Municipal Library
The Municipal Library contains more than 400,000 unique reports, books, periodicals and documents about New York City government. The Library is open to the public and offers Internet access, an online catalog, and reference assistance. The Library also makes available a growing collection of agency reports and other material online via the Government Publications Portal.
Get directions and visitor instructions.
Please Note: Coats, bags, briefcases, and other personal articles are not permitted in the document research areas.
Search the Municipal Library Catalog. Note: Our online catalog software is Koha.
The Municipal Library Catalog allows you to search for publications from the 17th century to the present. You will see title, author, date of publication and other information. The publications cannot be accessed through the catalog. The material is available in the Rebecca Rankin Reading Room. Please contact us with your questions.
The Municipal Library has used ArchiveIt to collect, catalog, and preserve NYC.gov content. By clicking here, you can see the dates the webpages were captured and click on one of them to see the webpage as it appeared on that date. New York City’s agency websites were being crawled and harvested quarterly and are fully text searchable until June 30, 2023. Future storage will be in the Cloud. Please watch this space for future details.
All official social media of New York City agencies is harvested and made available on the Municipal Library home page. The agency uses ArchiveSocial to collect the posts directly from social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and make them available.
Reference Assistance
Library staff can provide assistance via e-mail at research@records.nyc.gov
You can also e-mail the Municipal Library via the Contact Us form.
Collection highlights include:
- Annual Reports - published by city agencies, 19th century to the present
- Biographical Files - a handy resource of information about local officials
- Executive Orders, Local Laws. City Charters - resources for legislative intent research
Municipal Library Notes
Subscribe to the Municipal Library Notes to receive our quarterly newsletter. View our previous Municipal Library Notes. More recent issues can be found at: Government Publications Portal.