Exhibit: A Cabinet Of Curiosities

New York Public Library

This show could be called "The Library Bites Back." Just as the Internet is like a giga-library, full of useful information, this show is like a micro-Internet, full of stuff that's fascinating and pointless. Old, quaint erotica, Jack Kerouac's crutches, and an asbestos-bound copy of Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's novel about book burning, are among the eccentric treasures. Then there's the anti-Nazi literature hidden in tea bags, above, which demonstrates one of the library's main advantages over the Web: it can prove such things existed. --By Belinda Luscombe

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