Library of Congress's Blog, page 17

Q&A: Jessica Castelo

Jessica Castelo is a museum technician in the Visitor Engagement Office.

Tell us about your background.

I am originally from a city in the greater Los Angeles area called Downey. I attended California State University Channel Islands for my bachelor’s in history and the University of Southern California (USC) for my master’s in library and information science. I was fortunate to intern at the Library from September to December 2022 while finishing grad school.

After my internship, I worked as a medical records clerk in Los Angeles briefly before moving back to Washington, D.C.

What brought you to the Library, and what do you do?

During my Library internship, I worked in the Visitor Engagement Office and the Informal Learning Office. Shortly after my internship ended, my current position opened, and I returned to the Library in August 2023.

As a museum technician, I help to oversee visitor operations in the Jefferson Building and ensure that our visitors have a positive experience.

Examples of daily tasks include running the Main Reading Room experience, staffing the ticketing podium and information desks and engaging with visitors by sharing my knowledge of the Library. I also work Live at the Library events on a rotating schedule with my fellow museum technicians.

What are some of your standout projects?

One of my standout projects is from my internship last fall. I worked on a research project for the 125th anniversary celebration of the Jefferson Building’s opening. I conducted research in the online catalogs of the Manuscripts and the Prints and Photographs divisions to create a PowerPoint presentation on the building’s construction and its first few years of being open. I also created a reference sheet for volunteers to get a sense of what the very first opening day was like for visitors.

This was a very rewarding project, and I am grateful my internship allowed me to be a part of such a monumental event. The project was especially valuable to my current position, because I can now speak to how the Library can be used for in-person and online research.

What do you enjoy doing outside of work?

I enjoy reading and exploring the different neighborhoods of D.C. I am still pretty new in town and love exploring everything D.C. has to offer. I combine my interests by visiting different bookstores in the city and finding new parks outside of my neighborhood on Capitol Hill to sit in and read.

What is something your co-workers may not know about you?

I have a twin sister! We are fraternal twins and opposites in personality. So, even when we are standing next to each other, people don’t usually guess it.

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Historic Photos: The Wright Brothers, at Home and in the Air

This story appears in slightly different fashion in the November-December issue of the Library of Congress Magazine.

In the old days, when people reached a certain level of wealth and/or prominence, it wasn’t unusual for them to give their house a name. It conjured up a certain identity, a presence of the sort engendered by also calling the house an “estate,” “residence,” “family retreat,” or just “mansion.” The Rockefellers had Kykuit in New York’s Hudson Valley, the Vanderbilts had Biltmore in North Carolina, Faulkner named his Mississippi home Rowan Oak, Hemingway had Finca Vigía in Cuba, and so on.

Orville Wright, a modest and practical man, named his Ohio home Hawthorn Hill. He named it for the Hawthorn trees that grew on the property and it was, indeed, built atop a small rise. (We said he was practical.) He and Wilbur, his brother and aviation partner, had designed the place and both planned to live there, but Wilbur died of typhoid fever before it was completed. Orville, his sister Katharine and their father made it their home. It’s nothing on the scale of Kykuit or Biltmore, but grander than Rowan Oak or Finca Vigía.  Like all of the places mentioned above, it’s now a museum and tourist attraction.

You can see it as the backdrop — built to impress but not to overwhelm — in several photographs that were among the materials the Wrights gave to the Library after Orville’s death in 1948. Included were over 300 glass plate and nitrate negatives of photographs taken (mostly) by Orville and Wilbur between 1897 and 1928 — images that provide an important and fascinating record of their home lives and of their attempts to fly.

About 200 of the photos chronicle the brothers’ successes and failures with their new flying machines. Taken from 1900 to 1911, the images document the Wrights’ laboratory, engines, models, runways, flights, mishaps and daily life at Kitty Hawk.

The remodeled 1905 Wright machine, altered to allow the pilot to sit instead of lay flat, plus a passenger seat, on the launching track. Prints and Photographs Division.

Orville and Wilbur assemble a plane in a covered building on the beach. A crumpled glider rests on the sand following a crash. A local boy holds a freshly caught drum fish. And, that December day in 1903, the first powered flight, with Orville at the controls and Wilbur running alongside as the machine lifts from the Earth.

Orville Wright’s Saint Bernard, Scipio, in his summer cut, relaxes on the family front porch. Prints and Photographs Division.

The collection also shows the brothers with family and friends back home in Ohio, in and around Dayton. Orville works in their bicycle shop. His pet Saint Bernard, Scipio, lies on the front porch of the family’s home. A third brother, Lorin, poses with his three children.

And then there’s the semi-formal family photo at the top of this post. Dayton History, the nonprofit organization that manages Hawthorn Hill today, refers to it as Orville’s “success mansion” and that’s just right. The double set of stately white columns framing the entrance, the wide steps, the grand door — it presents itself with the grandeur of a manor, the home of someone who has made a success in the world and the house is the emblem of that success.

The house says a lot about Orville Wright, mainly in its reserved stateliness, and the rest of the photographs in the collection show he and his brother’s eye for the world that they shaped and thern remade with their world-changing invention.

The full collection is online, waiting to be explored.

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“Dr. Atomic,” The Oppenheimer Opera

This is a guest post by Kate Rivers, a specialist in the Music Division. It also appears in the January-February issue of the Library of Congress Magazine.

The setting: the San Francisco Opera and the 2005 sneak preview of “Doctor Atomic,” a new opera by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Adams based on the compelling saga of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and the other scientists who engineered the world-altering test of the first atomic bomb.

In the audience sat Marvin L. Cohen, president of the American Physical Society, amateur musician and real-life physicist from the University of California, Berkeley — the school that had been Oppenheimer’s academic home.

The opera’s first words drew Cohen’s professional attention:

Matter can be neither created nor destroyed, but only alter ed in form.

Energy can be neither created nor destroyed, but only altered in form.

 Sheet music from “Doctor Atomic.” Music Division. Copyright by Hendon Music Inc., a Boosey & Hawkes Company. Used with permission.

Celebrated director and Adams collaborator Peter Sellars had devised the libretto, drawing directly from once-secret government documents, official government publications and firsthand accounts of scientists working to pull off the Trinity test. (Oppenheimer’s papers, which document much of this history, are also preserved at the Library.)

Cohen, however, believed those first words presented a problem: The text did not reflect scientists’ knowledge in 1945. Oppenheimer would have known better.

The solution to that problem is documented in the archival collection of Adams’ music manuscripts and papers, acquired by the Library this year even as Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film “Oppenheimer” brought renewed buzz to the subject.

The material related to “Doctor Atomic” includes costume designs, concert programs depicting the famous blast and oversized music manuscript pages, rich with Adams’ pencil handwriting.

To correct the error noticed by Cohen, Adams and Sellars adjusted the music and text to convey a scientific perspective that would have been right in Oppie’s view:

We believed that “matter can be neither created nor destroyed but only altered in form.”

We believed that “energy can be neither created nor destroyed but only altered in form.”

But now we know that energy may become matter, and now we know that matter may become energy, and thus be altered in form.

It goes to show that words, and words in music, matter.

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Q&A: Angela Kinney

Angela Kinney was named deputy director of the Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate in November.

Tell us about your background.

I was born in Cincinnati to a family of 11, including my parents. My father and mother believed strongly that one is best educated in Catholic schools. Following their religious beliefs, I spent nearly the entirety of my formal education attending Catholic schools, including college and graduate school.

After graduating from an all-girls high school, I set my sights on moving to the Washington, D.C., area to further my education and interest in foreign languages. I applied only to Georgetown University and Trinity College, both Catholic schools that had outstanding foreign language study programs.

Ultimately, I completed my bachelor’s degree at Georgetown in languages and linguistics and later obtained a master’s degree in library science at the Catholic University of America.

What brought you to the Library, and how has your career evolved?

My original goal after finishing my undergraduate degree was to pursue a career as a diplomat in the foreign service. However, a fellow student from Ohio told me about job opportunities at the Library. I remain so thankful that I was able to express my gratitude to my friend, to whom I owe my professional career, before he passed away. He died shortly after I got my job at the Library.

At that time, I had no idea that the help he lent me to navigate the process of applying would turn into a career that would last for 42 years and counting, all at the Library.

My first job was as an information counter attendant in retail sales, where I learned about the Library’s infrastructure and how to manage federal funds. I met some of the most renowned dignitaries in the world in that position, including Henry Kissinger. He stopped by the gift shop one day to make a purchase and ended up chatting with me for 10 minutes!

Over the past four decades, I have held progressively responsible positions — technician, librarian, first-line supervisor, chief of the Social Sciences Cataloging Division. For 15 years, I served as chief of the African, Latin American and Western European Division, an acquiring and cataloging unit. I will always look back on the years I spent managing SSCD and ALAWE as some of the most inspiring of my tenure at the Library.

Most recently, I was thrilled to be selected for the position of deputy director in the Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access (ABA) Directorate, a job I assumed on Nov. 20. My duties are to support the ABA director and to provide oversight for the U.S./Anglo, Asian and Middle Eastern and Germanic and Slavic divisions. Stepping into this new position, I feel a sense of satisfaction knowing that I have brought about positive changes at Library.

What are some of your standout projects?

While serving on detail as a Leadership Development Program intern two decades ago, I led the Library’s initiative to launch the Employee Express program, the precursor to the Employee Personal Page. I also implemented the Library’s first shelf-ready cataloging operation, which involved training a book vendor to create cataloging records in the same fashion Library staff members do.

The most significant task that lies ahead for me as deputy director is to develop an arrearage reduction plan for ABA. I am excited about the careful collaboration with colleagues this monumental assignment will entail.

What do you enjoy doing outside of work?

I do not have much spare time, because I have always been one to work long hours. However, I do enjoy traveling and spending most of my leisure time with family and close friends.

What is something your co-workers may not know about you?

What most colleagues do not know about me is that I am super passionate about genealogy. I am a big fan of Henry Louis Gates’ PBS program “Finding Your Roots.” Following the genealogical techniques from his show, I successfully traced the lineage of my father’s side of my family back six generations. I shared the results at a family reunion last summer, and the joy I saw on the faces of my relatives confirmed that they will be depending on me to be the family genealogist in the future!

Football Forever!

We’re down to the college football national championship game next week and the NFL playoffs are just around the corner. It’s a perfect time to check in with “Football Nation” author Susan Reyburn as she chooses favorite items from the Library’s collections. This article is slightly adapted from the January-February issue of the Library of Congress Magazine.

The First Football Card

Tobacco companies produced the first sets of sports cards, which were packaged with cigarettes and other tobacco products, to encourage repeat purchases from consumers wanting to collect complete sets of featured cards. Captain Edward Beecher, who played quarterback for Yale, then the nation’s dominant college team, was the great nephew of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher. He had the distinction of appearing on the first football trading card, produced by Old Judge and Gypsy Green Cigarettes in 1888.

‘On, Wisconsin!’

Written by William T. Purdy and Carl Beck in 1909 at the height of the Tin Pan Alley era in popular music, the University of Wisconsin fight song is among the most highly rated examples of the niche musical genre. The lyrics specifically address football prowess, such as “plunge right through that line,” and hundreds of high school bands nationwide have borrowed the instantly recognizable tune — with revised words — for their own use on game night.

The ‘Powder Puff’ Game

Aided by terrific blocking, team captain Alice Shanks cuts through the line, leading the upper-class women to a 13-6 intramural win over the sophomore-freshman team at the Western State College Powder Bowl in Gunnison, Colorado, in 1939. That season, Spalding & Bros. published “American Football for Women: Official Rules,” and “powder puff” games associated with homecoming festivities grew in popularity. Women’s informal tackle football first appeared on a few college campuses in the 1890s, and various professional and semipro leagues have operated since 1965 to the present day.

Albert Richard All-America Football Map

Waving banners, smiling players and dancing mascots flash across the United States in this cartographic depiction collegiate sports conferences by F.E. Cheseman in 1941. The map also lists the NFL’s 10 professional clubs, offers a key to referee signals and provides recent team records and bowl game results. Viewed today, the map is a visual celebration and record of the major college conference system that is now undergoing dramatic change.

1958 New York Giants

This New York Giants team lost in overtime to the Baltimore Colts in the 1958 NFL championship game, known as “The Greatest Game Ever Played.” The core of that team featured two future Hall of Fame coaches (assistants Vince Lombardi, third row, second from left, and Tom Landry, third row, far right) and notable players such as Pat Summerall (88), Rosey Grier (76), Sam Huff (70), Don Maynard (13), Charlie Conerly (42) and Frank Gifford (16). Future New York congressman and 1996 Republican vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp, who played on the Giants’ taxi squad, signed the image but doesn’t appear in the photograph. The photo comes from the Kemp papers in the Library’s Manuscript Division.

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Black Dressmakers for First Ladies

This story also appears in the January-February 2024 issue of the LIbrary of Congress Magazine.

Two Black seamstresses have left their mark on White House fashion history, as Elizabeth Keckley and Ann Lowe designed dresses for two of the nation’s most famous first ladies, Mary Todd Lincoln and Jacqueline Kennedy, respectively.

Both designers developed their craft despite the brutal influences of slavery and Jim Crow segregation. Keckley (also spelled Keckly) was born into slavery in 1818 in rural Virginia until buying freedom for herself and her son in her mid-30s. Lowe, born in 1898 in Alabama, learned from her grandmother, who was born into slavery, and her mother, who ran the family’s dress shop.

Both women designed for famous women other than first ladies. Keckley, just a few years out of slavery, made custom dresses for, ironically, Varina Davis, wife of U.S. Sen. Jefferson Davis from Mississippi, the future president of the Confederacy. Lowe, nearly a century later, designed couture for the Rockefellers, the Roosevelts and other high-society names.

Both also left an indelible mark on how their most famous clients are remembered.

Elizabeth Keckley, 1870. Photo: Unknown. Wikimedia commons.

Keckley is remembered by historians today not so much as a groundbreaking fashion designer but as an activist (she was a co-founder of the Contraband Relief Association) and the author of “Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House,” her memoir of her close friendship with the emotionally volatile first lady. She was such a regular part of the Lincoln family’s domestic life that she combed Abraham Lincoln’s hair before his public appearances. He addressed her as “Madam Elizabeth.”

An excerpt from after Lincoln’s assassination:

“Returning to Mrs. Lincoln’s room, I found her in a new paroxysm of grief. Robert was bending over his mother with tender affection, and little Tad was crouched at the foot of the bed with a world of agony in his young face. I shall never forget the scene — the wails of a broken heart, the unearthly shrieks, the terrible convulsions, the wild, tempestuous outbursts of grief from the soul.”

The memoir was such an outrage at the time — viewed as a shocking breach of privacy, though it had been a well-intentioned effort to gain sympathy for Lincoln — that it was withdrawn from circulation almost immediately. (The Library has a copy.) Lincoln never spoke to her again. Her career and health slowly declined and she spent her last years in the National Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children, which had been founded by her relief association. She died in 1907.

Mary Todd Lincoln wore this purple velvet skirt and daytime bodice for the social season of 1861-62. It is believed to have been made by Elizabeth Keckley. Smithsonian National Musuem of American History.

But the book had a second life for historians and writers, including George Saunders, winner of the Library’s 2023 Prize for American Fiction. Saunders drew on Keckley’s details of the Lincoln’s grief after the death of their 11-year-old son, Willie, in “Lincoln in the Bardo,” which won the Man Booker Prize.

“I don’t think (the book) would exist, if I hadn’t read her memoir,” Saunders told the New York Times in 2018.

By contrast, Lowe only made one dress for Jacqueline Kennedy, but it was a stunner: Her wedding dress for her 1953 marriage to John F. Kennedy, then a U.S. senator. That storybook wedding was perhaps the cornerstone of the Camelot myth of the Kennedy administration, and Lowe’s dress was a central character in that foundational event.

Vanity Fair, describing the dress earlier this year:

“The pristine pleating on the gown’s bodice, intricate scallop pin tucks, and complex rosette embellishments with dainty wax orange blossoms nestled in the center — all meticulously done by hand — are trademarks of Lowe.”

The future first lady wasn’t a fan of the dress — she had wanted a French designer — and only told reporters that it was made by a “colored dressmaker.”

Lowe was not deterred. Her career in New York high fashion flourished. In 1965, she told television talk-show host Mike Douglas that the sole point of her career, from her roots in the violent racism of 19th-century Alabama to the civil rights movement, had been “to prove that a Negro can become a major dress designer.”

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Holiday Cheer? Try These Seasonal Favorites

Every year, a handful of holiday stories pop up as reader favorites in the Library’s archives.

During the last three weeks of December, familiar stories return to the top of our “most read” list. Some are more than a decade old, others just a few years. Some are sentimental, others are relate the backstories of holiday traditions. But they all share something that people like during these short days, long nights and chilly weather — a good story.

Here’s the beginning of one: “Imagine a morning in late November.”

That’s the start of Truman Capote’s 1956 classic short story, “A Christmas Memory.” It’s the bittersweet tale, heavily autobiographical, of his childhood relationship with his eccentric elderly relative, Nanny Rumbley Faulk.

Famously, she arises one morning each year, their old Alabama house so cold that frost ices the windowpanes, and exclaims, “Oh my! It’s fruitcake weather!”

The Library has a significant collection of Capote’s early-career papers, including his handwritten first draft of the story.  We wrote about how the story came to be two years ago and it grows more popular each holiday season. Readers comment that they are moved not just by a nostalgia for the rural, innocent era he describes, but by their own childhood memories of seeing stage, film and television adaptations of the story.

The opening page of “A Christmas Memory” in Capote’s handwriting. Manuscript Division.

Elsewhere, readers are in more of an investigative mood, pondering the age-old question: Who the heck invented Christmas tree lights, anyway?

We addressed this question early in our online history and revisit it every few years. As it turns out, the answer is pretty straightforward: Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, and Edward H. Johnson, his friend and business partner. The takeaway is that almost as soon as there were electric lights, people started putting them on Christmas trees. (The Library has a phenomenal collection of Edison’s early films and recording, by the way.) Still, that didn’t mean it caught on with the masses. It took more than four decades for the idea to catch on across the country and that eventual explanation involves President Grover Cleveland and a teenager name Albert Sadacca.

Hard to imagine the National Christmas Tree without lights. Photo: Carol M. Highsmith, 1997. Prints and Photographs Division.

Other readers are piqued by the ubiquity of those lovely red flowering plants you see in every office lobby at Christmas. The plants are native to Mexico and Central America, where they have been known for ages as cuetlaxóchitl in Nahuatl, the regional language.

We call them poinsettias, and buy them in astonishing numbers each holiday season, due to the efforts of Joel Poinsett, a U.S. diplomat in Mexico in the early 19th century, who brought them back to the U.S. and first popularized them. As to their commercial success today, that involves a California flower-growing businessman named Albert Ecke and his son, Paul.

Curl up with any of these short pieces and enjoy the holidays!

A “Gibson girl” style illustration, 1910. Illustrator/publisher unknown. Prints and Photographs Division.

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All I Want for Christmas Is … Mariah Carey at the Library?

Is it even Christmas if Mariah Carey doesn’t drop in on your holiday party?

The entertainment icon surprised a festive crowd during the Library’s Santa Claus edition of “Live! At the Library“ last night, making an entrance as her signature hit, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” played in the Great Hall.

Decked out in a stage-worthy sparkling dress and pink high heels, she picked up the song’s framed certificate of induction from the National Recording Registry from Librarian Carla Hayden and – like most everyone else at the party – posed for a couple of pictures by the Christmas tree.

Carey made the visit during a whirlwind trip through Washington during a one-day break from her Christmas concert tour. She’s back in concert tonight in Baltimore.

She was delighted earlier this year when “All I Want” was inducted into the recording registry, earning a forever home in the Library as part of the country’s official heritage in music and sound recordings. During an interview about the honor, she accepted an invitation to visit when she was next in Washington, leading to last night’s appearance.

Carey cowrote the song with Walter Afanasieff in 1994. Billboard Magazine puts it at No.1 in its list of “Greatest Of All Time Holiday 100 Songs.”

“I wanted (the song) to embody all the things I didn’t have when I was a kid,” she said.

Mariah Carey at the Christmas tree in the Great Hall. Photo: Shawn Miller.

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Home Alone? Check Out The 2023 National Film Registry!

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Brett Zongker, chief of media relations, contributed to this report

Twenty-five influential films from the past 102 years have been selected for the 2023 National Film Registry, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced today, inluding blockbusters such as “Fame,” “Home Alone” and “Apollo 13,” the popular romance “Love & Basketball” and influential feature films and documentaries such as “12 Years a Slave,” “Matewan,” “Alambrista!” and “Maya Lin: A Strong, Clear Vision.”

“Films are an integral piece of America’s cultural heritage, reflecting stories of our nation for more than 125 years,” Hayden said. “We’re grateful to the film community for collaborating with the Library in our goal to preserve the heritage of cinema.”

Spike Lee, whose “Bamboozled” became the fifth film he’s directed to be inducted into the registry, was thrilled at the news, as was Hollywood veteran Ron Howard, whose “Apollo 13” marked his directorial debut on the registry.

“An absolute highlight,” Howard said of his experience shooting the film, which drew on the real-life story of the aborted Apollo 13 mission to the moon. “It’s a very honest, heartfelt reflection of something that was quite American, which was the space program at that time and what it meant to the country and the world.”

Lee’s “Bamboozled,” a biting satire about the racial dynamics of blackface in pop culture, was not loved by critics or the box office when it came out in 2000, but has since gained an appreciation for its willingness to confront the issue in cinema history.

“It’s my fourth decade of filmmaking and I don’t remember saying to myself, ‘Don’t do this because the audience might not like it,’ ” he said. “….That didn’t matter to me because I was showing the truth as I see it.”

Jacqueline Stewart, chair of the Library’s National Film Preservation Board, said this year’s selections show the nation’s cultural diversity and storytelling range, finding deep humanity across a range of genres.

A particular theme this year was Asian Americans and their experiences. “Maya Lin,” the documentary about the young Asian American architect who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Civil Rights Memorial, won the 1995 Academy Award for best documentary feature for director Freida Lee Mock, herself of Asian American heritage.

“Maya, her work and the film – it has a national resonance and is an important part of who we are as Americans,” Mock said in an interview.

A scene from “Matewan,” John Sayles’ 1987 film about a coal workers strike in West Virginia. Image courtesy of Anarchist and Criterion.

Other Asian-themed films include “Cruisin’ J-Town,” a 1975 documentary about jazz musicians in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo community, and the Bohulano Family Film collection, home movies from the 1950s-1970s shot by a family in the Filipino community of Stockton, California.

Finally, there’s Ang Lee’s 1993 film, “The Wedding Banquet,” a comedy about a Taiwanese immigrant in New York City who sets up a marriage to a Chinese woman to conceal his gay relationship from his visiting family. The film was a surprise international hit, propelling Lee on to an Academy Award-winning career, directing films such as “Sense and Sensibility,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “Brokeback Mountain.”

“I didn’t make the movie to be influential, but it was,” Lee said in an interview. “I see since the movie, whether it’s cross-culture or gay issues, some major breakthroughs, certainly in Taiwan and the Chinese community because the movie was well-liked. It just eased into people’s lives quite naturally.”

Twenty-five films are selected each year for their cultural, historical or aesthetic importance and must be at least 10 years old. The selections bring the number of films in the registry to 875. Some of these films are among the 2 million moving image collection items held in the Library. Others are preserved by the copyright holders or other film archives.

The public submitted 6,875 titles for consideration this year. Several titles selected this year drew significant support, including “Home Alone” and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.” (Submit a nomination for the 2024 registry here.)

A scene from 1977’s “Alambrista!” Photo: “Alambrista!” (1977). Image courtesy of Criterion.

This year’s selections date back to a 1921 Kodak educational film titled “A Movie Trip Through Filmland” about how film stock is produced. The most recent films are 2013’s Oscar-winning “12 Years a Slave” and the Oscar-winning documentary “20 Feet from Stardom.”

McQueen, the British director of “12 Years a Slave,” said he was attracted to the story of the film’s real-life protagonist, Solomon Northup, because he saw him as “an American hero.”

“Slavery for me was a subject matter that hadn’t been sort of given enough recognition within the narrative of cinema history,” he said. “I wanted to address it for that reason, but also because it was a subject which had so much to do with how we live now.”

Other Hollywood releases this year include Disney’s 1955 beloved animation “Lady and the Tramp”  and the Halloween and holiday favorite “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” Plus, there’s “Love & Basketball,” which has grown new audiences over the years as a classic love story.

Released in 2000, the film was an intensely personal project for director Gina Prince-Bythewood. She grew up in Pacific Grove, California, and was a high-school basketball and track star. She ran track while in college at UCLA.

“A great deal of this film was autobiographical,” she said. “Monica’s (the film’s heroine) character, growing up as an athlete, all the feelings she felt, feeling ‘othered’ and different as if something’s wrong with her because she loves sports. All those were things that I had to deal with growing up, being a female athlete and with my parents.”

Turner Classic Movies will host a television special Thursday, Dec. 14, starting at 8 p.m. EST, to screen some of this year’s selections.

The Library will show two of the films in December: “The Nightmare Before Christmas” on Dec. 21 at 6:30 p.m. and “Home Alone” on Dec. 28 at 6:30 p.m. Free timed-entry passes are available at loc.gov/visit.

Films Selected for the 2023 National Film Registry

A Movie Trip Through Filmland (1921)Dinner at Eight (1933)Bohulano Family Film Collection (1950s-1970s)Helen Keller: In Her Story (1954)Lady and the Tramp (1955)Edge of the City (1957)We’re Alive (1974)Cruisin’ J-Town (1975)¡Alambrista! (1977)Passing Through (1977)Fame (1980)Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)The Lighted Field (1987)Matewan (1987)Home Alone (1990)Queen of Diamonds (1991)Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)The Wedding Banquet (1993)Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision (1994)Apollo 13 (1995)Bamboozled (2000)Love & Basketball (2000)12 Years a Slave (2013)20 Feet from Stardom (2013)

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Carl Sagan: Childhood Dreams of Space Flight

This is a guest post by Sahar Kazmi, a writer-editor in the Office of the Chief Information Officer. It appears in the November-December issue of the Library of Congress Magazine.

Children often dream of flying, of traveling to distant worlds. For Carl Sagan, contemplating the unfathomable vastness of the universe was a practically spiritual experience.

The man who would eventually become one of the world’s most distinguished and beloved cosmologists was fascinated by the wonders of space as a young boy.

Captivated by dazzling visions of the future at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, Sagan developed a lifelong passion for the mysteries beyond our planet and the technology that might bring humanity closer to them.

Among the 595,000 items in the Library’s Seth MacFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive is a childhood drawing titled “The Evolution of Interstellar Flight.” Created sometime between 1944 and 1947, when Sagan was 10 to 13 years old, the sketch offers a wondrous vision of adventurers crossing the galaxy.

Carl Sagan’s childhood drawings of space travel. Manuscript Division.

A collage of hand-drawn headline clippings wraps around a sleek logo for Sagan’s imagined multinational exploratory organization, “Interstellar Spacelines.” A decade before the start of the moon race, one headline proclaims, “Soviet and American Governments Agree on Mutual Cooperation in Preparation for First Moon Ship.” Others read triumphantly, “Spaceship Reaches Moon!!!” and “Life Found on Venus.”

In one of the most thrilling notes of foresight from the young Sagan, three astronauts appear at the bottom right corner of the page. Their uniforms feature bubble helmets, thick jumpsuits and backpacks with antennae — familiar sights to modern readers, but unexpectedly savvy visions from a school kid in the 1940s.

That boyish wonder never left Sagan. Today, his enchantment with the cosmos lives on in an impressive body of work, ready to inspire a new generation of dreamers.

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