This library is one of the city's most iconic cultural institutions. The collections, programs, and exhibitions are a portal to more than six centuries of human history, from the Middle Ages to the present. This history lives on where some 1.6 million books, 600,000 maps, and 5 million manuscript pages documenting life in Europe and the Americas can be accessed. A small fraction of these treasures appear in the exhibition galleries. The staff will help its guests in discovering the rest in the reading rooms, program spaces, and classrooms.