Library & Museum Studies

An “exquisite” (The Washington Post) “hauntingly beautiful” (Associated Press) portrait of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its treasures by a former New Yorker staffer who spent a decade as a museum guard.

On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual false alarm....

Isabella Stewart Gardner’s museum, with its plain exterior enfolding an astonishing four-story Italian palazzo, rose from Boston’s Fens at the turn of the twentieth century. Its treasures encompassed not only masterwork paintings but tapestries, rare books, prints, porcelains, and fine furniture....

James Gleick, the author of the best sellers Chaos and Genius, now brings us a work just as astonishing and masterly: A revelatory chronicle and meditation that shows how information has become the modern era’s defining quality....

At the same time Adolf Hitler was attempting to take over the western world, his armies were methodically seeking and hoarding the finest art treasures in Europe.....

Perfect for book lovers, this is a fascinating exploration of the history of libraries and the people who built them, from the ancient world to the digital age....

Flight is the hilarious and tragic story of an orphaned Indian boy who travels back and forth through time in a charged search for his true identity....

Renowned art conservator Rosa Lowinger spent a difficult childhood in Miami among people whose losses in the Cuban revolution, and earlier by the decimation of family in the Holocaust, clouded all family life....

Sitting on the banks of the river Seine, in the very heart of Paris, the Musée d'Orsay is known worldwide for its...

Py-Lieberman reflects on the profound connections between even outwardly dissimilar objects and offers insight and stories from Smithsonian experts.

Do you love working with books? Of course you do! Do you also love working with people? Do you want to better your community? Interested in planning big events for people in your community? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this book is for you....

The Art of Relevance is your guide to mattering more to more people....

The book that changed the conversation on the contemporary museum....

Abandoned in a library book-drop slot in the dead of winter, the small kitten who came to be known as Dewey Readmore Books miraculously endured the coldest night of the year....

A manifesto on the state of the non-profit arts sector and the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity leaders have to redefine the business as an investment in our shared humanity.

At first glance, Josh Hanagarne seems an improbable librarian. He stands 6'7", competes in strongman contests, and was diagnosed in high school with Tourette's syndrome....

In its first four months of operation, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture surpassed one million visits and quickly became a cherished, vital monument to the African American experience. And yet this accomplishment was never assured....

Coming face to face with an important illuminated manuscript in the original is rather like meeting a very famous person....

From a New York Times best-selling historian comes the story of how the alphabet ordered our world. A Place for Everything is the first-ever history of alphabetization, from the Library of Alexandria to Wikipedia....

Librarians spend their lives weeding - not weeds, but books - books that have reached the end of their shelf life both literally and figuratively. Annie Spence addresses those books directly....

Information Science: The Basics provides an accessible introduction to the multifaceted field of Information Science (IS).

In this audiobook, Jeffrey Pomerantz offers an accessible and concise introduction to metadata....

Art today is defined by its relationship to money as never before.....

A thoughtful meditation on the value of care and attention in an age of disappearing things, Fewer, Better Things invites us to reconnect with the physical world and its objects.

The remarkable, improbable story of a small, makeshift library in the Syrian town of Darayya, and the people who found hope and humanity in its books during the four-year siege they endured....