Brimming with photographs, letters, and article clippings, the scrapbook shows library interiors, events (including theater performances), and fellow staff members. Librarian Gertrude Finkel Sharcoff also illustrated the scrapbook in watercolor and ink — just look at that title leaf! — with charming vignettes appearing on eighteen of its twenty-four leaves. The photos of neighborhood children suggest how devoted Sharcoff was to her role in the Lower East Side community.
While you can’t borrow this book, you can buy it for $975 from Tavistock Books, a dealer in rare and antiquarian books based in Alameda, California. The cataloguer there summed up the scrapbook this way: “All in all, an unfiltered primary glimpse into the workings of a neighborhood branch of the NYPL system from the 1930s into the 1950s.”
