It says something about the nesting habits of certain bookish New Yorkers that when a shopper took a wrong turn out of the Strand one day, he wandered into Hank O'Neal's apartment and mistook it for an annex of the bookstore.

He was looking for the rare book room, but he took the wrong door, which led to the wrong elevator, which opened directly onto Mr. O'Neal's front hall. There the man was, methodically making his way along a hallway bookshelf sagging under the complete works of Djuna Barnes when Mr. O'Neal's wife, Shelley Shier, looked up.

''Excuse me, can I help you?'' she called.

''Oh, no,'' the man answered cheerily. ''Just browsing.''

New York City is full of people like Mr. O'Neal -- lifelong bibliophiles with a proclivity for accumulation, holed up in compact spaces in the intimate company of thousands upon thousands upon thousands of books.

The phenomenon is not unique to New York, but it is abetted by a few facts of life here: Books are ubiquitous and often affordable; space is tight, and rent laws, just renewed, encourage people to stay put.