Brooklyn Public Library and Brooklyn Historical Society to Merge

It will also, Ms. Johnson said, help solve some of the library’s issues with crowding, by opening up the prime space on the mezzanine of the flagship’s soaring lobby that is currently occupied by the Brooklyn Collection to wider use.

Last year, the Brooklyn Collection attracted about 800 researchers and 1,700 students, out of a total of more than one million visitors to the building. The historical society’s grand, wood-paneled second-floor library, which is an interior landmark, sees about 7,000 researcher visits a year, out of a total of about 50,000 visits to the building’s galleries and other public spaces.

“We’ve been on a space grab,” Ms. Johnson said of the library’s renovation, which is putting greater emphasis on digital technology and on converting more back-office space for public use. “We’re looking for every square inch and trying to make it available to the public.”

The plan may also bring a bit of spatial retrenchment for the historical society. Last year, in what was billed as its first-ever expansion, it opened a satellite in a restored pre-Civil War warehouse in the tourist-heavy Dumbo section of Brooklyn.

Ms. Johnson said the satellite’s current exhibition, a multimedia display exploring the Brooklyn waterfront, would remain there until March 2021. But what happens next in the space, whose lease runs through 2030, remains to be determined.

“We are really looking at everything,” she said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/arts/brooklyn-public-library-brooklyn-historical-society.html