The NYPL, Historians, and the Homeless

Claire Potter, the Tenured Radical, has been in the city, doing research at the New York Public Library. She remembers having been there twenty years ago:

One day in the reading room back in the 1980's, prior to the invention of laptop computers and a set of rules imposed by the Giuliani administration to prevent vagrants from coming to the library in the winter to thaw out, my friend Barbara pointed out a number of people sitting at one of the long tables and said:"Just try to guess which are the historians and which are the homeless." And indeed, each person at the table was wrapped in odd layers of grimy clothing and shuffling index cards and scraps of paper around. Upon closer inspection, some were scholars and others were -- well, just shuffling scraps of paper, trying to find a pattern.

As Eric Rauchway points out, the NYPL, Patience and Fortitude are about to get a facelift; but, twenty years later, I'm still"just shuffling scraps of paper, trying to find a pattern."