Library of Congress's Blog, page 129

A Hamilton Mixtape, Library of Congress Style

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Alexander Hamilton, bu John Trumbull. 1915. Prints and Photographs Division.

Nominated for a record-setting 16 Tony Awards, “Hamilton” the musical swept the ceremony winning 11, including Best Musical, Best Book, Best Original Score and a handful of best actor/actresses.

The show is based on the Ron Chernow biography on founding father Alexander Hamilton, which Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote the musical, had picked up on a whim while on vacation. Critics have praised “Hamilton” for its diverse musical styling, multi-racial cast and presentation of our country’s founding and pivotal leaders as representative of all Americans and less elite white men.

While Miranda certainly took dramatic license in his play, the musical does contain a lot of historical accuracy. Much of “Hamilton” centers on the relationship between the former treasury secretary and Aaron Burr. And, it is fact that their relationship was a contentious one with a tragic ending leading to Hamilton’s death and the ruin of Burr’s political career.

Whether you have or haven’t seen the Broadway hit, you can certainly follow along to the music through the Library’s own collections. The institution’s digital collections contain a wide variety of material associated with Alexander Hamilton, including manuscripts, letters, broadsides, government documents and images that are available throughout the Library’s website.

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Leaders of the Continental Congress–John Adams, Gouverneur Morris, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson 1894. Prints and Photographs Division.

Notably are The Federalist Papers, which Hamilton wrote with James Madison and John Jay under the pen name “Publius.” The Federalist Papers are considered one of the most important sources for interpreting and understanding the original intent of the Constitution. This web-friendly presentation of the original text is available on Congress.gov.

Author Joanne Freeman spoke at the Library several years ago on her book about Hamilton in which she detailed Hamilton’s and Burr’s fateful association and gave deeper insight into early national politics.

“Hamilton was aggressive, arrogant, brash, intensely irritating, astonishingly talented, dangerously impulsive and often self-destructive, and all of this is evident in his writings,” Freeman said. The Library is home to the papers of Alexander Hamilton.

“He was always quick to rush into a situation and state his view, which in his mind of course was always the right view, the end, period,” she added. “He rushed forward to criticize the Articles of Confederation after the war, and he was at the forefront of the effort to create new a constitution. He rushed into controversy as Washington’s secretary of the treasury by proposing dramatic, centralized, national programs and policies. And of course he never hesitated to rush forward in opposition to Aaron Burr, a man who he considered ‘dangerous to the republic, an ambitious opportunist with no political morals to hold him back.’”

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First Bank of the United States, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Photo by Carol Highsmith, between 1980 and 2006. Prints and Photographs Division.

All these events are covered in the musical, including Hamilton’s most controversial policy – the creation of the Bank of the United States. Rap battles among cabinet members ensue.

Circling back to Hamilton and Burr, the musical looks at pivotal moments in their relationship, including the presidential election of 1800, where Hamilton threw support behind Thomas Jefferson, who ended up winning the delegates by a landslide and thusly defeating Burr. It’s at this point in the musical that Burr challenges Hamilton to the fatal duel. However, it wasn’t actually until 1804, after being cast aside as vice president to Jefferson and losing the election for New York governor – “aided along by Hamilton’s active opposition,” said Freeman – that Burr challenged Hamilton.

The two met at dawn July 11, 1804, in Weehawken, New Jersey, to settle their differences. Burr’s shot met its target, fatally wounding Hamilton who died the next day.

According to Freeman, Hamilton didn’t really want to duel. In fact, historians have noted that Burr was quick to draw, while Hamilton intended to aim away from Burr. In the musical, Miranda, who plays Hamilton, points his gun to the sky as Burr takes his shot.

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The Burr and Hamilton duel, 11 July, 1804, at Weehawken, N.J. Prints and Photographs Division.

In a final statement written the night before the duel, Hamilton said, “All of the considerations which constitute what men of the world denominate honor, impressed on me, as I thought, a peculiar necessity not to decline the call. The ability to be in future useful, in those crises of our public affairs which seem likely to happen, would probably be inseparable from a conformity with public prejudice in this particular.”

Lawyer and historian William Nelson, (1847-1914), who was also the corresponding secretary of The New Jersey Historical Society, had this to say to say about the two in his address before the Washington association of New Jersey in 1897:

“Oh, bitter satire upon the ‘code of honor!’ By all its rules Burr was vindicated, and Hamilton condemned. But the overwhelming wave of public sentiment swept aside this sophistry, and lifted Hamilton’s memory everywhere on high, as the purest of patriots, the greatest and most upright of statesmen, the most beloved of men. And Burr became an outcast a Cain, shunned–save by a few of his closest friends–even by the great party for whose sake he had imbrued his hands in blood. … This is not the time, nor this the place, for a eulogy upon Alexander Hamilton–the poor unknown West Indian boy, who by force of extraordinary native genius, and actuated by the loftiest devotion to his adopted country, raised himself to a position of the highest influence, and has left his impress upon our very form of government, and the management of its most important departments.”

Related Blog Resources

The rules of dueling from In Custodia Legis

Hamilton actually proposed idea of Coast Guard from the Library of Congress Blog

The World Turned Upside Down from In the Muse

Pic of the Week: Eskin Lecture Recognizes Military Service

Dr. Jill Biden joins young-adult author Michael Grant, U.S. Army Reserve Capt. Rebecca Murga and U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Kristen Hansen in a conversation during the Jonah Solkoff Eskin Memorial program. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Dr. Jill Biden joined young-adult author Michael Grant and two female combat soldiers in conversation, comparing and contrasting real and imagined events in World War II with 21st-century combat and military life, in the Library of Congress’ annual Jonah Solkoff Eskin Memorial program on Monday. Monday was also the 72nd anniversary of WWII’s D-Day landing on the beaches of Normandy.

“I am a military mom,” said Biden, wife of Vice President Joseph Biden, as she opened the interviews. “Our son Bo
was deployed to Iraq in 2008.” She said she and first lady Michelle Obama have made a priority of being a sounding board for the nation’s military families.

Many of the middle-school and high-school-age students knew someone in the military, and many came from families with a deployed parent.

Biden interviewed author Michael Grant, whose latest book, “Front Lines,” imagines women fighting alongside men in World War II following a fictional Supreme Court ruling making women eligible for combat. She also spoke with Lt. Cmdr. Kristen Hansen, a Navy fighter pilot with 66 combat sorties over Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria and 472 carrier landings, and Army Capt. Rebecca Murga, who received the Bronze Star and the Meritorious Service Medal for her service.

Last Word: Brad Meltzer

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

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Brad Meltzer. Photo by Andy Ryan.

Bestselling author Brad Meltzer pays homage to the mysterious librarian who shaped his lifelong love of books.

I have a few rules I try to live by. One of them is: Mysteries need to be solved. Another is: You need to go thank the people who gave you your start. And so, let’s talk about this mysterious librarian.

I don’t know her name. I have no idea if she’s still alive. But when I was 10 years old, this mysterious librarian changed my life. You see, growing up, my family didn’t have a ton of money. But what we did have was my grandmother’s library card. It was there, in the public library in Brooklyn, New York, that I remember this librarian who pointed to shelves of beautiful books and told me, “This is your section.”

I almost fell over. I honestly thought she meant that all the books were mine (though, really, they were, weren’t they?). It was a day that made my world bigger and certainly better. And the best part was who she quickly introduced after that—a new friend, author Judy Blume. “Superfudge” was the first book I ever coveted. But it was Blume’s “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” that rocked my socks. Since I was a boy, no one understood why I was reading it. But I was a boy trying to figure out how girls worked.

I’m still searching for that answer. But thanks to that book, I knew what a bra was. Key first step. From there, she taught me one of the greatest lessons in life—that you must love yourself for who you are.

Today, that lesson inspires every children’s book I write—“I am Amelia Earhart”, “I am Abraham Lincoln”, “I am Rosa Parks”, “I am Albert Einstein”—and every other title in our “Ordinary People Change the World” series. Indeed, the series started because I was tired of my own kids thinking that reality TV show stars and loud-mouthed athletes were heroes. I wanted to give them real heroes—people just like themselves, which is what Judy Blume gave me.

Soon after, that librarian gave me Agatha Christie’s novel “Murder at the Vicarage,” the first murder mystery I’d ever read. To this day, I still don’t know what a vicarage is. And I don’t want to. In fact, if you see me somewhere, don’t tell me.

Back when I was 10, all I cared about was that on those pages there was a body. A dead body. How’d it get there? Why did it happen? And the most vital question of all: Whodunit? I’ve been asking that question ever since writing my first thriller, “The Tenth Justice,” to my newest, “The House of Secrets.” Over the years, Agatha Christie taught me that stories aren’t the beauty of what did happen. They’re the beauty of what could happen.

Needless to say, for what that librarian gave me, I owe her forever, which leads me back to my original point. Mysteries need to be solved. To this day, I don’t know who that librarian is. So in her honor, I’m thanking you—all the librarians who’ve inspired us and changed our lives.

Today, there are thousands of kids out there who will never know your name. They may never track you down. But do know, they’re part of your legacy. And on their behalf, I’m saying thank you.

Brad Meltzer is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of “The President’s Shadow” and nine other bestselling thrillers. His other popular works include nonfiction for children and comic books. He is also the host of “Brad Meltzer’s Decoded ” on History and “Brad Meltzer’s Lost History” on H2.

Library in the News: May 2016 Edition

The month of May saw the Library of Congress in a variety of headlines.

In April, the Library announced that THOMAS.gov, the online legislative information system, will officially retire July 5, completing the multi-year transition to Congress.gov.

David Gewirtz for ZDNet Government wrote, “You have to wonder what Thomas Jefferson would have made of the Internet, Thomas.gov, and Congress.gov. Considering how much of an innovator, man of curiosity, and scholar old TJ was, I think he’d have been very proud.”

Still making news is the Library’s exhibition on jazz singers. NPR’s Stamberg spoke with exhibit curator Larry Appelbaum. They discussed jazz icons Ella Fitzgerald, Mel Torme and Billie Holiday.

Also in the news was the Library exhibition, “World War I: American Artists View the Great War.” The Guardian spoke with curators Katharine Blood and Sara Duke.

“This was the first time in American history that art was used in war. The result was amazing,” said Duke.

Speaking of wartime, the Library’s Veterans History Project (VHP) has been working with the National Museum of Americans in Wartime Voices of Freedom project in collecting veterans’ oral histories. The Washington Post’s Jonathan Hunley spoke with Bob Patrick, director of VHP.

“So many stories of the past are told from the top down,” Patrick said, “through historians or the words of leaders. But oral histories provide a chance to preserve the tales of those who maybe aren’t so famous.”

Library experts continue to be featured in The Washington Post’s series of “Presidential” podcasts. New presentations are on Ulysses Grant and Abraham Lincoln.

In other news, the Library was featured in Travel & Leisure, which highlighted the Library’s collection of national parks images.

“In many ways, the Library of Congress and the National Park Service are alike. Both are public utilities with noble missions. Both celebrate uniquely American values. Both are really, really big. The Library of Congress is also a National Historic Landmark, which is administered by the National Park Service,” wrote Travel & Leisure staff. “Of course, there’s another, more tangible way the two federal institutions are connected: the Library of Congress is the repository of a wealth of historical photographs that help tell the early story of the parks.”

 And, from a page right out of a crime novel, the Library helped solve a mystery of a stolen letter written by Christopher Columbus. Donated to the Library in 2004, the letter written by the Italian explorer in 1493 detailed his voyage to the New World. Originally held in Florence’s Riccardiana Library, the letter was thought to have been stolen and replaced with a fake in 1950-51. Several outlets ran a story, including the Los Angeles Times, Fox News and Atlas Obscura.

Pic of the Week: Welcome to the Class

The 2016 Junior Fellows class takes the oath of office. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Thirty-eight undergraduate and graduate students convened on the Library this week to participate in the Library’s 2016 Junior Fellows Summer Intern Program. Nearly 800 applicants vied for a spot in the program. This year’s group hails from 20 states, the District of Columbia and the African country of Chad.

For the next 10 weeks, the students will be exposed to a broad spectrum of library work, including, collection processing, preservation, educational outreach, reference, access standards, information management, and digital initiatives. They will also work on a variety of projects like the archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape, audiovisual assets of the American Ballet Theatre, the digitization of monastery manuscripts, fire insurance maps, Hispanic legal documents, the collection of conductor Leonard Bernstein and the records of the Woman’s National Democratic Club.

The program is made possible through the generosity of the late Mrs. Jefferson Patterson and the Knowledge Navigators Trust Fund. A lead gift from H. F. (Gerry) Lenfest, former chairman of the Library’s James Madison Council private-sector advisory group, established the Knowledge Navigators Trust Fund with major support provided by members of the council.

You can read more about the work of past interns here.

New Online: Education, Folklife, Wartime Collections

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

Educational Outreach

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The Library’s Student Discovery Sets put primary sources in students’ hands and include full teacher resources for each set.

This month, we’re very happy to have a new release in the excellent series of Student Discovery Sets produced by the Library’s Education Outreach team. Designed for classroom use on Apple’s iPad platform, Student Discovery sets “bring together historical artifacts and one-of-a-kind documents on a wide range of topics, from history to science to literature. Interactive tools let students zoom in, draw to highlight details, and conduct open-ended primary source analysis. Full teaching resources are available for each set.” The new release includes sets on The New Deal, Scientific Data: Observing, Recording, and Communicating Information and Weather Forecasting. These materials are also available via the web as part of the Library’s Primary Source Sets.

You can read more about them on the Teaching with the Library of Congress blog.

American Folklife Center

The American Folklife Center is marking its 40th  anniversary in 2016, celebrating the center’s role in the preservation and promotion of traditional culture with a series of events, programs, and other activities throughout the year. New to the Library’s website is the Chicago Ethnic Arts Project Collection, the first online release of materials from approximately 25 ethnographic field projects and cultural surveys in various parts of the United States between 1977 and 1997. The Chicago collection includes photos, audio and the notes and reports of the AFC fieldworkers. This blog post on Folklife Today has more details and samples from the collection. Also new from AFC are four albums of music originally published on vinyl, now online for streaming and download: Folk music of the United States: Indian songs of today; Cowboy songs, ballads and cattle calls from Texas; American fiddle tunes; and Negro blues and hollers. Scans of the original album covers and liner notes are included on the pages (under the PDF link).

Wartime Collections

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American Fiddle Tunes is one of 4 albums now available for streaming and download, released to celebrate American Folklife Center’s 40th Anniversary.

Expanding our extensive Civil War-related collections, the papers of reformer, poet, editor and clergyman William Oland Bourne span the years 1841-1885, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1856-1867. As editor of the periodical The Soldier’s Friend, Bourne sponsored a contest in 1865-1866 in which Union soldiers and sailors who lost their right arms by disability or amputation during the Civil War were invited to submit samples of their penmanship using their left hands. The online presentation contains correspondence and broadsides concerning the contests, many of the penmanship entries submitted and photographs of some contest participants.

World War I: American Artists View the Great War is an online exhibition of posters, cartoons, fine art prints and drawings chronicling World War I from its onset through its aftermath. You can visit the exhibition in person through May 6, 2017, at the Library’s Jefferson Building Graphic Arts Gallery.

Digital Collection Upgrades

Finally, we’re continuing our migration of old presentations to newer technologies. The latest to receive an upgrade is Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers Project, 1936-1938, which contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves.  These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) of the Works Progress Administration, later renamed Work Projects Administration (WPA).

 

Rare Survivor of Pacific War

(The following story was written by Mark Hartsell, editor of the Library of Congress staff newsletter, The Gazette.)

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Brothers John (from left), George and Glen Pearcy donated their uncle’s diary to VHP. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Before he boarded the ship carrying prisoners of war across the ocean to a forced-labor camp, George Washington Pearcy divided his diary and gave the pieces to two comrades staying behind.

If he didn’t survive the journey, Pearcy hoped, his story somehow would. Pearcy, a POW held by the Japanese during World War II, never made it home to his family. His diary eventually did and, more than 70 years later, found its way to the Veterans History Project (VHP) at the Library of Congress.

Three of Pearcy’s nephews – George, Glen and John Pearcy – donated the diary, along with photos and family letters, to VHP in December.

 

The diary is a most-rare item: Such journals were common among POWs in German stalags but much less so at the brutal Japanese camps, where they were kept at risk of death.

“He’s representative of a much larger group that did not leave something behind for us to preserve,” VHP archivist Rachel Telford said. “So many prisoners didn’t keep diaries that they could get home to their families. We’re preserving his place in history, but he’s also a stand-in for so many other men who didn’t make it home.”

War in the Pacific

In June 1941, Pearcy graduated from Washington University law school, joined the Army and was assigned to the 66th Coastal Artillery on Corregidor, an island bastion protecting Manila Bay in the Philippines.

Following their attack on Pearl Harbor that December, the Japanese invaded the Philippines. American forces surrendered at Bataan in April 1942 and at Corregidor in May.

Second Lt. Pearcy was taken prisoner and held in a succession of Japanese camps – mostly at Cabanatuan, the largest in the Philippines. Some 9,000 Americans eventually were held at Cabanatuan. Thousands would end up buried just outside the camp’s fence.

While there, Pearcy documented his experiences on whatever scraps he could find – old maps, hospital forms, labels peeled from food cans. He recalled the “mental daze of the men” after Pearl Harbor, the fighting on nearby Bataan, Corregidor’s fall. He made lists: things he remembered on Bataan, diseases he’d suffered and treatments he’d received, a glossary (“toad-stabber=bayonet”), things to do when he returned home (make wine, build up a stock of food, collect veterans’ stories). He recounted everyday life in camp – the attempted escapes, the beating of prisoners, the thieves’ market.

“Two aspects of it were profound to me: the cruelty imposed upon the prisoners and the need to survive, the turning of American prisoners upon each other for food and medicine to survive,” nephew George Pearcy said. “They’re all on death’s doorstep and if you turn your back on your food, it was gone. If you turn your back on your medicine, it was gone.

“They had to protect themselves amongst each other, to a certain extent, as well as against the Japanese.”

And Pearcy recorded the terrible things he saw. He noted that a Japanese sentry had been decapitated, evidently by a Filipino. A few days later, the Japanese paraded into camp carrying battle flags and a Filipino’s head on a pole – a warning against future attacks on their soldiers.

“I have seen pictures of [Japanese] beheadings in China but never expected to see such a barbaric display – especially carrying a human head at the head of a company of troops,” Pearcy wrote.

‘Hell Ship’ Voyage

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Items from the collection of the late Lt. George W. Pearcy are donated to the Veterans History Project, December 11, 2015. Photo by Shawn Miller.

In 1944, with Gen. Douglas MacArthur moving to retake the Philippines, the Japanese began to evacuate some POWs aboard “hell ships” – freighters known for their terrible conditions.

On Oct. 20, Pearcy and nearly 1,800 other Allied prisoners sailed from Manila Bay aboard the Arisan Maru, packed into cargo holds not nearly big enough to hold them.

“From the outset, the journey was a horror story,” Manny Lawton wrote in “Some Survived: An Eyewitness Account of the Bataan Death March and the Men Who Lived Through It.” “Men were so tightly crowded together that there was scarcely room to lie down. With the hatch covers closed there was no way to get fresh air, and the humid, sweltering 120-degree atmosphere soon became fouled with the stench of unwashed bodies and human waste.

“In their frightening, helpless condition, many men panicked. Some went mad.”

The ship was headed to Japan or one of its territories, where POWs worked as forced laborers. They never made it. On Oct. 24, an American submarine torpedoed the unmarked Arisan Maru, sinking her. Only nine prisoners survived – Pearcy wasn’t one of them.

  On the Homefront

Stateside, Pearcy’s family wasn’t sure what had happened to him. His mother wrote him letters, but all came back marked “return to sender.”

The only communications they received during his captivity were a few postcards that mostly allowed Pearcy to choose among preprinted choices: “My health is – excellent; good; fair; poor.”

But Pearcy, fearing the worst before he boarded the Arisan Maru, took a gamble to ensure his story reached home. Figuring his diary had a better chance of survival if it remained behind, Pearcy split his papers between two POWs considered too sick to travel.

The gamble worked. After Pearcy’s death, half the diary got back to his family, in care of a soldier from Utah.

“I don’t know if he presented it or mailed it,” George Pearcy said. “But he got it to them.”

And now it has a permanent place at the Library of Congress.

“We thought it was a story larger than just the Pearcy family,” Pearcy said. “We thought this was the best vehicle to allow the story to be told about what I feel is not just the Pearcy story, but the story of that generation and thousands upon thousands of people that experienced the same doggone thing.”

UPDATE

The story of Pearcy’s diary was also posted on the Folklife Today blog in February in which it garnered quite the interest. One of Robert Auger’s relatives contacted VHP in April with an offer to donate Auger’s POW diary to the Library. You can read more about it here.

Pic of the Week: AFC Celebrates 40

Nakotah LaRance gives a hoop dance performance during AFC’s 40th anniversary celebration. Photo by Amanda Reynolds.

The American Folklife Center (AFC) hosted a reception in celebration of its 40th anniversary last Wednesday. Special guests giving remarks were David Mao, acting Librarian of Congress; Kurt Dewhurst, chairman of AFC’s board of trustees; Betsy Peterson, AFC’s current director; and David Isay, founder of StoryCorps.

The reception included a special performance by Nakotah LaRance, the 2015 and 2016 World Hoop Dance Champion. LaRance comes from Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo, New Mexico. He is well known as an actor for roles in Steven Spielberg’s “Into the West” miniseries, HBO’s “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” and AMC’s “Longmire.” He was also a principal dancer in the Cirque Du Soleil show “Totem” and is currently the master instructor for the Pueblo of Pojoaque Youth Hoop Dancers.

The American Folklife Center was created by Public Law 94-201, The American Folklife Preservation Act, which was signed into law by President Gerald Ford on Jan. 2, 1976. The law placed AFC at the Library of Congress to “preserve and present American Folklife” through programs of research, documentation, archival preservation, reference service, live performance, exhibition, public programs and training. The center includes the American Folklife Center Archive of Folk Culture, which was established in 1928 and has become one of the largest collections of ethnographic material from the U.S. and around the world. The archive includes about 6 million sound recordings, manuscripts, photographs and other items — 5 million of which have been acquired in the last 40 years.

More information on AFC’s 40th anniversary programming and plans can be found here.

Coloring Inside the Lines

carljungstudies.org

America’s Public Libraries

(The following is the cover story from the May/June 2016 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM, written by Yvonne Dooley, reference librarian in the Science, Technology and Business Division and president of the D.C. Library Association. You can read the issue in its entirety here.)

Opened in 2012, the Francis A. Gregory branch of the D.C. Public Library was designed by the
architecture team of Adjaye Associates and Wiencek Associates. Maxine Schnitzer, courtesy of D.C. Public Libraries.

More popular than ever, public libraries are changing to meet the needs of the communities they serve.

Despite dire predictions of their demise, America’s public libraries—about 17,000 nationwide—are thriving. Once thought of as a repository and lending place for books, public libraries are now centers for learning, innovation and collaboration. The digital age—with its rapidly changing technology—has required public libraries to evolve or risk becoming obsolete.

More Popular Than Ever

Americans love their libraries. In 2007–2008, during the nation’s economic downturn, public libraries saw an all-time high in usage throughout the country. The Institute of Museum and Library Services reported 1.5 billion in-person library visits in 2008. Patrons came to libraries in droves to use computers, look for jobs and attend classes, in addition to checking out materials. As they did during the Great Depression, people turned to their local public libraries during their greatest time of need. Today, those usage levels have remained unchanged.

A 2013 Pew Research Report on “How Americans Value Public Libraries in Their Communities” found that 90 percent of Americans ages 16 and older said that the closing of their local public library would have an impact on their community, with 63 percent saying it would have a “major” impact.

Jaime Mears, a National Digital Stewardship Resident at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C., instructs Alex Santos
on how to scan and digitize family photos in the Memory Lab. Photo by Shawn Miller.

A 2012 “Public Library Funding and Technology Access Study” found that libraries are helping to bridge the digital divide: The study reported that 62 percent of libraries are the only source of free Internet access in their communities; 76 percent offer access to e-books and 39 percent of libraries provide e-readers for check-out by patrons.

Yet, as demand surges, library funding continues to dwindle. The “Public Library Funding and Technology Access Study” also reported that 23 states cut funding in 2012 for public libraries and more than 40 percent of states decreased library support three years in a row.

What’s New at the Public Library?

Today’s public libraries offer something for everyone—at all ages and levels of ability. The District of Columbia Public Library system, for example, is a bustling network of 26 library locations that offer services well beyond those initially conceived by Congress when it established a free public library for the District on June 3, 1896. Not only can District residents check out the latest bestseller or issue of People magazine but they also have free access to the Internet for research or job-hunting, or they can use one of the hands-on “makerspaces” (complete with a 3D printer) available at the central Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library branch. Opened in 1972, the historic MLK Library is scheduled for a major renovation to provide state-of-the-art library services. Several other D.C. public libraries have been renovated in recent years with designs that reflect changes in how the community uses the modern public library.

Public libraries like the Watha T. Daniel/Shaw Library offer patrons access to computer and Internet. Paúl Rivera, courtesy of D.C. Public Libraries

This is not unique to the D.C. area—the evolution is happening in 9,000+ public library systems all over the United States. In October 2014, the Aspen Institute released the report “Rising to the Challenge: Re-envisioning Public Libraries” in an effort to guide critical conversations regarding the future of public libraries. “It is a time of particular opportunity for public libraries with their unique stature as trusted community hubs and repositories of knowledge and information,” the report concluded. “Public libraries must align library services in support of community goals.”

The American Library Association agrees. In October 2015 it launched “Libraries Transform,” a new public awareness campaign to showcase the critical role that libraries play in the digital age.

“The Libraries Transform campaign communicates the message that libraries are neither ‘obsolete’ nor ‘nice to have’—libraries are essential,” said ALA President Sari Feldman. “It is clear that today’s libraries are less about what we have for people and more about what we do for, and with people to create individual opportunity and community progress.”

With support from the American Library Association’s “the American Dream Starts @ your library” initiative, institutions like the Waukegan (Illinois) Public Library are giving new Americans the skills and confidence to improve their lives. Waukegan’s programming includes English Conversation workshops for those for whom English is a second language. Adult ESOL programs are a mainstay of public library programming throughout the nation.

Read to a Dog” programs at public
libraries motivate reluctant young readers. Courtesy of Montgomery (Maryland) County Public Libraries.

When facing budget shortfalls, U.S. mayors report that library budgets are among the first items cut. Donna Howell, the director of Mountain Regional Library System in Georgia sums up the issue: “Our funding has been cut so low that we’re really at the end of our financial tether … but the fact that we’re still relevant enough to our community for them to keep coming back in such large numbers gives me hope for our future.”

“Los Angeles is a gateway city and serving our immigrant communities is an extremely high priority for us,” said John Szabo, city librarian of the Los Angeles Public Library. “In 2012, we launched a partnership with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services—the agency that oversees naturalization—to provide resources that assist new Americans in taking their first steps on the path to citizenship. Our program has become a national model and is evolving into an even more robust immigrant integration effort. This work is beautifully aligned with the values of libraries and librarianship and is strategically important to our present and our future.”

Library programs using Legos support the STEM curriculum. Courtesy of Montgomery County
(Maryland) Public Libraries.

Today’s public libraries are bright, airy, inviting meeting spaces, with comfortable furniture in open floorplans. In addition to makerspaces, some even include coffee shops, toylending collections, passport acceptance centers—the list goes on and on.

Makerspaces allow the creative community to take advantage of new tools to produce products and take them directly to the marketplace on the web. Makerspaces also foster interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). More than 30 libraries in the state of Idaho have implemented STEM programming that encourages the use of new technology and tools. Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Libraries offer “creating with Legos” programs for elementary school children that support the STEM curriculum.

For reluctant young readers, many public libraries offer a “Read to a Dog” program. For reluctant users of technology, the public library is the place to go to learn how to download e-books to mobile devices.But as wonderful as all these new public library programs are, they mean nothing if people do not take advantage of them. Like a best-selling novel that gets shelved in the nonfiction section, if no one finds and uses it, it might as well not be there.