Library of Congress's Blog, page 176

The Greatest Scream in Rock ‘n’ Roll History?

Duke Ellington has been famously quoted as saying: “If it sounds good, it is good.”

Which brings us to Topic A of today:  What’s the greatest scream in rock ‘n’ roll history?

Janis Joplin said it all — vocally, but wordlessly — at the end of “Piece of My Heart”

In my own mind, it’s a tossup which of these is No. 1 — Janis Joplin’s soul-scraping vocalization at the end of “Piece of My Heart” or John Lennon’s wordless reveille at the opening of “Revolution.” Joplin’s amazing album with Big Brother and the Holding Company, “Cheap Thrills,” has been named to the National Recording Registry for 2013 by the Librarian of Congress.

There’s a lot of other fantastic stuff on this year’s recording registry – bet you can find personal connections to a bunch of it, too.  Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon”  – my college roommate played that album end-to-end daily for six months, but it was OK, because it was really good.  Harking back a bit more, Artie Shaw’s “Begin the Beguine” is on my IPod – that is one hot instrumental, enduringly so. (Thanks, Mom and Dad, for putting me on to that one.)  Ditto the soundtrack to “South Pacific,”played in our home again and again in the 1960s.

“Just Because” by Frank Yankovic & His Yanks is on this year’s registry; I can’t say I’m familiar with the album, but I know about Frank because a young woman I went to high school with was of Slovenian extraction, and let me know in no uncertain terms he was the man to see about polka.

And “Hoodoo Man Blues” by Junior Wells is on this year’s registry.  I had the enjoyment of seeing a very talented acquaintance of mine back in Denver, the irrepressible Robin Chotzinoff, sit in on piano with Junior Wells and Buddy Guy at Herman’s Hideaway.

Care to nominate an alternate rock cri de coeur?  Offer a comment below. And if you’d like to nominate sound recordings for next year’s registry, offer your suggestions here.

 

Trending: March Madness

James Naismith, photograph of a 1941 oil painting by Lon Keller. Prints and Photographs Division.

This Spring, basketball celebrates a milestone—the 75th anniversary of “March Madness,” the annual National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division 1 basketball series. For both men’s and women’s basketball, these tournaments determine the national champions of college basketball. In 1938, Ohio State University coach Harold Olsen conceived the idea, and the following year the first tournament was staged, with Oregon defeating Ohio State, 46-33.

The history of basketball is well-documented in the Library’s collections. The game was invented in 1891 at the YMCA Training Center in Springfield, Mass., by Canadian-American sports coach James Naismith, who founded the University of Kansas basketball program. The game gained popularity as a college sport for men and women. The Library’s “Today in History”web page notes that on Jan. 16, 1896, the first unofficial college basketball game was played between the University of Iowa and the University of Chicago—with five players on each side. Chicago won by a score of 15 to 12.

Bill Russell of the San Francisco Dons sinks a basket in the 1956 NCAA semifinals. Prints and Photographs Division

The Library of Congress photographic collections contain various nods to the sport, dating to the turn of the last century. The Prints and Photographs Online Catalog includes many action shots such as an airborne Bill Russell, of the University of San Francisco Dons, sinking a basket against Southern Methodist University in the semi-finals of the 1956 NCAA tournament.

The holdings of the Library’s Recorded Sound Section include radio highlights from games of the late 1940s and 1950s and more extensive radio and television coverage from the 1960s, featuring future NBA greats such as Jerry Lucas, Gail Goodrich, Bob Lanier, Bill Bradley and Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Two recent acquisitions—the John Miley Sports Broadcast Collection and the Sports Byline Collection—capture some rare moments in sports history.

“Hoosier Hysteria” is what they call the annual high school basketball tournament in Indiana—a state that has produced thousands of first-rate basketball players and boasts five NCAA championships. Hoosier Hysteria is documented in the Library’s American Folklife Center collections as part of the Local Legacies project that was launched in 2000 to recognize events and customs throughout the nation during the Library’s bicentennial celebration. The collection, which was submitted to the Library by Indiana Sen. Richard G. Lugar, chronicles the significant events, teams and moments in Indiana high school basketball history through videos, photographs, newspaper clippings and other memorabilia.

FACT: After attending a state basketball finals game in Indiana in 1925, the game’s inventor, James Naismith, said, “Basketball really had its origin in Indiana, which remains the center of the sport.”

This article is featured in the March-April 2013 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM, now available for download here. You can also view the archives of the Library’s former publication from 1993 to 2011.

Kaye and Fine Online

Growing up, I loved to watch old movies, in particular movie musicals. Of those, I remember “Hans Christian Andersen” starring Danny Kaye. It would turn up from time to time on television, so naturally I felt compelled to watch it. I haven’t seen the movie in years, but the Library’s online presentation, The Danny Kaye and Sylvia Fine Collection, which is new today, has certainly prompted me to revisit my childhood and even dig a little deeper into the life of the noted actor and comedian.

Danny Kaye and Sylvia Fine posing at piano in their home. Photograph by Alfredo Valente. Library of Congress Music Division.

More than 2,000 items cover the lives and careers of Kaye and his wife, Sylvia Fine, who played a major role in her husband’s success, writing the music and lyrics for his songs and artfully managing and producing his engagements.

“The items found on this website are informative, entertaining and enlightening,” said Daniel Walshaw, curator of the collection. “There are the stories people know, stories people do not know and there are the stories behind those stories.  It shows not only  the beautifully polished final products, such as films, recordings and shows, but it also shows the sweat, blood, tears and thousands of pots of black coffee that went into creating Danny Kaye and Sylvia Fine.”

A standout feature in the presentation is an interactive timeline that can be used to quickly browse the events in their lives with corresponding collection items like music scores, awards and audio-visual materials highlighting those particular periods.

In 1990, Sylvia Fine made an initial donation to the Library of Congress to form the Danny Kaye and Sylvia Fine Collection.  In recent years, more items have been received from their daughter Dena Kaye and the Danny Kaye and Sylvia Fine Foundation to supplement the collection.

Baby Dena Kaye and Danny Kaye eating cake. Library of Congress Music Division.

This weekend, the Library is hosting a series of film screenings in celebration of Kaye and his wife Sylvia. In fact, Dena was here last night to kick things off and will be back for a question-and-answer session during the screenings.

In a short film shown about Kaye and Fine, comedian Carl Reiner talked about his memories of the “unmatchable and wonderful” Danny Kaye. “When he came onstage, it was like a jewel coming on stage – with his bright, red hair and sparkling smile.”

You can read more about Danny Kaye and Sylvia Fine in this previous blog post from the Library of Congress blog.

InRetrospect: February Blogging Edition

Here’s a sampling of some of the highlights in the Library’s blogosphere from February.

Inside Adams: Science Technology & Business

Turf Wars on the Football Field

Jennifer Harbster debates the differences between natural and synthetic turf grass on the football field.

 In the Muse: Performing Arts Blog

In Memory of Patty Andrews and the Andrews Sisters

Chris Hartten and Mark Horowitz remember Andrews Sister front woman Patty Andrews.

In Custodia Legis: Law Librarians of Congress

Washington’s Farewell Address

Pres. George Washington gives advice to the new nation.

The Signal: Digital Preservation

After the Flood: Digital Art Recovery in the Wake of Hurricane Sandy

A New York City art gallery documents recovery efforts after Hurricane Sandy.

Teaching with the Library of Congress

Frederick Douglass on Abraham Lincoln: The Writer and Abolitionist Remembers the President in Library of Congress Primary Sources

Library of Congress resources highlight friendship between Lincoln and Douglass.

Picture This: Library of Congress Prints & Photos

What do the photographs tell you about the successful scientist, inventor and educator?

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

Visitors Welcome

The Poet Laureate is in residence and receiving guests.

Inquiring Minds: It’s All in a Word

With pop culture changing at such a rapid pace, it’s no wonder our language changes with the times as well. Here today, gone tomorrow as they say. I wonder where that phrase came from?

Barry Popik has made it his passion to discover word and phrase etymology. A lawyer and writer, Popik is a contributor to the “Oxford English Dictionary,” “Dictionary of American Regional English,” “Historical Dictionary of American Slang,” “Yale Book of Quotations” and “Dictionary of Modern Proverbs.” Since 1990 he has also been a regular contributor to Gerald Cohen’s newsletter, “Comments on Etymology.” He is recognized as an expert on the origins of the terms Big Apple, Windy City, hot dog and many other food terms, and he is an editor of the “Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink.”

Popik has often used the Library of Congress’s historic American newspaper database, “Chronicling America,” to uncover the truth behind our idioms.

While living in New York, Popik really became interested in etymology while doing his own work on the origin of “the Big Apple.”

“I felt that it was important enough to find the exact source and to find out if people were still living who knew anything on the subject,” he said.

That one phrase launched a hobby that would also later spawn a blog of the same name with more than 8,500 entries on the etymology of words.

“My website features Americanisms, and I prefer modern terms,” he said. “If it’s an expression used in the newspaper or on popular blogs, I’ll try to find its origin. I’m interested in terms about New York (where I used to live), Texas (where I now live), finance, politics, sports, food and the media.”

Most of Popik’s work was originally done using resources at the New York Public Library in the 1990s, “before blogs and Google and just about everything we’ve grown accustomed to.” However, he would find himself heading to the Library of Congress every few months to research the things he couldn’t find at NYPL.

“Most notably, I debunked the myth that Chicago’s nickname, ‘the Windy City,’ was born because of the 1893 Columbian Exposition, he explained. “I showed that the term was popularized by the Cincinnati newspapers in the 1860s.”

He looked to the Library’s cookbooks and old telephone books to research food and food names. “I found ‘sub’ sandwiches that were first cited from Delaware sandwich shops.”

Popik’s blog lists more than 220 posts on word origins that reference “Chronicling America.”

“I use every tool that I can get,” he said. “I prefer to cite free resources, so that any reader of my work can make a click and find the original article. Things change and technology certainly changes, but they’re both the same idea. It’s nice to know there’s a place where you can find this stuff.”

One of Popik’s interesting discoveries using Chronicling America concerned the word “hamburger.” When he first moved to Texas in late 2006, a legislator was trying to push a bill through that stated “hamburger” was first popularized by Fletcher Davis of Athens, Texas, at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis.

“I tried to tell everyone that the story was bogus, but no one would respond to me and the bill passed into law unopposed,” he said.

According to Popik, “Chronicling America” shows that “hamburger steak sandwiches” were served in Shiner, Texas, in April 1894, before Fletcher Davis arrived in Athens and well before the 1904 World’s Fair.

“Words and phrases have an origin and a reason for being – it’s a history,” he concluded. “Meanings can change, and nothing is fixed forever. But if people don’t know the history of words and names and phrases, then they have no guide.

“People these days have been citing George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, but in many cases, I’ve found that the quotations were really modern inventions. What did Thomas Jefferson really say about guns or about banking? To some people that might be trivia, but we live under documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution that are composed of words and phrases. It sure would be nice to know what they mean.”

I Love a Parade

“Official Program of the Woman Suffrage Procession”, Washington, D.C. March 3, 1913

A century ago today, more than 5,000 women—and some intrepid men—marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in the nation’s capital in what was billed as the Woman Suffrage Procession. The following is a guest post by Audrey Fischer, editor of the Library of Congress Magazine.

It had been 65 years since the first women’s rights convention, in Seneca Falls, N.Y., and it would be another seven years until the 19th amendment was ratified, giving women the right to cast their ballots. Every year since 1869, a delegation of women came to Washington to present petitions asking that women be enfranchised, to no avail. Their efforts had not sparked debate in the halls of Congress.

Just back from working with the militant British suffragists in 1912, Alice Paul, head of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), thought the American women’s suffrage movement needed a jolt and set about organizing the event. The timing—the day before Woodrow Wilson’s presidential inauguration—wasn’t lost on the media savvy Paul.

The story of what came to be known as the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913 is told thoroughly in a wonderful essay by Sheridan Harvey, former women’s studies specialist in the Library’s Humanities and Social Sciences Division, which appears in “American Women: A Library of Congress Guide for the Study of Women’s History and Culture in the United States.” It was adapted for an online presentation of the guide, “A Gateway to Library of Congress Resources for the Study of Women’s History and Culture in the United States.”

Harvey’s essay demonstrates how one might research a topic such as the woman suffrage parade in the resources of the Library of Congress.

For example, the Manuscript Division houses the papers of women’s suffrage movement leaders like Susan B. Anthony and Carrie Chapman Catt.

The records of NAWSA and other women’s rights groups are housed in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. Printed ephemera such as the are also housed in the Rare Book Division.

The Serials and Government Publications Division holds newspaper accounts of the parade as well as cartoons and drawings that appeared in the press. This artist’s sketch by Winsor McCay for the New York Evening Journal shows the order of the procession. It was reported that the delegation of librarians was led by the Library’s own Harriet Hifton of the U.S. Copyright Office.

The Prints and Photographs Division holds many photographs from the historic event such as this one and this assemblage of images of the suffrage movement in America. Many of these images have been digitized and are accessible on the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog and on the Library’s Flickr photostream.

Sounds of the suffrage movement can be researched in the Music Division through sheet music of the era and by listening to works like “Songs of the Suffragettes” and radio interviews with the movement’s leaders,  housed in the Recorded Sound Section of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division.

More resources on the woman suffrage parade can be found on the Library’s website and on the Women’s History Month website. The site is a collaborative effort between the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Gallery of Art, the National Park Service, the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum as “a tribute to the generations of women whose commitment to nature and the planet have proved invaluable to society.”

Finally, the anniversary and the subject of women’s suffrage has captured the imagination of two of our fellow Library of Congress bloggers, who offer their own unique perspectives:

Teaching with the Library of Congress

Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Suffragist March of 1913 with Primary Sources
In Custodia Legis: Law Librarians of Congress

Centennial of the 1913 Suffrage March

Inquiring Minds: Exploring Jefferson’s Universe

Now, more than ever, researchers are using the books in Thomas Jefferson’s library. The following is a guest post by Mark Hartsell, editor of the Library of Congress staff newsletter, The Gazette.

Mark Dimunation stands in a vault near the rare-book reading room and eyes a dozen volumes on a half-filled shelf, each bearing a small green ribbon.

“It’s been a little slow,” says Dimunation, chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, as he scans the titles.

Anna Bryan and Eric Frazier reshelve books from the “Thomas Jefferson’s Library” exhibition. / Abby Brack Lewis

The books all were drawn from the “Thomas Jefferson’s Library” exhibition at the Library of Congress, and each ribbon indicates a book once owned by Jefferson himself.

The exhibition is one of the Library’s most popular attractions – a physical representation of the intellectual curiosity of a Founding Father and a tangible connection to the towering historical figure who personally picked out and read every title.

Jefferson’s books aren’t, however, just for show: More than ever, Dimunation says, those volumes serve as a working collection that helps scholars gain a better understanding of Jefferson and his world.

Once infrequently used, Jefferson’s books now are regularly requested by researchers – typically 15 to 18 volumes each week.

“Not only is Jefferson’s library the foundation of the Library of Congress, it’s the foundation of the accessible library,” Dimunation says. “These books aren’t being artfully arranged to look used. We’re actually pulling books out on almost a daily basis. The reason these books look like they’re coming and going is because they’re coming and going.”

Over the first four days of this “slow” week, researchers requested the nine titles resting on that vault shelf – among them, Jefferson’s copy of the Constitution; John Adams’ “A Defence of the Constitution”; a work about Italian musical theater; two histories of the American Revolution; and “Virginia,” a book published in 1650 by Edward Williams extolling the virtues – the potential for silkworm farming, for instance – of what would be Jefferson’s home state.

The increase in research requests in recent years is due in part, Dimunation says, to the exhibition, which re-creates the library purchased by Congress from Jefferson after the British burned the U.S. Capitol in 1814 and, with it, the congressional library.

Jefferson sold 6,487 of his own books to Congress as a replacement – volumes that became the foundation of the Library of Congress collections.

Another fire, in 1851, destroyed two-thirds of those books. In 1998, the Library of Congress decided to reconstruct Jefferson’s library by seeking out identical editions of titles lost in that blaze.

The exhibition opened in 2000, displaying the original Jefferson books that survived the fire – marked with the green ribbons – alongside those identical editions acquired from elsewhere in the Library collections or by purchase or donation.

The exhibition and its online counterpart, Dimunation says, have raised awareness among researchers of available titles. “People are beginning to find them online,” he says.

There is no typical research topic – the subject matter is as wide-ranging as Jefferson’s intellectual interests, from Restoration Theater to Persian history to Palladian architecture to the spread of Italian philosophical ideas during the 18th century.

No subject was too obscure to draw Jefferson’s interest – a boon to scholars two centuries later. One researcher recently requested a book on phlogistons, a hypothetical substance once thought to be the combustible part of all flammable materials.

Jefferson had it covered.

“The topics can run pretty wild,” Dimunation says.

About one-third of requests are related to research about the man himself – Jefferson and slavery, for example, or Jefferson and music (he played the violin and made annotations on music).

But most researchers are studying topics related to the period, not the person, and they often don’t know they are requesting books that once belonged to Jefferson – a sometimes-intimidating surprise.

One researcher requested a book on Restoration Theater and was shown how to handle the volume and asked to keep the green ribbon visible in its pages.

“Why?” she asked.

Told the ribbon indicates the book belonged to Jefferson, she threw her hands back and said, “I don’t want to work with it.”

“You’re going to have to,” Dimunation told her. “It’s the only copy in the library.”

The most-requested volumes, Dimunation says, are Jefferson’s original copies of “The Federalist,” the Koran and “Notes on the State of Virginia,” a book he authored.

Scholars often want to study this Koran – a 1764 edition of a translation produced by George Sale three decades earlier – to better appreciate Jefferson’s own understanding of Islam. Sale’s Koran was the first to be translated directly from the Arabic into English and is credited with introducing the sacred text to the West.

“The researchers want to see what the English version of the Koran is imparting to Jefferson in terms of his understanding of Arabic law,” Dimunation says.

For many, it’s also a moving experience.

Photo by Abby Brack Lewis

“I think for people of Muslim faith, it’s profound,” Dimunation says. “It seems to be a profound moment.”

In his day, Jefferson owned the largest personal library in the United States. He had titles that couldn’t be found anywhere else in the country, Dimunation says, and people traveled long distances just to see the library and use the books.

Two centuries later, they still do.

“The collection is meant to be the sum of human endeavor, the universal effort of humankind,” Dimunation says. “That all these disparate people find spokes to grab onto and find access into the collection is, I think, pretty terrific.

“Jefferson would be thrilled.”

Leading a Library with a Long, Long Legacy

You’ve heard, no doubt, about the Great Library of Alexandria, Egypt, which was destroyed in a fire back in antiquity. (There are still debates about who torched it and why. We’ll probably never know.)

Ismail Serageldin of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina speaks at the First International Summit of the Book in December

You may also have heard that the national library of Egypt – the Bibliotheca Alexandrina – was rebuilt in an architecturally and intellectually marvelous way a little more than a decade ago, and is under the direction of Ismail Serageldin, a renowned thinker, writer and speaker.

Dr. Serageldin, at the invitation of Librarian of Congress James H. Billington, will give two public lectures at the Library of Congress on Friday, March 8.  The first talk – at noon in Room 119 of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building at 10 First St., S.E. in Washington, D.C. – will be on “The Loss and Rebirth of the Library of Alexandria.” The second lecture, in the Library’s Coolidge Auditorium on the ground floor of the Thomas Jefferson Building, will take place at 7 p.m. following a reception at 6:30 p.m. in the Library’s Great Hall. Serageldin will speak on the topic “The Knowledge Revolution and the Future of Libraries.” These lectures will be free and open to the public; no tickets are necessary.

“I am delighted that my friend and fellow explorer of the life of the mind will return to the Library of Congress to share his insights,” said Billington, who invited Serageldin to deliver the March lectures following the First International Summit of the Book in December, an event held at the Library of Congress that Serageldin keynoted. (You can see that speech here.)

Serageldin, in addition to directing his nation’s library, also chairs the boards of directors for each of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina’s affiliated research institutes and museums. He serves as chair and member of a number of advisory committees for academic, research, scientific and international institutions and civil-society efforts which includes the Institut d’Egypte (Egyptian Academy of Science), U.S. National Academy of Sciences (Public Welfare Medalist), the American Philosophical Society, TWAS (Academy of Sciences for the Developing World), the Indian National Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.

He is former chairman of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR, 1994-2000), founder and former chairman of the Global Water Partnership (GWP, 1996-2000) and the Consultative Group to Assist the Poorest (CGAP), a microfinance program (1995-2000) and was professor of the International Savoirs Contre Pauvreté (Knowledge Against Poverty), at Collège de France, Paris, and distinguished professor at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

He has also served in a number of capacities at the World Bank, including as vice president for environmentally and socially sustainable development (1992-1998), and for special programs (1998-2000). He has published more than 60 books and monographs and over 200 papers on a variety of topics including biotechnology, rural development, sustainability, and the value of science to society.

He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from Cairo University and master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Harvard University; he has received 33 honorary doctorates

Come to these excellent – and free – events!

 

 

 

A Whale of an Acquisition

“Moby Dick,” Herman Melville’s tale of high-seas adventure, heroic determination and the power of man, has been heralded as one of the greatest novels in the English language. Now, perhaps it can be given the same commendation in picture writing.

♥ You’ve probably seen these symbols in text messages and emails. So imagine an entire book translated into these little emoticons. Data engineer Fred Benenson did just that with the classic in his re-imagined translation, “Emoji Dick.” And the Library of Congress recently added the work to its collections.

In 2009, Benenson started a Kickstarter campaign to fund the project and within a month raised enough money to put it together. He contracted thousands of people to translate one sentence of the book into emoji, had the best ones voted into place and compiled the book from those.

In his Kickstarter proposal, Fred explained, “I’m interested in the phenomenon of how our language, communications and culture are influenced by digital technology. Emoji are either a low point or a high point in that story, so I felt I could confront a lot of our shared anxieties about the future of human expression by forcing a great work of literature through such a strange new filter.”

Buying into Fred’s premise was Michael Neubert, a recommending officer for the Library’s collections. He caught wind of the project through online news sources and was able to reel the book in for the Library.

“I am very pleased that the Library was able to add this work to its collections,” Neubert said. “There is, in the literal sense, no other book in the Library’s collections like it.

“What is striking for the Library’s collections about this work is that it takes a known classic of literature and converts it to a construct of our modern way of communicating, making possible an investigation of the question, ‘is it still a literary classic when written in a kind of smart phone based pidgin language?’” he added. “Simply demonstrating that it is possible is interesting in that regard.”

The book also represents a successful example of crowdsourcing – not only in the funding of the project through Kickstarter but also in using a crowd to produce the book with Amazon Mechanical Turk.

According to Neubert, the bibliographic record is the only one in the roughly 14 million items cataloged in the Library’s system that credits the crowdsource Amazon Mechanical Turk for any creative role.

“Emoji Dick” joins many other versions of Melville’s “Moby Dick” in its collections, including a 2008 graphic novel version, a 2007 pop-up book and a 1984 adaptation for young readers. The classic novel also appears as part of Melville compilation volumes, with different editors and introductions, translated versions in Chinese, Russian and German, and of course the original version from 1851 recently featured in the Library’s “Books That Shaped America” exhibition.

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington goes on to talk about “Moby Dick” and its importance in American literature.[media player not shown]

Library In The News: January Edition

The Library of Congress exhibition “The Civil War in America” and Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey continued to make the news last month.

Edward Rothstein toured the exhibition for The New York Times. “This is one reason the Library of Congress exhibition ‘The Civil War in America,’ which opened late last year in honor of the war’s sesquicentennial, is so fascinating. It doesn’t explicitly ask questions about means and ends, but we can’t help thinking about them as the letters, diaries, documents and images accumulate.”

In addition, the Washington Post’s Michael O’Sullivan reviewed the show, calling it a “sober chronology of letters, photographs, books, artwork, maps and other ephemera” and “surprisingly moving.”

In January, the Library put on temporary display the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation in the Civil War exhibit. Picking up that announcement were several local broadcast and newspaper outlets.

Also put on temporary display was a Bible, belonging to Abraham Lincoln, that President Barack Obama used for his second inauguration. You can read more about it this previous blog post. Outlets including USA Today, CNN and The Baltimore Sun featured stories.

Also in commemoration of the Civil War and coinciding with the exhibition, Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey did a poetry reading and lecture at the Library on January 30. A few outlets caught up with her prior to the event and as she began her in-office residence at the Library’s Poetry and Literature Center – the first laureate to do so.

“Being in the presence of history and a place so rooted in the national imagination – it’s so interesting to me,” she told The Washingtonian. “I like it very much. I think I could live here.”

Covering her lecture was Washington Post reporter Ron Charles. Trethewey discussed Walt Whitman and his war poems. “Her lecture elegantly blended scholarship, cultural criticism and poetry.”

In a last bit of news, Glenn Fleishman of Boing Boing took a tour of the Library’s Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation to “find the heart of the nation’s audiovisual memory.” He went on to discuss the Library’s efforts in preserving resources using old nitrate film base, copyright restrictions on films and sound recordings and the creation of digital versions of master recordings.