Library of Congress's Blog, page 72

Hooray for Joy! The Library Has a New Poet Laureate

This post was first published on “From the Catbird Seat,” the blog of the Library’s Poetry and Literature Center. Rob Casper, head of the center, wrote it.

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Joy Harjo. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Today is one of the biggest days of the year for the Poetry and Literature Center — it’s the day of the poet laureate announcement. I want to say how honored and excited we are at the center — and throughout the Library of Congress — that Joy Harjo will be our 23rd poet laureate consultant in poetry.

Today’s announcement has been more than six months in the making, and it involved:

Soliciting and receiving laureate nominations from over 90 different nominators in 27 states, including past poets laureate; scholars and critics; directors of centers, conferences, festivals and residencies; and bookstore owners and editors, among others.
Working with an internal library committee to create a recommendation memo to Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden — and meeting with the Librarian and senior staff, during which Dr. Hayden decided on her appointment choice.
Organizing a two-day poet laureate orientation at the Library that included a lunch with the Librarian and senior staff as well as background conversations and strategy sessions with various administrative offices, visits to reading rooms, sneak peeks at our collections and meetings with outside organizations to discuss partnership ideas.

The end result couldn’t be better — Joy seems the perfect poet to take on the role right now. She’s recently received major honors from the Academy of American Poets, the Poetry Foundation and Poets & Writers. And with both a new poetry collection and a new anthology forthcoming, she’ll be out on the road promoting poetry in a big way.

I’ve known of Joy’s work since I was in college and saw a copy of “In Mad Love and War” on a friend’s bookshelf, and I’ve followed her ever since. Later, I had the chance to hear her read (and sing!) her poems for an event I organized at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference in Denver, to interview her about her memoir “Crazy Brave” for the Library’s National Book Festival and even once to celebrate her birthday with a trip out to my favorite Thai restaurant in Queens! But nothing compares to this experience.

Below is a short video interview I did with Joy up in the Poetry Room — otherwise known as the office of the laureate — during her laureate orientation. I hope you enjoy, and if you’re in D.C. on September 19, I hope you will come celebrate Joy’s laureateship with us at her big opening reading.

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Inquiring Minds: Ryan Semmes

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Ryan Semmes with the main attraction at the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library at Mississippi State University.

Ryan P. Semmes is Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Congressional and Political Research Center at the Mississippi State University Libraries. He has been on the faculty since 2007 and has worked as archivist with the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library at MSU since 2009. He is also a doctoral candidate in history at MSU, where he is completing his dissertation on the connections between foreign and domestic policy and the nature of citizenship during the Reconstruction era.

You were in the Library’s Manuscript Division recently. What were you looking up?

The Library’s 19th century holdings are phenomenal. I was looking at the journals of Benjamin Moran, who worked in the U.S. Legation in London from 1853 to 1874 and kept a daily journal.  He unleashes a furious wit on his pages, tearing down the pompous and arrogant people with whom he worked and interacted.  They are a wonderful resource and a delightful read. 

How did you get started with Grant as the focus of your research?

When Grant’s papers moved to MSU in 2009, I was tasked with dealing with thousands of linear feet of documents that had accumulated over the years.  One collection was a set of diaries written by Orville E. Babcock, former aide-de-camp to General Grant and his private secretary in the White House. Two of the diaries focused on Babcock’s mission to the Dominican Republic to assess whether or not the United States should annex it as a territory. I realized that I knew nothing about foreign policy during the Reconstruction era and I began to transcribe the diaries and research everything I could on Grant’s presidency.

I’m sure you get this all the time, but: How did a university in the heart of the former Confederacy wind up with the papers of the Union General who crushed the Confederacy?

All. The. Time. The collection is a result of over 50 years of editing work conducted by the late John Y. Simon and his team of historians and editors at Southern Illinois University.  Dr. Simon also worked for the Ulysses S. Grant Association.  Upon the death of Dr. Simon in 2008, and due to disagreements between the USGA and SIU, the decision was made to move the collection to a new university.  The USGA chose Dr. John F. Marszalek as its new Managing Editor/Executive Director. Since Marszalek was at MSU, and MSU was willing to provide space, faculty, staff and financial support for the project, the USGA moved the collection to Starkville.

In the Grant Library, what are your favorite things to show people?

My favorite item is a letter written by Grant in the Spring of 1885, as he is dying from mouth and throat cancer (DO NOT SMOKE CIGARS!!) and writing his famous memoirs.  He has a three-year-old grandson, U.S. Grant III, and Grant wants to make sure that the boy is appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point, just as he and his oldest son, Fred, had been. Grant addresses the letter to “The President of the United States” not knowing who that would be. Two years after Grant’s death in 1887, the letter is endorsed by General William T. Sherman. In 1898, the letter is endorsed by then-president William McKinley, authorizing the appointment for the now 16-year-old USG III.  It’s a great artifact featuring the signatures of two Presidents, a general, and the foresight of Grant to use his political clout to obtain a spot for his grandson (who went on to become a general in the U.S. Army himself). 

The Civil War is always one of the top focuses of interest for Library users, if not in American history in general. Why does it continue to have such a hold on the American imagination?

We are very much still grappling with the legacy of the Civil War. The “unfinished revolution” of Reconstruction, as Eric Foner calls it, has shaped American politics, culture, and society throughout the 20th and 21rst century.  Social justice movements of our own time, such as Black Lives Matter or the fight for fair treatment of immigrants, have their birth in the questions of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Who gets to participate in the American experiment? What constitutes a citizen? These questions  are still being asked today. Conversely, the bigotry and hate that led to the Civil War and the end of Reconstruction is based on a false narrative known as the Lost Cause. The Lost Cause refers to the idea perpetuated by Southerners that Confederates were fighting for states’ rights and that slavery was a benign institution that was actually beneficial to African Americans. The children of Civil War veterans taught this narrative to their children, who taught it to their children, who are many of our parents’ generation.  The shame of the legacy of slavery is one that many Americans are afraid to recognize, so they cling to tales of daring on the battlefield and high-minded notions of honor — neglecting or ignoring the horrible racism that led to secession. But the Civil War was about slavery, our ancestors in the South knew it, accepted it, and fought to perpetuate it. This great conflict is then memorialized in film, books, and music, which continue today.

Ron Chernow, the Pulitzer-Prize winning historian (and Grant biographer), was the keynote speaker at the opening of the Grant Library. At the end of his talk, he rapped the opening number from the Broadway musical “Hamilton,” which was based on his book. Should he keep the day job? 

My wife and I were seated at a table near the front and it was fun to watch Ron read through Lin Manuel-Miranda’s lyrics. Lin has used the works of writers such as Chernow and historians like Joanne Freeman to great affect, so for that we owe them all a debt of gratitude. But I think Ron should stick to writing books and only rap under hip hop supervision.

Pic of the Week: Ancient China Edition

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Photo: Shawn Miller.

This Friday, we bring you a dazzling, 550-year-old pop of color: A scene from a 15th-century Chinese publication, “The Life and Activities of Shakyamuni Buddha Incarnate.”  Those blues! Those reds! That white tiger! The Library recently made these and other works available online by launching the Chinese Rare Book Digital Collection. The book is notable, among other reasons, for having been published under the Ming Emperor Chenghua, who reigned from 1465 to 1487.

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New! The Library’s Cataloging Page for Publishers

It’s in (almost) every book you read, but you’ve probably paid little attention to it. The Library’s Cataloging in Publication (CIP) information — that copy-block on the reverse side of the book’s title page spelling out the author, title, subject, its International Standard Book Number, and other information — is an essential beginning to a book’s publication.

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The new-look Book Link page.

The Cataloging information provided by the Library allows publishers to get the book’s information relayed to libraries and booksellers months in advance of publication — ask any author how important that is — and keeps the publication process rolling. (It’s different from copyrights, although the Library does that, too.)

And now, for the first time in 16 years, the Library is rolling out an all-new CIP database. It’s called PrePub Book Link (PPBL), and it overhauls the sturdy-but-outdated 2003 system. Book buyers won’t notice any changes, but publishers and Library staff certainly will. The overhaul took more than one and a half years, involves more than 3,000 major scholarly and trade publishers and more than 50,000 books each year. The Library’s system for smaller publishing houses, the Preassigned Control Number Program, will be merged into PPBL, too.

“It’s a very significant milestone,” says Karl Debus-López, chief of the U.S. Programs, Law, and Literature Division, which oversees the program. “It’s a success story of collaborative work.”

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The PPBL’s leadership team: (l-r) Bob Shirley, Amy Swanson, Caroline Saccucci, Camilla Williams, Cat Eiche,  Karl Debus-López, Connie Pierce. Photo: Shawn Miller.

The CIP program has been around since 1971. It began as a way for the Library to find out about forthcoming publications to catalog and add to its collections.  The records created for those titles were sent to libraries nationwide.  Those libraries then knew about new titles to add to their collections and had records to use for their catalogs.  The publishers also benefitted in that the program helped to promote, market, and sell upcoming titles.  The program quickly became an industry standard.

In the beginning, it was all done manually, by mail, and was, let us say, very analog.

“Publishers would mail us a galley, or maybe the entire book, with a CIP application and it would literally be hand-carried from place to place,” says Caroline Saccucci, the Library’s CIP and Dewey program manager.

In 2003, the Library established an internal database that allowed publishers to take care of the process online, with electronic galleys attached. The system was clunky but reliable and, in the digital age, held on for 16 years.

Overhauling that system was complicated, as it had dozens of moving parts. More than 200 Library employees catalog CIP books. Thirty-one partner institutions – mostly academic institutions with university presses — also use the system to catalog their titles. Publishing houses, independent authors and small presses use it every day. At any one time, 4,000 or more books are in the pipeline.

Creating the new program took the efforts of more than 30 staffers, plus contractors, working across four departments. The new system is faster, allows publishers to log-in by multiple accounts and attach a PDF file for the book, and provides auto-filled data boxes to streamline the process.

“Everyone involved with the design, development, testing, and training of staff should be very proud,” Debus-López said.

So, the next time you look inside a book? You’ll feel smarter for knowing how complicated just one part of it is to pull together.

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Her Vote at 100: Three Exhibits

This story is cross-posted on the blogs of the Library of Congress , National Archives , and Smithsonian’s American Women’s History Initiative .

When it came to advocating for women’s right to vote, creative communications tactics changed minds. Women demanded the vote by staging costumed tableaux at protest marches, organizing church committees, holding up handmade signs in front of the White House, getting arrested, publishing their own newspapers, and even walking 230 miles from New York City to Washington, D.C.

If social media had been available, these women would likely have leveraged it to organize and draw attention to the cause of woman suffrage. (A recent tweet from the National Archives tells us that “suffrage” comes from the Latin word “suffragium,” meaning the privilege to vote.)

But while women couldn’t tweet or post on Instagram at the turn of the 20th century, we can! As we approach the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment — a critical milestone in women’s battle for the vote — we invite you to learn about this history through social media.

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Before the March 3, 1913, woman suffrage march in Washington, D.C., suffragists debated whether African American participants should walk in a segregated section. Suffrage leader Ida B. Wells joined the parade and marched alongside the all-white Illinois delegation. Sallie E. Garrity (ca. 1862–1907) Albumen silver print, ca. 1893. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Learn more in the “Votes for Women” Google Arts & Culture online exhibition.

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In 1917, suffragists were arrested for picketing the White House. This suffragist is being escorted into a car to be taken to the police station. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/533776

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A diverse group of suffragists in 1916 demonstrates against President Woodrow Wilson along a street in Chicago. Library of Congress, National Woman’s Party Records. See more photographs, letters, records and scrapbooks from suffragists in the new exhibition Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote at the Library of Congress.

June 4: Meet real suffrage documents on Instagram

On the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment’s passage by Congress, the National Archives held an Instameet and took everyone behind the scenes with Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote exhibition curator Corinne Porter. You can still join in by following the hashtag #RightfullyHers on Instagram. You’ll see the original 19th Amendment; a 1910 patent drawing for a gendered “voting machine”; a 1946 affidavit from Julia Denetclaw, a Navajo Indian woman who was refused permission to register to vote; anti-suffrage material; and more.

June 4: Discover women’s history stories from around the U.S. on Twitter

Explore objects, stories, and resources from museums, libraries, and archives across the country with the hashtag #19thAt100. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History is convening more than 50 organizations to share stories related to the past, present, and future of woman suffrage, with a particular focus on women’s stories that have been overlooked. It’s part of the Smithsonian’s American Women’s History Initiative.

June 20: March along with us on a social media tour

Telling the story of the largest reform movement in American history is a big job for any single exhibition, so we are bringing three exhibits to you! Social media guides from the Smithsonian, National Archives, and Library of Congress will visit our three exhibitions and share the highlights with you on Twitter and Instagram. Follow the hashtag #HerVote100 to meet the experts who worked on the exhibition and learn about the women who persisted in the fight for the vote. Don’t hesitate to ask questions. Stops on our social tour include:

Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote at the Library of Congress

Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote at the National Archives

Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery

Throughout June: Get your weekly dose of women’s history

Celebrate the passing of the 19th Amendment with 19 weeks of amazing women in history with the @USNatArchives on Instagram. Starting on June 5, the National Archives will post a theme each week featuring a woman in history. Share the story of women who inspire you by using the hashtag #19forthe19th!

The Library of Congress also is exploring the stories of individual suffragists and their contributions to changing America each week through June. Follow along with #ShallNotBeDenied on Twitter and Instagram.

Here’s where you can find us on social media:

Library of Congress

Twitter: @LibraryCongress
Instagram: @LibraryCongress


National Archives

Twitter: @USNatArchives
Instagram: @USNatArchives


Presidential Libraries on Twitter: @OurPresidents
National Archives Foundation

Twitter: @ArchivesFdn
Instagram: @ArchivesFdn_


Smithsonian

Twitter: @Smithsonian
Instagram: @Smithsonian


National Portrait Gallery

Twitter: @SmithsonianNPG
Instagram: @SmithsonianNPG


National Museum of African American History and Culture

Twitter: @NMAAHC
Instagram: @NMAAHC


National Museum of American History

Twitter: @amhistorymuseum
Instagram: @amhistorymuseum

June will be a big month for women’s history, but it’s a theme we’ll explore throughout the year. Other recommended hashtags to browse: #BecauseOfHerStory, #HiddenHerstory, and #Suffrage100DC.

Pic of the Week: 19th Amendment Edition

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Cast members of “19: The Musical” perform during the “Shall Not Be Denied” exhibition opening. Photo: Shawn Miller.

This week marked the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote and changed American life and politics. The Library, repository of the papers of many key players in the suffrage movement, opened a yearlong exhibit about that struggle, “Shall Not Be Denied,” with a gala on June 4, the anniversary of the amendment’s ratification by the U.S. Senate in 1919. Cast members from the upcoming musical, “19,” gave the crowd a taste of the drama in music.

D-Day Journeys: The Story Map

This is a guest post by  Sam Meier, a Library technician, who writes about the curatorial and archival work that went into the Veterans History Project’s  “D-Day Journeys” Story Map.

In early May, the Veterans History Project released a Story Map titled “D-Day Journeys” which charts the course of four D-Day veterans before, during, and after June 6, 1944.

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Screenshot of an excerpt from “D-Day Journeys,” Story Map created by Samantha Meier and Megan Harris, Veterans History Project, 2019.

This Story Map began to take root in late fall of 2018, when Megan Harris, VHP’s Senior Reference Specialist, and I began reviewing VHP collections for potential inclusion in VHP’s new Experiencing War online exhibit in remembrance of D-Day. The wealth of visual materials in these collections sparked our interest in exploring the curatorial possibilities of the Story Map platform. We knew from our Story Maps training that the Cascade template would allow us to display photographs, artwork, and other visual materials in all their full-screen glory.

While VHP had previously participated in a Story Maps pilot project, the 75th anniversary of D-Day presented our first opportunity to create a Story Map which featured multiple stories from VHP’s collections. At first, we contemplated simply retooling a previous Experiencing War online exhibit to fit within the Story Map template. After some experimentation with various drafts and narrative approaches, it soon became clear that the interpretative possibilities of a Story Map were wholly different from our traditional online exhibits.

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A map version of VHP’s previous Experiencing War feature “D-Day: Beyond the Beach.” Created by Samantha Meier, January 2019.

After reviewing other Story Maps produced here at the Library of Congress, Megan had a flash of insight. Though we had both initially been drawn to the Cascade template for its lush presentation of visual materials, Megan realized that VHP collections are uniquely suited to digital storytelling in a map-based discovery environment. Story Maps allow users to learn new information about a subject spatially by engaging with interactive maps. What if we took advantage of this tool by mapping the service histories of individual veterans?

With Story Maps, we could show users where the veterans of D-Day had been instead of merely telling them. Rather than re-tread the sandy beaches of Normandy, France, we could situate the historic events of June 6, 1944 within the individual lives of the men who came ashore that day. We could map their journeys from basic training to the end of the war.

Our initial goal for these “journey maps” were modest. We hoped to identify mappable locations for a few key events in each veteran’s military service: where they underwent military training, or another stateside service-related location; where they were on D-Day itself; and where they found themselves at the end of the war, or any time before they left the military.

Next, we had to select four veterans to be featured in the Story Map. We scoured our holdings to find collections from veterans who had participated in D-Day. With hundreds of possibilities to choose from, we focused on selecting collections which contained ample visual material and compelling narratives.

We also needed the items in these veterans’ collections to contain rich location data, so that we could “pin” the veterans to a map. While some materials, such as diaries, often contained a great wealth of location data, other formats, such as oral histories, did not. This same disparity existed in the donor-submitted description about the collection materials. For example, while some donors provided locations and dates for their individual photographs, others did not.

Finally, we wanted our Story Map to include a variety of perspectives on the events of D-Day. We searched for veterans who served in different branches and in different roles, whose stories could tell us what it felt like to be on the beach, in the air, and out at sea.

CONNECTING THE DOTS

In the end, we selected these four veterans to include in the Story Map: Army veteran Preston Earl Bagent, a combat engineer; Army Air Forces veteran Robert “Bob” Harlan Horr, a glider pilot; Army veteran Edward Duncan Cameron, a rifleman; and Navy veteran John William “Bill” Boehne, III, a sailor.

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Screenshot of an excerpt from “D-Day Journeys,” Story Map created by Samantha Meier and Megan Harris, Veterans History Project, 2019.

As I started mining these collections for location data to create their corresponding “journey maps,” I found far more data than I had expected to find. Bagent’s letters to his wife mentioned many of the cities through which he traveled in Europe. Horr’s pilot’s log book contained location information for every training flight he took, starting September 26, 1942. Cameron, like so many other veterans, defied military regulations by routinely noting his location in his secret diary. And Boehne’s military papers filled in many specific geographic details that he omitted in his oral history interview. My “journey maps” ballooned from three or four data points per veteran up to 30 or 40 apiece.

Armed with all this data, I was ready to create detailed maps for our four veterans. But Megan and I still needed a way to ensure that readers could follow each veteran’s story. How could we structure our Story Map so people didn’t get lost in the details?

Luckily, I had an epiphany of my own. Long before coming to the Library, I worked as an editor and a writer for a digital media outlet. That experience informed my next idea. What if we thought of our Story Map as being less like an online exhibit, and more like multi-media journalism? We could give people options as to how they wanted to navigate the Story Map, letting them engage with the content in ways that made sense to them.

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My process notes illustrating how I could structure the D-Day Story Map. January 2019. Photograph by Samantha Meier.

I came up with a “choose-your-own-adventure” narrative structure which broke each of the three major sections of the Story Map—Before D-Day, On D-Day, and After D-Day—into sub-sections about each veteran’s experience. With a special assist from Tim St. Onge and Mike Bijou of the Library’s Geography & Map Division, we were able to create chapter links within the Cascade template. Now users could choose for themselves how these stories of D-Day would unfold.

As a researcher, I wanted our Story Map to show how rich VHP’s collections are for historical research. The platform allowed me to show my work by hyperlinking to primary source material in map pop-ups as well as in each veteran’s narrative. I embedded digital images of correspondence, diary entries, and other archival documents throughout the Story Map to show users how I knew what I knew about Bagent, Horr, Cameron, and Boehne.

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Screenshot of an excerpt from “D-Day Journeys,” Story Map created by Samantha Meier and Megan Harris, Veterans History Project, 2019. Diary excerpt from the Edward Duncan Cameron Collection, AFC2001/001/6555.

Of course, there were plenty of details that I didn’t know about what these four men did during the war. To fill in some of these gaps, I turned to other VHP collections. I leveraged the “Service Unit/Ship” field of VHP’s online database to find other veterans who belonged to the same service units as our four veterans.

These related collections provided me with new contextual information for Bagent, Horr, Cameron, and Boehne’s personal experiences. Reviewing the collections of men who served in the 149th Engineer Combat Battalion, I realized that the “Ray Kimm” mentioned in an October 1945 letter by Preston Bagent was none other than Raymond Calvin Kimm. The information provided in Kimm’s VHP collection helped me confirm key details of Bagent’s military service.

The biggest shock of all came when I realized that Bob Horr’s best friend “Buck Jackson” was not killed on D-Day, as Horr’s pilot’s log suggested. Though this discovery was surprising, one of the wonderful things about VHP’s vast archive of 100,000+ collections is that these kinds of connections are continually possible, waiting to be made by researchers.

In addition to discovering previously unknown connections between VHP collections, I also uncovered new information by intently scrutinizing Bagent, Horr, Cameron and Boehne’s own collection materials. Carefully poring over Bill Boehne’s scrapbook, I found photographs that had been literally hidden inside its pages. Duncan Cameron’s diary turned out to contain entries not only from 1944, as its cover suggests, but also entries from 1943 when Cameron was stationed in North Africa and Sicily.

Megan and I conceptualized the “On D-Day” section of our Story Map as its narrative center. June 6, 1944, was the day which united our four veterans in time and space. But they were far from the only men who participated in the invasion of Normandy that day. I wanted to make sure that the other stories of D-Day veterans in VHP’s collections were included in some way. I extended the potential for map-based discovery to include a map which would allow users to discover as many D-Day collections within VHP as possible.

As the “D-Day Journeys” Story Map notes, VHP has over 2,500 unique collections from veterans who participated in Operation Overlord, which began June 6, 1944, and ended on August 30, 1944. All of those collections are categorized as “Operation Overlord (D-Day Normandy Invasion)” in the “Battles/Campaigns” field of our database. This category includes both D-Day veterans AND veterans who did not participate in D-Day, but, rather, in the broader campaign.

To get an accurate list of the veterans in our collections who participated in D-Day, I spent over 60 hours reviewing donor-provided descriptions for over 1,500 unique collections. I checked to see whether they mentioned participating in the Normandy invasion on D-Day specifically, versus days to weeks after June 6, 1944, and where in France they said they were on that day. For most of these collections, there simply wasn’t enough data available to determine whether the veteran took part in D-Day, or their location that day. I was able to create data points for 238 veterans, but I suspect that VHP has hundreds more D-Day stories that I was not able to represent in our map.

Visualizing these 238 collections in a single map presented other problems. I wanted to both show trends within these collections and allow the user to access the stories of individual collection through the map. But a map with 238 data points was very difficult to interpret.

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Screenshot showing all the data points for the “On D-Day” map. From “D-Day Journeys,” Story Map created by Samantha Meier and Megan Harris, Veterans History Project, 2019.

Luckily, a GIS expert stepped in to save the day. Tim St. Onge, who had previously assisted us with the chapter links, suggested that we use the “Cluster Points” tool in Story Maps to improve the map’s legibility. Tim’s support was instrumental to our Story Maps project. He advised us on everything from filtering data points to creating transitional map scenes to developing more readable maps.

Thanks to his help, the final version of my “On D-Day” map not only shows our users the “hot spots” where most VHP veterans landed—namely, Omaha Beach, followed by Utah Beach—but also allows users to drill down to individual D-Day collections if they wish to do so.

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Detail from the “On D-Day” map showing a pop-up window for Norman Philip Swaney. From “D-Day Journeys,” Story Map created by Samantha Meier and Megan Harris, Veterans History Project, 2019.

In addition to connecting us with colleagues elsewhere in the Library, working on “D-Day Journeys” also engaged us with other divisions’ materials. I paid Tim’s colleagues a visit and traveled to the Geography and Map Reading Room to scan an American Red Cross map of London that VHP had previously transferred to that division from our collections. Megan and I sojourned to the Newspaper & Current Periodicals Reading Room to examine microfilmed obituaries for Bagent and Cameron. We utilized historic photographs and artwork from Prints and Photographs in our Story Map, consulting with them specifically regarding the use of Tracy A. Sugarman’s drawings. (Though his World War II-era artwork is held by Prints and Photographs, Sugarman also has a VHP collection.)

“D-Day Journeys” was unveiled to the world on Friday, May 10. After four months spent working on our Story Map, I not only knew Bagent, Horr, Cameron, and Boehne’s stories inside and out, but I had also learned far more about D-Day. While I cannot ever fully understand these veterans’ experiences during World War II, Story Map brings their records of those experiences—be they letters, log book entries, photographs, poems, or drawings—to life. “D-Day Journeys” demonstrates the richness of VHP’s collections. It visualizes the vast amount of information held within this participatory, community-driven veterans’ archive. It demonstrates how personal record-keeping can be, and how profound.

As Boehne inscribed in his scrapbook, quoting John Steinbeck,

“After the bare requisites to living and reproducing, man wants most to leave some record of himself, a proof, perhaps, that he has really existed. He leaves his proof on wood, on stone, or on the lives of other people.”

Digital Roundtable Conference: June 6, 7.

This is a guest post written by Kate Zwaard, Director of Digital Strategy.

A professor from California, an entrepreneur from Boston, an author from New York, and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire all walk into a library…

Sounds like the start of a joke, right?  Instead, it’s some exciting news I have to share: all four are thought leaders in technology and digital innovation, and they are joining a dozen of their peers for the inaugural meeting of the Library of Congress Digital Strategy Roundtable on June 6 and 7, 2019.

The DSR, launched at the direction of the Librarian of Congress, will solicit expert perspectives on the digital transformation of the Library and help ensure that the Library’s plans are meeting industry standards. To do that, we have invited a group of thought leaders from libraries, academia, industry, media, and non-profits to help the Library.

We’re bringing in people like Wendy Hall, Maria Thomas, Joichi Ito, and Paul Ford. They’ll work with the staff members who are leading our digital transformation.

The Library’s Digital Strategy, released in the fall of 2018, includes investing in new technologies to expand online access (for our users) and supporting an innovative culture (for our staff). We want our people to respond quickly to emerging technology and opportunities.

Of course, our plans will change over time to reflect contemporary best practices, so we’ll meet in person at least once per year and more often online. It’s one of the many ways the Library is engaging with the work of other institutions across industries and subject areas.

During the meeting, my team, including LC Labs, will discuss our ideas for the next three years. The Digital Strategy Working Group — a cross-Library team that helped draft the Digital Strategy — and other Library leaders will share digital initiatives. The DSR will also meet Library patrons to discuss their experiences.

In keeping with our goal to make experimentation a core practice in the Library, the Roundtable itself is an experiment. We have chartered the group for a two-year term, during which we’ll evaluate its effectiveness and determine the process for nomination and selection of members.

I am tremendously grateful for the generosity of the people mentioned below for sharing their time and talent with us to make the Library more digitally enabled. And a special thanks to Professor Dame Wendy Hall for co-chairing the meeting with me.

 

The 2019-2020 Library of Congress Digital Strategy Roundtable Members are:

Tony Ageh, Chief Digital Officer, New York Public Library
Christine Borgman, Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA and the author of more than 250 publications in communication, information studies, and computer science
Meredith Evans, President, Society of American Archivists
Paul Ford, CEO and Co-founder, Postlight
Joshua Greenberg, Director, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Digital IT Program
Dame Wendy Hall, Professor of Computer Science, University of Southampton
Hrishikesh Hirway, Creator/Host, Song Exploder
Joichi Ito, Director, MIT Media Lab
Melody Kramer, Director of Communications, Carolina Demography, Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Miriam Posner, Assistant Professor of Information Studies and Digital Humanities, University of California, Los Angeles
Mia Ridge, Digital Curator for Western Heritage Collections, British Library
Maria Thomas, Former Etsy CEO & NPR Digital SVP; Board of Directors at Pew Research Center
Jer Thorp, Artist/Writer
Victor Udoewa, Director of Strategy, 18F
George Westerman, Senior Lecturer, MIT Sloan School of Management and Faculty Director, Workforce Learning, MIT Jameel World Education Lab
Stacie Williams, Director, Center for Digital Scholarship, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago
Tim Young, Principal, Deloitte Consulting

Eisenhower’s Temporary White House

This is a guest post by Jennifer Davis, a collections specialist in the Law Library’s Collection Services Division. It originally appeared on the In Custodia Legis blog.






If you are visiting Pennsylvania, you should make a stop at Eisenhower Farm in Gettysburg. President and Mrs. Eisenhower gave the house, the farm and the grounds to the United States government in 1967, and after their deaths, the National Park Service opened the site for visitors. The Eisenhowers bought this farm in 1950 after his retirement from the military, and intended for it to be their first permanent home in their peripatetic marriage.

The Eisenhower House. Photo: Rebecca Raupach

However, a few years later, Eisenhower began the campaign for the first of his two terms as president. The farm was the Eisenhowers’ getaway during his presidency. They also used it for some of his second-term campaign events and to host some foreign dignitaries in a less formal, more relaxed setting. Eisenhower met with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev at the farm in 1959 as a break from a meeting at Camp David. He also hosted Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Prime Minister Winston Churchill of the United Kingdom, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of the Federal Republic of Germany, and President Charles De Gaulle of France at various times. Marshal Montgomery stayed in their guest house for a time as well.

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The Eisenhowers launch his 1956 presidential campaign at their Gettysburg farmhouse. Photo: Thomas J. O’Halloran. Prints and Photographs Division.

In 1955, Eisenhower had a heart attack and returned to the Gettysburg farm to recuperate, using the place as his “temporary White House.” He signed numerous pieces of legislation at this desk in his office, making it a historical and legal artifact. It is made of timber salvaged from the White House during renovations made during the Truman administration, and is supposedly modelled on a desk President Washington used at his home in Mount Vernon. According to our tour guide at the farm, the president was sitting at this desk when he received the call in May 1961 about CIA Pilot Francis Gary Powers being shot down in a U-2 reconnaissance airplane over Russia. The office is the last stop on the house tour; it is a small room, but it is worth getting a picture of it to remember.

Eisenhower’s desk. Photo: Rebecca Raupach

Jeannette Rankin and “Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote”

This post is adapted from an upcoming article in the Library of Congress Magazine.

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Jeannette Rankin addresses a D.C. crowd just before her swearing in, April 2, 1917. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Montana’s Jeannette Rankin came to Capitol Hill as the first woman elected to Congress in the spring of 1917. She was 36, Republican, single, a trailblazing suffragist and lobbyist. Nearly 7,000 representatives had served in the House’s 128 years, all of them men. When she was sworn in on April 2, she got an enthusiastic round of applause from the gentlemen in the chamber, but she soon found Congress to be not particularly honest and beset by lousy reporters.

“No doubt you have read in the papers about my ‘red hair’ and ‘sending the fathers to war’ and other inventions of the eastern press,” she wrote in a letter to constituents on June 1, 1917. “I wish you were here to see Congress working and to know the true facts.”

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“Miss Jeanette Rankin.” Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Some 102 years later, congressional complaints about D.C. dishonesty and problematic reporters remain pretty much the same.

Otherwise, a century after the 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote and altered American society, the political descendants of Rankin and other suffragists operate in a landscape their forebears could not have envisioned. The fundamental push of the suffrage movement was toward democracy, of opening the voting booth to millions of Americans, and that increased access to the ballot, over time, has fundamentally changed Capitol Hill.

A record number of women were sworn in as members of the 116th Congress – 102 in the House, 25 in the Senate. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) resides as the Speaker of the House. A woman won the popular vote for president in the 2016 election. Four female senators and one representative have so far announced they are running for the Oval Office in 2020.

Many of the incoming class wore white to their swearing-in ceremony, in homage to the suffragists who wore the color, often head-to-toe, to symbolize their purity and virtue. But the suffrage movement was dominated by white Christian women (racism was a consistent problem for the movement). Today, the women in Congress are as diverse as the nation they represent: staunchly conservative, fiercely liberal, moderates, white, black, brown, straight, lesbian, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Native American and so on. In 1989, when the youngest member, 29-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), was born in the Bronx, the oldest member, 85-year-old Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), had already served as mayor of San Francisco, 3,000 miles away, for a decade.

Still, these women compose just 25 percent of Congress, roughly half of their presence in the electorate.  Of the 365 women who have served in Congress, 131 are current members.

“Not until 1990s were there enough women so that they could drive a legislative agenda,” says Matt Wasniewski, Historian of the House of Representatives and editor of “Women in Congress 1917-2006.” “About four-fifths of all women who have served in Congress were elected after 1970.”

Why that matters in a such a fundamental way became apparent in a series of oral histories Wasniewski and his staff conducted with women who had been legislators and staffers. They recalled the frustrations of being the only woman at one committee meeting or another and seeing their ideas ignored.

“Having a seat at the table mattered because, as so many of our interviewees pointed out, women brought their perspectives that in many cases the men had never even considered,” Wasniewski said.

The fight to get women the vote — the longest reform movement in American history — is chronicled in “Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote,” a year-long exhibition by the Library (along with a companion book by Rutgers University Press) that opens on June 4, the 100th anniversary of Senate passage of the 19th Amendment. The exhibit and book draw heavily on the Library’s records from icons such as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mary Church Terrell, the National Woman’s Party and the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

The suffragists, it has to be recalled, were not just battling for a ballot; they were also taking on deeply entrenched views of religion, social order and human genetics.

“First and foremost, what you see in the objections to suffrage is that it wasn’t God’s will,” says Aimee Hess, managing editor of the Library’s Publications Office and an editor of “Shall Not Be Denied.”  “Motherhood was to be a woman’s most important duty, and that was wrapped up in traditional and often religious ideals.”

When Rankin arrived in 1917, there was no concept of women holding serious political power, particularly on a national level. Several states allowed women to vote (including Montana), but the 19th Amendment wasn’t certified until 1920, when Rankin was already out of office.

She was such a novelty that, when she was elected, the Journal Gazette of Fort Wayne, Indiana, described her as “a grey-eyed, slender girl with the enthusiasm of a zealot, the simplicity of a child and the energy and fire of a race horse.”

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Rankin and fellow suffragists, circa 1909-1920. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Reporters tracked her every movement. She got endorsement deals, a column in a prominent paper in Chicago and a $500-per-gig speaking fee. The limelight, she later recalled, was “a great shock.”

But the handful of women elected to Congress over the next three decades mostly downplayed their gender and eschewed symbolic leadership. Alice Mary Robertson, a stern missionary from Oklahoma, was the second woman elected to Congress in 1921. She didn’t care for the suffrage movement or most of the women in it.  “I came here to Congress to represent my district,” she said, “not women.”

During these decades, it was mostly women who were spouses of powerful men – such as Eleanor Roosevelt – or their widows, often working in reform movements, who exercised the most influence in society, rather than women elected to Congress.

That only began to change in the 1970s, when women began to win local and state offices, setting the generational stage for the surge in women in Congress in the 1990s, which, in turn, laid the groundwork for the Congress that governs the nation today.

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