One of the world’s premier research institutions, the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, has a hidden history of its own. In addition to housing the papers of luminaries like James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, and Malcolm X, contained within its walls are the voices of my grandparents, my aunt, my uncle, and my mother. In this talk I will outline the early stages of researching and writing about the library’s caretaker family, my family, and the lives they lived nearly 100 years ago. The 135th St Branch, as it was then known, has occupied a central cultural and community role in Harlem since the 1920s and continues to this day. My family, however, knew the library better than anyone. In this workshop I will share some of what my initial research has revealed and the silences which remain.