Library of Congress's Blog, page 163

Ten Thousand Treasures

The World Digital Library – a website of world cultural treasures offered free of charge in seven languages to anyone on the planet with access to the Internet – has put up its 10,000th offering.

It was part of a package, actually – a group of rare manuscripts from the collections of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, which has been a contributor the WDL since 2010.

Rare manuscript from the Walters Art Museum, now on World Digital Library

If you’re not careful, you can easily become addicted to the World Digital Library.  The wondrous focal point for manuscripts, maps and atlases, books, prints and photographs, films, sound recordings, and other cultural treasures was launched in 2009 with just a few hundred items and has been adding content and bringing new libraries and museums on board ever since.  The site was the brainchild of Librarian of Congress James H. Billington, and was made a reality with the cooperation of the Library and UNESCO.

All items on the WDL site are presented in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. Using a drop-down menu on the homepage – which looks like a huge map of the world – you can choose the language you’d like to use for your explorations, then go browsing within the WDL by a number of selection methods including place, time, topic, type of item or the institution that holds the original.

The Walters contributions include an early 16th-century Gospel manuscript from Ethiopia, written in Amharic and in Geez, the ancient liturgical language of Ethiopia; a manuscript containing a richly illuminated Ottonian Gospel book fragment believed to have been made at the monastery of Corvey in western Germany during the mid-to-late 10th century; and a menologion, or church calendar, in Greek, created in Byzantium circa 1025-1041.

Other items recently added to the World Digital Library include block-print books from China’s Song Dynasty, Islamic manuscripts in Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish, early 20th-century historical documents from the League of Nations, and codices once found in the legendary library of King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary.

One of my favorite offerings in the WDL is the full digitized set of books titled “Description of Egypt” that Napoleon ordered created when he invaded that nation; they contain gorgeous, detailed illustration plates showing Egypt’s flora, fauna and amazing antiquities.

Another is this rare gem of Americana.

What treasures have you found in the World Digital Library?

 

Pics of the Week: Celebrating Women’s History

The Library of Congress is an incomparable resource for research into women’s history and studies, which is especially appropriate in March, Women’s History Month. This year’s theme is “Celebrating Women of Character, Courage and Commitment.”

Spanning all time periods, classes, races and occupations, the Library’s women’s history resources are among the finest and most comprehensive anywhere. Contained in nearly every collection are materials of interest reflecting the full range of women’s experiences.

Signe Wilkinson. “How can I make sure my child won’t suffer from the wage gap between men and women?” Drawing with ink, opaque white, blue pencil. 1988.

The Library recently acquired several selections that strengthen the Library’s research holdings in women’s studies, particularly in the Prints and Photographs Division.

An award-winning American political cartoonist, Signe Wilkinson became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1992. Her wry commentary on the wage gap between the sexes was published in Ms. Magazine in November 1988. Wilkinson has addressed equality issues for women and others over many years.

 

Carolyn Drake. New Kashgar, Kashgar, China. digital photograph. 2011. 

American artist Carolyn Drake created vibrant photographs of contemporary people in the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar, China. The photograph on display comes from her “Two Rivers” series, which features more than 30 photographs showing current Central Asian life along the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers.

 

Ambreen Butt. Untitled print from the series “Daughter of the East.” Etching and aquatint. 2008.

Boston-based Pakistani artist Ambreen Butt merges aesthetic elements of Mughal and Persian painting with contemporary subject matter – often relating to the lives of women. Her beautiful work raises many questions about how their roles are changing. The featured print is from a series that shares the title of an autobiography by Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 2007.

Rupert García. “Frida Kahlo.” Screen print, 1975. (Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Iconic Mexican artist Frida Kahlo has been the subject of many works of art. The Library’s recent acquisition of her portrait was created by leading Chicano artist Rupert García. Working with Library curators, artists from San Francisco’s Mission Gráfica and La Raza studios have placed more than 1,000 prints and posters from the 1970s to 2010 in the Library’s collections.

 

Inquiring Minds: A Study of Mental Health

(The following is a guest post by Jason Steinhauer, program specialist in the Library’s John W. Kluge Center.)

Manuella Meyer

Manuella Meyer is the David B. Larson Fellow in Health & Spirituality at the Library’s John W. Kluge Center and assistant professor of history at the University of Richmond. Her research examines the socio-political and medical terrain in which mental illness became a public health construct and its subsequent management in Rio de Janeiro during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Meyer’s project examines narratives of madness and concepts of mental illness articulated by psychiatrists during a time of rapid socio-political and cultural transformation. The study dialogues with historians and social scientists across geographical boundaries about public health, the history of welfare, gender, race discourse, state building, modernity and the socioeconomic organization of post-emancipation societies.

Q: Tell us about your research.

A: I’m working on my book manuscript, currently titled “National Melancholia: Madness, State and Society, 1808-1930.” It’s an examination of politics and medicine primarily seen through the lens of psychiatrists. I am interested in how a given society defines madness at a particular moment and how psychiatrists, in addition to other actors, have attempted to manage it.

Q: How do madness and mental health get defined?

A: The project understands madness as a real illness that affects, and continues to impact, various groups and communities. Nonetheless, it is not transhistorical. Insanity requires analysis not only of the individual mad person but also of the social, political, institutional and professional structures that determine how and why a society treats that person as mad. During a time of rapid socio-political and economic transformation, known in Brazilian history as the Imperial and Old Republic eras, I investigate how race, gender, class and anxieties about modernity undergird ideas about madness and mental health.

Q: Why choose Brazil for this topic?

A: Brazil is popularly understood as a place of great contrasts, a place where high-rise luxury hotels are a few feet away from sprawling favelas, a place where the wealthy and the poor challenge and intimidate one another. During a visit to Rio de Janeiro many years ago, I became fascinated by how the affluent attempted to care for marginalized populations. This interest in the politics of care deepened as references to the “unfortunate” insane that frequently dotted mid-19th century state and medical documents in the archive sparked an academic interest in welfare and social policy. I became intrigued by how mental illness became a critical matter for both state and civil societies in addition to how both medical and religious groups sought to claim professional expertise over it.

Q: How do notions of power play into this?

A: Issues of power are at the center of this project. During the time period under investigation, psychiatrists warned of crisis as they surveyed Rio de Janeiro. Fluent in the argots of criminology, eugenics and degeneration theory (the notion that national decline was due to the supposed inferiority of Brazil’s racial composition), psychiatrists championed science and expertise to address not only mental illness but also a range of issues such as poverty, crime and delinquency.

These approaches played a fundamental role in changing the professional position of psychiatry from a peripheral discipline of marginal scientific status to a prominent field able to provide the state with a framework to address both medical and socio-political concerns.

Q: Are there strict definitions of madness, and do they evolve through the period that you’re researching?

A: Absolutely. Definitions and understandings of madness evolve over time. There is not one particular definition. For example, late 19th century Brazilian psychiatrists perceived that conversing with spirits (i.e. the ability to communicate with the dead) was in and of itself a form of mental illness. In contrast, this practice was a critical component of the respective cosmologies of spiritist mediums, candomblé (a syncretic Afro-Brazilian religion) healers and their followers.

Q: What does the Library have in its collection that is critical to this research?

A: The Library has been fundamental to my research. For example, I’ve been mining the newspaper serial collection for the 19th and early 20th century in order to explore how psychiatrists wrote accounts about the flagship asylum and prophylactic measures to ward off mental illness, in addition to other topics. Also, the Library of Congress has the proceedings of late 19th and early 20th century medical congresses, where Brazilian psychiatrists debated with experts from countries such as the United States, Belgium and France. I’ve been looking at these items to see what topics were seminal to these practitioners.

Q: What sort of implications does this research have for how we think about madness and mental health?

A: A very complex question. In terms of implications for today, it has bearings on how we care for others. This research asks us to contemplate the following:  What exactly does it mean to care for society’s marginalized populations? What is the role of the state, as well as the role of competing practitioners and care providers in regards to welfare? Who “deserves” social assistance? Who does not?  The project urges a consideration of how we make sense of marginality and how we devise solutions to address it.

Meyer lectures on the history of madness and mental health in Brazil on Thursday, March 6 at noon in LJ 113. Applications are currently being accepted to be the next Larson Fellow at the Kluge Center.

Conservation Corner: Rare Drawing by Martin Ramirez Conserved and Unveiled

(The following is a guest post by Holly Krueger, head of the Paper Conservation Section of the Library of Congress Preservation Directorate.)

Figure one: Before treatment (front)

Last December, the Library of Congress unveiled a remarkable drawing by the “outsider artist,” Martin Ramirez. The drawing depicts a Madonna figure standing on a blue globe surrounded by canyons filled with anthropomorphic cars. The story of its discovery and rescue is an interesting one.

Ramirez emigrated from Mexico in 1925 to find work to support his family. By 1931, he was institutionalized in California where he remained for the rest of his life. Diagnosed as catatonic, manic-depressive and finally schizophrenic, Ramirez never saw his family again and died in 1963. While institutionalized, he began to create beautiful, enigmatic drawings with found materials. He masticated bread, oatmeal or potatoes to paste together sheets of “junk mail” and drew with various materials, including homemade inks and matchstick heads. The work was so compelling that it drew the attention and support of his doctors – who supplied him with materials – and notable artists like Wayne Thiebaud. The work of Ramirez is highly sought after and has been the focus of several major exhibitions and published monographs.

Figure Two: Before treatment (back)

During routine processing of the Library’s Ray and Charles Eames collections, curator Tracy Barton found a crumpled up object at the bottom of a document box. Once she removed and gently unfolded it, she thought she was looking at a child’s drawing (Figure 1), something the Eames’ were known to collect. Upon turning it over and seeing the patchwork of pasted together junk mail, with a bit of detective work, she knew she had something much more. (Figure 2). Barton had uncovered a previously unknown drawing by Ramirez, a Madonna figure that is especially rare in his oeuvre. Because of the materials used, this piece is considered by experts to be one of his earlier works.

The drawing was transferred to the Library’s conservation experts to receive much needed treatment to make it stable and presentable enough to handle and display. Senior Paper Conservator Susan Peckham began the process of resurrecting the heavily damaged piece with a thorough examination and consultation with Prints and Photograph curator Katherine Blood. The drawing was greatly distorted with many tears and creases, having been stored in the bottom of a document box for many years. The homemade adhesive created and used by Ramirez had proven irresistible to insects while in the Eames warehouse in California, resulting in many losses throughout. (Figure 3).

Figure Three: Detail of insect and rodent damage

The surface plane was gradually restored through a variety of moistening and flattening techniques. The process was especially complicated by the number of different types of paper pasted together to form the support, as well as the extreme solubility of some of the media used. (Figure 4) In order to mend the tears, Japanese paper strips were adhered with wheat starch paste, transparent enough to provide stability while maintaining legibility of the back of the drawing. Paper toned to blend in with the surrounding support filled in any losses. To restore visual integrity to the drawing, Peckham then painted in those losses by drawing the lost design onto a separate piece of thin tissue cut out to the exact dimensions of the loss and then adhered that to the drawing so that no non-original media was added directly to the paper itself (Figure 5) .

Figure Four: Susan Peckham testing solubility

Compensation of the loss of design areas was an aspect of the treatment that required numerous consultations with Blood. The aim of color compensation was to enable the viewer to read the drawing without being distracted by losses, while maintaining the story of the drawing’s journey from Ramirez to the Eames warehouse in California to, ultimately, the Library of Congress. Peckham achieved a perfect balance. (Figures 6 and 7)

Figure Five: Inlay inserted into loss

Concurrent to the conservation process, Peckham worked with the Preservation Research and Testing Division (PRTD) to analyze some of the materials in the drawing. XRF and Fadometer readings identified some of the pigments to the extent that responsible exhibition conditions could be determined, anticipating a high demand for viewing in the near future. PRTD was also able to support the theory that bread was used as the basic adhesive in construction of the support. Through the analysis provided by PRTD and Peckham’s research into and identification of likely media used, details of Ramirez’s methods and materials are better understood, enhancing the preservation state of this remarkable drawing.

After treatment and analysis were completed, the drawing was framed and unveiled during a ceremony that included members of the Ramirez family. It remains on view through March 15 in the “Exploring the Early Americas” exhibition on the second floor of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building.

You can read more about the Ramirez drawing in this blog post.

Figure Six and Seven: After treatment (front and back)

 

George Washington’s Philadelphia Household, 1793-1794

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

Think of all the things your household buys and uses. Now think of George Washington. He was the commander of the Continental Army, first president of the United States and the father of our country, but he was not so different. Even though your expenses might include electricity, digital downloads, dry cleaning and gas for your car and his were candles, silver shoe buckles, clothing for his slaves and oats for his horses, the principle is more or less the same: the things we buy say a lot about who we are and the world we live in.

George Washington’s household expense book

This month, as part of a temporary display on the first three United States presidents on view on the first floor of the Thomas Jefferson building of the Library of Congress, you can see a small paperbound book containing Washington’s household expenses for 1793 and 1794. Maintained by a secretary (Martha Washington’s nephew, Bartholomew Dandridge),  records the purchases of George Washington’s household in Philadelphia during a part of his second term as president. This volume is just one of many financial records that Washington kept throughout his life and that are part of the George Washington papers in the Library’s Manuscript Division.

For most of his presidency, Washington lived in a rented house in Philadelphia that served as both home and office. His household there consisted of his wife, Martha Washington; her two grandchildren, Eleanor (Nelly) Parke Custis and George Washington Parke Custis; secretaries; and a household staff consisting of both servants and slaves. What did this household buy?  To keep the house running, they bought ice in January to store in the ice house and use later on, wood and candles, the services of chimney sweeps, brooms for the stable, oats for the horses, and “grease for the horses feet.”

In March 1794, Washington paid for “mending an umbrella to be kept at the door.” This is something we can all relate to – who doesn’t keep an umbrella by the door? But Washington had his umbrella mended – something that likely most of us don’t do. Washington’s umbrella was made by hand, possibly in Philadelphia, and it would have been expensive, worth mending.

The Washingtons bought themselves things that defined their status as a well-to-do 18th-century family: gloves for servant Patrick Kennedy to wear while placing “table ornaments;” hair powder for the president; feathers and ribbons for Martha; French and painting lessons, a harpsichord and a “pair of gold ear drops” for Eleanor Custis; a Latin book and fishing tackle for her brother; theater and a museum tickets; tailoring and hairdressing; butter, sugar and wine; picture frames; and books and newspapers.

Both George and Martha Washington gave alms to the poor when they encountered them. The president also responded to direct appeals. One came from “two distressed French women,” refugees from the Haitian revolution. Another was from Peregrine Fitzhugh, a Revolutionary War veteran, down on his luck, who raised money for himself with a lottery, offering tracts of land as prizes.

What about the servants and slaves who kept the household going? There are periodic glimpses in these pages of steward Samuel Fraunces receiving cash “to purchase sundries for the household.” Fraunces, who historians largely agree was a free black man from the West Indies, was the innkeeper in whose New York tavern George Washington said goodbye to his troops at the end of the Revolutionary War. He returned to innkeeping after this stint (his second) as Washington’s steward. The other servants appear when they are paid their wages, and at a few other times as with Patrick Kennedy and his gloves.

Overseeing the servants was housekeeper Ann Emerson, a widow with three children, who earned $33.33 per quarter. The slaves, who of course were not paid, appear in this book when the Washingtons bought clothes for them: “stockings for Austin,” “mending or altering boot for John whose foot was sore,” and money given by Mrs. Washington directly to Molly and Oney to buy shoes and stockings for themselves. These people are identifiable as slaves because they are listed here without surnames, something 18th-century slave owners commonly did. They are also mentioned elsewhere in Washington’s papers. Compared to the many details that survive about the Washingtons, these lives are documented by tiny fragments of information.

One of the most revealing things in this little book is the record of the Washingtons’ reading. Martha, who read for both pleasure and enlightenment, bought most of the books. She bought a play, poetry, religious works, geography books, two books about the French Revolution (the worst part of which, the “Terror,” was then in progress), and two books about the yellow fever epidemic that ravaged Philadelphia in 1793. She also bought “Thoughts on the Education of Daughters” (1787) by Mary Wollstonecraft, well-known author of the 1792 “A Vindication of the Rights of Women.” All of these books are briefly described, so it is hard to tell which edition Martha bought, but editions of most of them were published in Philadelphia in the 1790s. Mrs. Washington may have seen them in a Philadelphia shop or heard about them at her own dinner table.

Similarly evocative is a March 7, 1794, notation of “sundry books bought by the president.” Maybe that day George Washington grabbed the old umbrella by the door, went out for a walk and wandered into a bookshop. It hadn’t occurred to anybody yet that a president couldn’t go out without a motorcade, even one pulled by horses.

The information in this book has the effect of drawing us close to the Washington household and at the same time distancing us from it. In some cases their needs and ours are the same: when it rains, we reach for an umbrella, just like George Washington did. But just as we are rooted in the specifics of our own times and places, so were the Washingtons. In their time, the United States was a political experiment and Philadelphia was its capital, the French and Haitian revolutions were in progress, and people lived in terror of yellow fever. Today very few of us rely on a houseful of workers to take care of our needs, people who live in cities no longer keep horses, we benefit from modern medical care and disease prevention, and, most significant of all, we no longer are slaves or own slaves. These are the important things that this little book has to tell us.

My Job at the Library: Karen Keninger

Photo by Shealah Craighead

Karen Keninger, director of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped in the Library of Congress, discussed new technological developments in the interview excerpted below.

What are your responsibilities as the Director of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped?

The National Library Service (NLS) program has approximately 120 staff members and so part of my job is to oversee the whole program, including the staff in Washington, D.C. And then we have about 100 libraries throughout the country that are cooperating with us to provide our services. So, my job is to oversee that entire program and to look at what’s coming up in the future and plan.

Can you describe the career path that led you to this position at the Library?

I began my career path toward this position when I was seven years old and got my very first books in braille from one of the cooperating libraries in the National Library Services network. That was the beginning of my love for this program, which now serves over half a million Americans who can’t read standard print because of visual or physical disabilities.

The NLS recently organized the first-ever braille literacy conference. What were the goals and outcomes of that conference?

The braille program needs to be modernized. Toward that end, the conference brought together about 100 people from various corners of the braille world who looked at the whole issue of braille literacy from a number of angles. The goal was to have this group tell us what they thought NLS particularly, and the world of braille in general, should be doing to carry it forward into the 21st century. We spent three days talking about it from a number of different angles and we got, what I believe, were some very solid recommendations from the group.

What were some examples of the recommendations given?

One of the top recommendations was that NLS should provide a braille e-reader for people who could use it throughout the country. Braille e-readers are expensive right now and they’re not available to the average reader that we have because of the cost and NLS is not in a position to do that at the moment. But as the technology improves and changes … we will be able to look at that kind of service.

When you were first named director, you said that one of the goals of NLS was to enhance the technologies available to NLS patrons. Are there any technologies that NLS is working on that may be available in the future?

One of the things that we’ve done is develop an app for the iPhone/iPad/iPod family. With that app, you can read our braille and audio books. With the braille books, you need a braille display to go with it, but I think the mobile apps are going to be very popular.

You also said you want to increase NLS readership by 20 percent in five years. What is NLS doing to reach that goal?

One of the things that I think is going to increase the readership is the apps for the iPhone and the Android systems. I think that’s going to attract a group of people who are currently not using our programs because they’ll be able to download directly from our BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) website. We also are working with the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and we will be helping them to distribute a currency reader as part of a project that they have.

(The following is a story from the January-February 2014 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine. You can download the issue in its entirety here.)

 

Conservation Corner: Historical Book Repair

(The following is a guest post by Dan Paterson, preservation specialist in the Book Conservation Section of the Conservation Division.)

In preparation for display, Conservation Division staff recently treated a historical 17th century book of Spanish laws for governing settlements in the New World. “Recopilacion de Leyes de Los Reynos de Las Indias,” printed in Madrid in 1681, has been added to the “Exploring the Early Americas” exhibition. The book is from the Jay I. Kislak collection housed in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

According to John Hessler, curator of the Kislak collection, the translation of the title is “Collection of the Laws of the Kingdoms of the Indies” and is an extremely important compendium. The book was brought together under the reign of Charles II and is a compilation of all the laws that had been drafted by the Spanish in the New World since its discovery. Containing copies of all the laws, privileges and charters for the running of settlements in the Indies, this volume provided information on every possible facet of community planning and as such gives incredible insight into how the Spanish administered the first settlements in the New World, updating the information found in much earlier documents like Columbus’ Book of Privileges, which is also a collection of legal documents.

All books that are selected for exhibit undergo a conservation review. During this process, conservators identified numerous problems with “Recopilacion” to be addressed before safely displaying the item.

Note the holes on the left side of the cover. The sewing supports should be visible there but they are missing. Loss in the vellum is particularly visible in the center.

The volume is in its original limp vellum binding, a common style for books from Spain during the 17th century. Limp vellum covers were the least expensive way to bind a book based on the cost of the vellum and the time required to complete the binding. There were some annotations and glosses in the text and on the flyleaf. Because of their presence, and the rather pedestrian binding, the book was likely a “use” copy and referred to often – not something that sat on a bookshelf.

There were several failures with the binding that subsequently caused damage to the text pages. The most significant problem was the break and loss of the original sewing supports, as highlighted in the image to the left. The sewing supports serve as the primary attachment between the cover and the block of text pages. Frequent use would contribute to them breaking. Without the supports, the cover had separated completely from the text, as seen in the image below right. Also, the vellum had shrunk and wrinkled significantly. Vellum is very sensitive to moisture and reacts badly to getting wet. These large losses, visible in the image to the left, threatened the text pages underneath. There are stains throughout the text pages that suggest the book was exposed to water at some point. That exposure was likely a contributing factor to the shrinkage of the cover. As a result, the edges of those pages are now flush with the cover and without protection.

In addition, the first leaf and the title page had numerous tears and losses along the right side of the book. The first leaf was also breaking away from the text block at the spine edge, and the last leaf of the volume had significant tears and losses throughout.

It’s fortunate that it was never rebound, because that evidentiary value may have been lost if it had been put into a more expensive binding at a later date.

The failure of the sewing supports caused the cover to completely detach from the text block.

The tears and losses to the text block were repaired first. Mends were made using long-fibered Korean paper and wheat starch paste. The spine edge of the first leaf was repaired so that the page could be turned without fear of causing further deterioration. The back page was flattened and stabilized, also using mends made from Korean paper and starch paste.

Once the pages were stabilized, new sewing supports were added. The supports were attached to the original ones using unbleached cotton thread, sewn through the original sewing holes and wrapped around both the original supports and the new material. In order to reattach the vellum cover, the lacing holes were repaired and the losses to the vellum were also filled in at the same time. Finally, the repaired cover was laced back onto the text pages in the traditional manner.

The front cover after repairs have been made. The vellum is now attached to the text block with new sewing supports on the left. Losses to the vellum have been filled.

The final treatment decision was whether to address the shrinking of the vellum. It is possible to carefully and in a controlled manner expose vellum to humidity and gently stretch it back to a larger size. However, due to the extensive damage to the vellum where the losses had occurred, it was determined this procedure would be too risky and potentially cause more harm than good. Instead, a custom fitting box was made for long-term storage and to protect the text block edges and prevent further damage.

Now in its display case, the volume is safely supported by a plexiglass cradle measured and designed to fit the book exactly. Following the exhibition, the book will be returned to the Rare Book Division and available for researchers.

The opening displayed in the exhibit. Mends were applied to the fore edge to stabilize the page and prevent further tearing or loss.

A Novel Approach: The Library in Fiction

(The following is a story written by Abby Yochelson, reference specialist in English and American Literature in the Humanities and Social Sciences Division, for the January-February 2014 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine. You can download the issue in its entirety here.) 

From murder to alien attack, the Library of Congress has provided novelists with fodder for fiction.

Margaret Truman put the nation’s library in the title of her book, “Murder at the Library of Congress” (1999). David Baldacci gave the Library of Congress increased visibility by putting its Main Reading Room on the cover of “The Collectors” (2006). These two novels are the only books in the Library of Congress online catalog rating a subject heading of “Library of Congress—fiction,” but many others have scenes set at the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution.

“Murder at the Library of Congress” follows several murders—including that of a Hispanic Division employee—connected to the pursuit of the diaries of Christopher Columbus, rumored to be housed in the Library.

The fictional Rare Book and Special Collections librarian Caleb Shaw is briefly introduced in Baldacci’s “The Camel Club” (2005), the first in a series of thrillers featuring a group of four eccentric crimesolvers. The Library’s role grows considerably in “The Collectors,” the second book in the series, which investigates the death of the head of the Rare Book Division. In the next installment, Baldacci incorporates the newly opened U.S. Capitol Visitor Center (CVC) into the plot as the tunnel connecting the CVC to the Library of Congress becomes the setting for a shoot-out in “Stone Cold” (2008).

Dan Brown’s “Lost Symbol” (2009) also makes use of the tunnel, providing protagonist Robert Langdon with an escape route from the Capitol. Brown’s description of the history of the Library of Congress and the art of the Jefferson Building is so detailed that he could be mistaken for a Library docent. In another scene, Langdon escapes from the Main Reading Room on a book-conveyor system, which would be an unprecedented use of this technology.

The Library’s labyrinthine bookstacks have stimulated novelists’ imaginations for decades. In R.B. Dominic’s “Murder, Sunny Side Up” (1968), a character observes that “there are corners in this pile where a body could lie undisturbed for months.” This time, it’s Members of Congress who are found murdered in the wake of congressional hearings on a new egg-preservation technique.

The Library affords fictional assailants with unusual murder weapons. A fire-hose nozzle in the bookstacks is used for the first murder in Francis Bonnamy’s “Dead Reckoning” (1943). A leaded weight used to hold down maps is the weapon of choice in “Murder at the Library of Congress” and an unusual fire-suppression system is employed in “The Collectors.”

Long before Hollywood produced “National Treasure: Book of Secrets,” novelists saw the potential for finding clues in the pages of a book. In Ellery Queen’s story, “Mystery at the Library of Congress,” (Argosy, June 1960), researchers use the Library’s books to pass secrets. This plotline is also used in “The Collectors.” A family diary and Bible housed in the Library highlight a conspiracy stretching back centuries in Glen Scot Allen’s “The Shadow War” (2010).

Brad Meltzer’s “Inner Circle” (2011) is a political thriller that focuses on secrets hidden in the National Archives. However, the plot involves a fictional Library employee who provides information about the reading habits of a 19th-century researcher. That information would never be provided by an actual Library employee!

Fictional researchers come to the Library of Congress to find treasure maps, learn about pre- Columbian sites, examine a 19th-century Japanese diary and read espionage thrillers for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in James Grady’s “Six Days of the Condor” (1974).

Second only to murder mysteries, the genre of science fiction makes most use of the Library as a setting. Science-fiction novels run the gamut in envisioning the Library of the future from a dead depository providing useful clues to the past, a working library with 24-hour service or the ultimate electronic repository of information—either all freely available or available at great cost.

The future Library of Congress and the CIA are depicted in Neal Stephenson’s “Snow Crash” (1992). The reader is told that at some point in history the Library merged with the Central Intelligence Agency. With all information digitized, commercialized and sent to the Central Intelligence Corporation, the words “library” and “Congress” have ceased to exist and all information from the CIC is for sale. The term “LC” is used as a measurement of data meaning information equivalent to all pages of material that had been deposited in the Library of Congress.

In contrast, Bruce Sterling’s “Heavy Weather” (1994) depicts all of the information at the Library of Congress digitized and freely available in 2031. “The Puppet Masters” (1951) by Robert Heinlein shows an America of 2007 under attack from another planet, but the Library’s comprehensive historical collections—on microfilm—provide the key to defense. Even Heinlein’s vivid imagination did not predict the world of computers and the Internet.

In reality and fiction, the Great Hall of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building is a prized venue for special events in Washington. An event in Ellen Crosby’s “The Viognier Vendetta” (2010), which marks an important donation to the Library, is set in “the beautiful Italian Renaissance-style library with its paintings, mosaics, and statuary depicting mythology, legend, and flesh-and-blood icons of poetry and literature.” In Michael Bowen’s “Corruptly Procured” (1994), a bomb provides a diversion to cover the theft of the Gutenberg Bible during a G7 summit reception held at the Library.

With its unparalleled collections and magnificent spaces, the Library of Congress is sure to be cited in works of fiction and nonfiction in the future.

READER CHALLENGE 

Readers who come across additional references to the Library of Congress in literature are encouraged to contact Abby Yochelson at ayoc@loc.gov.

Celebrating African American History: Rich Library Resources

Composite of four photographs relating to the Civil Rights movement during the 1950s and 1960s. Prints and Photographs Division.

February is African American History Month, an annual celebration that has existed since 1926. This year’s theme, according to the Association for the Study of African American Life and History is “Civil Rights in America.”

Much of the credit for commemorating African-American heritage can go to historian and Harvard scholar Carter G. Woodson, who, in 1926, organized the first annual Negro History Week, which took place during the second week of February. He chose this date to coincide with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, two men who had greatly impacted the black population. Over time, Negro History Week evolved into today’s African American History Month.

The Library houses the most comprehensive civil-rights collection in the country: the original papers of the organizations that led the fight for civil liberties, such as the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; the National Urban League; the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights; the microfilmed records of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, led by Martin Luther King Jr.; the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); and the personal papers of Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, Roy Wilkins, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, Arthur Spingarn, Moorfield Storey, Patricia Roberts Harris, Edward W. Brooke, Thurgood Marshall, Robert L. Carter and Joseph Rauh.

Since 1964, the Library has served as the official repository for the NAACP Records. The collection consists of approximately 3 million items spanning the years 1842-1999, with the bulk of material dating from 1919 to 1991. Included are manuscripts, prints, photographs, pamphlets, broadsides, audiotapes, phonograph records, films and video recordings. The NAACP Records are the largest single collection ever acquired by the Library and the most heavily used. The NAACP Records are the cornerstone of the Library’s unparalleled resources for the study of the Civil Rights Movement.

Civil rights march on Washington, D.C. Photo by Warren K. Leffler. Prints and Photographs Division.

The list of Library resources and collections could go on and on. The digital collections of the Library contain a wide variety of material related to civil rights, including photographs, documents, and sound recordings. This guide compiles links to civil-rights resources throughout the Library of Congress website. In addition, it provides links to external Web sites focusing on civil rights and a bibliography containing selections for both general and younger readers.

Currently on exhibit is “A Day Like No Other: Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington,” to document the largest non-violent demonstration for civil rights that Americans had ever witnessed.

In partnership with several institutions, including the Smithsonian and National Archives, the Library has pulled together even more  to recognize African-American heritage and achievement. Highlighted are presentations on the Underground Railroad, African American veterans and documentary films on the Civil Rights Movement.

Library in the News: January 2014 Edition

With the new year, the Library of Congress rang in lots of news. Here is a sampling of the headlines.

The Library last month announced its acquisition of the collection of jazz great Max Roach.

“Admiration, invective, scrutiny — the sense you get is of a man determined enough to take it all,” wrote Ben Ratliff for the New York Times after having an opportunity to go through some of the archive.

Brett Zongker of the Associated Press caught up with the Library’s jazz curator, Larry Appelbaum, to talk about the importance of Roach and his collection.

“He’s a major figure, not just in jazz but in American music,” said Appelbaum.”Max represented much more than just a musician or even a composer. He was at the nexus of music, civil rights and black power because he was among that wave of socially conscious musicians.”

News of the acquisition also appeared in The Washington Post and D.C. jazz blog, CapitalBop.

In science-related news, Science Friday ran a feature on physicist Carl Haber and his pioneering work in extracting sound from historic audio recordings – many in the Library of Congress’s collections – using Haber’s IRENE, a preservation technology that can create a digital audio file from the analog information found in the grooves of an audio disc. (You can read more about it in these Library of Congress blog posts here and here.) Haber was as the Library last fall working on a collection of audio recordings held by the National Museum of American History, produced by the long-defunct Volta Laboratory.

“Haber and his teammates are working on an unusual disc from the Volta collection, made of bookbinder’s board topped with wax—it looks like a primitive record. Wearing purple surgical gloves to protect the media from the griminess of human hands, a curator takes the recording and places it on a clear plastic turntable connected to specialized optical equipment,” wrote reporter Andrew P. Han. “She must be careful—nobody really knows what is on these files.”

Also spending time at the Library were astrobiologists Steve Dick and David Grinspoon, incoming and outgoing astrobiology chairs at the John W. Kluge Center, respectively. The Washington Post’s Joel Achenbach moderated an event last month featuring the two scientists.

“Yesterday I moderated a discussion about astrobiology at the Kluge Center of the Library of Congress and lobbed questions at two eminent astrobiologists, Steve Dick and David Grinspoon. Here’s one: ‘If you were to make contact with an alien civilization, what’s the first question you’d ask?’” Achenbach wrote. “I always thought we’d want to know what the aliens were made of – whether they had DNA, for example, and were carbon-based and water-based, and so on. But Grinspoon suggested a more practical question: How do we become sustainable?’

“That’s not really a science question, but it’s the one we should all be asking. It’s the question that pulls in science, technology, engineering, political science, social science, and efforts on behalf of human rights, justice and education.”

On the literary front, the Library in January named Kate DiCamillo as the new National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.

“The huge popularity of young-adult books like ‘The Hunger Games’ series might leave the impression that children’s literature needs no added promotion,” said Julie Bosman for the New York Times. “But librarians and reading advocates say children’s books are constantly under pressure from other forms of entertainment like video games and television, a collective feeling that prompted the Library of Congress and other groups to form a new post in 2008 dedicated to promoting literature for children.”

“‘Stories connect us,’ DiCamillo says, and she believes this so strongly that she’s decided to make it the platform of her two-year ambassadorship. She hopes to encourage communities to engage in reading projects together — retirement homes reading with elementary schools, or entire towns launching on the same book,” wrote Monica Hesse.

DiCamillo also spoke with Jeffrey Brown of PBS Newshour: “I want to remind people of the great and profound joy that can be found in stories, and that stories can connect us to each other, and that reading together changes everybody involved.”