Library of Congress's Blog, page 20

John Phelan and the Sinking of the USS Oneida

This is a guest post by Candice Buchanan, writing with recently retired colleague Mark F. Hall. Both are/were reference librarians in the History and Genealogy Section.

My career started in a graveyard. I still do volunteer work there.

The graveyard in question is Green Mount, located on a hilltop on the outskirts of Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. This is in the far southwestern pocket of the state. My family has been there for several generations. As a teenager, I discovered my love of genealogy in no small part by walking past the rows of tombstones in this cemetery, fascinated by the shorthand accounts of lives buried beneath them.

The career that resulted from this youthful fascination is now to be working as a reference librarian in the History and Genealogy Section of the Library. On a recent visit back home, I walked through Green Mount — a dutiful affection keeps drawing me back — and I found my professional curiosity piqued by a white marble cenotaph in the Phelan family plot, which lies just a few steps from that of my family.

Most of the Phelan markers were made of brown sandstone, so the taller, whiter marker stood out. The inscription was also striking. The rest of the family had the basic names and dates. This one was a short story unto itself:

“Erected in the Memory of Lieut. John R. Phelan, U. S. N., Aged 23 Years & 4 Mo., who was lost on board the USS Oneida by a collision with the British steamer Bombay on the 24th day of Jan. 1870 in the Bay of Yokohama, Japan.”

The sinking of the Oneida, from a sketch by a survivor. Engraving: Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper March 19, 1870.

I was intrigued, though I had never heard of the Oneida or the Bombay or the international incident that followed, much less of John Phelan. But fellow genealogists will relate to the way in which each past person in our research seems to wait their turn to step forward so that their story might be told.

And so it was here.

I took my fascination back to the Library. With the collaboration of my colleague, Mark Hall, who specializes in maritime history, we dove into the long-ago international scandal that took young John Phelan’s life and that of so many others. Along the way, we created an in-depth research guide for readers and researchers to use. It’s filled with ship documentation, government records, books, magazines and newspapers that reported on the sinking. There are also strategies for how to apply genealogical research.

We are still digging, for John indeed stepped forward for his turn.

Briefly: The Oneida was a screw (propeller-driven) sloop with three masts and square sails. It was launched in 1861 and commissioned in 1862. The ship served in the West Gulf Blockading Squadron operations during the Civil War. Eight of her crew were awarded the Medal of Honor for actions during the 1864 Battle of Mobile Bay. After the war, the Oneida was recommissioned and assigned to the Asiatic Squadron.

Three years later, on Jan. 24, 1870, the ship departed the Japanese port city of Yokohama. Soon after, in the early darkness, the Oneida was hit by the Bombay, a British steamer. The Bombay sped on, offering no help. The Oneida went down in about 15 minutes, taking 115 sailors with her, among them Phelan. (Though the figure 125 was frequently reported, official government records identify 115.) His body was never recovered. Only 61 sailors survived.

John R. Phelan, just promoted to the rank of ensign. Photo: S. G. Rogers. Waynesburg University, Paul R. Stewart Museum Collection.

The disaster sparked a heated controversy on the far side of the world. Who was responsible for the collision? Why didn’t the Bombay help? Could lives have been saved?

The diplomatic result was a split decision.

A British Court of Inquiry decided on Feb. 12, 1870, that the Oneida crew was responsible for the collision, but censured Capt. Arthur W. Eyre of the Bombay for not “waiting and endeavoring to render assistance.” A subsequent U.S. Court of Inquiry provided an opinion on March 2, 1870, which placed blame for both the collision and desertion on the Bombay, but did fault Capt. Edward P. Williams of the Oneida for failing to replace lifeboats that had been lost in an earlier typhoon.

And John Rogers Phelan, one of the many lost at sea?

Our research, built on a range of sources, shows that he grew up a child of promise, raised in financial comfort, with good family connections. He was the youngest son of John Phelan and Jane Walker. His father was a lawyer (who, by chance, studied the profession under my fourth-great-grandfather, Andrew Buchanan) and a politician. Both men served in the Pennsylvania state legislature. The Phelan and Buchanan families lived near each other on High Street in Waynesburg, within walking distance of the Greene County Courthouse.

The Phelans lived in, and added onto, one of the most impressive houses in town, the Whitehill Place (named for the original owner, who built it in 1808). It’s now a historic landmark and stands on the northwest corner of High and Cumberland streets.

Still, John did not choose to stay in these privileged surroundings and follow in his father’s profession. Instead, at 15, he entered the . He was successful in his career, being promoted from midshipman to ensign to master. He was in his early 20s then and had not married. If he kept a diary, it is lost. So far, we have not found any letters. We did find photos of him, one in his U.S. Naval Academy uniform and the other after he was promoted to ensign, in a photo book kept by his only sister, Mary (Phelan) Hogue, in the archives of Waynesburg University. She had been one of its earliest women graduates in 1864. 

In the last surviving ship log of the Oneida, there are regular written reports of weather and conditions in what we think is Phelan’s handwriting and with his signature, but we are still working to confirm that.

John Phelan’s signature in the ship’s log. We believe it to be in his hand, not filled in by another colleague, but are still working to confirm this. U.S. National Archives.

And then the record goes silent. The Oneida is hit and sinks.

In the 1870 U.S. Census Mortality Schedule, John’s family reported him as drowned. More than a century later, the family’s grief can still be documented in that cenotaph (and its detailed inscription) that caught my attention — it’s so strikingly different from those of the rest of the family. John’s death was clearly shocking and outrageous to them, no doubt exacerbated by his body never being found.

For several other Oneida sailors, we have found family papers. One of the men lost at sea had supported his mother, and she was granted a pension. Included in the paperwork are his letters home from service. They are heartbreaking to read in the aftermath. These and papers from other Oneida sailors can be found in our research guide.

This project has been engulfing. We plan to do a presentation to share some of the individual case studies because they are unique and incredible, plus they reveal research paths that can be learned from as examples.

John Phelan was the starting point for us. He stepped forward and caught our attention. Now he’s introducing us to each of his shipmates as well.

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Proclaiming a New Nation: The Library’s Copies of the Declaration of Independence

After the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, the delegates wanted to spread word of their momentous action throughout the Colonies as quickly as possible.

The president of Congress, John Hancock, ordered the document to be printed as a broadside, a single-sheet format popular in that era for quickly distributing important information.

That first printing of the Declaration today is known as the Dunlap Broadside, named for the man who produced it for Congress, Philadelphia printer John Dunlap. Original copies are extremely rare: Only about two dozen survive, most of them held by institutions in the U.S. and a few by British institutions and private individuals.

The Library of Congress holds two copies. One, part of the George Washington Papers in the Manuscript Division, survives only in incomplete form: The text below line 54 is missing. The second copy, held by the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, is complete.

In keeping with congressional resolutions, Hancock on July 6 had dispatched one of Dunlap’s newly printed broadsides to Gen. Washington, then in New York with his troops, and asked him to “have it proclaimed at the Head of the Army in the Way you shall think most proper.”

On the evening of July 9, with British warships visible offshore, Washington assembled his troops and had the Declaration read to them from the broadside now in the Washington papers. They were, the Declaration asserted, no longer subjects of a king. Instead, they were citizens and equals in a new democracy.

Later that night, to Washington’s dismay, a riled-up crowd pulled down an equestrian statue of King George III, located at the foot of Broadway on the Bowling Green. Ahead lay seven years of war and, eventually, the independence proclaimed to Washington’s troops from a broadside now preserved at the Library.

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Poetry in National Parks: Ada Limón’s New Project

Ada Limón’s signature project as the U.S. Poet Laureate, “You Are Here,” will feature two major new initiatives: an anthology of nature poems and poetry installed as public art in seven national parks.

“I want to champion the ways reading and writing poetry can situate us in the natural world,” Limón said. “Never has it been more urgent to feel a sense of reciprocity with our environment, and poetry’s alchemical mix of attention, silence, and rhythm gives us a reciprocal way of experiencing nature — of communing with the natural world through breath and presence.”

A new anthology, “You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World,” will be published by Milkweed Editions in association with the Library next spring, on April 2. It will feature original poems by 50 contemporary American poets, including former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, Pulitzer Prize winner Diane Seuss, and PEN/Voelcker Award winner Rigoberto González, who reflect on and engage with their particular local landscape. As Limón said, “With poems written for vast and inspiring vistas to poems acknowledging the green spaces that flourish even in the most urban of settings, this anthology hopes to reimagine what ‘nature poetry’ is during this urgent moment on our planet.”

“You Are Here: Poetry in Parks,” an initiative with the National Park Service and the Poetry Society of America, will feature site-specific poetry installations in seven national parks across the country. These installations, which will transform picnic tables into works of public art, will each feature a historic American poem that connects in a meaningful way to the park and will “encourage visitors to pay deeper attention to their surroundings,” according to Limón.

Participating national parks are:

Cape Cod National Seashore (Massachusetts)Cuyahoga Valley National Park (Ohio)Great Smoky Mountains National Park (North Carolina and Tennessee)Everglades National Park (Florida)Mount Rainer National Park (Washington)Redwood National and State Parks (California)Saguaro National Park (Arizona)

Limón will travel to each of the  parks in the summer and fall of 2024 to unveil the new installations.

“In this moment when the natural world is making headlines, Ada Limón’s signature project will help us connect more personally to America’s greatest parks as well as show how the poets of our time capture the natural world in their own lives,” said Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. “It also extends our laureate’s engagement with federal agencies and literary partners, to promote poetry to the nation.”

Ada Limón. Photo: Shawn Miller.

Limón has a number of major collaborations under way to share poetry with the public. In June, she returned to the Library to reveal “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa,” which she wrote for NASA’s Europa Clipper mission. Limón’s poem will be engraved on the spacecraft that will travel 1.8 billion miles to explore Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons. The poem is part of NASA’s “Message in a Bottle” campaign, which has gathered more than 450,000 signatures from people around the world signing on to the poem. The campaign will run through 2023.

For National Poetry Month, Limón has served as the guest editor for the Akcademy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series in a first-ever series collaboration between the Academy and the Library.

Limón was born in Sonoma, California, in 1976 and is of Mexican ancestry. She is the author of six poetry collections, including “The Carrying,” which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry in 2018. began her first term as poet laureate in September 2022. During her term, she participated in two events hosted by the first lady of the United States for the National Student Poets Program and for the state visit with Brigette Macron, wife of the president of France. Limón also participated in an event hosted by Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller, wife of the president of Mexico, for the North American Leaders Summit in Mexico City, and she participated in a conversation with Argentine and Brazilian poets for the Library’s Palabra Archive.

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Fair Winds and Following Seas to You, Jimmy Buffett

Jimmy Buffett, whose “Margaritaville” was inducted into the National Recording Registry this year, died yesterday at age 76. He was surrounded by his family, friends and his beloved dogs, his family announced on social media. There was no mention of the cause.

It was a shock to his millions of fans across the globe, as the vibrant, still-touring Buffett was not publicly known to be ill. He had performed in concert as recently as May.

I interviewed him in late March for the NRR honors. The man was both the picture of health and tickled by the recognition, as his laid-back songs were not the type that tended to get awards, he chuckled.

So he happily joined us via a streaming platform and told the familiar story of how he wrote the hit that changed the last four decades of his life and helped make him one of the wealthiest entertainers of his generation.

It was the early 1970s and he was day drinking in Austin, Texas, after a rough night out with his friends Willie Nelson and Jerry Jeff Walker. He ordered a margarita – on the rocks with salt – and it hit the spot.

“I started writing it right there on a napkin like you hear about,” he said. A friend took him to the airport for his flight back to Miami, from which he’d shuffle a rental car back down to Key West for a friend who was in that business. (He also needed the free transportation.) A traffic jam ensued on the Seven Mile Bridge and, stuck for an hour or so, he finished the song.

“I got to Key West and I was working in a little club on Duval Street called Crazy Ophelia’s. And I went in and I had to work that night and I played the song. People liked it! I went, ‘Wow, this is pretty good.’ And you know, it was fresh, it was probably, you know, six hours old …. It was maybe even four years before it got recorded (in 1977). It was just part of my repertoire that people liked as I was going around as a performer.”

He was very familiar with the Library, having performed here in September 2008 when his friend Herman Wouk was honored with the Library’s first Lifetime Achievement Award for the Writing of Fiction (today known as the Prize for American Fiction). In one of those “only at the Library” moments that demonstrate the sweep of the place, Buffett spoke, and then sang, just before Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke and read from Wouk’s writing. (Imagine that advertising card: “Tonight Only! Herman Wouk! Jimmy Buffett! Ruth Bader Ginsburg!”)

The announcement of Buffett’s passing. Image from Buffett’s website.

This March, ours was a simple, half-hour interview. He wore a baseball cap, an upbeat smile and a camo tee shirt. It came with a sweet nostalgic undertone, at least for me.

How I had idolized this man when I was a teenager! How I had memorized every line of every song!

Buffett was nearly two decades older but, like me, grew up in Mississippi, him down there on the Gulf Coast. I was a seventh generation Mississippian, living outside a small town in the middle of the state. I was very much into music and very much into not living the rest of my life outside a small town in the middle of Mississippi.

And there he was! A Mississippi kid, living the dream in the Florida Keys and the Caribbean! Writing romanticized, chilled-out songs about the seas, the islands, roaming the planet, another life in another world.

I must stress this was before “Margaritaville,” before he was on the cover of Rolling Stone, before Parrotheads, before the restaurants and “Cheeseburger in Paradise.” I was “A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean.” I was “A1A.” I even wrote to rare record shops, getting a copy of his first album, “Down to Earth.”

After college, I took a job at a newspaper on the east coast of Florida, right by the ocean, in no small part because my hero, Jimmy Buffett, had gone to Florida, too. I eventually became a foreign correspondent and roamed the planet, my wanderlust having been kindled by listening to Buffett as a teen.

And so here we were this March, both of us now old guys.

We played back home for a minute or two. Because it’s a very small state it turned out we had mutual friends. He said that when in Washington he often ate at the Bethesda Crab House. It’s a mile from where I live, we eat there as well, and I said I’d keep a lookout for him. The man is worth some $600 million, thanks to his ceaseless touring and ever-expanding merchandising of “Margaritaville,” but you wouldn’t have known it that day. We might as well have been two Magnolia State refugees who happened to bump into one another on adjacent bar stools at Sloppy Joe’s in Key West.

He was working on a new album about his time as a busker in New Orleans and urged me to buy it when it came out. He was planning a concert in the D.C. area and told me to come on out and introduce myself. It had the gist of sincerity to it, not just a “let’s have lunch” pleasantry that people say but of course don’t actually mean. (And, even if it was, it was kind of him to say so.)

So, like the rest of you, I was stunned and saddened this morning when I heard the news. The cover of the “Changes in Latitude” album popped up before my mind’s eye. “Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season” played in my head, his soft tenor opening the lyrics:

Squalls out on the Gulf Stream

Big storm’s coming soon

Passed out in my hammock

And God, I slept till way past noon

Fair winds and following seas to you, Jimmy Buffett.

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The Scenic Route? The Library’s 117-foot Map from 17th-century Japan

—This is a guest post by Dylan Carpenter, an intern in the Office of Communications this year. It also appears in the July-August issue of the Library of Congress Magazine.

Long before the advent of Google Earth and glossy travel books, ancient cartographers used pictographic maps to guide travelers through the world around them. Many of these are held in the Geography and Map Division.

Among the most remarkable of these navigational aids is the Tokaido bunken-ezu, a 17th-century Japanese map charting the route from what is now Tokyo to the then-capital of Kyoto. The map not only provides valuable insights into Japan’s rich cultural heritage but also offers a fascinating glimpse into the world of mapmaking before the age of digital technology.

One thing that makes the Tokaido bunken-ezu truly unique is its massive size. The map, painted on two scrolls, measures about 117 feet in length, dwarfing most other pictorial maps of its time and even more contemporary counterparts.

The Tokaido bunken-ezu, created as an everyday guide for a road trip, today is also recognized as a great cultural artifact: It is considered a masterpiece of Japanese mapmaking.

Cartographer Ochikochi Doin surveyed the 319-mile route from Edo (now known as Tokyo) to Kyoto in 1651, and the well-known artist Hishikawa Moronobu gave form to his findings via this pen-and-ink illustrated map in 1690.

The map renders five main stretches on the Tokaido road, providing a detailed account of the amenities, landmarks and terrain set against images of mountains, rivers and seas.

The map shows the 53 stations, or post towns, that lined the route to provide travelers with lodging and food. Famous landmarks such as Mount Fuji and Mount Oyama are depicted from multiple angles and various stations. Travelers walked the road in groups of various sizes.

“A road of a thousand miles comes from a single step,” a famous Japanese proverb goes.

Centuries ago, adventure awaited those who took that first step on the path leading from Edo. Looking at this great map today, it’s easy to appreciate the travelers who made the journey — and the mapmakers who helped make it possible.

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The March on Washington, Revisited

It’s 30 minutes before midnight on June 1, 1963. Martin Luther King Jr. is on the phone.

For eight long years, ever since the Montgomery bus boycott with Rosa Parks, he’s been the nation’s most visible civil rights leader. Freedom Riders, sit-ins, voting rights volunteers spreading out across the South. The waves of terrorist violence. His house has been bombed. He’s been arrested. He wrote “Letter from Birmingham Jail” two months ago.

“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed,” he wrote. And: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Now hundreds of protests are taking place across the country. Now the wildfire is spreading. In the phrase he will make famous, the fierce urgency is indeed now.

“We are on a breakthrough,” he’s telling fellow organizers in this conference call, as recounted from FBI surveillance tapes in Taylor Branch’s Pulitzer Prize-winning history, “Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63.”

“We need a mass protest,” he’s saying. The place? Washington.

Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders in the front row of the march, as news crews ride on a truck just in front of them. Photo: Warren K. Leffler. Prints and Photographs Division.

Less than two weeks later, a white supremacist assassinates Medgar Evers, the NAACP leader in Mississippi, in his driveway.

Now the wildfire is roaring. The “mass protest” King envisioned spawns into the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The date selected is impossibly early: Aug. 28. It’s crazy. It’s less than three months away.  And yet somehow organizers, anchored by union official A. Philip Randolph and veteran activist Bayard Rustin, pull together a march of some 250,000 people from across the nation — the vast majority of them Black — creating one of the most moving, consequential moments in American history.

“Freedom Now,” read the hats of many marchers who ride by bus for hours to get here. Spirits are high. Men wear suits. Women wear pearls. Everyone laughs, a little giddy. The heat stays in the low 80s; there’s a slight breeze. Star power? How about Josephine Baker, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Paul Newman, Harry Belafonte, Marlon Brando, Sidney Poitier, Sammy Davis Jr., Bob Dylan, Mahalia Jackson, Marian Anderson, Joan Baez, Odetta?

King’s concluding speech of the rally, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a sea of listeners stretching as far back as the eye can see, is “I Have a Dream.” It is one of the dazzling moments in American rhetorical history, certainly one that led to his Nobel Peace Prize the next year. It is preserved in the Library’s National Recording Registry.

That afternoon, he seems to sense the moment even as it is happening:

“I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation,” are some of the first words he says.

Many parts of that day are preserved at the Library. The papers of Rustin. The papers of Randolph, who was the first speaker of the day. The papers of Rosa Parks. The papers of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.  Those of legendary activist James Forman. The work by photographer Warren K. Leffler. And so many others.

They all document an amazing accomplishment, these peaceful crowds, this energy.

People arriving for the speeches at the Lincoln Memorial at the conclusion of the march. Photo: David L. Harris. Prints and Photographs Division.

But it is not a perfect day.

Parks doesn’t get to speak; no woman is allowed any significant time on stage during the main program. James Baldwin, the eloquent novelist, the gay icon, the man who has spoken truth to power in any forum anywhere, was not invited to speak for fears he will be too incendiary. Malcolm X has derided the proceedings as a “circus,” too inclusive of too many other groups and causes. President Kennedy, who is sympathetic to the cause, meets with King and others after the march in the Oval Office, but does not speak at the event and doesn’t stand next to King in the group photo. (This may be the clearest example of how dangerous King was seen to be at the time.)

Still, the magic. It can’t be denied.

King had given variations of his “I Have a Dream” speech before, but this time, broadcast on national television, it seems injected into the national consciousness.

“Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” he shouts at the conclusion, quoting lines from a Negro spiritual, to a whirlwind of emotion from the crowd.

And then.

Part of the March on Washington delegation that met with the president: (l to r): Whitney Young, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.,John Lewis, Rabbi Joachim Prinz, A. Philip Randolph, President John F. Kennedy. Photo: Warren K. Leffler. Prints and Photographs Division.

And then everyone goes home to the same terrorist violence they had left behind, because there is another America that sees King’s dream as a nightmare.

Less than three weeks later, four Black girls will be killed by white supremacists in the bombing of a Black church in Birmingham, Alabama. Kennedy will be assassinated in November. Freedom Summer and the murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi lies in the next turning of the calendar. In 1965, the shooting death of voting rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson by an Alabama policeman will spark the Selma-to-Montgomery March and the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

And then.

And then King will be shot dead by a white supremacist on a motel balcony in Memphis on April 4, 1968, less than five years after the March on Washington. He was 39.

His memorial, a granite sculpture emerging from a rock face, now stands on the Tidal Basin. It is a short walk from where an inscription marks the spot of his speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, given in the fading light of that summer afternoon in 1963, when the March promised a dream for so many.

The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C. Photo: Carol M. Highsmith. Prints and Photographs Division.

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My Job: Cheryl Regan

Cheryl Regan is a veteran of the Library’s exhibits office, bringing the treasures of the world’s largest library to the public. Here, she answers a few questions about her work.

Describe your work at the Library.

I am a senior exhibition director in the Exhibits Office — the office charged with planning, developing and mounting Library of Congress exhibitions, both on-site and online. I began working at the Library in 1991, hired on as a picture researcher for the “City of Magnificent Distances: The Nation’s Capital” exhibition, and I never left.

I have directed exhibitions, both national and international in scope, and worked collaboratively with recognized scholars and in-house curators and staff, always with the institution’s mission in mind of providing access to the collections.

The audience for exhibitions at the Library is impressive. Over 30-plus years, I have seen attendance swell from the tens of thousands to well over a million for more recent offerings. But it is working with the amazing Library staff and the phenomenal collections that has made mine a truly great job.

How did you prepare for your job?

As I was preparing to start school as a fine arts major (painting) at Carnegie Mellon University, my father assured me of his whole-hearted support — but also asked that he not have to support me for the rest of his days.

So, as an undergraduate I began interning in museums. That led to my first job at the Carnegie Museum of Art, one of many museum jobs and subsequent internships I held in Pittsburgh; Rochester, New York; Charlottesville, Virginia; and Washington, D.C.

After three years of working as an assistant to the director of Carnegie Mellon Art Galleries, the director encouraged me to enter graduate school. I received a master’s in art history at the University of Virginia in 1991, then came to the Library.

What are some of your standout projects?

So many, really. We mounted an exhibition examining the life and work of Sigmund Freud that garnered worldwide attention and allowed me to work with renowned historians and thinkers. The Lewis and Clark and a century of Western exploration exhibition sparked what my love affair with maps. “Creating the United States” — with its message of creativity, conflict and compromise that went into crafting this nation’s founding documents — drew a broad audience, including members of Congress.

Working with colleagues on “The Civil War in America,” “Jacob Riis: Revealing ‘How the Other Half Lives,’ ” “Echoes of the Great War: American Experiences of WWI” was particularly rewarding. I helped develop and curate the Library’s “American Treasures” exhibition during its 10-year-run, and now my career has come full circle: We currently are preparing “Collecting Memories: Treasures from the Library of Congress,” which promises to be a spectacular showcase for collections from all corners of the Library.

What are some of your favorite collection items?

I have direct contact with thousands of collection items, and I don’t think there is a custodial or collecting division that I haven’t worked with.

I remember giving tours of “With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition” and choking up reading the last lines of Lincoln’s first inaugural address. The collections are amazing for what they represent and the information that they contain, but the awe I feel in front of objects that were in the hands of Lincoln or Meriwether Lewis or some anonymous photographer doesn’t ever diminish. These objects bore witness to their time — that is so powerful, and it’s why I do the work that I do.

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The Library Reimagined, with You in Mind

This story also appears in the July-August edition of the Library of Congress Magazine.

First-time visitors to the Library of Congress campus often ask the same question: Where do I even begin?

It’s easy to see why.

For many, it’s awe of the historic Jefferson Building that stops them. One of the most beautiful spaces in America, the Jefferson is a head-spinning whirl of murals, marble, sculpture, stained glass and soaring architecture.

For others, it’s the lure of the institution’s massive collections.

The Library holds an endless array of fascinating things, more than 175 million items that form the most comprehensive collection of human knowledge ever assembled. Together, those millions chronicle millennia of world history and culture.

Here is Abraham Lincoln’s original draft of the Gettysburg Address, neatly written on Executive Mansion letterhead. There is an ancient fragment of the “Iliad,” one of the greatest and earliest works of Western literature. The world’s first selfie. The world’s largest collection of films. The papers of 23 presidents. The map Lewis and Clark carried across the continent. A perfect copy of the Gutenberg Bible. Rosa Parks’ papers. Original Beethoven music manuscripts. That crystal flute, and on and spectacularly on.

The Great Hall in the Jefferson Building. Photo: Carol M. Highsmith.

So, where do you begin?

If you ask a librarian, the answer lies in finding more ways to connect visitors with collections and programs that match their interests.

“At the Library of Congress, we want you to make a make a personal connection, to find yourself here and explore your own history, so you can tell your own stories,” Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden said. “We want to transform the visitor experience for the people who visit the Library of Congress in person and the millions more who access us online.”

Over the next few years, the Library will deliver a new experience, “A Library for You,” to bring that vision to life.

“By opening windows to our world,” Hayden said, “by sharing more of the Library’s treasures with the public and engaging children and young adults in its collections, we will greatly increase Americans’ access to knowledge.”

The opening paragraph of Lincoln’s first draft of the Gettysburg Address. Manuscript Division.

The multiyear A Library for You initiative has several key elements:

An orientation gallery. Once the project is completed, visitors will enter the Jefferson Building through an orientation gallery located on the ground floor. There, they will discover more about the Library’s history, mission, collections and programs.

The gallery will center around one of the Library’s foundational and most significant holdings: the personal library of Thomas Jefferson. The Library at one time was located in the U.S. Capitol. During the War of 1812, the British sacked Washington, D.C., and burned the Capitol, destroying most of the volumes in the Library. Jefferson sold his books to the government in 1815 as a replacement — the foundation of the modern Library of Congress.

The gallery will showcase the art and architecture of the Jefferson Building itself, with immersive and interactive experiences that explore the magnificent space. Visitors also will have an opportunity to see behind the scenes into the original book stacks.

The David M. Rubenstein Treasures Gallery. This new gallery will offer visitors a window into the Library’s collections, creating a public space where visitors can see firsthand some of the fascinating and special items held by the Library in rotating, thematic exhibitions.

The inaugural installation, centered on the theme of remembrance, will include a draft of the Gettysburg Address handwritten by Lincoln, original handwritten lyrics from “The Sound of Music,” Maya Lin’s original drawings for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, original artwork by Stan Lee and Steven Ditko for the Spider-Man comic, President James Madison’s crystal flute, 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablets and more.

A working image of the new teen center. An educational research studio. The Library’s new education center, called The Source, will provide children, ages 8 years and older, and their families with a space within the Library to discover how information and research can nourish curiosity, creativity and change. The space also will host teens with special programming and volunteer and internship opportunities.

Through fun hands-on activities and interactive experiences, children will explore the Library’s resources, while actually modeling the research process by finding information, analyzing primary sources and considering perspectives.

“The Source will introduce young visitors to the process of research, inviting them to practice critical skills, such as primary source analysis while allowing them to consider how research can use materials from the past to shape the future,” said Shari Werb, the director of the Library’s Center for Learning, Literacy, and Engagement. “That is what will make it unique from other spaces.”

The Jay I. Kislak Gallery of the Early Americas. In 2004, businessman Jay I. Kislak donated nearly 4,000 artifacts, paintings, maps, rare books and documents to the Library. This extraordinary material chronicles the history of the early Americas, from the ancient Maya to the encounters between European explorers and Indigenous peoples.

The collection spans 2000 B.C. to the 21st century. There are pre-Columbian artifacts such as a panel relief of a ballplayer from the ruined Maya city of La Corona. Manuscripts written by important figures like Queen Isabella of Castile, King Philip II of Spain and explorer Hernán Cortés. Rare manuscript letters and annotated books by Founding Fathers George Washington and Jefferson. And there are the creative endeavors of 20th-century artists, including a unique series of watercolors depicting Popol Vuh, the Maya creation myth, by Mexican muralist Diego Rivera.

A working image of the new Kislak gallery.

A new exhibition, “Voices of the Early Americas,” will highlight key pieces of the Kislak collection — many of them displayed for the first time through a state-of-the-art, transparent artifact wall.

Food, drink and a view. On the Jefferson Building mezzanine level, a new café will invite visitors to linger and admire the beautiful Great Hall and the grand views of the U.S. Capitol, located across the street.

The new features of A Library for You are scheduled to open over the next few years, beginning in spring 2024 with the Rubenstein treasures gallery, followed by the orientation gallery, café and education center.

A transformation of this scale and with a mission this vital requires a dynamic collaboration between the public and private sectors.

At this moment of great opportunity for the Library of Congress, both the U.S. Congress and the private sector have stepped forward to help ensure that the nation’s library can extend its reach and democratize access to the Library’s vast collections and resources.

“At the Library of Congress, we want you to make a personal connection, to be able to find yourself here and explore your own history, so you can tell your own stories,” Hayden said. “You can look up maps from your hometown. You can locate your grandfather’s store and use census data and genealogical resources to research your family tree.

“We are focused on expanding our collections to reflect all the people we serve and to make them easy to access because they belong to you.”

 

Q & A: Jessica Tang

Jessica Tang is a library technician in the Asian Division.

Tell us about your background.

My parents are Chinese American immigrants, and I was born and raised in Fairfax County, Virginia. I went to McLean High School, played clarinet in the marching band and attended Hope Chinese School in Annadale on the weekends.

Afterward, I studied elementary education at James Madison University. At the time, it was one of my dreams to teach children. Another dream, which I viewed as less attainable, was to become a clarinetist in a U.S. Army band. One day, I decided to just go for it and auditioned. The Army accepted me.

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

I realized how great it is to work in a library after falling off an obstacle tower in Army basic combat training and breaking my shin in half — three days from graduation.

I begged my drill sergeants and my commander not to chapter me out of the Army, since I’d already won an audition and was so painfully close to attaining my dream. Because of that, the Army put me in a trainee rehabilitation center, where they kept me for another 10 months.

Rehab is a tough place for trainees. We couldn’t leave the building or have family visitors or access to phones or computers. I was cut off from the world.

But, luckily, the rehab center had a library. Its lead librarian sussed me out from day one as a bibliophile and persuaded our drill sergeants to let me work in that oasis.

That’s where I first experienced just how life-changing a library can be. We had trainees who came from tough backgrounds and had never read a book in their lives. I would introduce them to any page-turner that piqued their interest and, within a month or two, they’d be devouring classics.

Inspired by this experience, I started working at public library after rehab. Then, last year, a friend texted me a posting for a job in the Asian Division. It was such an ideal fit for me, so I applied, and now I’m here!

Another factor that pushed me to library work was my own experience as a researcher. I write historical fiction, and much of my world-building research relies on old medical records collected in local libraries. Sometimes, my records requests would turn out to be “not on the shelf,” and each time I would be so disappointed. Often, the staff wouldn’t take a second look for me.

Now that I’m on the other side of the counter, I’m passionate about doing everything possible to hunt down missing items. You never know how much of a researcher’s work depends on them.

What are some of your standout projects?

First, I’m very happy to say that I’m part of a unique team of multilingual technicians in the Asian Division.

Right now, I’m helping to sort and inventory more than 40,000 items in the division’s Pre-1958 Chinese Collection. It is full of records in both Chinese and English with different types of romanization that makes it challenging to navigate. We often receive requests that are difficult to serve because of the confusing records.

And, physically, many of the collection items are old and fragile, so I’m also working on rehousing them. In short, I’m trying to make the collection easier to use for everyone who wants to explore these books.

What do you enjoy doing outside of work?

On weekends and holidays, I serve as a clarinetist and fifer in the U.S. Army’s 29th Infantry Division Band. I also enjoy letterboxing, which is a treasure-hunting hobby. Basically, you carve rubber stamps that can be inked and pressed in journals, then hide them in cool places for others to find. You also carry a journal of your own to collect stamps that other people have hidden.

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

I’m into graphology, or handwriting analysis. I can tell you things about your personality based on a sample, like your degree of extroversion, pessimism or self-discipline. Of course, it’s all pseudoscientific, so take my feedback with a hunk of salt!

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George Saunders Accepts the Library’s Prize for American Fiction

Novelist, short-story writer and essayist George Saunders was awarded the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction Saturday evening in one of the final sessions of the 2023 National Book Festival, conferring a lifetime honor on a versatile writer whose most famous book cast one of Washington’s most famous residents in a surreal light.

“This year’s winner is George Saunders, and you might as well clap right now,” Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden told the enthusiastic crowd before giving the winner’s impressive resume.

Saunders, the author of 12 books and a professor of creative writing at Syracuse University, won the 2017 Man Booker Prize for “Lincoln in the Bardo,” a fantastical take on actual visits by the 16th president to a Georgetown cemetery where the body of his dead son was held in a crypt during the Civil War. Saunders, 64, has also been awarded the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story and received fellowships from the MacArthur and Guggenheim foundations.

Saunders cheerfully posed for pictures with Hayden before pretending to drop the crystal trophy, drawing a laugh from the audience in the convention center’s mammoth Ballroom A. In the subsequent conversation with Clay Smith, the festival’s literary director, Saunders discussed his career of writing short stories, nonfiction, essays and his stunning novel about Lincoln’s visit to Oak Hill Cemetery one night to visit the corpse of child Willie, who died in 1862 at the age of 11 of typhoid fever. More than 160 ghosts comment, narrate, argue and debate his presence in a cacophony of voices.

Saunders said he first heard the story about the grieving Lincoln during a visit to Washington in the 1990s but thought the material wasn’t in his wheelhouse. Two decades later, a more intimate tour of the cemetery spurred him to take on the challenge of writing about one of the most well-known, well-loved and mythologized of American presidents. “I just stood there (in front of the mausoleum) for a couple of minutes and something said to me, ‘If you can’t write this, and you don’t try it, then you have to stop saying you’re a writer.’ It’s such a beautiful, profound story, and if your excuse is, ‘I don’t have the depth to do it,’ just quit.”

It was hardly an easy process; he was bedeviled by self-doubts about taking on such a different, emotionally laden project: “Every day, it was, ‘Is it cheesy yet?’ ”

George Saunders on stage during the National Book Festival. Photo: Shawn Miller.

Polished on stage, comfortable in jeans, shirt, loose tie and a blue sport coat, Saunders was eloquent on the importance of writing and reading fiction. It can be both a balm and a gentle nudge toward acceptance and love during difficult times, he said, as we live in a world that is often beyond our intellectual and emotional grasp.

“I feel like we went off base a bit when we started treating literary fiction as a kind of an interesting side gig, you know, something that some English nerds do,” he said. And, a moment later: “Fiction does something just to remind us in the tiniest way that the real big truths of the world evade us mostly, except maybe in moments of love, tragedy, crisis,” he said. “Fiction can be a way of, sort of, in the safety of our own home, re-creating such moments, so that we remember that we have a greater ability to empathize with other people, even our enemies, than we thought we did.”

The Library’s Prize for American Fiction, begun under a slightly different name in 2008, seeks to recognize writers whose works convey something essential about the American experience with a unique style and heft. Previous winners include Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Louise Erdrich, Isabel Allende, Don DeLillo and E.L. Doctorow. Last year’s winner was Jesmyn Ward.

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