Library of Congress's Blog, page 44

“Transforming the World” — The Magic of Making Books

Russell Maret. Photo: Annie Schlechter. 

This is a guest post by Russell Maret, a book artist, type designer and private-press printer working in New York City. It first appeared in the Library of Congress Magazine. 

Two of the earliest-known pieces of European printing made with moveable metal type are an indulgence — a promissory note granting its holder a shorter stay in purgatory in exchange for a small fee — and the Gutenberg Bible, widely considered one of the most beautiful books ever printed. (The Library’s copy is one of three perfect vellum copies known to exist.)

These two objects describe the outer limits of what we now call the book arts, an amorphous field populated by printers, papermakers, type designers, engravers and bookbinders; craftspeople who spend their lives reckoning with their materials, trying to find some middle ground between Gutenberg’s lofty heights and the more ephemeral objects of commerce.

Like any creative field, each branch of the book arts is characterized by a kind of alchemical awe, that out of these base materials of paper, lead and ink we can make something that is greater than the sum of its parts. To print is literally to transform a blank piece of paper into a messenger of ideas, and it is a permanent transformation.

That last bit is one of the trickier aspects of printing to navigate — its permanence. It is why we are so careful about committing thoughts to paper, and why opponents of ideas are so determined to prevent their being printed or distributed (The Tyndale Bible, “Ulysses,” etc). But even permanence is relative, in as much as the permanence of an idea is subject to the shifting interpretations of time (The earth is the center of the universe!). And books, as we all know, can be burned.

In my experience, the transformational power of print is not only technical, it is existential. In 1989, I inked up a printing press and pulled a proof for the first time. I was 18 years old, and in that instant I changed from a dreamy kid who had never worked with his hands into a determined apprentice. Printing was literally the first thing I ever wanted to do and now, over 30 years later, I am still determined to do it better.

Then, in 1996 I had a sudden vision for the design of a typeface, having never studied type design or calligraphy before. Since then type design and alphabetical form have become the primary focus of my work. The books that I make likewise feed from and into each other, changing the way I think of the work I made 10 years or 10 days ago. They map new pathways for me to pursue in my books and, in the process, they change my understanding of myself.

Making a book is not an easy task. It involves hard physical work, a high level of attentiveness and, ideally, a willingness to reevaluate and change. It is a pursuit that is simultaneously primed with the excitement of permanence and transformation while being undercut with the melancholic knowledge that one’s efforts might fall short of both.

I have made some books that have come close to communicating what I wanted to say. I have made others that I would prefer not to see distributed, and I have made a few books that I would not mind burning. But when I was making each of them, no one could have persuaded me that I was doing anything short of transforming the world.

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Herencia, the Library’s Spanish-Language Crowdsourcing Project, Has Banner First Year

One of the documents being transcribed in the Herencia project.

This is a guest post by Geraldine Davila Gonzalez.

The debut of the Library’s first Spanish-language crowdsourcing campaign seemed ill-fated at first. Just days before the launch of “Herencia: Centuries of Spanish Legal Documents” last spring, the Library closed due to COVID-19.

But the staff quickly pivoted to a virtual opening, holding an online transcribe-a-thon. Then they added other outreach initiatives, including a remote internship program. Now, a little more than a year after its launch, more than 800 volunteers have transcribed more than 3,000 pages.

“The pandemic disrupted our plans to host Herencia transcription and review events on-site,” said Robert Brammer, chief of the Law Library’s Office of External Relations. “As it turns out, we have been able to host more events virtually and invite people across the world to participate.”

Herencia is a collaboration between the Law Library; the Hispanic Reading Room; the African, Latin American and Western European Division; and the Library’s inaugural crowdsourcing transcription team, By the People. It focuses on a collection of Spanish legal documents in Spanish, Latin and Catalan dating from the 15th to the 19th centuries. By making the documents more searchable and accessible online, the campaign aims to open the legal, religious and personal histories of Spain and its colonies to greater discovery.

Herencia, which translates roughly to “heritage” or “inheritance,” operates the same way By the People  does and uses the same platform. Volunteers transcribe historical documents word-for-word or peer-review transcribed documents. Completed transcriptions are then put online, making them searchable by keyword.

The Law Library acquired the Spanish Legal Documents collection in 1941. Most of documents relate to disputes about inheritance and titles of nobility, taxes and privileges of the Catholic Church. Items of special interest include rare print and manuscript documents pertaining to the Spanish Inquisition, opinions of legal scholars of the Church, decisions rendered by the king’s court and other decrees by Spanish kings and government officials.

In the early 1980s, the Library got funding  to organize, index and microfilm the collection. Digitization began in 2017.

Herencia was selected for crowdsourcing because of its value as a collection and its appeal to historically minded volunteers. Still, the pool of potential volunteers is smaller than for big-picture By the People projects, even though volunteers don’t have to speak Spanish to participate.

To build participation, the Law Library introduced a remote Herencia internship in January. Interns are transcribing documents and reviewing transcriptions, helping to identify names, places and dates missing from existing descriptions and researching secondary sources that provide context about documents. They are also inviting  new volunteers.

Among this spring’s seven interns are a first-generation Mexican American undergraduate at Texas A&M International University who seeks to learn more about Spanish history and culture; a first-year student at Claremont McKenna College who wants to put her knowledge of Latin to use; a librarian born and raised in Lima, Peru; and a historian specializing in Latin America who is pursuing a master’s in library and information science.

“The Law Library is fortunate to be able to host such a talented group of multilingual interns who can perform original research and help us share Herencia with a broader audience,” said Jay Sweany, chief of the library’s Digital Resources Division.

To celebrate the first anniversary of Herencia, the Law Library hosted a review challenge in March in which volunteers peer-reviewed 159 transcriptions in four days. A similar project last July took 10 days to complete 140 transcription — showing that the nascent project had doubled its pace in less than a year.

The Library also hosted an online conversation with interns in a “lunch and learn” webinar series to mark the anniversary. The panel explored the interns’ experiences and favorite discoveries,

We’re delighted to say that Herencia is now accepting applications for summer internships.

“It’s hard to believe that this campaign started over a year ago and that we now have thousands of fully transcribed pages that will become part of the Library’s permanent collection,” Sweany said. “We are grateful for the work of our volunteers, our interns and our staff for making this possible.”

Now that the Law Library has a full year of experience with a crowdsourcing project, it’s time launch another. In honor of Law Day 2021, the Law Library and By the People will release “Historical Legal Reports” from the Law Library. Look for an announcement next week on In Custodia Legis, the Law Library’s blog!

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Not Gutenberg’s Book: Wild Innovations in Handcrafted and Art Books

“Random Thoughts on Hope,” Laura Davidson. The wheel creates a poem each time each wheel is spun. Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

This is a guest post by Mark Dimunation, chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. It appeared in slightly different form in the Library of Congress Magazine.

When William Morris produced his Kelmscott Chaucer in 1896, he did more than create a monument to his notion of the handcrafted book — he launched the revival of letterpress printing in England and America. More than a century later, that impulse has emerged as its own art form.

Books printed on the handpress using hand-set type, fine paper, woodcut and engraved illustrations and hand-sewn bindings have been the mainstay of the fine press movement. Over the years, they have transformed from their origins as an elegant and restrained homage to quality and the craft to wildly innovative and expressive print objects that celebrate the blending of text, type and image into a singular artistic vision.

Because this movement in many ways continues the story first told by Gutenberg and the introduction of the printed book, the Rare Book and Special Collections Division collects exemplars of the fine press movement. The foundation of the Library’s holdings of book arts is built on the narrative thread of the story of letterpress printing. With 500 years of the history of the printed book preceding the Fine Press Collection, it is, in effect, the extension of the rare book collection into the contemporary realm of the fine press book.

“Four Gospels,”  Eric Gill. Golden Cockerel Press, 1931. Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

An extremely strong book arts collection has been built over the years — one that is highly representative of the field and, in many cases, comprehensive. Thousands of titles plot the chronology of the modern letterpress tradition, beginning with a comprehensive collection of the Kelmscott Press, then moving through the decades of presswork from the early English movement to the American fine presses, from the California printers to the present.

Many printers and printmakers are represented by complete and comprehensive holdings, such as those by artist Leonard Baskin and his Gehenna Press, printmaker and printer Claire Van Vliet and her Janus Press, Steve Clay’s Granary Books, the publications produced by the Women’s Studio Workshop, and many others representing the work of printers such as Ken Campbell, Peter Rutledge Koch, Carolee Campbell and Julie Chen.

But the division also holds in other collections large gatherings of materials that sit at the fringe of our consideration — shaped books, graphic novels, pop-up books, miniatures. All in all, the Library has a vast collection of the modern fine press tradition and one of the earliest established efforts in collecting artists’ books.

The books tell the story of how contemporary book arts have transformed over time. Leaving behind the elaborately designed pages of the arts and crafts movement, letterpress printers in America and England turned their attention to the simply crafted, beautifully printed book. New movements brought with them a new visualization of the page — new type, new layout design, new materials, new visions of traditional texts. Those that were to follow closely after Morris brought their own viewpoints forward. In its English Bible (1905), the Doves Press countered with a spare, unmanipulated space with a straightforward typographic sensibility.

In the decades that followed, the Grabhorn Press, the Ward Ritchie Press, John Henry Nash, William Everson and Adrian Wilson at the Press at Tuscany Alley, all experimented with the printed page and the relationship between words and illustrations. English book illustrator and typographer Eric Gill, for example, was uniquely innovative in combining typography and the figurative arts. For the “Four Gospels,” Gill designed both the typeface and the wood-engraved initials.

Beginning in the 1960s, book artists reconsidered the entire notion of the book. Artists’ books arrived on the scene, breaking all boundaries in terms of format, content and production. They issued the challenge, demanding to be placed in juxtaposition with more traditional book arts and redefining the notion of the book as a material object. Some arrived at wholly new ideas of a book. Koch created a book with lead pages, Chen produced books that could be manipulated and reshaped and Laura Davidson made unique book objects that paired her exquisite handwork with the book format. In “Random Thoughts on Hope” (2003), Davidson offers a poem that changes randomly as wheels of words are spun to fashion another line of poetry.

These collections are bolstered by archival collections in the book arts that provide significant opportunities for research. The division holds the archives of two of the greatest American book designers of the first half of the 20th century: Frederic Goudy and Bruce Rogers. Goudy commands a special place in American book arts. In addition to his work as a printer, book designer and writer, he was the first American to make the designing of type a separate profession. Rogers, a typographer and type designer, is known for his classical style, his own design of the Centaur typeface and the production of the Oxford Lectern Bible.

Recent additions include the papers of the artist cooperative Booklyn, the archives and publications of innovative printer and designer Walter Hamady and his Perishable Press, and the papers and a comprehensive collection of the work of typographer and printer Russell Maret, whose recent work has redefined the relationship between the letterform and the illustration.

“Interstices & Intersections or, An Autodidact Comprehends a Cube.Thirteen Euclidean Propositions.” Russell Maret, 2014. Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

Finally, printmaking is documented directly in the division’s Artists’ Books Collection, which includes examples of illustrations from the traditional livre d’artiste to the dynamic experiments of futurism. Today, this collection is the repository for hundreds of contemporary artists’ books, highlighting collaborative ventures between artist, printer and binder that characterize the postmodern book.

Artists’ books challenge the notion of a book. New materials, new processes, new formats and new approaches to content are highlighted in these contemporary efforts, and they make up an important part of the story of the book told at the Library.

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Library Preservation: Making Models of Ancient Books

A book model under construction. Photo: Shawn Miller.

This article first appeared in the Library of Congress Magazine.

Inside every historical book is a hidden story, one that reveals how the object itself was made.

Conservators at the Library study the construction of ancient volumes in order to learn more about their inner structure and how to better preserve them for future generations.

One way they do so is by building models that let them “see inside” a book’s covers to its invisible or hidden structural components — the board attachments, endbands, fastenings and sewing that hold a book together and allow it to withstand centuries of use.

Detail of a book model. Photo: Shawn Miller.

Books from different regions and eras have unique methods of construction and are built from place-specific materials: A book made in England in the 1400s was not made in the same way as one crafted in Armenia even during the same time period.  The textblock and endbands were sewn in distinctive and completely different ways, as well as the board attachment and the decoration.

The models help conservators identify construction methods and materials specific to regions and to identify damage that has been caused over time by use, such as how the boards have become loose or detached, or the sewing or sewing supports have weakened or broken. Then, armed with a better understanding, conservators can chart the best course for treatment.

Tamara Ohanyan of the Library’s Conservation Division has built models of works both from Library collections and those of other institutions: Armenian, Byzantine, European, Persian and Ethiopian bindings as well as bindings of the Nag Hammadi library, a cache of leather-bound, Gnostic Christian texts from the fourth-century that were discovered buried in a sealed jar in Egypt in 1945. You can watch her creating a traditional Armenian endband, step by step, as part of her work. It’s a master class in the art of book preservation.

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New! Joy Harjo’s “Living Nations”

Joy Harjo. Photo: Shawn Miller.

Delighted to write this piece with Brett Zongker, chief of media relations.

When Joy Harjo became the 23rd U.S. Poet Laureate, she knew she wanted to take the country back to its beginnings, long before whites arrived from Europe.

Harjo, a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, wanted to document and amplify the voices of her fellow Native Americans who see the land through a different lens, different languages and a different sensibility.

“As the first Native Nations poet laureate, I was aware that indigenous peoples of our country are often invisible or are not seen as human,” Harjo writes in the  introduction to her new anthology of poems from Native poets. “You will rarely find us in the cultural storytelling of America, and we are nearly nonexistent in the American book of poetry.”

Her new book, “Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry” ($15, available at the Library’s bookshop) is edited by Harjo and closely tracks the work she’s undertaken as poet laureate to bring Native poets into mainstream recognition. It’s published by the Library in association with W.W. Norton & Company.

Her signature project at the Library has been to create a  digital map of “First People’s Poetry.”  It gathers the work of 47 contemporary Native poets into a multi-media telling of their lives and work, ranging from New York to the Hawaiian islands. The project also includes a new online audio collection developed by Harjo and housed in the Library’s American Folklife Center, which features poets reading and discussing their work.

The new anthology is a companion volume to that project, featuring poets including Natalie Diaz, Ray Young Bear, Craig Santos Perez, Sherwin Bitsui and Layli Long Soldier. The poems, chosen by the poets themselves, reflect on the themes of place and displacement with focal points of visibility, persistence, resistance and acknowledgment. It moves from east to west, from the “Becoming” of the morning sun, to the “North-South” of the central heartlands, and finishes in the West, or “Departure.”

In “Daybreak,” the first poem, Jake Skeets, a Navajo poet and winner of a 2020 Whiting Award, mixes the ancient past with the clanging modern present, writing, in part:

above a passing plane or marsh hawk or maybe a crow

casts its wing on the sweet yellow clover and field weed

on the rubble of rust tin can and car axle and wheel barrow

a basketball backboard crafted from sheet metal and

piping

The poems in the following 222 pages showcase “that heritage is a living thing, and there can be no heritage without land and the relationships that outline our kinship,” Harjo writes.

Championing this kind of work has shaped Harjo’s lifelong trajectory. Born (and still based) in Tulsa, Oklahoma — the place where the Trail of Tears ended — she earned her undergraduate degree at the University of New Mexico and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Her subsequent career has centered around poetry, music (she’s a saxophonist), teaching and social justice issues She’s the author of nine poetry collections, most recently “An American Sunrise.” Her memoir, “Crazy Brave,” won the PEN USA Literary Award for Creative Nonfiction. She’s won the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

First named as U.S. Poet Laureate  in 2019, she was recently appointed to a third term — only the second poet to do so since the position was established in 1943.

And, while her focus is often on the past, her point is always about the present.

“The mapmaking represented by this anthology comes at a crucial time in history,” Harjo writes, near the end of her introductory essay, “a time in which the failures to acknowledge, listen to, and consider everyone when making the map of American memory has brought us to a reckoning.”

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Jim Lee and DC Comics: A Heroic Conversation for Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month

 

DC Chief Creative Officer and Publisher Jim Lee joins illustrator Bernard Chang and writers Sarah Kuhn and Minh Lê for a conversation moderated by Gene Luen Yang, former National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.

This is a guest post by Deziree Arnaiz, a program specialist in Literary Initiatives. It first appeared on the From the Catbird’s Seat blog.

“In my real life, I did not think I was a main character for a very long time because I just never saw that—I never saw Asian Americans centered in the kinds of stories I enjoyed, or a lot of times as creators,” says writer Sarah Kuhn. “Jim Lee was one of the few Asian American creators that I was like, wow, that’s someone doing that who is like me.”

In honor of Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month, DC Chief Creative Officer and Publisher Jim Lee is featured in a moderated interview celebrating his life and work that takes us behind the scenes of creating and publishing comics. He will be in conversation with illustrator Bernard Chang (“Generations Forged”) and writers Sarah Kuhn (“Shadow of the Batgirl”) and Minh Lê (“Green Lantern: Legacy”). Former National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Gene Luen Yang (“Superman Smashes the Klan”) will moderate the discussion. All of the panelists participated in the creation of DC’s first-ever anthology of Asian American superheroes, “DC Festival of Heroes.”

The event premieres tonight at 7 p.m. EST on the Library’s Facebook page and its YouTube site (with captions). The event will be available for viewing afterward on the Library’s website. During the video premiere on Facebook, all the panelists (save Lee)  will be available in the chat to  answer questions.

Their inspiring conversation explores Lee’s childhood and entry into the comics industry, as well as topics including fandom, artistic curiosity, how being an outsider can hone your observation skills, the importance of taking risks to pursue your passion and how meaningful storytelling can be.

When  Lê asks Lee about his unique role as caretaker of a multiverse, Lee responds, “There’s that heavy responsibility … that you’re curating, or sort of safeguarding, these characters that have been around for 80 plus years at this point, right? They are beloved. They are fixtures of pop culture. They are iconic. They are all over the world.” He continues, “But at the same time, we recognize that over the years we’ve had to change them and update their mythology to keep them fresh and contemporary … How do we do that? What do we update? How do we update? I think that’s the balance we have to find.”

In his quest to update characters and create contemporary stories,  Lee has pursued diversity among characters and creators. “I think we owe it to our fans to continue to diversify, and make sure that our universe really reflects the diversity that we see in our readership all around the world,” Lee says. “And that doesn’t mean just sort of coming up with characters from this country and kind of checking the box. I think it’s deeper than that. It’s about finding … authentic voices from the countries themselves … It’s about diversifying our creative community as well.”

This event is a “Great American Publishers” segment of the “Behind the Book” series. These interviews focus on leading gatekeepers in publishing who bring great works to fruition—from the germ of an idea to the production of a physical book. Lee is one of the heroes of the publishing world who champion talent, create an overall vision for a house, and bring us the kind of publications critics will laud and readers will relish for decades, even centuries, to come. “Behind the Book: Great American Publishers” celebrates the crucial role publishers play and takes you inside America’s legendary publishing houses as top professionals discuss their careers with their most successful authors.

We hope you’ll tune in on Thursday for this very special program.

George Willeman, at Home with (Old, Highly Flammable) Movies

George Willeman in the film vaults Photo: Shawn Miller.

It’s Public Service Recognition Week, so we caught up with George Willeman, leader of the nitrate film vaults at the Packard Campus of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia. Willeman, a 37-year veteran of the Library’s film preservation team, has played a key role in finding, preserving and restoring some of nation’s classic early films. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

So what are you doing right now, as we speak?

Scanning some of Jerry Lewis’ Christmas cards from one his scrapbooks.

Wait, are you serious?

Absolutely. We have Lewis’ archives and he kept everything. Here’s a Christmas card from Alan Ladd. Here’s one with a crest on the front from “Lady Janet and Sir Anthony.” That’s Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, from when they were married. They were big friends with Lewis and they lived very close by. Lots of home movies with them, too.

Are Lewis’ home movies as family friendly as his in-theater movies?

A gentleman never tells.

Fair enough. What does a “nitrate film vault leader” do on a daily basis?

My official job, as it’s written down, is to manage the nitrate vaults at the Packard Campus and take care of our collections. Films were made with cellulous nitrate up through the 1950s. It’s highly flammable, so we all have to be trained to handle hazardous material. That adds another level of stress — you have to do it right, or there could be an accident or we could be heavily fined.

And here I thought you guys just watched old movies all day.

Well, it can be pretty exciting. My training in college was filmmaking. Sometimes we complete or reconstruct old films, parts of which are damaged or missing. “Ramona” is a 1928 silent film with Doloros del Rio, but the only known remaining copies, for whatever reason, had foreign title cards, in German or Czech. We had to put new ones into English. The problem was that the direct translations didn’t work. But over in the Copyright collections – in another part of the Library, on the Capitol Hill campus — we found an old contest that had almost all of the original title cards in English. We also went to the original novel and matched a section in that to the scene in the movie and recreated the title card that way. That reconstructed version is now on a streaming service and you can see it there anytime you like.

Willeman inspects the film reel for the 1910 “Frankenstein” short film made by Edison Studios at his office. Photo: Shawn Miller.

Does the LOC have a financial stake in that?

No, because we can’t make money on these things as a government agency. But we get a screen credit and it’s nice for the Library.

Which leads me to: How does the work you do pay off for the country’s taxpayers?

Film is one of our great tools for education, entertainment and enlightenment. Our collection dates back to pretty much Day One of film — we have material from the early 1890s —  so while we do have some of the popular stuff, the things I’m really excited about are these little films of people farming and going to work and factories and ships and immigrants getting off the boats at Ellis Island. Without those, we have nothing to tell the story of how things looked and moved at the turn of the 20th century. One of my favorite sayings is George Santayana’s, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” So I kind of see as my job is to help prevent that, to make sure that people know who we were, what we looked like, how we dressed, how we walked, how we ate, that kind of thing. A lot of that work is going up on the Internet where it’s available to anyone, anywhere.

You’ve had a number of “wow” moments in your career. One that stands out?

 Once, when I just a vault collection attendant in college, I was going through a collection of cans of nitrate films from the Thomas Edison Laboratories in New Jersey. Several of the cans said, “Great Train Robbery.” Well, “The Great Train Robbery” is a very important film and a lot of people will tell you it is the beginning of the film business. The cans listed what I was looking at as a “dupe negative.” At that point in my career, I didn’t know a lot about how film elements worked, but it didn’t look like a duplicate to me. So I called up our lab and they sent down an expert named James Cozart. We each looked at the film again and then at each other – this wasn’t a duplicate, it was the original camera negative of the film from 1903. To this day, I still take tour groups down the hall to show them that reel. It’s always fun to see the reaction. The neat thing is that it’s still usable. It hasn’t deteriorated, it’s just gotten old.

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Librarian Carla Hayden: Public Service Recognition Week

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The first full week of May is Public Service Recognition Week, which is designated by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to honor the folks who work in the business of federal, state, county and local governments.

This includes your friendly neighborhood library employees as well as those at your favorite national Library. More than 3,200 people work at the Library of Congress, the largest library in world history, which contains more than 171.6 million items and counting. Library facilities include the main Library buildings, the U.S. Copyright Office and the Congressional Research Service on the Capitol Hill campus; the Packard National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia; six satellite offices around the world; and several state-of-the-art storage facilities.

Our staff includes world-class experts and scholars in a vast number of fields  — U.S. and world history, literature, book-binding, films, folklore, maps, manuscripts, printing, photography, maps — and the art and science of keeping all of those available to the public while also preserving them for centuries to come. Sure, we have great librarians, but also chemists, film preservationists, and, in the case of the papers of Alexander Hamilton, scientists who used hyperspectral imaging to uncover long-hidden lines of text.

As Carla Hayden, the Librarian, points out in the video above, the Library is one of the primary keepers of the American narrative, a storehouse, conservatory, library and museum of American and world history. Though our doors have been closed to the public and most employees during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Library staff never missed a day, as the staff shifted to telework almost overnight.

That’s important, because our work never stops. More than 802,000 people asked reference librarians questions in fiscal 2020, from members of Congress to researchers to students. (Just use our Ask a Librarian service!) Technicians took in, stored and processed thousands of items that come into the Library daily. The Copyright Office kept up with copyright registrations (more than 400,00 per year), a cornerstone of intellectual property rights. Conservationists and preservations, working in everything from manuscripts to maps, from films to recordings, found new ways to work safely.

The staff from multiple departments that put together the National Book Festival, one of our favorite events, transitioned to hosting the festival online last fall. We’re also actively documenting and curating COVID-19’s impact on the nation. Our crowdsourcing project for transcribing historical papers, By the People, never missed a step.

We’ll be featuring just a few of the people in the month to come. We love seeing you all online, but are also looking forward to seeing many of you in person again, once it’s safe to do so. The Library just isn’t the same without you.

The Library’s Main Reading Room. Photo: Shawn Miller

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Jason Reynolds: Grab the Mic Newsletter, May Edition

This is a guest post by Jason Reynolds, the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. His most recent piece ran in April.

A question I get all the time—like, all the time—is, “Jason, are you ever worried people won’t like your books?”

And before I tell you my reply, I first want to tell you a story.

The day before my first novel, “When I Was The Greatest,” was to be released, I went to lunch at a restaurant across from my house. I was a ball of nerves, so much so that I couldn’t even eat what I’d ordered. The owner of the restaurant, Craig, came from the kitchen to where I was sitting.

“J, what’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

“That ain’t what your face is saying. Your face is saying something’s definitely going on,” he said.

So I told him the truth, that I was nervous. Actually, nervous is an understatement. I was freaking out.

“What if people read my book and … hate it?” I took a sip of water, but could barely swallow it. The mere thought of failure, or even criticism, had seemed to close my throat.

Craig took a seat, folded his hands on the table.

“Let me tell you something,” he said. “If someone were to come to me, someone special, and ask me to make them a perfect meal, do you know what I’d do?”

I shook my head.

“I’d go to the butcher and have him cut me a perfect steak, something with the right amount of marble. Something tender. Then I would go to the best garden I could find and get the perfect vegetables to go with that steak, maybe carrots, maybe asparagus, some mushrooms and onions. Then I’d come back to the restaurant and I’d marinate the steak for a few days to make sure all the flavors soak into the meat. Then I’d roast the veggies so that they’d have a slight char and all the natural flavors are activated. Then I’d cook the steak to the perfect temperature, and maybe to round out the meal I’d add a baked potato.” He paused here. “You still with me?”

“I’m with you,” I said, wondering where all this was going.

“Okay, so after I got everything cooked perfectly, I’d plate it all … perfectly. Make it real pretty. And I’d the set the table perfectly, too. Even add a candle and a tablecloth. Sparkling water. Wine. Everything … perfect. And if my customer — my special customer — cut into that perfect steak, took a bite and didn’t like it, well … I would assume that’s just because he was in the mood for fish.” Craig smirked. “But not because I didn’t cook a perfect steak.”

“But how would you even know the steak is perfect?” I asked.

“If the steak is what you intended it to be, it’s a perfect steak.” Craig pushed back from the table, got up and returned to the kitchen of his restaurant without saying another word.

What he was trying to explain to me is that when it comes to people not liking the thing you’ve made, or maybe even the person you are, it doesn’t always have to do with you, and really it often has to do with what they wanted. What their expectations were. And we have no control over that. If I’m a good artist, but my father wanted me to be a good athlete, but I’m not, that doesn’t mean my art is bad. It just means my father preferred points over painting.

So don’t worry about criticism. It usually has nothing to do with you.

Okay, so back to the beginning. What do I say when people ask me, “Jason, are you ever worried people won’t like your books?”

Well, my response is always, “Of course. Terrified!”

Hey, I didn’t say I’ve mastered it all. And the truth is, maybe that’s because it’s hard not to care what young people think about me because I care so much about you. Or maybe I’m still trying to make the perfect steak.

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The Path to Nirvana, from an 18th Century Buddhist Carving

The top of the 31 levels of existence, as seen on the cosmography.  Photo: John Hessler. Geography and Map Division.

This is a guest post by John Hessler, a specialist in the Library’s Geography and Map Division, focusing on computational geography and geographic information science. He’s also the Library’s curator of the Jay I. Kislak Collection.

Recently, the Library’s Geography and Map Division acquired a rare 18th-century carving of a Theravãda Buddhist cosmography that originated in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma).

The panel, which is more than 9 feet high when its three parts are fully assembled, shows the many levels that are the temporary resting places for living beings as they make their way to the ultimate goal of nirvana. The carving shows the levels that spiritual entities — humans, animals or gods –  transmigrate. It pictures these way stations as floating palaces. It gives their names, the geography of the cosmos and the life of beings who temporarily reside in each of them.

The teachings of the Guatama Buddha, from which the engravings on the panel ultimately derive, are found in a series of writings that are known as the Pali Canon. These are the earliest written records of Buddhist scriptures, which had previously been handed down in the oral tradition. This large body of texts, written in the ancient Indian language of Pali, is divided into discourses of various lengths. It treats the metaphysics, psychology and cosmology of the Buddhist path toward enlightenment through meditation.

“In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true,” is one of the Buddha’s metaphysical sayings.

The information found on the engraving in the Library’s collections does not derive from a single source, but from a variety of texts in what is called the “Sutta Pitaka,” or Basket Discourse.  Most of the information inscribed on the panel can be traced to the “Majjhima Nikaya, Anguttara Nikaya, Samyutta Nikaya,” which are  the middle length, numerical, and connected discourses of the Buddha, respectively.

I recently translated the panel. It describes, both graphically, as temples, and in writing, the 31 levels of existence. It starts at the top of the panel with “neither-perception-nor-non-perception.”

This is the realm of beings that are formless and without physical or material structure and who have no perception. The engraving continues down through the various levels of “Arupaloka” (world of non-form), through “Rupaloka” (world of form) into “Kãmaloka” (world of desire) finally reaching “Manussa” (the level of human beings). Below that we find the levels occupied by animals and the fiery hells that are undesirable places for rebirth and reincarnation.

In the center of the panel are carvings of temples signifying each of the levels rising from the base of Mount Meru, or the sacred mountain.

Palace at the base of Mount Meru. Photo: John Hessler. Geography and Map Division. 

Here, the engraving turns cartographic. 

The myth of Mount Meru is common to almost all ancient Indian religions and is part of the foundations of Hindu, Jain and Buddhist cosmology. According to all three, it is located in the center of the universe. In Hinduism, it is the realm of the gods.

In this section of the panel, we see the various mountain ranges that surround Mount Meru. These seven “golden” ranges are known as the “Sattaparibhanda.” They are separated by vast oceans.

Moving out from the center of the panel in both directions, they extend great heights and distances:

Yugandhara                    40,000 yojana high and thick

Isadhara                          20,000 yojana high and thick

Karavika                           10,000 yojana high and thick

Sudassana                       5000 yojana high and thick

Nemindhara               2500 yojana high and thick

Vinataka                          1250 yojana high and thick

Asskanna                         625 yojana high and thick

“Yojana” is an ancient Indian scale of measurement. It equals the distance that a cow yoked to a cart can walk in one day, although no one knows how far that actually is. The scale of these distances is not terrestrial, but cosmic. The distance from the center of Mount Meru (itself being 80,000 yojana wide) to the edge of the map is approximately 795,300 miles.

The four continents of Buddhist geography that includes earth, the “Jumbudvipa,” is in a great ocean that lies far off the map. 

Theravãda Buddhism is the oldest and the only surviving form that derives directly from the ancient Hinayaba School. The word Theravãda, in both Pali and in Sanskrit, means “the School of the Elders.” It was established in Sri Lanka in the third century BCE by the Indian Emperor Asoka. Asoka’s edicts survive as some of the oldest written inscriptions relating to Buddhism, carved on boulders, pillars and cave walls, written in the ancient Brahmi script, according to Richard Salomon’s book “Indian Epigraphy.”

Although this may not seem to be a “map” in the classical Western sense, the Geography and Map Division strives to collect a wide range of cartography, cosmography and the mapmaking arts from around the world. This panel, and many others like it from cultures around the world, constantly remind us how difficult it is to actually answer the question: What is a map?

The lower realms representing the existence of animals. Photo: John Hessler. Geography and Map Division.

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