Finding New York City directories in Hathitrust is a little like herding cattle: you find the first bunch quickly, and then spend the rest of your time rounding up strays. Instead of a long list of individual directories, searching Hathitrust yields a series of record sets into which the individual directories have been organized. A record set often holds multiple directories, but sometimes contains only one, and a single directory series series may appear across multiple record sets. It's at this point that the search process begins to feel like a long, lonely cattle drive.

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