New York Public Library To Hold Overnight Treasure Hunt
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- The New York Public Library is planning its version of "Night At The Museum."
The main library branch is seeking 500 people to spend the night and participate in a scavenger hunt called "Find The Future."
The game was created by best-selling author Jane McGonigal to celebrate the library's centennial.
The hunt will allow people to tap into their inner creativity and potential as they explore the library's rare treasures.
Participants will be broken up into groups of eight to look for 100 objects inside the Fifth Avenue library. An app will provide clues on where to find the objects.
To prove they found an object, they will have to scan a type of bar code with their cell phones and spend time with it before unlocking a quest to write their own story based on the object at a computer in the reading room.
"At the end of the night we will have produced a book which will go into the permanent collection of the New York Public Library so that people can come in 100 years and see what happened on this extraordinary night," Caro Llewellyn, the producer of the library's centennial celebration, told 1010 WINS.
Some items that will be a part of the hunt include Charles Dickens' letter opener, Virginia Wolfe's walking stick, and Jack Kerouac's glasses.
"It's all about about people envisioning their future and drawing on the strength and the power and the importance of the objects we have here at the library," Llewellyn said.
The three-story library, the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, houses 65 million items, including a Gutenberg Bible, the first substantial printed book in the Western world; the first edition of the sheet music of "The Star-Spangled Banner''; writing desks belonging to Emily Bronte and Dickens; and one of the oldest known terrestrial globes, known as the Hunt Lenox Globe, from 1510.
The event starts on May 20 at 8 p.m. and ends the next day at 6 a.m. An online version of the game will be available a day after the scavenger hunt.
Click here to register.
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