But in Southeast Queens, images like that are becoming history. 

The Queens Borough Public Library’s Central Branch is taking the borough’s book borrowers into the future with a staggering amount of music, movies, CD-ROMs, photos and musical scores that could put any video or record store to shame and please the most discerning couch potato (or musicologist, or film buff, or art guru).

The Central Library’s Fine Arts and Recreation division, which started in 1933 with a collection of books about the visual arts and music, expanded in 1941 to include a phonograph and small collection of records.

The library  acquired new media as it became available to the public.

Thousands of CDs for work and for pleasure are available at the Central Library, as well as DVDs, VHS tapes and cassettes. PRESS Photo By Ira Cohen

Currently they have a constantly rotating collection of over 41,000 audio titles, 23,650 video titles, 330 CD-ROMs, 30,000 photos and 25,000 musical scores and instruction books. 

All are available for lending.

Among the audio and video titles, spokesperson Yvonne Hoeft said, most in the collection—and most being borrowed—are what the library calls ‘entertainment’ titles, like popular music and feature films.

Movies and music are the most popular media being borrowed from the Fine Arts and Recreation division. 

Titles from the division’s collection of 20,000 VHS tapes were taken out 21,451 times in August, or 692 per day that month, Hoeft said. 

Titles from the collection of 2,400 DVDs were taken out 9,638 times in August, or 302 times a day. 

Titles from the 28,000-piece CD collection were borrowed 11,477 times, or 370 times a day. 

Titles from the 13,000-piece audio cassette collection were borrowed 13,390 times, or 432 times a day.

Most of those titles are in English, but Chinese, Indian and Spanish titles are also popular, Fine Arts and Recreation Divisional Manager Esther Lee said.

The most popular instructional titles, Lee said, are for language instruction. 

Over 40 languages can be studied with the Library’s audio and computer titles, which number at over 500.

Many of the Library’s interactive CD-ROM titles are also for language instruction, but there are also many art and music history titles, as well as some National Geographic article, photo and map archives.

Computer instruction titles are also very popular, Lee said.  Most of those titles are videos, but some CD-ROMs are also available to show junior, mom or grandpa that mice and icons are more than just rodents and people.

The Fine Arts and Recreation division’s picture collection lends mostly to teachers and students working on school projects, Lee said, but many borrowers are also architects, historians and designers looking for background or inspiration in their fields. 

Twenty photos can be borrowed at a time, as one item, and returned to any branch of the Library.

The Library’s collection of musical scores and librettos includes materials on every kind of popular, classical and religious music, including about 500 operas with original and translated lyrics.  There are also hundreds of titles that teach how to play instruments.

For those who would still like to read about the arts or recreation, the Library has about 125,000 books on painting and drawing, antiques, architecture, sculpture, photography, film, television, theater, dance, games and sports.

They range in subject matter from instructional to documentary to the classics to the latest teen screamers.  There are also about 2,100 print and microfilm periodical titles available, though most are for reference only, Hoeft said.

The vast amount of entertainment-related material available through the internet is also accessible at the Central Library, mostly through the high-speed lines that feed the fast new computers at the 48-station Cyber Center.  About 50 other computers are also available for public use at the Library, scattered throughout the first floor.

The Library’s official policy is that the computers, available for one hour per day per user, are for “information resources only,” barring “chat rooms, newsgroups or games.”  But many people break these rules, or interpret them differently, and many chat rooms and newsgroups can be accessed for legitimate research purposes.  The computers have the suite of Microsoft Office programs available for use, as well as laser printers—one for every two seats—that can be used for free.

Deputy Director for Customer Services Thomas E. Alford said that there are no filters regulating Internet access from the Queens Public Library’s computers, and that it’s the staff’s job to police usage.

In addition to all the physical and electronic materials available, there are also a lot of events that happen at the Central Library, many instructional but mostly in the form of lectures and art performances.

Authors, poets, musicians, actors, comedians and other performers have found audiences at the Central Branch, particularly its 200-seat basement theater, since the branch’s Merrick Boulevard opening in 1966.

In the recent past, there have been a poetry slam hosted by hip hop mogul Russell Simmons, a book discussion with author Mary Alice Munroe, a magic show by clown Chip Bryant and an East Indian drama dance by the Rajkumari Cultural Center.

On Sept. 28 there was a tribute concert to Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin.  Irene Failenbogen will play and sing Spanish and Hebrew music at a concert on Oct. 6 at 2 p.m.

Serious local history buffs who get their kicks from 300-year-old municipal documents, 100-year-old event posters and newspapers and giant maps and arial photos of the borough documenting how it changed during this century can find themselves in historian-heaven at the Long Island Division, a reference room hidden on the second floor of the Central Branch.

The Division, which has its own (shorter) hours and a bevy of strict rules governing access and usage (get a pass before entering; don’t use ink-based pens; don’t try to reshelve books; get a pass if you have to leave and return), is a treasure chest of original historical materials and hard to find reference titles.

There are big, leather-bound 30-by-50-inch insurance atlases that trace the borough in more detail than a Hagstrom street map.  Most date from the early part of the century and have been updated—with paper cutouts, hand-drawn lines and glue—until the 90s.  There are also a lot of old flat-file maps, but many are so fragile that they’re not available for browsing by visitors.

There are about 100,000 photographs, in addition to the New York Herald Tribune photo morgue.  The photos date back to the turn of the century and reveal, as they’re doing right now in a gallery exhibit downstairs called “From Burgh to Borough,” a borough that has changed from rural farmland to a teeming metropolis.  About half of the photos are viewable through a computer database that can only be searched in the room, but will soon be available on the Internet.  The database is searchable by keyword, subject, date or neighborhood.

There are also clipping files of original materials stored by community and subject.

The Central branch of the Queens Public Library is at 89-11 Merrick Blvd., in Jamaica.  Its website address is www.queenslibrary.org/central/.  Its main phone number, one of dozens, is 990-0700.