Library of Congress's Blog, page 127

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

[image error]

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.”

World War I: A Wartime Clipping Service

(The following is a post by Arlene Balkansky, reference specialist in the Serial and Government Publications Division, and Will Elsbury, military history specialist in the Humanities and Social Sciences Division.)

Editorial cartoons from The World (NY), the Boston Journal, and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as an article from the Brooklyner Freie Presse, a German-language newspaper. All dated April 6, 1917, the day the U.S. declared war on Germany. Serial and Government Publications Division.

The Library of Congress’ historical newspaper collections are extensive in their coverage of World War I. From the beginning of the war to America’s involvement to armistice, headlines presented readers with a view of one of the deadliest conflicts in history that resulted in more than 35 million casualties. Many of these newspapers can be found online, with curated topics in Chronicling America including the sinking of the Lusitania, World War I Armistice, World War I Declarations and World War I Poetry, plus World War I rotogravures. The Library also holds the complete 71-week run of The Stars and Stripes World War I edition. (You’ll read more about it later on in this blog series!)

World War I news, editorials, features, cartoons, photos, maps, and more are also contained in a unique 400 volume 80,000-page set of newspaper clippings found within the collections of the Library of Congress Serial and Government Publications Division. The set, “World War History: Daily Records and Comments as Appeared in American and Foreign Newspapers, 1914-1926,” was created after the war through the dedicated direction of Otto Spengler, owner of the Argus Press Clipping Bureau.

Spengler worked as a teen at the Argus and Information Bureau of Berlin and, following his immigration to America in 1892, at a clippings bureau in New York for more than 10 years. By the early 20-th century, he had established his own company and understood the importance of his clipping service and how to market it. Ads in 1907 for the company in the magazine, The Advocate of Peace, touted press clippings as “an important factor in peace negotiations” ending the Russo-Japanese War. The ads stated that both Russian and Japanese negotiators “were kept posted through newspaper clippings furnished by Argus.” The ads then asked “What Interests You” with a cost of $5.00 per hundred clippings and $35.00 per 1,000.

The outbreak of the World War in 1914 presented Spengler with the massive task of documenting the conflict as fully as possible. Throughout the war years and for several years after, Spengler’s Argus Bureau acquired and clipped newspapers from around the country, including several foreign language ones, and some from around the world. Beginning with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and extending to the League of Nations and beyond, the clippings yield significant information about the political, social, cultural and economic impact of the war as it was taking place.

After World War I, Spengler and his staff began organizing the many thousands of clippings, mounting them chronologically in hardcover volumes of 200 pages each. The pages were oversized so that a full newspaper page or several smaller articles could be accommodated. For this undertaking, the New-York Historical Society secured funding from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. This donation provided for the blank volumes of high quality paper and the cost of preserving and mounting the clippings, utilizing glue that has not deteriorated the clippings to this day. The clippings were donated by Spengler and others who had gathered them. Only one copy of the collection was created, and it was the largest known to exist at that time.

Front page of the New York Evening Journal, Nov. 11, 1918, at war’s end: “Victory Here; Kaiser Flees.” Serial and Government Publications Division.

The 400 volumes were kept in storage at the New-York Historical Society until the late 1980s when it was decided there was no longer room for them. The collection was then offered to the U.S. Army Military History Institute in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where it was kept until 2003. At that time, two librarians from the Library of Congress Humanities and Social Sciences Division visited the Army Institute and compiled a list of materials for possible acquisition out of those being weeded from the Institute’s library. Almost as an afterthought, the Institute’s representative led the two librarians to a room where hundreds of oversized volumes were shelved and stacked. It was explained that unless an institution could be found to take the volumes, they might be destroyed. As the librarians discovered the depth and scope of the information the volumes contained, they realized the importance of saving them. After a period of negotiation and a flurry of paperwork, the 400 volumes were trucked to Washington, D.C. and became part of the Library of Congress collections. To help preserve them, the volumes have been individually boxed and stored offsite in a controlled environment. They are accessible by request through the Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room, James Madison Building, LM 133.

Charlotte Lerg (Ludwig-Maximilains Universität, Munich), recent Bavarian-American Fellow at the Library’s John W. Kluge Center, examined several volumes and extolled, “This amazing collection offers a formidable source for research on World War One. It captures the national discourse over neutrality, war and peace. The material, including German language-papers, presents a unique perspective while the choice of clippings creates its own fascinating narrative.”

While it will take years, plans are in the works to digitize the 80,000 fragile pages and make this valuable and unusual resource freely accessible online.

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.

Sources: The American Monthly, April 1926, p. 38; The New York Times, November 11, 1928, sect. 2, p. 1.

Letters About Literature: Dear Gayle Forman

Last week, we featured the first of two letters that tied for the National Honor Award for Level 2 in the Letters About Literature contest. The initiative is 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 last month.

The second Level 2 National Honor Award-winning letter comes from Pippa Scroggins of Florida, who wrote to Gayle Forman, author of “If I Stay.”

Dear Gayle Forman,

People often ask young musicians what inspired them to work hard. Most respond by giving a name, or a recording, but I respond with the name of a book. It’s a novel called “If I Stay,” and without it, I wouldn’t be the person I am now.

Since I was young, I have been told that I am extremely talented in music. I have been playing violin since I was 6, and now that I’m 13, it’s safe to say that I owe over half of my life to the thrill of it. Music is in my family; my grandmother was a touring opera singer, my mother was a violinist, and my father plays bass in a band called Drood. I grew up loving music, soaring, enjoying it…But when it came down to practicing, I always hit the ground. It was excruciating. I was gifted, but I felt like I was being pushed to do something I didn’t want to do. As a little kid, my mother would have to yell at me, as I grew older, I got punished. Nobody could truthfully say that I had any motivation.

In the summer before seventh grade, I bought a copy of your book, “If I Stay.” I was hooked immediately. I related tremendously to the main character; we both came from musical families, we both were normal adolescent girls who happened to have a passion for music, we both were somewhat shy, and we both felt deep love for everyone around us. The only thing different about us was that she, Mia, had dreams – she wanted to successfully audition and get into The Julliard School, she wanted to perform, she wanted to love – and I had no music related dreams whatsoever at the time.

After a heart-wrenching afternoon spent in my room reading the entire book, I came down, with tears dripping down my face, and told my dad that I needed to use his computer. I looked through the book and found every classical piece listed, and then, I listened to them. I felt the emotions. I was haunted by Beethoven’s Cello Sonata No. 3, I felt glory with Yo-Yo Ma’s Le Grand Tango, and was exhilarated by Gershwin’s Andante Con Moto e Poco Rubato. And that was when I discovered how truly beautiful and personal music really is. From that moment forward, I knew exactly what I wanted to do, who I wanted to be. I wanted to be Pippa Scroggins, the girl who plays the violin, with incentive as she practices, who pleases her teacher, who feels the music as she plays, who puts meaning behind the notes. I wanted to love music with all my heart.

That year was a great one. After a summer of passion, I came back to school full of fire. I pushed myself. I achieved more than I thought. This previous summer, I went on to study in New York, an accomplishment I am very proud of. Currently, I am having a struggle with tendonitis in my wrist, which has prevented me from practicing as much as I normally would, but I intend to overcome it. I believe that Mia Hall could do it; I believe that I can too.

Now, I have incentive. I plan what I want to accomplish, whether it be over the course of two hours or two years. I know that I truly have purpose. I know what I want to achieve. Thank you for shaping me, Gayle Forman.

Pippa Scroggins

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

Pic of the Week: Teacher Institutes

Carol Gnojewski and other educators analyze maps during one of the Library of Congress Summer Teacher Institutes. Photo by Stephen Wesson.

(The following was written by Stephen Wesson, Educational Resource Specialist at the Library of Congress.)

This June and July, teachers and school librarians from more than 40 states have gathered in Washington for the Library of Congress Summer Teacher Institutes. These intensive, week-long professional development sessions, which are organized by the Library’s Educational Outreach division, immerse K-12 educators in the practice of teaching with primary sources from the Library’s collections.

Primary sources like the artifacts in the Library’s collections are powerful teaching tools, and the Summer Teacher Institutes provide educators with opportunities to learn and apply strategies for integrating them into their classroom practice. In addition to hands-on activities facilitated by the Library’s Educational Outreach staff, participants consult with experts from across the Library and collaborate with their fellow educators to develop new resources for use with their own students.

This year’s Summer Teacher Institutes will run through the end of July, and applications for next year’s sessions will become available early in 2017. If you’re an educator or know an educator, watch the Teaching with the Library of Congress blog to find out more. One teacher, when asked what next year’s Institute participants should expect, said, “You should expect to experience the best professional development you have ever attended.”

World War I: Time to Recall What This War Was About

(The following is a post by Gayle Osterberg, director of communications for the Library of Congress.)

[image error]

Iconic World War I poster showing Uncle Sam with the famous phrase “I want you …” Prints and Photographs Division.

Next April begins the centennial of America’s involvement in World War I, from April 6, 1917, when the U.S. Congress formally declared war on the German Empire. It concluded November 11, 1918, with the armistice agreement.

I am going to risk embarrassment by confessing that I have retained very little of what I learned about this war in school. I must have been taught all the basic information – how it started, why we were involved, what its legacies were. But unlike the Civil War and World War II, there is little I can discuss in an informed way about the 19 months America was engaged in this global conflict.

I am told by Library colleagues that this is not unusual. In the United States, what was known as “The Great War” over time has been less widely studied, written about and dramatized on screen than other conflicts.

But consider that during those 19 months, more than 1 million women joined the workforce and momentum built for suffrage; nearly 400,000 African-Americans volunteered and served overseas, along the way popularizing jazz in Europe; the U.S. transitioned from being a debtor nation to a creditor nation, for the first time establishing America as a global power; and the global mobilization and conditions of warfare led to the spread of influenza; between 1918 and 1919, Spanish Influenza, as it was known, killed more people than the war itself.

These are just a few of the economic, cultural and political influences of the conflict. Seems worth exploring further. And there is no time like the present to re-learn as much as I can about it.

The Library of Congress has digitized thousands of original materials from the World War I era and made them accessible for use. Even better, we have curators and historians here who have spent a lot of time learning and thinking about this period of history and what it means.

I have asked these experts to share over the next six months some of the stories and collection materials they think are most revealing about World War I, so that all of us can benefit from their expertise. Their insights will be posted on this blog with the header “World War I” between now and April of next year.

They will discuss firsts like the use of conscription, personal stories like the time a book saved a soldier’s life, and trends like marketing and music. Here, one of our experts, Ryan Reft, gives us a sneak peek into the Library’s WWI materials. 

{mediaObjectId:'3815D3706B740064E0538C93F1160064',playerSize:'mediumStandard'}


WWI Video Transcript

In the meantime, I am going to explore some of the primary source materials in the Library’s collections – and you can too. Following are links and descriptions of some of the collections we’ll be digging into in the months ahead.

Following are links to sample World War I source materials available on the Library’s web site:

The Stars and Stripes

This collection presents the complete 71-week run of the World War I edition of the newspaper The Stars and Stripes. Published in France by the United States Army from February 8, 1918, to June 13, 1919, the eight-page weekly featured news, poetry, cartoons and sports coverage. Written by and for the American soldiers at the war front, the paper offers a unique perspective from which to examine the wartime experience.

World War I Sheet Music

From 1914 through 1920 the Library of Congress acquired more than 14,000 pieces of sheet music relating to what ultimately became known as the First World War, with the greatest number coming from the years of the United States’ active involvement (1917-1918) and the immediate postwar period. America’s entry into the war came at a time when popular songwriting and the music publishing industry, centered in New York’s Tin Pan Alley, was at its height and a new musical form known as “jazz” was emerging.

World War I Posters

This collection makes available online approximately 1,900 posters created between 1914 and 1920. Most relate directly to the war, but some German posters date from the post-war period and illustrate events such as the rise of Bolshevism and Communism, the 1919 General Assembly election and various plebiscites.

Federal Writers Project

These life histories were written by staff of the Folklore Project of the Federal Writers’ Project for the U.S. Works Progress (later Work Projects) Administration (WPA) from 1936-1940. Search on the phrase “World War I” to locate life histories that mention World War I.

Military Battles and Campaigns Maps

This collection contains maps showing campaigns of major military conflicts including troop movements, defensive structures and groundworks, roads to and from sites of military engagements, campsites and local buildings, topography and vegetation, including more than 20 military maps from World War I.

Newspaper Pictorials: World War I

This online collection is drawn from three primary sources: The War of the Nations: Portfolio in Rotogravure Etchings, a volume published by the New York Times shortly after the armistice that compiled selected images from their “Mid-Week Pictorial” supplements of 1914-1919; Sunday rotogravure sections from the New York Times for 1914-1919; and Sunday rotogravure sections from the New York Tribune for 1916-1919.

Chronicling America Historic Newspapers

This site of more than 10 million pages of historic American newspapers from 1836-1922 can be searched for World War I stories from around the country. A topics guide here includes several guides related to World War I under “War” https://www.loc.gov/rr/news/topics/to...

Veterans History Project

The Veterans History Project collects and preserves stories of wartime service from World War I to the present. This site provides a database of participating veterans, and digitized materials from the collection. Search the database to view more than 100 digital collections from World War I veterans.

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. Detailed program information will be announced in the coming weeks and months.

Library Fends Off DDoS Attack

This is a guest post by Bernard A. Barton Jr., chief information officer of the Library of Congress.

On Sunday morning, July 17, the Library became the target of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) network attack that resulted in the disruption of Library services and websites, including Congress.gov, the U.S. Copyright Office, the BARD service from the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, our many databases, and both incoming and outgoing email.

I’m pleased to report that our team of Library IT professionals and contract partners have returned our networked services to normal functionality. We did this while maintaining the security of the Library’s network.

This was a massive and sophisticated DNS assault, employing multiple forms of attack, adapting and changing on the fly. We’ve turned over key evidence to the appropriate authorities who will investigate and hopefully bring the instigators of this assault to justice.

We’re satisfied that we’ve fended off the attack and fortified our system for now, but we’ll continue to be vigilant and employ state-of-the-art security systems to effectively respond to these type of incidents in the future. This is not the first time that a large agency or organization has been targeted with this kind of denial of service, and it certainly won’t be the last.

I am grateful to our colleagues in other agencies across the federal government for their assistance and collaboration this week as we worked to restore full service.

I want to also thank our patrons and social media users, who’ve offered valuable feedback on specific problems they were experiencing in a timely way. This helped us work through ongoing isolated service issues once the broad system problems were resolved.

There may be some residual issues with parts of our system as full service is restored. If you’re still experiencing problems, please report them to us via our website comment form.