About monthèque
monthèque is a personal project created in July 2026. The name is short for mon + bibliothèque. It searches the three public library systems of New York City in a single request and shows which branches have a copy of a book on the shelf: NYPL (Manhattan, the Bronx, Staten Island), Brooklyn and Queens.
The three systems are separate institutions. Each has its own catalog, its own website and its own card, and none of them can search the other two. monthèque exists to fill that gap.
How it works
Search by title, author or ISBN. Results are grouped by work, so the fifty-odd editions of a classic appear as one line. Opening a book shows the shelf status of every branch, fetched live from each system. The three catalogs do not publish the same information:
- NYPL reports branch availability plus system-wide copy and hold counts. When its holdings drawer exposes item rows, monthèque also shows per-branch copy counts and due dates; some records still only expose branch-level status.
- Brooklyn reports per-copy status, call numbers and due dates at every branch.
- Queens blocks automated catalog search, so monthèque only knows the Queens holdings that have been mapped in ahead of time. Every book page links to the Queens catalog so you can check there directly.
Holds are placed on the library's own site, with your own card. monthèque links to the exact record but has no access to library accounts.
Freshness
Shelf status is fetched live and cached for a few minutes. The cache keeps pages fast and keeps monthèque a discreet guest of the libraries' services: identified requests, batched lookups, no hammering. Each availability table states when its data was fetched (the “checked N min ago” line). A copy can always leave the shelf in the time it takes to get there.
Accessibility
The site targets WCAG 2.1 AA: semantic HTML, full keyboard operation (including the tables that scroll sideways), visible focus, screen-reader announcements for live updates, and text contrast checked in both themes.
Independence
monthèque is not affiliated with, nor endorsed by, NYPL, the Brooklyn Public Library or the Queens Public Library. Cover images come from Syndetics, Google Books and Open Library. Open Library also fills in publication years and covers the library records leave blank.