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Resources in New York Public Libraries

The New York Public Library's catalog reveals a dense array of printed materials on the Congo published between 1895 and 1909. Many of these books are in the Library's main stacks, but most should not be, owing to their condition and rarity. AMNH has a disproportionately large collection of Congo material published between 1875 and 1909: it's likely that these books were purchased for or by Herbert Lang. In some cases, the catalog record is noted thusly. Like the books in the NYPL collection, many of these are in precarious condition, but are consulted so infrequently that they may be safe in the Main Stacks. Columbia's collection is extremely sparse, and mostly duplicated by the NYPL.

Also included in this list of resources are the headlines of articles on the Congo that appeared in the New York Times and the New York Herald. Other New York papers, such as the New York American and the Brooklyn Daily Standard, also printed articles on the Congo, but the Herald was at the time the New York paper with the best international coverage, and the Times, then as now, was the newspaper of record.

Maps listed are from the Map Division of the New York Public Library unless noted. Most of the books consulted had fold-out maps, some in color. The researcher would do well to compare these privately-made maps (with their inherent political biases) with the official maps of the Congo Free State (with their inherent political biases).

When consulting the catalogs of the NYPL and Columbia library, it is important to check the Dictionary Catalog or card catalog as well as the Online Public Access Catalog (CATNYP at NYPL; CLIO at Columbia). Many older works have not made it into the online catalog yet.

The online catalogs are available as follows:

NYPL: http://catnyp.nypl.org/

AMNH: http://nimidi.amnh.org/webvoy.htm

Columbia: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/indexes/clio.html

Lastly, the researcher will do well to remember these various names for the area now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo:

Congo Free State

Etat Independant du Congo (or in some cases l'Etat Independent du Congo)

Congo Belge

Congo, Belgian

Belgian Congo

Congo (Kinshasa)

Congo/Leopoldville

Zaire