I don't know if anyone answered this. I was born in NYC, so was my son, my parents, etc, etc. I have both the long and short for me and for my son. I have seen a lot of birth records for NYC, including Long Island City. The long - used to be a negative print - white on black, but they may have changed. It has many details on it, (varies with time period, older ones have race, newer ones do not), but it details included information about the parents' - age, occupation (father), mother's maiden name, number of children born living, address, time of birth, doctor's name, hospital. That's the one you want. The short form looks like an award certificate and has very basic information. Can't find mine and my son needed his when he got married. I think it just has name, date, and maybe names of parents. Very little genealogical information. The first time I saw one I thought it was fake!! but that's what they're doing now if you just send for a birth cert and don't specify long form. These are the forms from the Department of Health and access is restricted. Only the individual and his/her parents can get the cert. Maybe you can get for your parents or grandparents but I think you have to prove relationship and that they are deceased. There is only one type of form at the Municipal Archives and those are probably the ones at LDS. They depend on the year. Very early ones were just in a ledger with little information. Then they started certs and they changed them as the years went by. You can only get certs up until 1909. The Municipal Archives will print a copy of whatever is on the microfilm. They do not print a positive, not negative version of the microfilm. NYC birth records were always easy to spot because of the black paper and white print. Hope that helps. Mary