Library of Congress's Blog, page 154

Poem Dedicated to Library Published as Children’s Book

(The following is a guest post by Guy Lamolinara, communications officer in the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress.)

Billy Collins at the 2014 National Book Festival. Photo by Colena Turner.

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins (2001-2003), creator of the Library’s Poetry 180 website, has just published his first illustrated children’s book with artist Karen Romagna. The book features Collins’ poem “Voyage,” which the poet wrote in 2003 and dedicated to John Y. Cole, director of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress.

That year, Cole celebrated his 25th anniversary as the founding director of the center, and he has recently marked his 50th year of federal service (all but two at the Library).

The poem, presented to Cole in a letterpress edition from the coordinators of the 50 Center for the Book state affiliates, “was a surprise to me,” he said. “The original letterpress edition of 100 copies was printed at the University of Alabama by Steve Miller on handmade paper by Frank Brannon.”

Collins and Romagna discussed “Voyage,” a poem about the pleasures of reading, in the Children’s pavilion at this year’s National Book Festival. (A webcast of the presentation is forthcoming.)

In their presentation, Collins and Romagna discussed their contributions to the 32-page book, released Sept. 1 by Bunker Hill Publishing of Piermont, N.H. (The book is available from the Library’s Sales Shop.)

“The poem’s text and illustrations tell the story of how a young boy searching the beach for treasure comes across a sailboat and pushes out to sea. Magically the boat becomes a book that the boy begins to read, and he finds himself living out its adventure, pirate ship and all, in the fantastic world of words,” said Cole.

“Voyage” is Romagna’s debut as a picture book illustrator. A self-taught artist, she lives and paints in historic Clinton, N.J.

Collins has been called “the most popular poet in America.” While he was Poet Laureate, Collins created the Library’s widely used Poetry 180 website, which offers a poem a day throughout the school year. Collins made another presentation at the 2014 National Book Festival. He also discussed “Aimless Love,” his new collection of poems, in the Poetry & Prose Pavilion.

The Library’s Center for the Book, established by Congress in 1977 to “stimulate public interest in books and reading,” is a national force for reading and literacy promotion. A public-private partnership, it sponsors educational programs that reach readers of all ages through its affiliated state centers, collaborations with nonprofit reading-promotion partners and through the Young Readers Center and the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress. For more information, visit read.gov.

Share Your Photos of Halloween

The American Folklife Center (AFC) at the Library of Congress is inviting Americans participating in holidays at the end of October and early November – Halloween, All Souls Day, All Saints Day, Dia de los Muertos – to photograph hayrides, haunted houses, parades, trick-or-treating and other celebratory and commemorative activities to contribute to a new collection documenting contemporary folklife.

Between Oct. 22 and Nov. 5, AFC invites people to document in photographs how holiday celebrations are experienced by friends, family and community, then post photos to the photo-sharing site Flickr under a creative commons license with the tag #FolklifeHalloween2014.

AFC will explore the stream of photographs shared on Flickr and pick a selection of images to be archived. Of particular interest are images that capture the diversity of practices, people and places that are distinctive in their association with these holidays.

Selected images accessioned by the Library will be shared via the blog Folklife Today in a series of blog posts beginning in November 2014. Depending on the response to this project, AFC may continue using this method to collect documentation of other holidays and other topics.

The Library’s collections are full of documentarians and folklorists including Alan Lomax, Sidney Robertson Cowell and Dorothea Lange, whose work and contributions have inspired this project.

You can read more about this project in a recent blog post from the folklife center, which includes submission guidelines and some example photographs.

Mark Twain & Copyright

(The following is an article written by Harry Katz in the September-October 2014 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM. Katz is a former curator in the Library’s Prints and Photographs Division and author of a new Library publication, “Mark Twain’s America.”) 

Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) poses in his classic white suit, 1905. George Edward Perine, Prints and Photographs Division.

Samuel Clemens’ fight for the intellectual property rights to Mark Twain’s works helped protect the nation’s authors at home and abroad.

On May 7, 1874, Samuel L. Clemens–the American author and humorist known as Mark Twain–wrote to Librarian of Congress Ainsworth Rand Spofford, seeking copyright protection for his pamphlet and its cover design. In 1870, the Library of Congress had become the federal repository for commercial and intellectual copyright; authors routinely submitted samples of their work to the Librarian of Congress to document their legal claims.

Accompanying Clemens’ letter was an illustration from “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” the landmark comic sketch that made Twain an overnight literary sensation in 1865 under the title “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog.” Twain was known as “the people’s author” for his wildly popular comic sketches and hugely successful books, ”The Innocents Abroad” (1869), “Roughing It” (1872), and “The Gilded Age” (1873, co-authored with Charles Dudley Warner).

Pamphlet for which Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) sought a copyright from the Library of Congress. Prints and Photographs Division.

It would be several years before his publication of ”The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” but Twain had already discovered the price of success–unauthorized editions of his writings were being published throughout the English- speaking world without due compensation for the author.

From early in his writing career, Twain was victimized by unscrupulous publishers who simply transcribed his published writings into unauthorized editions which were sold without the author’s permission. Pirated editions of his works infuriated Twain, who went to great lengths, traveling to Canada and England, to ensure his copyright and protect his intellectual property. Twain told a reporter, “I always take the trouble to step over in Canada and stand on English soil. Thus secure myself and receive money for my books sold in England.”

Twain became so frustrated by literary piracy that from time to time he considered giving up books to write plays, successfully staging versions of “The Gilded Age,” “Huckleberry Finn,” “The Prince and the Pauper,” “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” and “Pudd’nhead Wilson.”

Twain also became a leading advocate for an international copyright law, which was enacted by Congress in 1891 to extend limited protection to foreign copyright holders from select nations.

In 1900, he appeared before the British House of Lords, and in 1906 made a stunning entrance into a U.S. congressional committee meeting on copyright. As one observer noted of Twain’s unveiling of his trademark white suit, “Nothing could have been more dramatic than the gesture with which he flung off his long loose overcoat, and stood forth in white from his feet to the crown of his silvery head.”

Letter from Samuel Clemens to Librarian of Congress Ainsworth Rand Spofford requesting a copyright for his pamphlet, May 7, 1874. Prints and Photographs Division.

Twain was in favor of perpetual copyright protection. But he supported a bill that would extend the term of copyright from 42 years to the author’s life plus 50 years. The copyright law of 1909–the law’s third general revision– provided for a term of only 28 years, plus a single renewal term of 28 years. The life-plus-50 term was not established in U.S. law until 1978.

At its annual meeting in New York City in 1957, the American Bar Association adopted a special resolution that “recognized the efforts of Mark Twain, who was so greatly responsible for the laws relating to copyrights which have meant so much to all free peoples throughout the world.”

Katz will discuss “Mark Twain’s America” at the Library at noon on Oct. 22 in the Mumford Room, located on the sixth floor of the James Madison Building at 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C.   

“Mark Twain’s America,” a 256-page hardcover book, with 300 color and black-and-white images, is available for $40 in bookstores nationwide and in the Library of Congress Shop, 10 First St. S.E., Washington, D.C., 20540-4985. Credit-card orders are taken at (888) 682-3557 orwww.loc.gov/shop/.

Anatomy of the Flute

(The following is a feature on “Technology at the Library” from the September-October 2014 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM. You can read the issue in its entirety here.) 

Lynn Brostoff of the Preservation Directorate and Carol Lynn Ward- Bamford of the Music Division perform an X-ray fluorescence analysis on a glass
flute from the Library’s collections. Photo by Abby Brack Lewis

The Library of Congress holds the largest collection of flutes in the world, due in great measure to the generosity of Ohio physicist and amateur flutist Dayton C. Miller (1866-1941). Miller donated his collection of more than 1,700 flutes and wind instruments to the Library upon his death.

Housed among Miller’s gold, silver, wood and ivory flutes are 18 flutes made out of glass during the first half of the 19th century by Claude Laurent of Paris. The Library holds nearly half of the approximately 40 glass flutes known to exist worldwide, in institutions like the Metropolitan Museum, the Corning Museum of Glass and the Smithsonian Institution.

Although trained as a clockmaker, Laurent took out a patent for his “crystal” flutes in 1806 and won the silver medal at the Paris Industrial Exposition that year. Laurent’s flutes, with their intricate cut patterns and ornate jeweled keys, are also functional instruments. Some were made for heads of state. One such flute, which was crafted in 1813 and presented to James Madison during his presidency, is permanently on display at the Library of Congress.

The Laurent flutes are the subject of a collaborative research project between the Library’s Music Division and its Preservation Directorate. This cross- disciplinary collaboration is shedding new light on the Madison flute and its sibling glass flutes. The research will allow the Library to care for these rare instruments with the most up-to-date preservation methods, provide a new understanding about the place of Laurent’s flutes in history and enrich the world’s knowledge of 19th-century glass preservation.

The sheer number of Laurent’s flutes in the Dayton C. Miller Collection makes the Library an ideal place for researchers to carry out this work, which was prompted by senior curator of instruments Carol Lynn Ward-Bamford. She observed that some of the flutes were undergoing subtle changes in appearance and enlisted the help of research chemist Lynn Brostoff and conservator Dana Hemmenway. The team is moving forward with an in-depth study that seeks to bring to light the remarkable story behind Laurent’s creation of glass flutes, as well as their current preservation needs. Their tools include a high-powered microscope and the use of X-rays to “see” into the glass and discover its composition.

Close-up of a glass flute undergoing X-ray analysis. Photo by Abby Brack Lewis

The materials analysis carried out thus far by Brostoff has revealed that only two of the 18 flutes are, in fact, made of “crystal,” which is technically leaded glass. The remaining flutes are made of potash glass, so named due to the presence of potassium from the ash used in their manufacture. As the study continues, Library researchers–aided by glass chemists at the Vitreous State Laboratory of The Catholic University of America–will investigate how a new understanding of the materials and manufacturing methods that Laurent used in different flutes may aid in their conservation. Library Junior Fellows Dorie Klein and William Sullivan also are assisting in the Library’s efforts by learning more about Laurent, including a possible family connection to the famous Paris maker of cut crystal, Baccarat.

“The project is amazing,” said Klein, a history and museum studies major at Smith College– and a trained glassblower. “Our goal to determine the structure and significance of these rare flutes is important, both to the Library and to the larger mission of preservation of history.”

Remembering the Real Fifties

(The following is a guest post by Tom Wiener of the Library’s Publishing Office and editor of “The Forgotten Fifties: America’s Decade from the Archives of Look Magazine.)

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“The Forgotten Fifties: America’s Decade from the Archives of Look Magazine” (Skira/Rizzoli and the Library of Congress, 2014).

Look Magazine was a large format, glossy-paged publication that emphasized photography as much as words. Published between 1937 and 1971, it is recalled now as the poor sister of the more heavily financed and successful Life. The magazine was owned by the Cowles family, which also owned newspapers in Des Moines, Iowa, before branching out with Look. After the magazine closed its doors, the family donated the entire Look photo archive to the Library of Congress. It comprises the largest single collection within the Prints and Photographs Division, with an estimated 5 million individual images.

Look was a late bloomer, struggling for respectability in its early years when it published pictures of female movie stars accompanied by simplistic stories. It became known as a barber shop magazine, and Look’s principal owner, Gardner “Mike” Cowles, admitted, “Not until 1950 did Look begin to reach that level of quality for which I had hoped.” In that watershed year, Look began running stories on foreign affairs, on the political scene in Washington and on American communities they dubbed “All American Cities.” 1950 saw the outbreak of war in Korea and the arrival on the American scene of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, a Wisconsin Republican who insisted that the United States government, and in particular the State Department, was riddled with members of the Communist party. Look reported on both of these stories and the anxieties they raised among their readers.

In March 1950, Look ran a story titled “Southern Catholics Fight Race Hatred,” about efforts in Alabama by the church to reach out to black citizens living in an officially segregated society, often in fear for their safety. It was a bold move by the magazine, and reader reaction was strong – both in praise and in condemnation – with many of the latter letters originating from the South. Thus began a decade-long fascination with racial issues in Look’s pages, which reflected the early days of the Civil Rights era.

Look also displayed a fascination with women, but not like in its early days with the plethora of features on starlets. Mike Cowles’ wife, Fleur, became an associate editor at the magazine in 1947, and her hand on the editorial content was evident until the Cowles marriage broke up in 1955. Yes, there were still pieces on female entertainers, from Marilyn Monroe to Lucille Ball, but there were also examinations of the lives of ordinary women, many of them working for a living. In 1950, Look featured a single mother living in New York who worked as an assistant to cartoonist Al Capp, creator of the popular comic strip “Lil Abner”; and on a middle-aged traveling saleslady specializing in lingerie.

Newly published by the Library of Congress, “The Forgotten Fifties: America’s Decade from the Archives of Look Magazine” (Skira/Rizzoli and the Library of Congress, 2014) by James Conaway brings the 1950s to life through images from the collection selected by photo editor Amy Pastan.

In preparing to assemble “The Forgotten Fifties,” Jim, Amy and I were guided by an outline of topics, including the Cold War, the rise of television and rock music, and the shifting dynamics of race and gender. We indexed all the relevant features on these topics, and Amy dove into the Look Collection in search of the most evocative photographs. Jim Conaway wrote his text to the photos in each of the 10 chapters, representing one year of the decade. Our book traces the story of how America evolved from its preoccupations with Communism to the dawn of a different era. The photo that opens the 1950 chapter is from the Korean War, and the last photo in the 1959 chapter is of Jacqueline Kennedy. (The author and editors will be on hand today at the Library to discuss the book. A webcast from the event will be forthcoming.)

The unexpected rewards of dealing with a collection so large was that Amy found many photos that never appeared in the magazine. Either they weren’t used for the article for which they were shot, or the article never ran. For example, in 1954, Look staffer Bob Lerner photographed gospel singer Mahalia Jackson for a feature marking her debut recording for Columbia Records. We found no article corresponding to Lerner’s photos of Jackson at the Columbia microphones, and only after we completed the book did we learn that most of the film Lerner shot for the story was stolen and Look chose not to run an article. A strip of pictures of Mahalia at the microphone appear on page 126 of “The Forgotten Fifties.”

Researching the Look Collection was both exhilarating and exhausting. No book before ours had made such extensive use of the collection, and Amy immediately found that, as a working archive for a publication, Look rarely made prints of its photos. She was faced with poring over contact sheets, slides and color transparencies–all requiring the use of a magnifying loupe. Look wasn’t stingy; on most assignments, their photographers shot dozens, even hundreds of exposures.

Look’s vision of the 50s offers a nuanced view of a decade thought to be prosperous, simple and innocent. Though there are plenty of pictures in “The Forgotten Fifties” of well-groomed kids and smiling suburban housewives, there are also shots of tattoed beatniks and the Little Rock “mob” of angry white people that greeted the nine black teenagers trying to integrate Central High School. Perry Como appears on our pages, as do Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. Doris Day is here, as is “Peyton Place” “bad girl” author Grace Metalious. Look took it all in, and we’re happy to share their view of a decade that’s richer and more complex than is remembered.

The 224-page hardcover book, with 200 color and black-and-white photographs, is available for $45 in bookstores nationwide and in the Library of Congress Shop, 10 First St. S.E., Washington, D.C., 20540-4985. Credit-card orders are taken at (888) 682-3557 or www.loc.gov/shop/ .

Mathew Carey (1760-1839), Philadelphia Publisher and Provocateur

(The following is a guest post by Julie Miller, early American specialist in the Manuscript Division.)

Through the winter and spring of 1825, the Philadelphia publisher Mathew Carey sat for the painter John Neagle. On Feb. 1 he recorded in his diary: “His portrait appears a flattering one. If true, I am a better looking man than I ever supposed.” The Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress recently acquired two manuscript diaries by Carey, including the one containing this entry. Like the painting (now at the Library Company of Philadelphia), the diaries are a portrait of a man who was at once boastful and self-doubting, sociable and cranky, driven and depressed.

John Neagle (1796-1865).
Portrait of Mathew Carey, 1825.
Oil on canvas.
Library Company of Philadelphia. Gift of Mary Hudson, 1991.

Carey was born in Dublin in 1760, emigrated to the United States in 1784 after several times tangling with the British parliament over his writings in favor of Irish nationalism and Catholic emancipation and settled in Philadelphia. After an early career as a printer, journalist and newspaper publisher, he became one of the most successful book publishers in the U.S. He prospered publishing bibles, schoolbooks, maps and atlases, almanacs and novels. The absence of an international copyright law made it possible for him to republish British books, including the popular novels of Sir Walter Scott, and “Charlotte Temple,” by Susanna Haswell Rowson, which attracted a wide and enthusiastic readership. His American publications included the “Life of Washington,” by Mason Locke “Parson” Weems. In 1801 he organized an annual book fair, to be held alternately in Philadelphia and New York, following the example of the book fairs of Frankfurt and Leipzig. It lasted only a few years, but it fortified Carey’s reputation as a leader in the American book business.

Carey was also an impressively active participant in Philadelphia civic life. He was a member of the American Philosophical Society and the Franklin Institute; a director of the Bank of Pennsylvania and the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal company; and a founder of the Hibernian Society, which aided Irish immigrants. More ephemeral bodies he belonged to included the health committee organized during Philadelphia’s yellow fever epidemic of 1793; a “committee of 24″ that promoted canal-building in the 1820s; and a “friends of Clay” group that supported Henry Clay’s presidential candidacy in 1824.

During the period these diaries cover, Nov. 11, 1821 – Jan. 3, 1823, and Sept. 2, 1824 – Nov. 1, 1825, Carey was easing out of the publishing business and into a new career as an author of essays on political economy and a promoter of what Americans then called “internal improvements.” Like Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay, both of whom he admired, Carey believed that government ought to play an active role in promoting and protecting the American economy. For Carey, this meant federal government protection of American manufacturing through tariffs on foreign imports and the construction of canals in order to speed communication and trade. As early as the 1780s Carey was leading organizations that promoted American manufacturing and the “useful arts.” After the Panic of 1819, an economic collapse whose effects lasted into the early 1820s, he helped found several more, including the Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of Internal Improvements.

Carey’s economic views are preserved in his writings and in correspondence with friends and political leaders. On Oct. 3, 1822, he wrote retired president James Madison “on the policy that prevails in our intercourse with foreign nations – a policy which renders us hewers of wood and drawers of water to the manufacturing nations of Europe.” Today Carey’s letter is in the Manuscript Division’s James Madison papers. On Nov. 2, 1822, Carey wrote in his diary: “Rec’d a flattering letter from Mr. Madison.” A draft of that reply, dated Oct. 25, 1822, also in the Madison papers, is more flattering than Carey knew. Lengthy and heavily corrected, it is evidence of Madison’s engagement with Carey and his ideas.

Carey’s diaries are also a storehouse of his emotions at a time when the practice of diary-writing was shifting from terse and factual to emotive and soul-searching. An incident in the diary that shows Carey’s emotions from the inside out involves the Marquis de Lafayette. In 1784, Lafayette, in a gesture of life-transforming generosity, gave Carey $400 to start his first American enterprise, a newspaper. In 1824 Lafayette was visiting the U.S. again and Carey wanted to pay him back. In his autobiography, Carey writes that as soon as Lafayette arrived, he sent him a check that Lafayette cashed “only at my earnest insistence” (Autobiography, Letter II, Vol. 5, December, 1833, “New England Magazine,” p.491, “Making of America,” Cornell University). But here is what Carey wrote in his diary on Oct. 2, 1824: “The Marquis de Lafayette’s check paid – so that I was overdrawn about $20. Gloomy and desponding today.”

Carey’s moods appear everywhere in the diaries as the private backdrop to his public life of constant activity and prolific writing. The reputation for irritability he acquired in his lifetime is demonstrated in an entry for Nov. 24, 1824, when he wrote: “Almost determined to cease writing, disgusted with the apathy, worthlessness, & sordid meanness of those with whom I have to deal.” Sometimes his annoyance burst into rage, as on April 4, 1825, when after an incident with his horses he wrote of his coachman: “Outrageously angry with George.”

Especially striking are Carey’s descriptions of his depression and self-doubt. The gloom he experienced when he was unable to repay Lafayette without overdrawing his account is one example. There are more: on Jan. 18, 1822, he wrote: “Rode out to the Robin Hood [a Philadelphia green space] in the gig. Atmosphere hushed. My faculties in good measure benumbed. Fear they are fast decaying. Think I ought to write no more.” He added: “In the evening recovered.” But two days later he was down again: “My mind low spirits. Cannot cheer up my spirits.” He sounds panicked. And on Oct. 13, 1825: “Awoke a prey to the blue devils. Could not regain my spirits all day. Determined to cease writing on public subjects.” That day he went for a ride “to try to raise my spirits – but in vain.” Despite his struggle with the “blue devils,” Carey led an active and productive public life. The diaries show how he struggled to do that.

They also show how he enjoyed himself, or tried to. He went to many parties and gave a few, mingling with Philadelphia’s elite, including Nicholas Biddle, president of the Second Bank of the United States and Pennsylvania supreme court justice William Tilghman. He loved the theater, except once when three women in front of him “behaved with boundless indecorum. Talked & giggled & laughed aloud even during the performance. Inexpressibly disgusted at such conduct” (Dec. 18, 1821). A week later he had a better time at St. Augustine’s church, recording this observation about the sermon: “style elegant. Some inconsistency” (Dec. 23, 1821). In 1824 he went to see a painting, “The Resignation of Washington” by the Connecticut-born artist John Trumbull, in Philadelphia as it toured American cities before being installed in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington D.C. “Likeness of Washington most miserable,” he complained on Dec. 4, 1824.

Carey’s deepest pleasure seems to have been reading. Every day he ravenously consumed many pages of books, pamphlets, reports, magazines and newspapers for information, business and pleasure. On Nov. 25, 1821, he “examined a large part of the first album of Macpherson’s annals. Found much matter admirably calculated for my purpose” (David Macpherson, “Annals of Commerce, Manufactures, Fisheries and Navigation,” London, 1805). On Feb. 4, 1822, he “finished reading the Pirate” by Sir Walter Scott, which he was in the process of republishing. On Sept. 20, 1822, he “staid up till 12:30 reading Ennui,” a novel by the Irish writer Maria Edgeworth. On Dec. 26, 1822, he “read 90 pages of the History of an Opium Eater in the carriage & the remainder at night.” This is Thomas de Quincey’s popular “Confessions of an English Opium Eater” (1821). On Sept. 8, 1824, he reports reading the “second number” of Washington Irving’s “Tales of a Traveler,” which was “much better than the first.”

The diaries show Carey at work as a publisher. His entry for June 17, 1822: “Rose at 5. Wrote, corrected & read proofs” is typical, and he frequently reports getting bank loans for his son Henry Charles Carey and son-in-law Isaac Lea (husband of his daughter Frances and a scientist), who joined him in the business and then took it over when he retired. As he eased out of publishing, they show him writing on the subjects that possessed him during these years. Starting in 1822 and continuing through and beyond the period the diaries cover, Carey published more than 60 essays on economic subjects for which he used the pseudonym “Hamilton.” He notes the composition and publication of these in his diary entries, as on Oct. 28, 1822, when he “completed Hamilton No. 5 & sent it to the press.” His working methods are revealed in this entry showing how he spent the evening of Jan. 9, 1825: “After 7 began an essay on Canals, which I finished before one, although it required considerable research in Niles Register. To bed at one.” The diaries may help identify essays Carey published anonymously. For example, his entry for April 22, 1822, reveals that he was the author of an address signed “a Pennsylvanian.”

Carey’s life was packed with incident. Even during the four years these diaries cover, there is more than can fit in a blog post. Had blogs existed during Carey’s lifetime (imagine quills and candlelight mixed with digital clicks and flashes), he would certainly have been a blogger. He would have described the dinners he attended during Lafayette’s visits to Philadelphia in 1824 and 1825, the observations of Philadelphia and its hinterlands he made during his daily carriage rides, and much more. Carey had more to say and a lot more can be said about him with the help of these two diaries, now at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress.

 

We the People

Today we celebrate the 227th anniversary of the signing of the United States Constitution in Philadelphia, Penn., which was ratified at the Constitutional Convention on Sept. 17, 1787.

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“The Constitution,” one of six new Student Discovery Sets for the iPad, now available from the Library of Congress.

The Library recently released a series of interactive eBooks for tablets, including a set on the Constitution, which can be downloaded for free on iBooks. The new Library of Congress Student Discovery Sets bring together historical artifacts and one-of-a-kind primary source documents and objects on a wide range of topics, from history to science to literature. Interactive tools let students zoom in for close examination, draw to highlight interesting details and make notes about what they discover.

The set on the Constitution follows many of the drafts and debates that brought the historical document into being. With a swipe of a finger, students can scrutinize George Washington’s  on the Constitution, read newspaper articles about the document or use prompts to help analyze such things as maps and letters.

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Detail with drawing palette from “The Constitution.”

Other sets available cover the Symbols of the United States, Immigration, the Dust Bowl, the Harlem Renaissance and Understanding the Cosmos.

The sets are designed for students, providing easy access to open-ended exploration. A Teacher’s Guide for each set, with background information, teaching ideas` and additional resources, can be found on the Library’s website for teachers.

The Library of Congress has excellent Constitution Day resources, including this page that pulls together a variety of materials from across the institution’s collections.

Celebrating Hispanic Heritage: Feliz Cumpleaños, Hispanic Division

(Today is the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month, which is celebrated annually Sept. 15-Oct. 15. This year, the Library’s Hispanic Division marks its 75th anniversary. The following is an article from the July-August 2014 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine .)

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“Entry into the Forest” is one of four murals by Brazilian painter Cândido Portinari in the Hispanic Reading Room. Carol Highsmith

Dating back to the middle ages, the Library’s Hispanic world collections are the largest in the world.

An original 1605 copy of Miguel de Cervantes’ “Don Qixote.” A 16th-century Native American legal document protesting Spanish colonialism. Films of Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders after the Spanish American War in 1898.

These are just a few of the Library’s Hispanic treasures. Comprising nearly 14 million items in various formats, the Library’s Iberian, Latin American and Caribbean collections are the largest and most complete in the world.

The point of entry for these collections is the Library’s Hispanic Reading Room, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. The reading room opened its doors in the Thomas Jefferson Building on Oct. 12, 1939, Columbus Day. The Hispanic Division was established three months earlier with an endowment from Archer M. Huntington (founder of the Hispanic Society of America), a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation and a congressional appropriation.

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The Library holds this 1605 first edition of Miguel de Cervantes’ classic “Don Quixote.” Amanda Reynolds

Huntington began donating funds to build the Library’s Hispanic collection in the 1920s. But the Library’s collections from the broad Hispanic world–which date to the Middle Ages–began more than a century earlier. Thomas Jefferson’s personal library, which the Library of Congress purchased in 1815, contained about 200 books about the Hispanic world. Jefferson believed in the basic unity of the Americas–North and South. In 1820 he declared, “I should rejoice to see the fleets of Brazil and the United States riding together as brethren of the same family and pursuing the same objects.”

The Hispanic Division’s first chief, Lewis Hanke, was the founding editor of the “Handbook of Latin American Studies.” Considered to be the father of the field of Latin American Studies in the United States, Hanke became the first Latin Americanist to be elected president of the American Historical Association. In remembrance of their father, Hanke’s children donated funds to the Hispanic Division to offer online access to the Handbook.

In addition to books, journals and manuscripts, the Hispanic Division holds an original collection of sound recordings. The division has been recording selected readings by poets and writers for more than 70 years. Today the “Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape” holds nearly 700 recordings from more than 32 countries in some 10 languages. Among the authors are nine Nobel laureates, including Gabriela Mistral, Octavio Paz and Gabriel García Márquez. Cuban-American poet Richard Blanco, who read his poem “One Today” at Barack Obama’s second presidential inauguration, was recently recorded and added to the collection. Using cutting-edge technology at its Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation, the Library is transferring the retrospective recordings from magnetic tape reels to a digital format.

Hispanic Division Chief Georgette Dorn contributed to this story. 

Conservation Corner: A Persian Manuscript

(The following is a guest post written by Yasmeen Khan, senior book conservator in the Conservation Division.)

Opening page showing tears and grime. The opening illumination on the right and the calligraphy are of poorer quality than the rest of the text. A chapter heading can be seen in the gold cartouche on the left.

Conservation staff recently treated a rare Persian manuscript in preparation for display in the Library of Congress exhibition, “A Thousand Years of the Persian Book.” The bound 103-leaf manuscript, dated 1583 and attributed to Central Asia, forms the fifth tale in a seven-part work of poetry by Nasiruddin Jami (d. 1492) called the “Haft Aurang” (“Seven Thrones”). Titled “Yusuf wa Zulaykha,” the story follows Joseph and Potiphar’s wife based on the tale told in the holy Qurʼān.

The Library’s 1583 copy came to the Book Conservation Section with both covers missing and many tears and losses in the paper of the first and last few leaves of the manuscript. On the other hand, the calligraphy of Jami’s poetry was in a beautiful nasta’liq hand – a predominant style of Persian calligraphy in the 15th and 16th centuries – and the fine polished leaves of the book were painted in various styles and colors.

An opening from the text showing two types of decoration: the sinuous stenciled decoration on the left, with a stenciled inner column; and gold painted decoration on the right which consists of a stenciled layer finished with a gold painted lines.

While documenting the manuscript, however, the inconsistencies of the decorative program immediately caught the eye.

Stencils of flora and fauna were used to decorate the margins with watercolors, while the text was framed with multiple lines of black, red, gold and blue. A blank column dividing the text area into two was also spattered with color using the same technique as the stenciled margins. Chapter headings were written in white, red and blue inks, respectively, on gold cartouches set into the text area. Occasional pages were more richly decorated with gold within the text and in the margins.

Upon further inspection, the first six leaves of the manuscript were of a much lower quality than the rest: the calligraphy was bad, the ink used was less opaque, the details of the multicolored illumination above the opening lines were badly executed, and subsequent leaves used large stencils that seemed more akin to Matisse’s collages than the delicate forms in the rest of the book. The sinuous and delicate stenciled margin decorations in the greater part of the manuscript were found in two configurations: with either the same color on both pages of an opening or with a different color on each page.

The difference in the crispness of the ink and the calligraphy on the cartouche is clear. In addition, the blue used to outline the cartouche show that they are lapis lazuli of different quality.

Disassembling the manuscript revealed more design inconsistences: some opening pages were decorated with the same stencil and color, others had different stenciled designs or colors and old catchwords under the margin paint had been crossed out over the paint and new catchwords had been inscribed. In addition, paper stubs along the spine showed that someone had removed a few leaves. It was clear that the book was not in its original order.

A crossed out catchword with the new catchword written next to it that show the new order of the pages after some pages had been removed. The blurred blue line by the text is evidence that the green paint from the stenciled design was applied later.

Understanding the original order of the pages was essential to gaining insight into the decorative inconsistency, the damage visible and the use that the manuscript had received. The Library’s manuscript was compared to another edition of “Yusuf and Zulaykha” printed in Bombay, India in 1884. It was discovered that approximately 50 leaves constituting 1,130 lines of rhyming couplets had been removed, mainly from the second half of the manuscript. The comparison also revealed that the graphite Persian numbering of the pages in the last half of the book was done in order to maintain the same color in the margin decorations for facing pages of the manuscript and not on maintaining the integrity of the text. For example, the leaf I had numbered 101 based on its order in the bound manuscript carried the earlier graphite Persian page number 83. After disassembly and review of the text, the page was found to follow the leaf I had numbered 89. There were many such instances that illustrate how complicated and puzzling a process this was.

Two designs for the colored stencils are found in the manuscript: the animal design shown above and the one shown here. Birds predominate in this image, though fish are shown in the rocky pond along the lower margin, as well as ducks and squirrels.

Finally, after putting the manuscript back into the order of the text and looking at the evidence of the stenciled decoration, catchwords and Persian page numbers, a possible history of the use of the manuscript began to take shape.

The manuscript was written and illuminated in a delicate style (a few of those pages are still extant), and it may have been bound. Over the course of its history it was likely rebound several times and edited and redesigned to include stenciling, trimming, adding and removal of the leaves. New catchwords were written along the lower inner margin of the leaves, the pages were numbered in graphite and the leaves were put in order based on the color of the opening leaves.

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All the extant sections or gatherings of the “Yusuf wa Zulaykha” laid to collate the text.

Though more scholarly work needs to be done on the manuscript in terms of its relationship to other copies of 16th century “Yusuf and Zulaykha” manuscripts from the Persian world, I had enough information to treat and prepare the leaves of the manuscript in their correct order for display in the exhibition on “A Thousand Years of the Persian Book.” In late September when the show ends, the leaves of the manuscript will be rebound with goatskin leather in a Persian-style binding appropriate to the time when it was written.

“A Thousand Years of the Persian Book” closes Sept. 20 in the South Gallery of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building. The exhibition is available online.

Songs of a Movement

Music is a powerful tool. It can create an emotional response, a feeling, a certain attitude. Music can unite people, and give a voice when simple words fail. During the Civil Rights Movement, music played a vital role. Freedom songs drew from spirituals, gospel, rhythm and blues, football chants, blues and calypso and were sung by protesters, activists, civil rights leaders and music legends to spread the message of the movement.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called these songs ”the soul of the movement” in his 1964 book “Why We Can’t Wait.” Civil rights activists ”sing the freedom songs today for the same reason the slaves sang them, because we too are in bondage and the songs add hope to our determination that ‘We shall overcome, Black and white together, We shall overcome someday.”’

In the new Library of Congress exhibition, “The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom,” which opens today, 25 songs from the era are highlighted.

Making up a large group of music in the exhibition is a selection of songs from Smithsonian Folkway’s “Voices of the Civil Rights Movement: Black American Freedom Songs 1960-1966.” Many of the songs were recorded live during mass meetings. Several of the songs feature the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Freedom Singers, a performance group arm of one of the key organizations in the civil rights movement. The singers performed throughout the country to raise money and awareness for SNCC.

Whether sung in churches or in jails, such freedom songs as “Oh Freedom (Over Me)” and “This Little Light of Mine” helped to shape the movement and sustain it in moments of crisis. Most freedom songs were common hymns or spirituals familiar to the southern black community; the lyrics were often modified to reflect the political aims of the civil rights movement rather than the spiritual aims of a congregation. The songs not only reflected the views and values of the movement’s participants but also, in the case of the Freedom Singers, helped to share them with a national audience. (Hatfield, Edward A. “Freedom Singers.” New Georgia Encyclopedia. 11 July 2014. Web. 08 September 2014.)

Considered the unofficial anthem for the movement, “We Shall Overcome,” popularized by folk singer Pete Seeger, has its roots in African-American hymns from the early 20th century, and was first used as a protest song in 1945, when striking tobacco workers in Charleston, S.C., sang it on their picket line. A few years later, activists in the civil rights movement discovered the song and quickly made use of it during protests, marches and sit-ins. You can read more about the song in this blog post from the American Folklife Center.

Often referred to as the African American National Anthem, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” was a poem written by James Weldon Johnson and set to music by his brother John for a special celebration of President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday on Feb. 12, 1900, in Jacksonville, Fla. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) later adopted the work as its official song.

Featured on a listening station is Louis Armstrong’s “What Did I Do To Be So Black and Blue?” Known as the first American popular song of racial protest, the jazz standard was written in 1929 by African American songwriters Thomas “Fatts” Waller and Andy Razaf for an all-black-cast Broadway musical revue. Originally conceived as a romantic lament, Armstrong transformed it into a protest song against racial discrimination. The song inspired Ralph Ellison to write in his book “Invisible Man” that Armstrong “made poetry out of being invisible.”

“The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom” is made possible by a generous grant from Newman’s Own Foundation and with additional support from HISTORY®.