Library of Congress's Blog, page 126

Curator’s Picks: Signature Sounds

(The following is from the July/August 2016 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM. You can read the issue in its entirety here.)

Matt Barton in the Library’s Motion Picture and Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division discusses some of the nation’s most iconic radio broadcasts.

DATE OF INFAMY SPEECH

President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed a Joint Session of Congress on Dec. 8, 1941—one day after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The president referred to Dec. 7 as “a date which will live in infamy.” Within an hour of the speech, Congress passed a formal declaration of war against Japan and officially brought the U.S. into World War II. “In his nine-minute speech, the president sought not only to rally the nation, but to provide the most accurate picture possible of the extent of the attacks made in the Pacific to that point, countering rumors but also conveying the seriousness of the situation.”

Weltbild Publishing Company, Prints and Photographs Division

MARIAN ANDERSON SINGS

Denied the right to sing at DAR Constitution Hall because of her race, contralto Marian Anderson performed an Easter Sunday concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on April 9, 1939. The event drew an integrated audience of 75,000, including members of the Supreme Court, Congress and President Roosevelt’s cabinet. “News photos and newsreels of this event have become iconic, but millions of Americans experienced the radio broadcast first, live and in real time.”

Prints and Photographs Division, courtesy of the NAACP

WILT CHAMBERLAIN’S 100-POINT GAME

In 1962, Philadelphia Warriors center Wilt Chamberlain shattered the NBA record by scoring 100 points in a single game. The game was broadcast only by a Philadelphia radio station and rebroadcast later that night. “Those broadcasts were lost but fortunately two fans recorded key portions of those broadcasts. The NBA eventually acquired both recordings.”

Prints and Photographs Division

WHO’S ON FIRST?

Comedians Bud Abbott and Lou Costello first performed their now- legendary baseball sketch for a national radio audience on “The Kate Smith Hour” in March 1938. This broadcast is now lost, but in response to popular demand, the duo gave an encore performance later in the year, which survives.

New York World- Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection, Prints and Photographs Division

COOLIDGE INAUGURAL ADDRESS

Calvin Coolidge made history at his second inauguration on March 4, 1925. “It was the first time an inauguration was broadcast nationally on the new medium of radio, and it was carried on 30 stations nationwide.”

National Photo Company Collection, Prints and Photographs Division

 

All of the above radio broadcasts were selected for inclusion in the National Recording Registry, which ensures their long-term preservation. 

World War I: When Wurst Came to Worst

(The following post is by Jennifer Gavin, senior public affairs specialist at the Library of Congress.)

In the United States, a century ago, there were more than 8 million citizens of German origin or with German ancestry – the largest single group among those of foreign birth or ancestry, but still less than 10 percent of the total U.S. population of over 102 million. Like other immigrant groups, they were scattered all over the country, with concentrations in many big cities, and like other immigrant groups, they “had their ups and downs” as they interacted with neighbors of different backgrounds.

Destroy this mad brute Enlist – U.S. Army. Prints and Photographs Division.

One of the bigger “downs” followed the opening of World War I (the art of that war is the subject of a current Library of Congress exhibition). It was a German war of aggression, and much U.S. public sentiment turned against Germany and Germans, even as then-President Woodrow Wilson tried to keep the U.S. out of the war. This reached a fever pitch with the German U-boat sinking of the British luxury liner “Lusitania,” causing the loss of 1,198 lives including those of 123 Americans. The public – both in England and the U.S. – was shocked that the German war machine would torpedo a passenger ship rather than sticking to warships or merchant-marine vessels.

When that sentiment turned, and particularly after the U.S. got into WWI, it suddenly became difficult to be German. Schools stopped offering classes in the language, once common. Music by German composers such as Mendelssohn and Wagner ceased to be performed. Many Americans with German surnames anglicized them. There were even efforts to rename foods of German origin – sauerkraut became “liberty cabbage,” for example.

The anti-German feeling increased stateside, where former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt denounced “hyphenated Americans,” meaning German-Americans and Irish-Americans, the two largest groups of immigrants in the country. President Wilson shared that view, saying “Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready.”

Many German-Americans proved their loyalty by joining U.S. military service and fighting “the Huns” in Europe. Among them was my grandfather, Phil Oberhauser. He was a corporal in the U.S. Army in France during the American engagement there, seeing service in the battles of Chateau Thierry, Verdun, and the St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne offensives. He was mustard-gassed and suffered from problems with his lungs and teeth for the rest of his life. But he made it out alive, became a traveling paper-products salesman and married a girl who first approached him on roller-skates. She was working at a telegraph office in Omaha – an office so large the staff skated from the telegraph operators on one end of the building to the public counters at the other.

Albert Einstein, Washington, D.C. Prints and Photographs Division.

After the war ended, anti-German sentiment settled down, until the return of German militarism under Hitler. However, Germans fleeing the Third Reich were welcomed into the U.S., and many became celebrated (if sometimes controversial) new U.S. citizens, including many scientists – physicist Albert Einstein, rocket scientist Werner von Braun and chemists Otto Loewi and Max Bergmann – and other celebrated artists and intellectuals.

World War I Centennial, 2017-2018: With the most comprehensive collection of multi-format 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.

Letters About Literature: Dear Marie Lu

We continue our spotlight of letters from the Letters About Literature initiative, a national reading and writing program that asks young people in grades 4 through 12 to write to an author (living or deceased) about how his or her book affected their lives. Winners for 2016 were announced in June.

Nearly 50,000 young readers from across the country participated in this year’s initiative, which aims to instill a lifelong love of reading in the nation’s youth and to engage and nurture their passion for literature

There was a tie for the national honor award for Level 3 (grades 9-12). Following is one of the winning letters written by Macoy Churchill of Wyoming, who wrote to Marie Lu, author of “Legend.”

Dear Marie Lu,

Being a criminal comes with a certain looming paranoia, even for the craftiest of criminals. You have to plan out your every move, never missing even the smallest of details, and if you slip up the law will not blink an eye at throwing you into a cell you worked so hard to avoid. Just like Day, my heart was the very thing that caused me to end up with undesirable metal cuffs around my wrists, and the foreign sound of a juvenile cell door clicking close behind me to become routine. My inability to let my brother take my possession charges for me made me feel like Day, bounding from the room of his childhood home, to his imminent capture. My actions metaphorically put my family, especially my mother, in the direct line of fire. I read “Legend” and realized that I was stuck, incarcerated, thinking of the harm my actions had on my family, just as Day in his cell. 

An overwhelming interest started to overtake me when I started to make connections between my criminal actions and Day’s. I would remember sitting in my car overlooking my house envisioning my family’s actions while they resided comfortably inside the house. Overtaken by substance, I felt like someone else watching over my family, like I couldn’t go in because of the possible repercussions it would have on my family. Day knew exactly the same thing would happen if he entered his childhood home. Although our situations were different, they were the same. We watched over our family for comfort, but couldn’t be with them because we were different. The son we once had been was overtaken by a life of crime. Although we wanted the situation to change, we knew it would never be the same.

Day let his heart destroy his flawless criminal history to avoid a simple argument with Tess, and I did the same thing. I was a good criminal, and I knew every step to take to avoid being caught. When I asked my brother if we should have taken precautions to avoid being caught, he said it would take too much time. I knew what we had to do, but to avoid an argument with my brother, I decided to take my chances. Day did a very similar thing. He knew the trouble in saving a stranger, but to avoid the solemn eyes of Tess, he took his chances. We decided to roll the dice to avoid having to look in the eyes of our upset loved ones, and inevitably it was our downfall. Criminals cannot have hearts, or good intentions. In order to protect ourselves, we have to hurt our loved ones. When I gained this knowledge from your book, I felt better as I lay in my cell; I knew hurting my loved ones wasn’t worth a flawless criminal history and so did Day.

The connections I made to “Legend” caused me to lie stunned in my overly frigid cell, completely stunned. This book taught me lessons about my criminal life when I didn’t even take a step. It showed me exactly where my criminal conduct would take me when I refused to see the enclosed walls around me. “Legend” caused me to open my eyes to the inevitable capture of every criminal regardless of his/her wit, effort, and will to avoid incarceration. Unlike Day I don’t have an exquisite lover like June to ensure my freedom. My capture is only escaped through the time given by the judicial system. As I flipped the last page, I knew that letting my brother take my charges would be equivalent to John taking Day’s place on the firing line. I would have to allow my criminal consequences to fall on my family’s shoulders, then my loved ones and society would have to suffer. 

Only through “Legend” was I able to see this fact. Before I dove into this book, I was blind to the cell I was in, the situation that only I put myself into, and the metaphorical massacre of my family’s emotions. Through “Legend” I became aware of my profound need to change. For that I could never thank you enough.

Macoy Churchill

You can read all the winning letters here, including the winning letters from previous years.

Library in the News: July 2016 Edition

In July, the Library of Congress was widely in the news with the U.S. Senate’s vote to confirm Carla Hayden as the 14th Librarian of Congress. She will be both the first woman and first African American to serve in the position.

“Hayden will be the first Librarian of Congress appointed during the internet age – and the first librarian who seems to understand its power,” wrote Robinson Meyer of The Atlantic.

“Libraries are usually seen as repositories of history, not places where history is made. But yesterday was an exception as the Senate moved to confirm the nation’s next Librarian of Congress—one who is widely expected to change the institution and the role forever,” said Erin Blakemore for Smithsonian.com.

“An administrator so dedicated to bringing the library to the people that she kept everything open during last year’s unrest in Baltimore will become the first black American and first female librarian of Congress,” reported Melanie Eversley of USA Today.

The announcement made many more national and regional news including The Baltimore Sun, Time, The Washington Post, Slate Magazine and American Libraries.

In other big name news, the Library also announced Smokey Robinson as the next recipient of the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song.

“Whether he was singing his own compositions or writing for other artists, Smokey Robinson was instrumental in shaping the Motown sound that changed American popular music in the 1960s,” wrote Ben Nuckols for the Associated Press. “Now, his accomplishments have won him the pop music prize from the national library.”

“As a singer, songwriter and producer, Mr. Robinson, 76, has a musical résumé few can match,” said Joe Coscarelli of the New York Times.

Library experts continue to be featured in The Washington Post’s series of “Presidential” podcasts. New presentations are on Teddy Roosevelt and Benjamin Harrison. In fact, the presentation on William Howard Taft rounds out the Library’s contribution to the series, which also noted the Library as “such an incredible resource.”

And, finally, Upworthy included the Library of Congress in its list of nine “stunningly beautiful libraries to see before you die.

New Online: More Presidents & Newspapers

(The following is a guest post by William Kellum, manager in the Library’s Web Services Division.) 

July was a relatively quiet month for the Library’s websites, highlighted by the long-planned retirement of THOMAS, covered in this excellent blog post from the Law Library’s In Custodia Legis blog.

New in Manuscripts

The William Henry Harrison Papers have recently been added to the Library’s online collection of presidential papers. This collection joins eight other presidential collections online, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Abraham Lincoln.

The Harrison papers contain approximately 1,000 items dating from 1734 to 1939, with the bulk dated from 1812 to 1841. Harrison (1773-1841), an army officer, representative and senator from Ohio, served as the ninth president of the United States.  His collection includes a letterbook, 1812-1813, correspondence and military papers stemming mostly from his military and political career in the Northwest Territory, his service in Indian wars and the War of 1812, his time as territorial governor of Indiana Territory (1800-1812), and his role as Whig Party candidate in the unsuccessful 1836 presidential bid and the successful 1840 election. The latter led to his abbreviated presidential term, cut short by his death one month after his inauguration.

Cover image from the New York Journal, October 24th, 1897

New in Newspapers

Many users know of our Chronicling America site that features historic American newspapers from 1836-1922. The Library is also busy digitizing additional newspapers of historic significance – newly added is the New York Journal (and related titles) Collection, covering William Randolph Hearst’s papers from 1896-1899. The New York Journal is an example of “Yellow Journalism,” where the newspapers competed for readers through bold headlines, illustrations and activist journalism.  The paper infamously reported on and influenced events like the Spanish-American War. The Sunday editions contained additional supplements: American Women’s Home Journal, American Magazine and the American Humorist, which included the “Yellow Kid” comic strip. These supplements featured colorful layouts and covered sporting events, pseudoscience and popular culture, such as the bicycle craze of 1896.

We’ve also added 152 issues of the New York Herald – these newspapers don’t have their own collection presentation, but you can access them in our search.

Exhibition Update

The extensive online exhibit The Mexican Revolution and the United States in the Collections of the Library of Congress is now available in a Spanish language version. The exhibit tells the dynamic story of the complex and turbulent relationship between Mexico and the United States during the Mexican Revolution, approximately 1910-1920.

The NEH “Chronicling America” Challenge: Using Big Data to Ask Big Questions

The following cross-post was written by Leah Weinryb Grohsgal of the National Endowment for the Humanities and originally appeared on The Signal: Digital Preservation blog.

[image error]Historic newspapers offer rich histories of American life, with glimpses into politics, sports, shopping, music, food, health, science, movies and everything in between. The National Digital Newspaper Program, a joint effort between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress, seeks to preserve and provide open access to America’s historic newspapers via Chronicling America. The site now contains over eleven million pages of digitized newspapers as well as a digital directory of over 150,000 titles from small towns and big cities across the United States.

Not only are the newspaper pages openly available, but the data is too. The Library of Congress has developed a user-friendly Application Program Interface, which can be used as a doorway into the newspaper data in Chronicling America. Because of this commitment to openness, users can now interact with these rich sources both as individual pages and as big data sets used to show trends over time and space.

NEH recently asked the public, “How can you use open data to explore history?” We invited members of the public to produce creative web-based projects demonstrating the potential for using the data found in Chronicling America. Entries could be data visualizations, web-based tools or other innovative and interesting web-based projects. Entries came through Challenge.gov, the U.S. government’s hub for federal prize and challenge competitions. The nationwide competition garnered extremely high-quality entries on a variety of subjects, which showed the importance of and potential for making this rich historical data openly available.

The results are in. NEH has announced six open data challenge prize recipients. The winners will receive cash prizes and will attend the National Digital Newspaper Program annual September meeting in Washington, D.C. to present their work. We join with the Library of Congress in celebrating the questions and insights that can be gained from making open data and excellent primary sources accessible to the public.

And the winners are…

First Prize

American Public Bible: Biblical Quotations in U.S. Newspapers

Entry By: Lincoln Mullen, Assistant Professor, Department of History and Art History, George Mason University (Fairfax, VA)

This project tracks Biblical quotations in American newspapers to see how the Bible was used for cultural, religious, social or political purposes. Users can either enter their own Biblical references or choose from a selection of significant references on a range of topics. The project draws on both recent digital humanities work tracking the reuse of texts and a deep scholarly interest in the Bible as a cultural text in American life. The site shows how the Bible was a contested yet common text, including both printed sermons and Sunday school lessons and use of the Bible on every side of issues such as slavery, women’s suffrage and wealth and capitalism.

Second Prize (Tie)

American Lynching: Uncovering a Cultural Narrative

Entry By: Andrew Bales, PhD Student in Creative Writing, University of Cincinnati (Cincinnati, OH)

This project explores America’s long and dark history with lynching, in which newspapers acted as both a catalyst for public killings and a platform for advocating for reform. Integrating data sets on lynching created by Tuskegee University, the site sheds light on the gruesome culture of lynching, paying close attention to the victims of violent mobs. The site allows readers to use an interactive chronological map of victim reports and see their state-by state distribution, linking to Chronicling America articles.

Second Prize (Tie)

Historical Agricultural News

Entry By: Amy Giroux, Computer Research Specialist, Center for Humanities and Digital Research, University of Central Florida (Orlando, FL)

This site allows users to explore information on the farming organizations, technologies and practices of America’s past. The site describes farming as the window into communities, social and technological change and concepts like progress, development and modernity. Agricultural connections are of significance to those interested in various topics, including immigration and assimilation, language use and communication, education and affiliations and demographic transitions.

Third Prize (Tie)

Chronicling Hoosiers

Entry By: Kristi Palmer, Associate Dean of Digital Scholarship, Indiana University-Purdue University (Indianapolis, IN)

This project tracks the origins of the word “Hoosier.” The site’s maps visually demonstrate the geographic distribution of the term “Hoosier” in the Chronicling America data set. This distribution is measured by the number of times the term appears on a newspaper page. Each point on the map shows a place of publication where a newspaper or newspapers contain the term. Another feature on the web site is the Word Clouds by Decade visualizations, which are created by looking at the word “Hoosier” in context. The text immediately surrounding each appearance of the word is extracted and from this the most frequently occurring terms are plotted.

Third Prize (Tie)

USNewsMap.com

Entry By: Claudio Saunt, Professor, Department of History, Co-Director, Center for Virtual History and Associate Director, Institute of Native American Studies, University of Georgia (Athens, GA)

This site discovers patterns, explores regions, investigates how stories and terms spread around the country and watches information go viral before the era of the internet. The site argues that newspapers capture the public discourse better than books do because of their quick publication schedule. For example, users can track “miscegenation,” a term coined in 1863 by a Democratic Party operative to exploit fears about Lincoln, and “scalawag,” a recently arrived term that quickly gained currency after 1869. Other examples for use are tracking regional differences in language, tracing the path of epidemics and studying changing political discourse over time and space.

K-12 Student Prize

Digital APUSH: Revealing History with Chronicling America

Entry By: Teacher Ray Palin and A.P. U.S. History Students at Sunapee High School (Sunapee, NH)

These students used Chronicling America newspaper data to create a variety of visualizations —- maps, charts and timelines -— to explore questions about U.S. history. The projects use word frequency analysis -— a kind of distant reading -— to discover patterns in news coverage. Some examples of investigations include geographic coverage of Plessy v. Ferguson, temporal trends in the use of the words “secede” and “secession,” articles about Uncle Tom’s Cabin by year, state-by-state coverage of the KKK and geographic trends in coverage of labor unions.

Trending: Olympic Games

(The following is a feature in the July/August 2016 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM, that was written by Audrey Fischer, magazine editor. You can read the issue in its entirety here.)

Franz Warble’s color poster promoted the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany. Prints and Photographs Division.

Broadcasts of the Olympic Games bring the event to life for millions of viewers and leave a record behind for posterity.

When the 2016 Summer Olympics open in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Aug. 5, there will be no lack of media coverage. In fact, the use of video streaming, smartphones and tablets will allow viewers to access Olympic coverage in a wider variety of ways than ever before.

That wasn’t always the case.

Held during the Great Depression, the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles (the X Olympiad) was a relatively austere event. Many nations could not afford to send their athletes to compete. And the Los Angeles Olympic Committee chose not to devote scarce resources to global broadcasting.

Four short years later, Germany made broadcast history by being the first to televise a sports event—the 1936 Olympic Games held in Berlin. The quality was poor and live transmissions could only be seen in special viewing booths in Berlin and Potsdam.

Jesse Owens begins his record-breaking 200 meter race at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Prints and Photographs Division.

But the Nazi regime took the opportunity to showcase its considerable radio broadcasting capabilities at the 1936 Olympics and focus the world’s attention on Germany. Ironically, in doing so, they helped bring international attention to African-American track star Jesse Owens who won four gold medals in track and field (100 meters, 200 meters, long jump and the 4x 100-meter relay). In its NBC Collection, the Library holds a number of radio broadcasts from the Berlin Olympics, including an interview with Owens and his coach aboard the Queen Mary on their return home.

Eighty years later, Jesse Owens is still remembered, not only as an Olympic hero but for destroying Adolf Hitler’s myth of racial purity. His story is told in the 2016 feature film “Race.”

The University of Washington’s eight-oar crew was another underdog in the 1936 Olympics, who brought home Olympic gold. Sons of loggers, shipyard workers and farmers, the team defeated elite rivals from U.S. and British universities and ultimately beat the German crew rowing for Hitler in the Olympic games in Berlin. The so-called “boys in the boat” are the subject of a 2013 book by Daniel James Brown, which is in film development.

The NBC Collection also includes a radio recording of the rowing team’s Olympic win. It aired on Aug. 14, 1936, as part of the NBC Olympics Roundup programming. NBC broadcast nightly from Germany, giving listeners a summary of the day’s events. Since the event was at night, NBC broadcast full coverage of the race.

Letters About Literature: Dear Dorothy Parker

We’re winding down our blog feature highlighting the 2016 Letters About Literature contest with winners from Level 3 (grades 9-12). The contest asks young people in grades 4 through 12 to write to an author (living or deceased) about how his or her book affected their lives.

Today we feature National Prize-winner Sara Lurie of Colorado, who wrote to Dorothy Parker, author of “Penelope.”

Dear Dorothy Parker,

The other night I sat with my family around the dinner table reminiscing and telling old stories. My grandma told one about a time when my mom was eight years old and wanted to play the flute. The story goes, my grandma went down to the music store to rent a flute, but the salesman told her she needed a man to sign the contract. Being a single mother she asked her father to go to the music store and sign the papers verifying the $2.50 bill would indeed be paid each month. I was shocked that such a relatively short time ago women were not trusted to make a simple (small!) payment.

In my life there are some pretty amazing people, but my grandma stands out as the most extraordinary. When my mom and her siblings were young children their dad left them, leaving their protection and care in the hands of my grandma. She managed to raise four kids, maintain a stable job, a house, and all that one needs to be happy. She was successful on her own with no male figure by her side. Not to say there weren’t hard days, even hard years, but in the end my grandma was a hero and still is. Even now, at 77 years old she is the director of a life-long learning institute for elders. She is such a unique and incredible human being because of her ability to be a strong, empowered woman in the face of hardship. When I read your poem, “Penelope,” not only did my grandma come to mind, the potential and power of all women did. This extraordinary poem altered my perception of the role of women figures in the traditional male hero stories, and in my own life.

As I grow older it has become apparent that the world around me struggles with gender equality. Job opportunities. Wages. Raises. Access. Women fight harder and longer every day to achieve equality. That is why we need constant, clear reminders and guidance to continue the shift away from how things have been and still are today. Your poem offers such guidance.

As seen in Homer’s poem, “The Odyssey,” Odysseus sets sail on a heroic, eventful journey, while Penelope tends to the baby and deals with domestic affairs in Ithaca. Penelope’s hope and determination remains constant throughout his absence, making Penelope the true hero, much like my grandma. A key to understanding your poem is the title itself. “The Odyssey” is titled after Odysseus, the male hero. By titling your poem “Penelope” you push readers to question the belief that only men are heroes. Although Odysseus led the long and eventful journey, his story could not exist without Penelope. She serves as the rock that holds the fort down so when Odysseus returns he has the people of Ithaca to deem him the hero. While Penelope is an almost invisible character in the epic story, the entire journey could not exist without her steady presence. We have a concrete image in our minds of the roles and obligations the male and female figure hold. But why? Because it takes two to tango. In other words Penelope’s presence in Ithaca is essential to everyday life, yet it is barely acknowledged in the story. I like how your poem concludes, “They will call him brave,” emphasizing the fact that readers are led to view the story in light of Odysseus’ journey during which he becomes a hero. Penelope serves as proof that although a heroic adventure seems to focus on male actions, both male and female contribute to a successful outcome.

I experience gender inequality first hand every day; Boys get called on twice as often as girls in classrooms, and when stating the answer don’t qualify it with, “I think,” or “Maybe…” Even something as small as when the PE teacher yells “girls against boys,” reflects entrenched bias. As I went about my sophomore year you brought to my attention that most clubs, teams, and even some classes are defined solely by gender. When I was young I had the opportunity to join a boys’ soccer team because there weren’t enough girls to complete our own. After reading your poem I finally understood that the coach’s open-mindedness gave me an opportunity to prove my strength and resilience. This allowed me to take a small first step into the women empowerment movement alongside my grandma.

Ever since I read your poem women empowerment shows up everywhere I go, in places I previously overlooked. The examples continue to pop in my head; my middle school principal, a pilot on the plane on a recent trip, high profile TV role models like Ellen Degeneres and Oprah, the girls who joined the wrestling team, and wins matches! I could go on. My point is you have made it possible for me to acknowledge amazing women right before my eyes, women who take an active role in the movement towards gender equality. I used to not think twice about occurrences such as these but your poem has opened my eyes, and I now realize these women are worth stopping to think about, yet are not often seen. And now, I truly appreciate strong empowered women and want to become one myself.

Since freshmen year I have been on the poms dance team at my high school. We perform for football, soccer games, rallies, competitions, camps and other sport events. We work extremely hard every day to get better and stronger. Yet our team continues to be diminished; we don’t receive the funding or status other teams enjoy. We are constantly brushed aside when it comes to athletic programming support. As may be predictable, we are an all-girls team. Cheering for the boys’ athletic teams isn’t the problem, but not being treated as equals is. Maybe the funded boys’ teams see themselves as “cutting the glittering wave,” while we “brew tea and snip thread.” Our participation is a key part of the high school sports equation, and we should be supported as such. We perform, train, and do everything required of the boys’ teams yet don’t get nearly the wide range of support they do. Reading your poem gave me insight into my personal experience and made it clear to me that I needed to stand up for my team and amazing young women on it. As the new freshmen join us I encourage them to view our team as powerful and equal to all the others. We’re rising above the outdated approach and lack of support and empowering ourselves to fight for equality in the eyes of the school’s athletic program.

This is one poms team, one school, one athletic program. We may only be a small piece to a larger puzzle; but every piece counts. Boulder Valley School District alone has 56 schools. Within these 56 schools the fight for equal treatment within the athletic department must be a priority. Female sports must be treated with the same support as male sports, in effort to set a precedent for the bigger picture. The one-sidedness and lack of equality in an educational system full of young women at such an essential time in life is the last thing our schools need to promote, and will lead to more drastic gender inequality issues. If school districts can maintain gender equality in something as simple as sports it will start a ripple effect, eventually allowing the young adults within the school to carry gender equality into everyday adult lives.

Your poem has inspired me to look more deeply into feminist ideas. Maya Angelou once said, “How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!” My point is, Maya Angelou, you, and now myself, are taking the steps to extinguish the “weak female” stereotype and instead encourage women empowerment. We can live in a world where all genders should live as equals. You have helped me recognize that beginning with old Greek mythology to present day, gender bias has existed. Yet, there is no real reason for bias to exist other than the fact society has not had the critical mass to drive the change. That is why I will continue to work to break down the wall that allows gender stereotypes to impact schools and sports. Thank you, Dorothy Parker, for opening my eyes to this ability to enlighten others to the concept and reality of women empowerment that will shape our world to gender equality.

Sarah Lurie

You can read all the winning letters here, including the winning letters from previous years.

Pic of the Week: Final Projects

Akari Goda-Maurerzzutt, a Mills College student from San Francisco, and Kalila Morsink, a Columbia University from Bethesda, discuss their project on the Preservation and Research Testing Division ASTM 100 Year Paper Aging Study. Photo by Shawn Miller.

On Wednesday, the Library of Congress Junior Fellows Summer Interns presented more than 100 rare and unique items from 17 Library divisions. The display provided the opportunity for fellows to discuss the historic significance of the collection items they have researched and processed during their 10-week internships.

Some highlights included:

an Olmec ceramic figurine (900-1200 BCE), the oldest item in the Jay I. Kislak Collection
An 1886 journal written by William T. Hornaday, a conservationist and founder of the Bronx Zoo
A watercolor paintings of costume designs for the 1938 New Orleans production of “One Third of a Nation”
A guest book used from 1955-1986 by the Woman’s National Democratic Club, which includes signatures from former U.S. Rep. Barbara Jordan, Lady Bird Johnson, Carol Channing, W. Averell and Pamela C. Harriman, Liz Carpenter, Lynda Robb, Alistair Cooke, Dean Rusk and Jack Anderson
Audio clips from interviews conducted in 1957 and 1981 with American composer Leonard Bernstein

You can read more about the program and their work here.

Saving the Sounds of Radio

(The following is a story written by Mark Hartsell, editor of the Library’s staff newsletter, The Gazette, for the July-August 2016 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine. You can read the issue in its entirety here.)

The Library of Congress is working to preserve the nation’s historical broadcasts

[image error]

Herbert Hoover played a key role
in regulation of radio broadcasting,
1925. National Photo Company
Collection, Prints and Photographs
Division.

When Wilt Chamberlain smashed an NBA record in 1962 by scoring 100 points in a single game, a radio broadcast provided the only real-time account of the Stilt’s incredible feat.

When Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic, Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the nation in the Depression’s depths, Allied troops landed on Normandy beaches and Babe Ruth called his shot in the 1932 World Series, radio delivered the news.

For about a century, radio has informed and entertained Americans. The passage of the years, however, has left recordings of those historical broadcasts at risk, victims of deterioration, neglect, improper storage or just the ravages of time.

The Library of Congress for decades has worked to acquire, preserve and make those recordings accessible—efforts that in recent years have increased in scope and scale.

“We have an opportunity to sustain this material and make it available, but it’s a closing window—that’s the scary part,” said Eugene DeAnna, head of the Library’s Recorded Sound Section. “It takes action now on the part of archivists, producers and scholars to move us forward at a faster rate than we’ve up to now been able to sustain.”

Radio’s Missing Era

By the 1920s, radio was a staple of everyday life, an unprecedented blend of news and entertainment, brought to life with voices and delivered over the airwaves to American homes.

Few broadcasts, however, were captured for posterity—recording equipment was bulky, expensive and not especially good. As a consequence, recordings of broadcasts of, say, big stars or historic events from the Roaring Twenties are exceedingly rare.

When Lindbergh landed at Le Bourget airport following his historic trans-Atlantic flight in 1927, announcers broadcast the chaotic scene as thousands of spectators stormed the field to welcome him to France. All that remains of that scene today are black-and-white images—and silence. No recording of the broadcast is known to exist.

That’s a common tale: Of the 500,000 or so recorded radio broadcasts preserved in the Library’s collections, only about 50 come from the 1920s. The cultural loss is enormous—the soundtrack of an era forever missing.

“We don’t have that initial foundation of radio,” DeAnna said. “So much of the early broadcasts— radio and TV—just went into the ether. They’re gone.”

Radio, on Record

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Radio Towers. Harris and Ewing, Prints and Photographs Division.

That changed in the mid-1930s. Radio networks flourished, making the recording of broadcasts economically more feasible. Theapproaching war in Europe fostereda sense that these momentous events should be documented for posterity. Technological progress helped, too: Equipment got easier to use and the addition of lacquer coating to aluminum discs improved the recordings’ sound quality.

The major radio networks—CBS, Mutual and NBC—began recording most of their daily broadcasts on lacquer discs and, after World War II, on magnetic tape.

Whether those recordings survived is another matter—and that’s where preservationists and institutions such as the Library come in.

Forty years ago, Congress mandated the preservation of broadcast recordings in its 1976 revision of copyright law, legislation that directed the Library to create the American Television and Radio Archives to “preserve a permanent record of the television and radio programs.”

The foremost challenge preservationists face is the degradation, over time, of the media on which broadcasts were recorded. Tape is vulnerable to mold, brittleness and signal loss. The lacquer coating of discs chips or peels off the aluminum base. An aluminum ban during World War II prompted networks to briefly adopt glass-based lacquer discs—an even more-fragile medium.

That problem is compounded, at many institutions, by a lack of good, climate-controlled storage that can extend the life of recordings.

The Library stores its collections of broadcasts in the underground, climate-controlled vaults of its National Audio-Visual Conservation Center campus in Culpeper, Virginia. But, DeAnna said, such storage is expensive and hard to acquire for many institutions, even larger ones.

“Getting these collections scattered around the country into proper archival storage would extend the timeline for us to get them recorded to digital,” he said.

Saving Sounds of the Past

The Library tries to acquire as many historically significant radio broadcasts as possible for preservation— its holdings include such major collections as the Mutual network, the Office of War Information, Voice of America, National Public Radio, and Armed Forces Radio and Television. The foundation of its massive holdings, however, is NBC Radio—the largest, richest, most significant collection of domestic historical radio.

For decades, technicians in the Library’s Audio Preservation Unit have transferred those recordings from their original, at-risk formats to other, more-stable media. Today, they also are converted to digital formats, archived in a digital repository. Some 30,000 radio broadcasts have been preserved in these ways.

The Library promotes preservation in other ways as well, aiding institutions in the preservation of their own collections, helping establish national preservation standards and policy, and generally raising awareness—efforts that have ramped up in recent years.

In 2012, the Library issued a national recording preservation plan—a blueprint for saving America’s recorded sound heritage. An outgrowth of that plan is the Radio

Preservation Task Force, created in 2014 by the National Recording Preservation Board—itself a congressionally mandated, Library-affiliated organization.

“When considering our radio broadcast legacy, imagine how we would treasure a comparable recorded history of the 19th century, how much our understanding of the Civil War, Lincoln, slavery and reconstruction would be enhanced,” DeAnna said. “This is the perspective future generations will have.

“It has fallen to us to secure this vast trove of fragile discs, degrading tapes and ephemeral digital recordings in sustainable digital archives before they are lost time.”