Articles by Guests

To enhance the conversation generated by this website, I am inviting guests to write about topics that are relevant to the discourse. The first two invited guests are Jeffrey Croteau and Roberta Munoz, both former colleagues who I had the pleasure of working with at the Brooklyn Museum.

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Walter Whitman, Acting Librarian
Walter Whitman, Acting Librarian

By Jeffrey Croteau

The investigation that follows has its roots in a simple question that has yet to be adequately addressed: did the fifteen-year-old Walt Whitman serve as “acting librarian” for the Brooklyn Apprentices' Library in January of 1835? 

Whitman on Broadway – The Poet of the Present Contemplates the Past
Whitman on Broadway – The Poet of the Present Contemplates the Past

By Roberta Munoz

When Walt Whitman writes about the “great thoroughfare” of Broadway in Manhattan the energy almost breaks the page. It was, and still is,  a place where … million-footed Manhattan unpent descends to her pavements…entirely given up to foot-passengers and foot-standers, when the mass is densest[

Guest Contributors

Jeffrey Croteau was Library Associate at the Brooklyn Museum and assisted with collection development, budget management and promotion of those fine research collections. He is currently Director of Library & Archives at the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library. Here is a link to blog posts he has written about the collections held there. Jeffrey is also a poet and has written and lectured about nineteenth-century libraries in America. He has lectured at the Brooklyn Museum about the Brooklyn printers that Walt Whitman encountered during his apprenticeship years and how these connections directly led to Whitman's appointment as acting librarian of the Brooklyn Apprentices Library in 1835. His article on nineteenth-century Brooklyn circulating libraries was published in the journal Library History. His poetry has appeared in The Paris Review and Fence.

Roberta Munoz was the Librarian of the Wilbour Library of Egyptology at the Brooklyn Museum and assisted with collection development, cataloging, access and social media to promote that world renown research collection. Here are a few links to blogs she wrote about rare items in the Wilbour Library collection . Her extensive essay on the work of an Egyptologist entitled Amelia Edwards in America – A Quiet Revolution in Archaeological Science was recently published in the  Bulletin of the History of Archaeology. She is currently Librarian of the Union Club in New York City. In addition to overseeing the Library’s collections, she is also responsible for the Union Club’s Archives and is registrar of the Art Collection.