Library of Congress's Blog, page 109

Pic of the Week: Pride in the Library!

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Library of Congress staff members stand before panels of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Panels from the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt are on display in “Pride in the Library,” a special pop-up exhibit open to the public from June 8 through 10. Shown here are current and former Library staff members who constructed the Library’s section of the quilt to honor Library colleagues who died of AIDS during the height of the epidemic. In addition to the quilt, the exhibit showcases items from the Library’s collections that feature LGBTQ+ creators and representations of LGBTQ+ life in America and around the world.

If you’re in Washington, come to the Jefferson Building of the Library today or tomorrow between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. to see the fantastic display for yourself! But even if you’re not, you can read more about the pop-up display and LGBTQ+ resources at the Library of Congress on our Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month 2017 online presentation, which includes a master list of what collection items are currently on display in the exhibit.

Gallery Talk: Immigrant Voices of the Veterans History Project

This is a guest post by Owen Rogers, liaison specialist for the Veterans History Project. Library of Congress specialists often give presentations about ongoing Library exhibitions. This post relates to a presentation Rogers prepared for the exhibition “Echoes of the Great War: American Experiences of World War I.”

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Wedding portrait of Blanche and Stephen Young

My great-grandfather, Stephen Basford Young, served in France with the 26th Infantry Division and celebrated his 18th birthday on November 11, 1918—the day World War I ended. Through stories passed down from my mother and aunts, I learned that our family line is—quite literally—a consequence of the Great War and its intersections. While visiting comrades gassed at the Battle of Belleau Wood, my great-grandfather met one of their sisters. Blanche would be my great-grandmother. Both of my great-grandparents were the children of French-Canadian immigrants to the United States.

During World War I, nearly one-third of American residents were immigrants or children of immigrants. International ancestry is a common theme in the Veterans History Project collections. Altogether, 5 percent of VHP World War I collections indicate foreign birth.

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Joseph Rosenblum

My great-grandfather, who spoke French and English, found fortune in the Signal Corps through a common language and ancestry with French soldiers, relaying coordinates from artillery forward observers. But Prussian-born veterans like Rudolph Neumann and Peter Shemonsky no doubt felt conflicted about their overseas service, a tension furthered intensified by nativist fears on the home front. Others like recent Romanian immigrant Joseph Rosenblum were drafted into the U.S. Army and fought for the same cause as their countrymen.

As a result of the Selective Service Act of May 18, 1917, by war’s end, nearly three-quarters of the entire U.S. Army were conscripted soldiers. Half a million were foreign-born. Although immigrants weren’t required to serve in the military, their eventual naturalization required registration for selective service. As further incentive, Congress amended naturalization laws for immigrants who served in the U.S. armed forces, waiving the five-year residence requirement for naturalized citizenship.

A photograph from the Library’s New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection suggests the effects of these incentives. In 1917, F.M. Stefano documented the arrival of an immigrant contingent from New Rochelle, New York, to the Camp Upton induction and training facility on Long Island. More than 30 different languages and dialects were spoken in this training camp alone! More than 120,000 veterans received citizenship as a consequence of their military service and began a tradition of military naturalization that continues to this day.

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Immigrants arrive Camp Upton on Long Island for induction into the U.S. Army. Photo by F.M. Stefano.

When Congress created the Veterans History Project in 2000, there were fewer than 4,000 living World War I veterans in the United States. By 2011, there were none. Although VHP is expanding its Great War narratives through posthumous manuscript and media submissions, we have fewer than a hundred WWI veterans’ oral histories—less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the entire archive.

Our stories inform our understanding of the past. VHP is an ongoing effort, and veterans’ voices are accessible only through the voluntary recording of oral histories and the submission of original manuscripts and media. To hear more veterans’ stories and learn how to add your family history to the Library’s permanent collections, visit our website.

World War I Centennial, 2017–18 . With the most comprehensive collection of multiformat World War I holdings in the nation, the Library of Congress is a unique resource for primary source materials, education plans, public programs and on-site visitor experiences about the Great War including exhibits, symposia and book talks.

Inquiring Minds: Diaries Shed New Light on Laos’ 20th-Century Upheavals

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Ryan Wolfson-Ford researches serials in the Asian Reading Room on May 11. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Ryan Wolfson-Ford spent two weeks at the Library of Congress in May thanks to the Library’s Florence Tan Moeson Fellowship Program. It supports scholars pursuing research in Asian studies using the collections in the Library’s Asian Division.

Wolfson-Ford is completing his doctoral degree in history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research focuses on Laos from 1945 to 1975—the era of the Vietnam War—specifically on the rule of the Royal Lao Government during that time. Wolfson-Ford consulted original documents in the Manuscript Division, including the diaries of longtime Royal Lao prime minister Souvanna Phouma, as well as holdings in the Asian Division.

Wolfson-Ford took a break from his research in the Asian Reading Room on May 12 to answer a few questions for “Inquiring Minds.”

What exactly will your dissertation explore?

The period from 1945 to 1975 is the only time that Laos had a democracy. It involved a major cultural and social shift as well as a change in the political order. My main focus is on the Royal Lao Government’s elite. Other historical studies have dismissed it, but it was crucial to the formation of the first government following the declaration of independence on October 12, 1945. While the Royal Lao Government lasted only a few decades—it lost power in 1975 after waging a civil war that started in 1959 against communist forces—it laid the foundations for modern Laos.

Why did you apply to do research at the Library, and which collections did you use?

I wanted to come to the Library mainly to research the diaries of Souvanna Phouma. He is a central figure in the Royal Lao Government period, but no historian has ever studied his diaries. They’re a major unutilized source for modern Lao history. For the first week, I worked in the Manuscript Reading Room with the Phouma diaries. The second week, I spent most of my time working with Lao newspapers in the Asian Reading Room. Newspapers are a valuable ephemeral source that have only recently been used to study Lao history. The Moeson Fellowship allowed me to complete research that has totally reshaped my understanding of the wartime years in Laos.

What was your most surprising discovery?

I was surprised to find that Phouma, a champion of neutrality in the aftermath of the First Indochina War in the 1950s, had by 1964 sanctioned U.S. bombing campaigns in Laos against North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao communist forces. He was not just bowing to pressure, but was in fact advancing the military campaign for his own reasons. He viewed the Ho Chi Minh Trail—along which communists carried men and material through Laos to South Vietnam—as an invasion that had to be stopped by force after negotiations failed.

What do you see as the importance of your findings at the Library?

My most important insight is that the war in Laos against communists, which paralleled the Vietnam War, was not just forced on the Lao by the U.S., but was in fact a Lao conflict. Royal Lao Government leaders had their own reasons to go to war, primarily to defend their independence and sovereignty and to halt what they saw as a communist takeover of the country. They wanted above all to safeguard the democracy they had built since 1945. It is unfortunate the U.S. did not fully appreciate their goals, limiting the effectiveness of the Lao–U.S. alliance.

How was your experience working at the Library?

Everyone at the Library was pleasant and professional and made working at a complicated place seem easy and enjoyable. Jeffery Flannery of the Manuscript Division was especially helpful in ensuring I had access to the Phouma diaries. He does a wonderful job providing access while also preserving and protecting documents for future generations. Chandell Butler of the Asian Division was very knowledgeable and answered all my questions and concerns fully. And Hong Ta-Moore, also of the Asian Division, has a great enthusiasm that is contagious, ensuring that my time at the Library was positive and productive.

 

Inquiring Minds: Diaries Shed New Light on Lao’s 20th-Century Upheavals

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Ryan Wolfson-Ford researches serials in the Asian Reading Room on May 11. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Ryan Wolfson-Ford spent two weeks at the Library of Congress in May thanks to the Library’s Florence Tan Moeson Fellowship Program. It supports scholars pursuing research in Asian studies using the collections in the Library’s Asian Division.

Wolfson-Ford is completing his doctoral degree in history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research focuses on Laos from 1945 to 1975—the era of the Vietnam War—specifically on the rule of the Royal Lao Government during that time. Wolfson-Ford consulted original documents in the Manuscript Division, including the diaries of longtime Royal Lao prime minister Souvanna Phouma, as well as holdings in the Asian Division.

Wolfson-Ford took a break from his research in the Asian Reading Room on May 12 to answer a few questions for “Inquiring Minds.”

What exactly will your dissertation explore?

The period from 1945 to 1975 is the only time that Laos had a democracy. It involved a major cultural and social shift as well as a change in the political order. My main focus is on the Royal Lao Government’s elite. Other historical studies have dismissed it, but it was crucial to the formation of the first government following the declaration of independence on October 12, 1945. While the Royal Lao Government lasted only a few decades—it lost power in 1975 after waging a civil war that started in 1959 against communist forces—it laid the foundations for modern Laos.

Why did you apply to do research at the Library, and which collections did you use?

I wanted to come to the Library mainly to research the diaries of Souvanna Phouma. He is a central figure in the Royal Lao Government period, but no historian has ever studied his diaries. They’re a major unutilized source for modern Lao history. For the first week, I worked in the Manuscript Reading Room with the Phouma diaries. The second week, I spent most of my time working with Lao newspapers in the Asian Reading Room. Newspapers are a valuable ephemeral source that have only recently been used to study Lao history. The Moeson Fellowship allowed me to complete research that has totally reshaped my understanding of the wartime years in Laos.

What was your most surprising discovery?

I was surprised to find that Phouma, a champion of neutrality in the aftermath of the First Indochina War in the 1950s, had by 1964 sanctioned U.S. bombing campaigns in Laos against North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao communist forces. He was not just bowing to pressure, but was in fact advancing the military campaign for his own reasons. He viewed the Ho Chi Minh Trail—along which communists carried men and material through Laos to South Vietnam—as an invasion that had to be stopped by force after negotiations failed.

What do you see as the importance of your findings at the Library?

My most important insight is that the war in Laos against communists, which paralleled the Vietnam War, was not just forced on the Lao by the U.S., but was in fact a Lao conflict. Royal Lao Government leaders had their own reasons to go to war, primarily to defend their independence and sovereignty and to halt what they saw as a communist takeover of the country. They wanted above all to safeguard the democracy they had built since 1945. It is unfortunate the U.S. did not fully appreciate their goals, limiting the effectiveness of the Lao–U.S. alliance.

How was your experience working at the Library?

Everyone at the Library was pleasant and professional and made working at a complicated place seem easy and enjoyable. Jeffery Flannery of the Manuscript Division was especially helpful in ensuring I had access to the Phouma diaries. He does a wonderful job providing access while also preserving and protecting documents for future generations. Chandell Butler of the Asian Division was very knowledgeable and answered all my questions and concerns fully. And Hong Ta-Moore, also of the Asian Division, has a great enthusiasm that is contagious, ensuring that my time at the Library was positive and productive.

 

New Book: “America and the Great War: A Library of Congress Illustrated History”

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Design by Elizabeth Van Itallie.

Between August 1914 and November 1918, World War I eradicated empires, ignited the Russian Revolution, reconfigured the world map and marked a turning point for the United States. A new book by Margaret E. Wagner, “America and the Great War: A Library of Congress Illustrated History,” published by Bloomsbury Press in association with the Library of Congress, commemorates the centennial of that decisive moment in American history. Chronicling the United States in neutrality and in conflict, it presents events and arguments, political and military battles, bitter tragedies and epic achievements that marked U.S. involvement in the first modern war.

Extensively illustrated with images and artifacts from the unparalleled Library of Congress collections—including the rich store of WWI material in the Library’s Veterans History Project—the book presents a unique and engaging look at the era that saw the United States emerge as a true world power while addressing questions that Americans are still struggling to answer today.

Filled with the voices of individuals both well-known and previously unsung, “America and the Great War” reveals the explosion of patriotic fervor as the country declared war; the near-miraculous expansion of its tiny army; its military engagements abroad and struggles against the suppression of civil liberties at home; the successful drives for woman suffrage and prohibition; and the largely unsuccessful struggles by African-Americans to secure at home the rights Americans were fighting for overseas.

In his introduction to “America and the Great War,” Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David M. Kennedy praises the book as “a uniquely colorful chronicle of this dramatic and convulsive chapter in American—and world—history.” Publisher’s Weekly commends Wagner for combining “an entertaining coffee-table format with an intellectually rewarding text.”

A senior writer-editor in the Library of Congress Publishing Office, Wagner is the author of “The Library of Congress Illustrated Timeline of the Civil War,” “The American Civil War: 365 Days,”  “World War II: 365 Days” and “Maxfield Parrish and the Illustrators of the Golden Age.” She is also the co-author of “The Library of Congress Civil War Desk Reference” and “The Library of Congress World War II Companion.”

“America and the Great War” complements an array of Library of Congress programming to commemorate the centennial of World War I, including lectures, symposia, digitized collections, war gardens, veterans’ stories, educational tools, film programs and research guides.

“America and the Great War” is 384 pages long and includes more than 250 illustrations in both color and black-and-white. It is available for $35.99 through the Library of Congress Shop. Credit-card orders are also taken at (888) 682-3557.

For those of you in the Washington, D.C., area, Wagner will speak about the book at the Library of Congress at noon on June 8. Part of the Books and Beyond series sponsored by the Library’s Center for the Book, the talk will be in the Mumford Room on the sixth floor of the Library’s James Madison Memorial Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C.  The event is free and open to the public; no tickets are needed.

 

National Garden Week: How Does Your Garden Grow?

(The following is an article by Erin Allen from the May/June 2017 issue of LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine. Read the entire issue here .)

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A vegetable garden commemorating the victory gardens of World War I grows outside the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress. Photo by Shawn Miller.

April showers bring May flowers, but it’s the summer months that give green thumbs a chance to cultivate, nurture and experiment.

National Garden Clubs Inc. has proclaimed June 4–11, 2017, as National Garden Week. The Library of Congress is following the gardening trend, collaborating with the Architect of the Capitol (AOC) to plant a series of “victory gardens” in commemoration of the centennial of America’s entrance into World War I.

According to Robert Gimpel, a gardener with the AOC, “War gardens were the brainchild of Charles Lothrop Pack and his National War Garden Commission. During the war, a severe food crisis emerged in Europe, as farmworkers enlisted in the military and agricultural lands became battlefields. The National War Garden Commission was organized to increase the food supply for civilians through home gardening.”

The gardens are featured on the grounds of the Thomas Jefferson Building and highlight heirloom varieties of vegetables available during the war years. Today, cities across the United States are continuing this tradition with school and community garden programs.

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This 1919 poster by Maginel Wright Enright was created as part of the National War Garden Commission’s campaign to encourage Americans to raise more food on their own.

During WWI, Maginel Wright Enright, sister of Frank Lloyd Wright, designed a series of posters for the U.S. School Garden Army (part of the National War Garden Commission). This national campaign was launched in 1917 to increase the food supply. Secretary of the Interior Frederick Lane wrote of one of her posters, “I am sure a great many children will find their hearts stirred by the picture, and no older person can look at it without a thrill of loyalty and desire to do his part.”

If horticulturists are considered the ultimate gardeners and architectural landscaping the ultimate garden, the Library’s collections are very representative of both disciplines. Considered the father of landscape architecture, Frederick Law Olmsted is best remembered for his design of the U.S. Capitol grounds, and his career is documented in his personal papers, as well as those of his architectural firm, held in the Manuscript Division. The Science, Technology and Business Division also offers various reference guides on gardening and horticulture.

“Garden and Forest: A Journal of Horticulture, Landscape Art, and Forestry” was the first digital reformatting project done by the Preservation Reformatting Division. It was also the first serial digitized in its entirety by the Library. “Garden and Forest” was the first American journal devoted to horticulture, botany, landscape design and preservation, national and urban park development, scientific forestry, and the conservation of forest resources in the late 19th century.

Pic of the Week: Kids Celebrate Reading Milestone

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Led by Library of Congress staff member Teresa St. Angelo (center), elementary school students search for details in the ornamentation of the Library’s Great Hall. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Seventy-six students from Tyler Elementary School in Washington, D.C., visited the Library of Congress on May 31 to celebrate a big accomplishment: together, they read 1,436 books during the school year with mentors from the Library’s staff and the House of Representatives.

Mentors and students came together through the Power Lunch Program of Everybody Wins! DC. The nonprofit promotes children’s literacy by arranging for adult mentors to read with young students. The Library has worked with Tyler since the 2010–11 school year.

The May 31 celebration included a book talk in the Young Readers Center by children’s author Erica S. Perl, guided activities in the Great Hall and an awards luncheon.

Inquiring Minds: Setting the Record Straight on Pirates and Their Wives

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Daphne Geanacopoulos at the Library of Congress. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Pirate lore has long captivated us and, through the centuries, worked its way into our literature, movies and popular culture. But many depictions of pirates are wrong, distorting our understanding of them. So writes Daphne Palmer Geanacopoulos in her new book, “The Pirate Next Door: The Untold Story of Eighteenth Century Pirates’ Wives, Families and Communities.”

Geanacopoulos used newly discovered primary sources from the 17th and early 18th centuries, including documents at the Library of Congress, to correct long-held beliefs about pirate life and to bring to light the strong women behind men widely considered outlaws and outcasts.

Geanacopoulos is an author, historian and journalist. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post and other publications. She has a doctorate in liberal studies from Georgetown University with an emphasis in maritime history.

Here Geanacopoulos answers a few questions about her new book and her research at the Library.

First, how did you become interested in pirates?

I became interested in pirates when I wrote an article in 2002 for the New York Times about the Whydah Pirate Museum in Provincetown, Massachusetts. The Whydah was a pirate ship that crashed off the coast of Wellfleet, Cape Cod, in 1717 during a fierce storm. One hundred and forty-four men were on board; two survived. In 1984, Barry Clifford, a native Cape Codder and salvage expert, found the fabled pirate ship. For over 30 years, he and his dive team have excavated the shipwreck and have recovered over 200,000 artifacts.

While researching the article for the New York Times, I came across a fascinating primary source document about the pirates. It was a deposition from a runaway pirate, Jeremiah Higgins, who was caught by the authorities and thrown in jail in New York. He told the admiralty court he had been on one of the ships in the pirate flotilla that sailed with the Whydah up the eastern seaboard toward Cape Cod. Days before the wreck of the Whydah, the captain of Higgins’s ship, Paulsgrave Williams, veered away from the group and steered his ship to Block Island in Rhode Island. He wanted to go home to visit his mother and three sisters. Higgins reported that he remained onboard the ship while Captain Williams went ashore to see his family.

I was taken aback by this court testimony—a pirate going home to see his mother and sisters? And in a pirate ship, no less? Especially one painted yellow and blue with worn patched sails! It seemed like a very un-pirate thing to do.

I have long had an interest in issues concerning women, children and the family, and Jeremiah Higgins’s testimony made me realize that the story about pirates was not only about their seafaring exploits and stolen treasure, but also about their everyday lives and their relationships on land with the people they cared about—their families and communities. In one short sentence, Jeremiah Higgins gave me a gold nugget of information in what would later be a treasure trove that I compiled for my doctoral thesis at Georgetown University. My book, “The Pirate Next Door,” is based on the 15 years of research I did for my doctoral thesis.

Tell us a little about your book.

In “The Pirate Next Door,” I write about the wives, families and communities of four pirate captains from the Golden Age who were active from 1695 to 1720. Though pirates were active up and down the eastern seaboard of the United States and the Caribbean, I focus specifically on four pirates who operated in New England. This area was a hub of pirate activity, and I chose these four pirates in particular because they were all married (except Captain Samuel Bellamy, who had an “intended”). All interacted with each other at some point or another, and all of them were involved—in some cases quite actively involved—in the larger land-based community. These men are Samuel Bellamy of Cape Cod, Paulsgrave Williams of Block Island, and William Kidd and Samuel Burgess of New York.

While I focus on these four men, my research included the lives of 80 married pirates. Their stories help craft a picture of the wider world of pirates and the surprising sense of community these men often shared, inspiring us to take another look at the conventional image of pirate life

What collections at the Library did you use, and what was your experience like?

I spent days in the Manuscript Reading Room in the Madison Building. I also spent time in the Prints and Photographs Division. My experience was wonderful. There was always someone who could answer my questions. Or there was a resource I could use, such as a webinar through Patron Services, to figure out what I needed and where to find it.

I am a former congressional staffer, and one of my jobs was to send constituent requests to the Library. Magically, the answer or the documents would appear at my desk in very short order. I had no idea where in the Library the information came from. I only knew the Library from outside of the beautiful buildings. It was such an eye-opening and humbling experience to actually go into the different departments and do my own research. I am overwhelmed by the amount of information that is available in the Library. I have not begun to scratch the surface of what I can uncover for my research.

What were your most interesting discoveries at the Library?

I found an image of Captain William Kidd’s house in Manhattan, located at the corner of Hanover and Pearl Streets near the city wall that would be later be renamed Wall Street. The pen-and-ink drawing is from 1699, and I used it for the cover of my book. The three-story mansion actually belonged to his wife, Sarah, who inherited it from her first husband, William Cox. It is fascinating to see where one of the most notorious pirates in history lived with his wife and two daughters.

In the Manuscripts Reading Room, I found a fascinating document about Captain Kidd. It is an itemized list of the cost of maintaining a young boy and a young girl who were with him while he was in Newgate Prison in London. Kidd was held there for over a year while he awaited trial for murder and piracy. I had no idea that they were with him. I wondered, why were they there? The document listed the price of the girl’s dresses and shoes as well as the cost of trousers and shirts for the boy.

What finding in your book surprised you most?

The most remarkable thing my research has revealed is the role women played in the lives of pirates—a much larger one than has been acknowledged in previous pirate literature. I discovered that behind many a pirate was a strong woman on land.

Who is your favorite pirate wife and why?

I would say Sarah Kidd is my favorite pirate wife. Information about pirates’ wives is scant, but there is enough information about Sarah that I was able to piece together her life from an early age to her death. I admire her strength and grit. She was married four times, and Captain Kidd was her third husband. She went from a young 20-something New York socialite to a pirate’s wife and an accomplice to a man on the run from the law. What many people don’t know is that behind Captain Kidd was a very strong woman who pleaded, cajoled and bribed colonial officials to try to save her husband’s life. Their relationship was a real love story, and she was a remarkable woman.

New Finding Aid: Asian-American and Pacific-Islander Resources

This is a guest post by Andrew Gaudio, reference librarian and classics, medieval studies and linguistics specialist in the Humanities and Social Sciences Division.

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A 1943 photograph by Ansel Adams of the Catholic church at the Manzanar Relocation Center in California. It was one of the camps where the U.S. government detained Japanese-Americans during World War II.

The Library of Congress collects materials on most subjects, excluding agriculture and medicine. In a collection of over 160 million items, finding what you are looking for can be challenging. To help you better navigate collections on Asian-American and Pacific-Islander resources—and to commemorate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month—the Humanities and Social Sciences Division has created a new research guide.

It functions as an entry point for researchers seeking materials in multiple formats on Asian-American and Pacific-Islander studies and related resources at the Library. The types of resources covered in the guide—including both print and online materials—range from special collections containing photographs, diary entries and recorded interviews to monographs, reference works and serials. They are housed within reading rooms throughout the Library, including the Main Reading Room, the Asian Reading Room, the Manuscript Reading Room, the Prints and Photographs Reading Room and the Microform Reading Room.

For me, two online collections, both referenced in the guide, are especially striking. They document life for Japanese-Americans in World War II internment camps. Photographer Ansel Adams shot hundreds of images at the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California, including the photo at the top of this post. He donated the collection to the Library in the 1960s, placing no copyright restrictions on their use. And just this month, the Library placed online a collection of newspapers published in internment camps from 1942 to 1946.

To learn about many other notable Asian-American and Pacific-Islander resources at the Library, consult the guide!

On a side note, did you ever wonder why May is designated as Asian Pacific American Heritage Month? The answer is rooted in 19th-century American history. On May 7, 1843, the first Japanese immigrants arrived in the United States. Then, on May 10, 1869, the transcontinental railroad was completed, largely by Chinese laborers. With these events in mind, New York representative Frank Horton and California representative Norman Mineta introduced a resolution in June 1977 to mark the first 10 days of the month as Asian-Pacific Heritage Week. Congress passed the resolution, and President Jimmy Carter approved it on October 5, 1978. In 1990, George H. W. Bush signed a bill to extend Asian-American Heritage Week to a month that year. Two years later, he signed Public Law 102-450, which officially designated May as Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

For more information, visit the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month portal.

 

Form Follows Function: Diverse Collections Require Diverse Modern Storage

(The following is an article by Jennifer Gavin from the May/June 2017 issue of LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine. Gavin is senior public affairs specialist in the Library’s Office of Communications. Read the entire May/June issue here .)

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Thirty-foot-tall shelving units in one of the Library’s storage modules in Fort Meade, Maryland. Photo by Shawn Miller.

The phrase “form follows function,” long associated with the design movement, isn’t a bad starting place when we look at how the Library of Congress keeps track of 164 million books and other collections items.

Back in the day of physical card catalogs, item storage simply meant building enough shelving to hold all that stuff, bound or in containers. As a result, the Library’s John Adams Building, an art deco delight, was built in the 1930s to hold the overflowing collections; and later, the Library’s James Madison Memorial Building opened, in 1980, with significant storage capacity tucked in among its reading rooms.

But by the new millennium, it was clear some new approach would be needed to handle the 12,000 items that are accepted into the collections daily. As a result, the Library now has five (soon to be six) specialized buildings in Fort Meade, Maryland, designed to hold Library materials safely and efficiently. With shelves that soar quite high (special forklifts move the items), everything in these climate-controlled structures is bar-coded. This allows every inch of shelving space to be fully used. Researchers requesting items from such storage are served within 24 hours, sometimes later the same day.

Another approach is the Library’s special storage for rare collections. Custom boxes are created to hold rare or fragile items, such as those in a set of climate-controlled locking cases in the Geography and Map Division containing items from the unparalleled Kislak Collection of Mesoamerican artifacts.

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Custom-designed boxes house priceless Mayan, Aztec and Olmec archaeological objects from the Kislak Collection. Photo by Shawn Miller.

With special storage that ensures preservation, the 3,800 items in the Kislak Collection—about 25 percent of them are on public display at any given time, in the “Exploring the Early Americas” exhibition—are available to researchers at all times, said John Hessler, curator of the collection.

He praised James Thurn of the Preservation Directorate and Thurn’s team of box-makers, as he displayed a ceramic figure (300–650 CE) cradled in a specially carved bed of foam designed in the 21st century that could be slid sideways out of its preservation box, “so the object doesn’t have to be touched too much.”

Researchers from around the world come to study the objects, which range from ceramic and stone figures to a rare notebook penned in a native language by a Spanish missionary, to beautiful, flag-like panels woven using brilliant Macaw feathers. “No one actually knows what they were used for—probably to create some sort of sacred space,” Hessler said.

When the Kislak Collection first arrived at the Library, “It was nothing like this,” placed securely in closets but without the special preservation and access now made possible. “Now . . . if it’s not on display, it’s still accessible to researchers.”

On the Library’s Capitol Hill campus, book storage has been made more efficient by the use of shelving that rolls on rail-like tracks. The aisle space ordinarily left between fixed shelves is eliminated by putting the shelves on rollers, so they can be packed tightly together but an access point can be created instantly by turning a wheel at the end of a shelf, “So you don’t need all the aisles simultaneously,” said Steven Herman, chief of the Collections Access, Loan and Management Division. “It’s much more efficient.”

Special cold storage at the Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation in Culpeper, Virginia, ensures that precious old movies shot on nitrate-based film stock will have longer life and remain chemically stable. Nitrate stock, used for nearly all 35mm filmmaking until about the 1950s, is a fire hazard.

A nitrate fire, if one gets going, is “a tough critter,” said Stephen Leggett, liaison specialist for the Library’s National Film Preservation Board. “It creates its own oxygen when it burns.” As a result, the nitrate film vaults at Culpeper isolate each film container in its own cubbyhole. Should a fire start, water would be released from overhead pipes at a rate of 200 gallons per minute, creating a curtain of water that would let the fire burn itself out within its compartment. To date, the campus has never had a fire and the nitrate film storage area, at 35 degrees F and about 30 percent relative humidity, has kept the film treasures intact.

Check out a video of Library of Congress staff constructing a custom storage box here.

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