Library of Congress's Blog, page 165

A Spoonful of Serendipity

  (The following is a guest post from Mike Mashon, head of the Moving Image Section in the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division.)

The Library of Congress’s collection of television programs is broad and deep, consistently revealing some rather unexpected finds. A recent case in point: in the course of selecting two-inch Quadruplex tapes for preservation by the Packard Campus for Audio Visual Preservation video lab, I recently came across a title inventoried as, simply, “P.L. Travers.”  Now, I like the Disney version of “Mary Poppins” just fine, but all I really knew about P.L. Travers was that she thought so little of the adaptation that she refused all entreaties for further film treatments of Poppins stories. Suitably intrigued, I asked for it to be preserved.

A few days later, I downloaded the digital file from our archive server and was quite surprised to see an opening slate with the words “Library of Congress” on it. It turns out that the program was one in a series of late-Sixties joint productions between the Library and public television station WETA in Washington, D.C., each featuring well known authors and poets like John Updike, Rod Serling and James Dickey discussing their work. With the kind and generous permission of WETA, we will share more of these shows in future blog posts.

The program with P.L. Travers is quite different from the others in that she takes questions from a group of children – who prove to be adept interviewers – even if one gets the sense that some of their inquiries might have been provided to them beforehand. Everyone studiously avoids any mention of the film – released two years before this November 1966 recording – but it remains a fascinating and rare television appearance by Mary Poppins’ creator. If you know anything about this production (especially if you are one of the children!), we’d love to hear from you.

And in a welcome instance of serendipity, between the time of the tape’s preservation and this online presentation, “Mary Poppins” was named to the 2013 National Film Registry by Librarian of Congress James Billington. While one hesitates to hazard what P.L. Travers would think of the coincidence, it does seem practically perfect in every way.

{
shortName: '',
detailUrl: '',
derivatives: [ {derivativeUrl: 'rtmp://stream.media.loc.gov/vod/blogs/pl_tra...'} ],
mediaType: 'V',
autoPlay: false,
playerSize: 'mediumStandard'
}

Write Your Family History – And Send it to the Library of Congress!

(The following is a guest post by James Sweany, head of Local History and Genealogy in the Humanities and Social Sciences Division.)

Blank family record. 1888. Prints and Photographs Division.

The best way to preserve your family history is to write it down. By publishing your family history, you are able to capture and preserve the stories, pictures and genealogical data, making it available for other family members and future generations. A history of your family will make a wonderful gift for your relatives, and you may find that your family becomes inspired to help you seek out additional family branches.

As my colleague Anne Toohey wrote in her blog post on Christmas Day, by writing your family history, you are taking the known names, dates and places of your ancestors, and providing a historical context in a story-like form. This way, your ancestors become much more than names on a pedigree chart. They become people who lived during an earlier time, who had experiences through which you and others can get to know them through your narrative. If you include photographs and images of vital records or other significant events, the text will come alive and will be much more interesting for the reader.

The key to making your family history useful to others is the organization. A table of contents and an index of names and places used in your history will take additional time, but these added details will be very useful to future researchers consulting your history. Also, it is very important to document your research. By compiling and publishing a family history, you are inviting others to continue your research. Cite your records and document your sources.  With documentation, others can build upon on the work you have done, and your history is more credible. There are various style manuals that can assist you with citation styles for footnotes, endnotes and bibliographies. If you decide to distribute your family history outside of your immediate family, be sure not to include personal information about people who are still living in order to protect their privacy.

The Library of Congress can help you find books about writing and publishing your family history. For example, how-to guidebooks that will help you organize your family history and resources on how to find a publisher can be identified in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. We invite you to seek guidance from our reference librarians through Ask a Librarian.  For assistance with resources that may be found in your local area, consult your public or nearby university library to search other library catalogs. Local genealogical societies and historical societies are also great resources for additional guidance.

When you write your family history, you may only be doing so for your relatives. However, we also invite you to consider sending a copy to the Library of Congress. Compiled genealogies and U.S. local histories are very important to the international research clientele who frequent the institution. The Library seeks to collect all published and self-published works available on these important topics. Through generations of such gifts, the Library has assembled the leading book collection of genealogy and local history information in the world.

And who knows, perhaps not yet discovered relatives will be led back to your family line through your sharing of your family story!

Pic of the Week: Kate DiCamillo, National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature

(The following is an article written by Mark Hartsell, editor of the Library of Congress staff newsletter, The Gazette. Author Kate DiCamillo was sworn in today as the newest Library of Congress National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.)

Kate DiCamillo signs a book for a young fan during today’s ceremony. / Shealah Craighead

The inner voice of Kate DiCamillo belongs to a 10-year-old girl from a small Florida town who learned to navigate the world through books she checked out at the local library.

“That connection to the 10-year-old kid, I’ve come to believe through the years, is more immediate for me than other people,” said DiCamillo, the best-selling author of “Because of Winn-Dixie” and “The Tale of Despereaux.” “Maybe that’s why I write for kids. That 10-year-old is front and center all the time for me.”

That innate ability to empathize with young readers makes DiCamillo a natural for her new role: On Jan. 2, she was named by Librarian of Congress James H. Billington the national ambassador for young people’s literature.

“Kate DiCamillo is not only one of our finest writers for young people but also an outstanding advocate for the importance of reading,” Billington said. “The Library of Congress is pleased to welcome Kate as a worthy successor to our three previous national ambassadors.”

The ambassadorship was established in 2008 by the Library’s Center for the Book, the Children’s Book Council and Every Child a Reader to raise awareness of the importance of literature to children’s literacy. The ambassador serves a two-year term, appearing at events around the country and encouraging young people to make reading a central part of their lives.The young Kate DiCamillo certainly did.

DiCamillo was raised in Clermont, a small town in central Florida, in a home filled with books. Kate’s mother read to her, bought her books and sent her for more to the tiny, wood-framed Cooper Memorial Public Library – a place that held unique importance in her life.

“It was this old house filled with books, and the librarians knew me and gave me special privileges: I could check out more than four books at a time,” DiCamillo said by phone from her Minneapolis home last week. “Being seen by those librarians as somebody who was special and who loved to read – that shaped me. It was also how I made sense of the world, through books.”

She read, she said, “without discretion”: Beverly Cleary, “Little House on the Prairie,” “The Twenty-One Balloons” and, over and over, a biography of George Washington Carver – anything she could get her hands on.

“I was just wide-ranging. Whatever it was, I would read it,” she said. “Loved, loved, loved books.”

At the University of Florida, a professor noticed her facility with words and urged her to consider graduate school. But she passed, deciding instead to become a writer – or, at least, pose as one.

“I just got a black turtleneck and started wearing that, because that’s what writers wore,” she said. “I started talking about how I was going to be a writer. And, no lie, that’s basically how I spent the next 10 years.”

She worked at Disney World, Circus World, a campground – but never wrote a thing.

“The whole time I’m saying, ‘I’m a writer, I’m a writer, I’m a writer,’ ” she said. “It wasn’t till I turned 30 that I figured out I was actually going to have to write something.”

DiCamillo began writing short stories, moved to Minneapolis and took a job in a book warehouse as a “picker,” pulling volumes off shelves to fill orders. She had never considered writing for children, but fate landed her on the warehouse’s third floor – filled entirely with children’s books. She read them and got inspired.

“I thought, I want to try to do this,” she said.

Through her work at the book distributor, DiCamillo connected with editors at Candlewick Press and eventually submitted a draft of a novel about a lonely girl who adopts a mischievous dog she encounters in a grocery store. The finished novel, “Because of Winn-Dixie,” was published in 2000 and earned a Newbery Honor as one of the year’s best children’s books. Her follow-up, “The Tiger Rising,” was named a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. In 2003, “The Tale of Despereaux” won the Newbery Medal as the year’s best American book for children.

She since has produced three more novels, two picture books and two series of chapter books, and both “Winn-Dixie” and “Despereaux” were made into feature-length films – a wave of success that still leaves DiCamillo wondering what happened.

“I’m sitting here with my mouth hanging open,” said DiCamillo, who began writing with modest expectations: She hoped just to earn enough to go part-time in her other job.

That’s why, in part, she wants to serve as ambassador.

“There is a part of me that still can’t believe I got published,” she said. “So much has been given to me by this community. I want to try to give back.”

DiCamillo chose as her platform “Stories Connect Us” – the act of reading brings people together and the power of literature helps people better understand each other.

“It’s more than reading together, but partly that: Teachers to students, grandparents to grandchildren, parents to their kids, kids to their parents, communities reading together,” she said. “That is a way to connect.

“And when you’re sitting alone in your room [reading], you’re connecting with other people by imagining other lives.”

The 10-year-old DiCamillo connected to the world that way. Ambassador DiCamillo hopes to help others do the same.

“I feel really lucky to get to do this,” she said, “to tell stories for a living, and to be the ambassador and to go out and talk about the power of stories.”

More information about the national ambassador for young people’s literature is available at read.gov/cfb/ambassador/.

InRetrospect: December Blogging Edition

Blogs around the Library of Congress decked the halls with a variety of posts in December. Here are a few selections to unwrap.

In the Muse: Performing Arts Blog

Podcast: Song Travels | Michael Feinstein Interviews Rosanne Cash

Singer and musician Michael Feinstein interviews Rosanne Cash and John Leventhal about Cash’s new album “The River and the Thread.”

Inside Adams: Science, Technology & Business

Featured Advertisement: Buy Useful Presents!

Holiday shopping ads aren’t a thing of the past.

In Custodia Legis: Law Librarians of Congress

New Year’s Greetings from the Law Librarian of Congress

Law Librarian David Mao ushers in the new year with a look back at the Law Library’s successes in 2013.

The Signal: Digital Preservation

11 Great Digital Preservation Photos of 2013

Photos document digital preservation.

Teaching with the Library of Congress

Helping Students Visualize the Process of Change With Historic Images 

Stephen Wesson highlights library resources that help document historical change in our nation.

Picture This: Library of Congress Prints & Photos

Caught Our Eyes: Santa Gets Credentials

This photograph documents Santa receiving the “all clear” to fly the skies on Christmas Eve.

From the Catbird Seat: Poetry and Literature at the Library of Congress


Poetry in the School Library

Teacher in Residence Rebecca Newland discusses fostering a love of poetry in students.

Folklife Today

Auld Acquaintance for the New Year: Burns’ “Auld Lang Syne”

Stephen Winick presents the history of the traditional New Year’s tune.

Library in the News: December 2013 Edition

Every year, the Library of Congress announces the addition of 25 films to the National Film Registry, and every year, media outlets far and wide run stories on the initiative.  According to a Google search on the story, more than 230 news articles highlighted the selections for 2013.

“To me, this honor goes on the same shelf as the Oscar or the Palme d’Or,” filmmaker Michael Moore told The Washington Post on the selection of his film “Roger & Me” to the registry.

Moore also took to the Huffington Post to issue a thank you to the Library for the inclusion of his film.

“The nanny Mary Poppins and the nasty Vincent Vega are now ensured a place where they can spend their golden years growing old together, using whatever they wish to help the medicine go down,” wrote the New York Times blog, The Carpetbagger, on the inclusion of “Pulp Fiction” and “Mary Poppins” to the registry.

“At the time of their release it would have been hard to imagine Tarantino’s breakout, Moore’s anti-car industry doc or a B-movie such as ‘Forbidden’ ever being recognized by Congress. Time brings a unique perspective,” wrote Gregory Ellwood for .

“The Library of Congress National Film Registry is an elite and rather special club. It places a premium on timelessness and historical import, and it always makes room for a few films you’ve never heard of,” wrote Chris Vogner for The Dallas Morning News.

National outlets running stories included USA Today, LA Times, CBS News, PBS Newshour, Time, Variety, Entertainment Weekly, Hollywood Reporter, Vanity Fair, UPI, Associated Press.

Regional outlets in Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York,  New Jersey, New Hampshire, Maine, Delaware, Michigan, Missouri, Indiana, South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Colorado and California, among others, also highlighted the registry.

International media, including AFP, malaymailonline.com (Malaysia), Irish Independent, BBC News and the Times of India featured stories as well.

Speaking of films, the Library recently released a report that conclusively determined that 70 percent of the nation’s silent feature films have been lost forever and only 14 percent exist in their original 35 mm format.

“The report underscores some of the difficulties faced by archivists dedicated to preserving the world’s cinematic heritage, from full length features to educational filmstrips. Some of the films may remain intact in archives where harried film technicians have not had time to identify, much less restore the work. Others, though, are likely gone forever, lost to an early Hollywood culture that saw no value in maintaining movies they couldn’t sell tickets to anymore” wrote Library Journal’s Ian Chant.

“Our film heritage doesn’t begin with “Casablanca,” “The Wizard of Oz” or “Gone with the Wind.” Silent films are a full-blown form of entertainment, and some are an art form,” said Audrey Kupferberg with WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

And in other preservation news, the Library found and recently restored work – a painting of the Madonna – by Mexican artist Martin Ramirez.

“It is a charming and energetic picture showing an angelic figure, with an androgynous face and a radiant crown, standing on a luminous blue globe,” wrote Philip Kennicott for The Washington Post. “Surrounding her, and rendered in a different perspective, are two canyons filled with what seem to be automobiles, driving from a landscape of green trees toward the bottom of the vertical landscape, perhaps south, to Mexico.”

“Ramírez was making drawings, almost all of them lost, in the 1930s and ’40s, but not until the early 1950s did the larger world take notice. That makes the Madonna at the Library of Congress one of the earliest of his surviving works from the period when the outside world was just beginning to take notice,” he added.

Start a Holiday Tradition – Trace Your Family Genealogy

The Library of Congress has one of the world’s premier collections of U.S. and foreign genealogical and local historical publications. The Local History and Genealogy Reading Room, located in the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building, is the hub for such research. More than 50,000 genealogies and 100,000 local histories comprise its collections. The Library’s royalty, nobility and heraldry collection makes it one of only a few libraries in America that offer such resources.

(The following is a guest post by Anne Toohey, reference librarian in the Local History and Genealogy section, Humanities and Social Sciences Division.)

Family Christmas dinner. 1921. Prints and Photographs Division

Oral history has been the main way of preserving family and tribal memories since before the invention of writing and is an important part of family social networking in the present digital age. During the holiday season, family gatherings provide many opportunities to add to your family history. Sharing family stories can take place in a very informal and conversational way.

The holiday dinner table provides a venue for relatives of several generations to share and compare experiences, to discover stories unique to the various generations, and to build not just family memories but social networks with cousins and relatives with whom one interacts less often. Sometimes different branches of the family know different versions of the same story, and comparison adds details and veracity to the story itself.

One of the first things to do when compiling a family history is to interview your older relatives. They can also be a great source of stories that can enrich your family history with personal accounts, as well as give clues for further research to set the family in historical context. Most family stories have at least a grain of truth, even if the details are not exact. And as you conduct genealogical research in primary sources such as vital records and census records to verify the facts in the stories, and to set these memories in historical context, the memories of your relatives will be made more accurate and useful for the compiled family history.

It is often better to ask open-ended questions, and the open style may actually be preferable for family gatherings because it allows opportunities to form new questions about a particular family member or story. For instance, for a family story about how dad dropped the Meissen dinner platter with the turkey on it one Christmas, some may wish to ask what was special about the Meissen dinner plate, how it was acquired, whether they had lived or visited Germany, how mother felt about losing her antique and whether it could be fixed and replaced. Some might want to know what was served after the turkey slid to the floor and whether there was a Fido who complicated the story. These questions may be based on individual interests of family members but may elicit further truths from the storyteller.

The genealogist in the family may want to also intersperse more targeted fact questions to elicit information about specific birth or death dates, places lived or specifics about personalities and experiences of themselves or past ancestors whom they knew or have heard about. These questions can help target further genealogical research.

Oral history can help to shape family memories and add details to family stories that can become the foundation of further research into family history. Formal oral history might depend on setting up interviews, recording audio or visual accounts and transcribing these accounts, and sometimes might be conducted with non-relatives. While the formal style may not enhance the more informal conversations at the family dinner table, the many websites with lists of questions for conducting oral history on the web, and sites devoted to the open and closed interview styles, may help you to shape more informal family conversations.

The Library of Congress can help find books about oral history, find facts about the family or the geographic location, and find places to archive family history. For instance, an existing Bibliography of Books about Oral History can be searched in the Library of Congress catalog, or in World Catalog (often available at public libraries) to provide access (sometimes digital; sometimes analog) to these books. Remote access to reference librarians is available through Ask a Librarian.

You can also archive your family memories at the Library of Congress. You can archive your compiled family history at the Library of Congress. Oral history can be archived also at the Library of Congress through StoryCorps – one of the largest oral history projects of its kind and preserved at the American Folklife Center – and the Veterans History Project, a project to preserve personal accounts of American war veterans.

There are many social networking sites on the web where you can share your family memories and find lost cousins whom you never knew existed. Family history is a great gift and a legacy to the younger family members who may not normally hear the stories. For those who may be solo for the holidays, consider interviewing neighbors and friends!

The Library of Congress blog will bring you more helpful tips, ideas and resources to aid in your genealogy research in the coming weeks.

Highlighting the Holidays: Santa Claus is Coming to Town

Santa Claus is one of the most popular and recognizable figures surrounding the Christmas season. He brings us gifts and inspires imagination, so what’s not to love? While he may bring joy to young and old alike, he can also be a bit frightful. We all know the scene in the mall of upset children getting their photos taken with  St. Nick.

Our pets dream of old Santa Claus/Strohmeyer & Wyman. 1897. Prints and Photographs Division

The Internet is full of websites featuring awkward photographs of the man in the big red suit, and the Library of Congress has some in its collections as well. For example, this photo, dated 1897, features a ghostly Santa standing over a woman and child while they sleep.

The image is a stereograph, which consists of two nearly identical photographs or photomechanical prints, paired to produce the illusion of a single three-dimensional image, usually when viewed through a stereoscope. The Prints and Photographs Division’s holdings include images produced from the 1850s to the 1940s, with the bulk of the collection dating between 1870 and 1920.

Searching for “Santa Claus” in the Library’s stereograph collection pulls a few other interesting finds you don’t want to miss.

 

More historical holiday fun from the Library of Congress can be found here. Happy Holidays!

 

Highlighting the Holidays: A Special Telegram

On Dec. 22, 1864, William T. Sherman sent President Abraham Lincoln a telegram that included a pretty monumental “gift,” according to the Civil War general.

William T. Sherman to Abraham Lincoln, Thursday, Dec. 22, 1864. Manuscript Division.

“I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah with 150 heavy guns & plenty of ammunition & also about 25.000 bales of cotton.

W. T. Sherman

Major Gen”

From Nov. 15 to Dec. 21, 1864, Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army campaigned through Georgia – his famous “March to the Sea” – with troops capturing Savannah on Dec. 21. His forces laid waste to the southern state and its cities, destroying military targets, industry, civilian property and the South’s economy.

Just a few days later, Lincoln sent back correspondence acknowledging the “gift.”

“My dear General Sherman.

Many, many thanks for your Christmas-gift — the capture of Savannah.

When you were about leaving Atlanta for the Atlantic coast, I was anxious, if not fearful; but feeling that you were the better judge, and remembering that “nothing risked, nothing gained” I did not interfere. Now, the undertaking being a success, the honor is all yours; for I believe none of us went farther than to acquiesce. And, taking the work of Gen. Thomas into the count, as it should be taken, it is indeed a great success.2 Not only does it afford the obvious and immediate military advantages; but, in showing to the world that your army could be divided, putting the stronger part to an important new service, and yet leaving enough to vanquish the old opposing force of the whole — Hood’s army — it brings those who sat in darkness to see a great light. But what next? I suppose it will be safer if I leave Gen. Grant and yourself to decide.

Please make my grateful acknowledgments to your whole army, officers and men.

Yours very truly

A. Lincoln.”

The Library of Congress continues its holiday highlights with more historical finds. You can read other holiday-related blog posts here.

Highlighting the Holidays: A Kodak Moment

They say a picture is worth 1,000 words, and in the early 20th century, the Kodak Company wanted to make sure you were fully equipped to capture those moments, particularly for the holidays.

The Kodak Christmas Story. 1907. Duke University

In this ad from the Eastman Kodak Co., (1907), consumers were encouraged to buy a Kodak camera to capture their own Christmas story.

“Wherever children are there’s a Christmas story, yes, and all the year round story for the Kodak to record – a story that grows in interest as the years go by.”

“Let the grown folks with a Kodak and the Children with a Brownie join in building the family Kodak Book. And there’s no better way to being than with pictures of Christmas Day.”

The Brownie was a long-running popular series of simple and inexpensive cameras made by Kodak that really introduced the concept of the “snapshot.” Kodak advertisements particularly targeted children when promoting this camera because of its simplicity and ease of use.

These advertisements are part of “The Emergence of Advertising in America,” presented in partnership with Duke University. More than 9,000 images illustrate the rise of consumer culture, especially after the American Civil War, and the birth of a professionalized advertising industry in the United States.

More historical holiday finds from the Library of Congress can be found here. Happy Holidays!

 

 

Highlighting the Holidays: Tree Time at the Wright Brothers’ House

Twinkling lights, multicolored ornaments, sparkly tinsel, hanging candy canes – trimming the Christmas tree is a tradition of the holiday season, for those that celebrate.

Christmas tree in the Wright home, 7 Hawthorn Street, Dayton, Ohio. 1900. Prints and Photographs Division.

At 7 Hawthorn Street in Dayton, Ohio, the Wright Brothers decorated their tree with popcorn garland, candles, paper angles angels, sparkly ornaments and a star topper.

In this picture, ca. 1900, from the Library’s collection of Wilbur and Orville Wright Papers, you can see a variety of gifts, mainly for children, stuffed under the tree: a couple of dolls perched atop a stroller, boxes of miniatures for a dollhouse, a toy train, several wrapped packages, possibly a pair of skates and a BB gun, perhaps.

Wilbur and Orville Wright never married but rather lived together in the Hawthorn Street house with their father and sister Katharine. The home was where much of brothers’ creative thinking and planning took place, including the invention of the world’s first airplane. Orville and Wilbur resided at the Hawthorn Street house until Wilbur’s death in 1912.

More historical holiday treasures from the Library of Congress can be found here. Happy Holidays!