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art (MoCHA) was born from the rise of multiculturalism in 1985, as an alternative museum in SoHo that showcased the art of Latin American and Latino artists under-represented in mainstream institutions. MoCHA o…

Collection: Greenburgh Local History Collection Description: The Town of Greenburgh encompasses many different villages and towns that span from the middle of Westchester County to the Hudson River. The Greenburgh Public Library Local History Collection contains manuscripts, books, maps, an atlas of the Town of Greenburgh from 1915, ne…

Collection: Mount Sinai Beth Israel records Description: Beth Israel Hospital was founded in 1889 to address the dire health concerns of those living in New York’s Lower East Side at that time. Approaching the 10-year mark of its merger with the Mount Sinai Health System, Beth Israel remains rooted in its history. Now a medical center …

We worked in partnership with the Brooklyn Historical Society on a $498,135 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as part of the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program. With BHS, we implemented the National Digital Stewardship Residency program in New York City for two years. The NDSR-NY program continued to develop and refi…

The myMETRO Researchers program gave individual METRO members an opportunity to grow their research skills in a supportive environment. Three cohorts formed teams to investigate, report, and present on library-related research topics of their choosing.

The Innovative Internship program (2013-15) funded 14 internships for enrolled graduate students, recent graduates, or individuals in career transition at a METRO member institution. Each internship required at least 120 hours of work over the course of a semester on an innovative project within libraries, archives, and museums.

The METRO Fellowship (2016-17) aimed to address cross-institutional challenges amongst METRO member institutions. Real-world problems of practice were submitted by METRO members, and fellowship applicants submitted project proposals that would seek creative solutions to these challenges. Three fellows were matched with participating institutions an…

NYC Digital Safety: Privacy + Security is a partnership between New York City’s three library systems — Brooklyn Public Library, The New York Public Library, and Queens Library — and METRO Library Council. With support from the City of New York Mayor’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer, this project ensures that NYC residents can rely on publi…

METRO has been assisting IMLS and OCLC with the management of the Operations, Scientific, and Executive Steering Committees for the REALM Project. REopening Archives, Libraries, and Museums (REALM) is a research project conducted by OCLC, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and Battelle to produce and distribute science-based COVI…

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has provided the New York State Library with $6.2 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds through the LSTA Grants to States Program. The State Library has allocated $5,514,315 of these federal funds to New York State’s nine regional Reference and Research Library Resources Co…

Collection: Digitize Suffrage Periodicals Description: Collection of 382 issues made up of 6,117 pages from two periodicals published by Women's Suffrage organizations in the 1910s: The Woman Voter, published by the Woman Suffrage Party of New York City between 1910 and 1917, and The Suffragist, published by the Congressional Union for…

Collection: William S. Ladd Collection of Prints Description: Collection of 671 prints, primarily portraits, dating from the 17th century through the early 19th century. The prints, which demonstrate a variety of printing processes including etching, engraving, mezzotint, stippling, lithography, and hand coloring, primarily depict peop…

Collection: Audio of JTS Lectures, 1947-1969 Description: Reel to reel audio recordings and one 16mm film of lectures at JTS documenting American Jewish history, society, and scholarship throughout the mid to late 20th century. The items selected capture lectures, conferences, and events held and recorded at The Jewish Theological…

Collection: Maria Gerard Messenger Women’s Bookplate Collection  Description: Collection of more than 2,000 women’s bookplates and book labels assembled by Maria Gerard Messenger (1849-1937) of Great Neck, Long Island. The collection represents women book owners from the sixteenth century to the 1930s, and includes women from Nort…

Collection: Photographs of Polish Soldiers and Civilians During WWII (1939-1945) Description: Collection of over 1,000 photographs of Polish Armed Forces in the West, including organized military formations, established in the autumn of 1939 outside of Poland, on the basis of inter-allied agreements signed with France and the United Ki…

Collection: Five Timicua Language Imprints, 1612-1635 Description: This digital collection includes five seventeenth-century Mexican imprints that are among the earliest known primary sources in the lost Timucua language of Spanish Florida and among the first works ever published in a native language of the Americas. They owe their sur…