Hi, I went to New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue for the first time on last Saturday. My first impression of the library was that it was HUGE! It is like a museum. Now they have a Japanese exhibition - EHON: the artist and the book in Japan. (EHON means a picture book in Japanese.) The exhibition is organized into five sections - "Origins", "The Art of the Book", "Heaven", "Earth" and "Humanity" - and focuses on each theme. The picture books and scrolls are about many historical periods from 764 to 2005. Since I saw some of them in the textbooks when I was a student, I kind of got ideas what they were like. By the way, for your info, a Japanese book is opened from right to left, which is the opposite way of a western book.

On Third Floor, there were Pinocchio pictures on the wall by Jim Dine who is a painter, printmaker, sculptor, photographer, performance artist, and poet. He painted several different kinds of Pinocchio such as "Mature Pinocchio" - his grown-up face(so manly!) and "Pinocchio in Fire" - baked his head on the pan (so cruel!) Most of them are so unique.

They have a big computer room for Internet access, organized rooms divided by categories and sophisticated architecture. I think it is not just a library but also could be a museum or something. When you visit NY, I highly recommend you go there and see how beautiful it is.

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