Finding Materials at NYPL
Definition. The most effective strategy for browsing the NYPL research catalog is to navigate subject headings. These descriptive authorities, created by the Library of Congress, are used to group similar materials together. Each item in the catalog is typically assigned at least one relevant subject heading, and clicking through the hyperlinked headings and subheadings is the best way to gain a comprehensive sense of NYPL collections.
Issues. There are no uniform subject headings related to personal narratives, and depending on what you are looking for, any related subject headings might not exist. A recent downtown memoir by psychedelic graphic designer Steven Heller features ten subject headings, none of which feature the terms "personal narrative," or "memoir," or any term indicating a first-person account, and the use of the subheading "Biography" is only in reference to the author's career as a "Commercial artist," with no indication of the biographical relationship to New York City.
Keywords. Resorting to keywords, one encounters another vacuum of terminology: memoir, autobiography, reminiscences, recollections, journals, diaries, letters, and “creative nonfiction” (a term that should be filed beside “alternative facts” in its Dadaist implications for what exactly is going on in the text, and raises the question of its opposite, “noncreative nonfiction,” which doesn’t sound like something anyone wants to read, much less, for the book industry, to publish). See the subject headings under each tab in the "Type" section. In addition, use the "Search Tips" tab to enhance your navigation of NYPL collections relevant to your subject.
There are a handful of idiosyncrasies in using subject headings to browse the NYPL catalog. Theoretically, there should be a consistency in the use of subject headings, while in action they are inconsistently applied. The uniformity is a bit corrugated; one pinballs through the catalog, or, depending how far one enters the wormhole of research, floats among the fourth dimension. In order to harness these research behaviors for an optimal sense of NYPL collections, play around with these tips.
Subheadings.
- On the homepage for the NYPL Research Catalog, select the Subject Heading Explorer and enter the phrase "Personal Narrative." This results in two arrangements of browseable lists: subject headings where the phrase precedes the subheading, and another where the phrase is the subheading.
- If there are particular neighborhoods associated with a particular demographic you are researching, browse the catalog using the neighborhood as the point of entry, or the population. For example, New Brighton (N.Y.), or Chinese Americans -- New York (State) -- New York.
- Perform trial-and-error subheading searches in the Subject Heading Explorer - this saves time over clicking each subject heading and scanning through a list of subheadings. See the side screengrab for sample terms paired with "personal narratives."
Wording.
- Instead of subject headings that include the phrase "personal narrative," the term "biography" is often used. Though misapplied, it is useful to employ the term "biography" when searching the research catalog and browsing the Subject Heading Explorer. For example, the 59 results using the terms "personal narrative queer" include Another Appalachia : coming up queer and Indian in a mountain place / Neema Avashia, however of the abundant subject headings, there is no use of the term "Personal Narrative," only "Biography."
- Another example: "Homosexuality - Personal narratives" shows only two results, while "Gay men -- United States -- Biography" yields 392 titles, including numerous memoirs and first-person accounts.
- Use the subject heading "Social life and customs," which is often employed as the barest indication that the work might be a real-time account of a time and place. One usually turns to a personal narrative precisely for a sense of social life and customs. See the catalog record for Yazoo, or, On the picket line of freedom in the South : a personal narrative.
Contemporary. More recent catalog records (circa 2000 – current) tend to have more subject headings that typically include more descriptive fields.
Bibliographies - sometimes also referred to as "indexes" - are one of the more comprehensive resources for finding personal narratives. A unique type of publication that seeks an acute degree of thoroughness in listing publications related to a certain subject, bibliographies might often prove frustrating because of the lack of bibliographies for a certain date range or type of personal narrative. In 2023, with memoirs and tell-alls and adaptations of personal blogs and the overabundant promotion of "creative nonfiction," how might even a semi-comprehensive bibliography fit on the bookshelf no less the length of the Atlantic seaboard? Sample subject headings to begin your search:
- United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- Sources
- United States -- Biography -- Bibliography
- American diaries -- Bibliography
- American diaries in manuscript, 1580-1954; a descriptive bibliography.
- The published diaries and letters of American women: an annotated bibliography.
Also, studies of personal narratives are good sources for finding specific titles, getting a sense of what has been published, and pursuing where to find potential primary source collections that include unpublished diaries, correspondence, journals, and other personal narrative formats. Pair your keyword search terms with the word "biography" or "historiography."
And, lastly, to round out researching the old times, consult reference works that provide "what life was like" historical context to a particular era, like the "Daily Life Through History" series published by Greenwood Press, with sample titles like Daily Life in the Early American Public, 1790-1820, and Daily Life During African American Migrations. And be sure you have enough gigawatts to get back to the future...
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Subject Headings
