The Cloisters: Deep Stacks

This second, deeper stack room of The Cloisters Library holds the monographs unconverted to LC, and the rest of the archival material.

This has resulted in a awesome salmagundi, the best kind of bits and pieces.

Museum administration papers, the personal papers of founder George Grey Barnard, early glass lantern slides of material held by the museum, collections of images of museum under construction, curators papers both internal and external, scholars papers. Bequests of dealers records (particularly those whose merchantry contributed to the Cloisters collection), a bequest from scholars of medieval architecture. Spools of reel to reel tape of classical music for piping through the museum halls, back when one used reel to reel technology to sidestep vinyl records skipping. Piles of loose maps in various states of repair and decay. Basically, this room is crammed with wonderful, ephemeral and very orderly treasure.

And the longest, most impressive compactus I've ever met.

Cloisters: Stacks of stacks

The first stacks we visit are in this great primary blue, and were completed in the early 1990's.

This room holds the working collection. Most of the titles here have been acquired post 1992- when the reading room upstairs officially ran out of space. The few older publications are from collections that were displaced from the reading room for some heavily used subjects like medieval cooking and gardening (the Cloisters grounds have extensive historical gardens, documented here).

Michael admits he really has the best of both worlds in managing a collection like the Cloisters. A small, by-appointment repository, in a beautiful setting, with the full financial and operational support of a major organisation to boot.

While the finances of the Met mean Michael's budgets aren't lean, the Cloisters do receive bequests. There have been about 5 major donations, mostly by retiring scholars. These high quality collections have helped fill the gaps nicely. A bequest from a scholar of Medieval Scandinavia filled just such a gap. 

For the most part the collection supports the curators, and reflects the museum focus of Western Europe: Germany down to Spain, and British to a certain extent. The Library wasn't restrictive against Scandinavia, they just hadn't been actively collecting. They ARE restrictive against Byzantine era resources- there is a strong focus and specific Byzantine collection downtown at the Met proper.