Shaquille O’Neal Illustration by Tom Bachtell

There are fifty-two million items in the New York Public Library, if you count the artifacts, like pieces of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s skull and the walking stick that Virginia Woolf carried to the river’s edge. The other day, Thomas Lannon, a curator, was riffling through the collection, trying to find some objects that might interest Shaquille O’Neal, who was coming to the library that night as part of the N.Y.P.L.’s conversation series to talk about his new children’s book, “Little Shaq.”

Lannon was stumped. He’d considered original Superman comics, but they’re stored off-site. “Shaquille O’Neal isn’t really a scholar,” Lannon said, as he wheeled two boxes into a makeshift greenroom. “But he does have a doctorate”—in education, and also a master’s in business. One of his many nicknames is the Big Aristotle.

When Paul Holdengräber, the library’s resident interviewer, started the series, the staff created a tradition: before each event, the curators pull objects geared to the speaker’s interests. George Clinton was shown correspondence between Timothy Leary and Allen Ginsberg about psychedelics and jazz. Werner Herzog looked at a register of executions at San Quentin, and Patti Smith got to hold the Woolf walking stick.

Lannon placed felt pads on three tables. On one of them he set down two file cards covered in scribbles. “Doodles by Herbert Hoover,” he said. “Shaq has a sense of humor.” Lannon also had a note from George Washington to a field general during the Revolutionary War. “It shows the military Washington,” Lannon said. “And Shaq is a lawman.” (O’Neal is a reserve police officer in Florida.) There were two six-inch cones, called clay nails, from the ancient Mesopotamian city of Lagash. “I really just picked these for their artifactuality,” Lannon said. Then came a letter to King Ferdinand of Spain from Christopher Columbus’s son Diego, who wanted money to circumnavigate the globe. (“Diego operated on a Shaquille O’Neal scale, a world scale.”) Lannon opened a book of hymns by Isaac Watts and read, “ ‘How doth the little busy bee improve each shining hour, and gather honey . . . from every opening flower.’ This is a bit like the message of ‘Little Shaq.’ ” Alongside the hymns was a red dictionary the size of a bottle cap, with a picture of Samuel Johnson on its inside cover.

O’Neal appeared at the door, mountainous as ever, wearing a checkered blazer and a black beret. His entourage trailed behind him. “Hey, Shaq!” Lannon said, gesturing toward the miniature Dr. Johnson. “Look at this—it’s the world’s smallest book.” O’Neal pinched the dictionary and dropped it into his open palm, where it was dwarfed by a crystal-encrusted Masonic ring. “Holy shit,” he said. Lannon beamed. “How big is this place?” O’Neal asked. “Fifty-two million items? This isn’t a library—this is the inside of the Internet!”

Lannon launched right into the busy-bee hymn, but O’Neal was losing interest. He nodded politely. “I bet they have crazy insurance,” he said, adding, “I haven’t been in a library since the Internet was created.” He zeroed in on the ancient clay nails. “Oh, those are woolly-mammoth tusks,” he guessed. “How much is something like this worth? Say I have it in my house.”

“They’re priceless,” replied Lannon, whose head came up to the breast pocket of O’Neal’s shirt, which bore a dainty monogram (“Shaq,” in cursive).

O’Neal: “One million? Two million?”

Lannon turned back to the Hoover doodles, to make a final point. “Really, it’s a question about what’s worth saving,” he said. “Is it important in itself, or is it important because of who touched it?”

O’Neal dismissed the question. “Save everything,” he said. ♦