Library of Congress's Blog, page 84

Join Us for a Serendipity Run – No Sneakers Required

And now for something completely different. On November 8, Jer Thorp, the Library of Congress Innovator-in-Residence, will take over the @LibraryCongress Twitter account to host a #SerendipityRun.

What’s a #SerendipityRun? Let’s ask Jer:

#SerendipityRun is an experiment in collaborative serendipity. During the run, we’ll see how far and wide we can range across the Library’s vast collections, riding waves of whimsy, curiosity and chance. On November 8, join an all-star cast of artists, writers, curators and Library staff as we explore the endless sea of possibility that can be found in the Library!

It can be challenging to find what you’re looking for in the Library’s enormous collections. We are always working on new ways to help you get the content you want. The #SerendipityRun is an opportunity to discover what you didn’t know you wanted and what you happen upon by chance. We’re excited to go where this experiment takes us, to see what you find and to hear your stories.

What: #SerendipityRun on Twitter

When: Thursday, November 8, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. ET

Where: We’ll kick it off from the @LibraryCongress Twitter account. Follow the activity using the #SerendipityRun hashtag.

Why: Take a serendipity-powered tour through the Library of Congress collections. Connect with others and share stories through primary sources.

Who: You! We will have special guests joining us throughout the three-hour run and we want you to participate, too.

How: During the run, if someone tweets an item from the Library’s collections that connects with you, look at the item on loc.gov. What did the item make you think of? Does it remind you of something or make you curious to find other content? If you find a new item that interests you, tweet that item using the #SerendipityRun hashtag and share your story. Be sure to add the loc.gov link and attach an image, so others can use it as a jumping-off point for their discovery.

Join us Thursday on Twitter!

New Online: A Civil War Marriage Confronts Illiteracy

This is a guest post by Michelle Krowl, a historian in the Manuscript Division.

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May 28, 1864, letter from John Arnold to his wife, Mary Ann.

Students of the Civil War are fortunate that so many Americans of the era were literate, and during the war made good use of their ability to read and write. Soldiers wrote to loved ones with stirring sentiments of patriotism, observations of camp life, longings for home, news of their comrades (who were often relatives, friends or neighbors) and sometimes frank statements of the horrors of battle they witnessed. Servicemen treasured the letters they received from home, and complained when their names were not included at mail call. But what if their loved ones could not write back? The John Carvel Arnold Papers, now available online from the Library of Congress, document how one couple dealt with illiteracy during the Civil War.

Laborer John Carvel Arnold of Snyder County, Pennsylvania, enlisted in February 1864 as a private in Company I of the 49th Regiment Pennsylvania Infantry, and was sent to the front in Virginia. He wrote to his wife, Mary Ann, as often as time, marching orders and mail service allowed. He typically began his letters with a comment on his health before telling her about regimental activities and movements, updating her on soldiers they both knew and providing advice about domestic matters she had to attend to in his absence. And he frequently wrote about writing. He noted when he received a welcome letter from home, or implored her to write more often when letters did not arrive regularly enough. The postscript of his May 28, 1864, letter said it all: “write soon.”

Mary Ann Arnold would have written her husband sooner, except that she was illiterate. Mary Ann relied on neighbors in Port Trevorton, Pennsylvania, to transcribe her sentiments onto paper, and the clear variations in handwriting in letters John Arnold received from his wife attest to the community effort on Mary Ann’s behalf. Some scribes – examples from three appear below – seem to have been only slightly more literate than Mary Ann, whose husband also employed irregular grammar and phonetic spelling in his own correspondence.

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John wrote out the alphabet in a letter to Mary Ann to help her learn to write.

To Mary Ann’s suggestion that with some guidance she could try to write a letter on her own, John sent a reply containing the upper and lower case letters of the alphabet so that she could learn to write. “I can Read any Writeing,” he stated, and exhorted her to “write oftener.”

Mary Ann’s efforts did not always satisfy John’s expectations, however. “Dear wife what is the reason that you Don’t Write oftener I was Exspecting a letter every male that come in But all in wane [vain],” he next wrote on June 20. After not hearing from Mary Ann for five weeks, John had resolved in October to not write again until he first received a letter from his wife. But word that guerrilla forces in northern Virginia had captured the mail caused him to reconsider, thinking that perhaps one of her letters had been seized. Mary Ann replied to this news that she “was sorry that you sought that you would not write to me till you would get a letter from me,” but, she reminded her husband, “you no that i cant write myself and so I cant write when i pleas.”

Despite the occasional moments of frustration with one another, the Arnolds’ letters showed them to be a loving couple. In one letter, for example, John Arnold signed himself her “Cinsear Husband Father friend and lover.” In another, he wrote their names followed by an illustration of clasping hands.

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John drew a picture of clasping hands in a Dec. 28, 1864, letter.

Unfortunately, the Arnolds’ love story did not have a happy ending. Arnold wrote his wife on June 5, 1864, about the casualties his unit had suffered, and the trust he placed in God to spare his life. “I feel confident that iff it is not gods will for me to be shot the is no reb that can shoot me.” Arnold’s prayers were not answered. Less than a month after being promoted to the rank of corporal, John Carvel Arnold was killed in action on April 6, 1865, at the battle of Sailor’s Creek, Virginia. Three days later, Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House, essentially bringing the war in Virginia to an end.

Explore, Transcribe and Tag at Crowd.loc.gov!

This is a guest post by Lauren Algee, senior innovation specialist with the Library’s Digital Innovation Lab.

What yet-unwritten stories lie within the pages of Clara Barton’s diaries, the writings of civil rights pioneer Mary Church Terrell or letters written by constituents, friends and colleagues to Abraham Lincoln? With the launch of crowd.loc.gov, the Library of Congress is harnessing the power of the public to make these and many other collection items accessible to everyone.

Crowd.loc.gov invites the public to volunteer to transcribe (type) and tag with keywords digitized images of text materials from the Library’s collections. Volunteers will journey through history first-hand and help the Library while gaining new skills – like learning how to analyze primary sources or read cursive.

Finalized transcripts will be made available on the Library’s website, improving access to handwritten and typed documents that computers cannot accurately translate without human intervention. The enhanced access will occur through better readability and keyword searching of documents and through greater compatibility with accessibility technologies, such as screen readers used by people with low vision.

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A poem, written in 1864 by poet, editor and clergyman William Oland Bourne (1819–1901), is now transcribed and tagged in crowd.loc.gov, greatly increasing its readability and accessibility.

The pages awaiting transcription represent the diversity of the Library’s treasures. Today, volunteers can choose to work on selections from the papers of Mary Church Terrell, letters the public wrote to Abraham Lincoln, Clara Barton’s diaries, Branch Rickey’s baseball scouting reports or memoirs of disabled Civil War veterans. We’ll continuously add new materials. Coming soon are documents related to women’s suffrage, Civil War veterans, American poetry, the history of psychiatry and more.

So how does it work? We import digitized items into the platform from loc.gov. Volunteers type what they see in an image, check transcripts created by others and tag images, enhancing existing collections metadata. We expect to release the first set of publicly transcribed materials in early 2019.

Participatory projects like these are known as crowdsourcing, meaning that they invite the public – nonspecialists and specialists alike – to engage with collections and process information. This is not the Library’s first foray into these approaches.

We have long invested in building digitized collections and making them searchable. Our first attempt to recruit volunteers to increase their findability began in 2008 when the Library’s Prints and Photographs Division published thousands of photographs on Flickr Commons. For more than 10 years, this project has invited the public to help identify people and places in the photographs, generating rich information about them.

Two additional crowdsourcing efforts within the Library – the American Archive of Public Broadcasting’s Fix-It initiative and the Library of Congress Labs’ Beyond Words project –  invited people to transcribe historical public broadcasting programs and to identify cartoons and photographs in the Library’s historic newspaper collections. These projects have demonstrated the passion of volunteers for history and learning as well as the knowledge and expertise the public has to share with the Library.

Crowd.loc.gov runs on an open-source software, Concordia, developed based on the user-centered design principles. It has been open source from the beginning and is available in the Library’s Github repository. Because Concordia is open source, other libraries and organizations can use the code to create transcription projects focused on their own collections.

Have we got you curious?  Good! Consider visiting crowd.loc.gov today to contribute to our Letters to Lincoln Challenge. We hope to inspire volunteers to finish transcribing 10,000 items from the Abraham Lincoln Papers by the end of 2018. Help us meet our goal by transcribing at least one page and sharing your work with others.

Thirty Years of the National Film Registry

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The National Film Preservation Board meets at the Library this morning. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Something exciting is happening today. Of course, there are always exciting things happening at the Library of Congress, but today I want to take you behind the scenes of one of my favorite duties as Librarian – selecting films for the National Film Registry.

Under the terms of the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, each year the Librarian of Congress names 25 films to the National Film Registry that are “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant, and deemed worthy to be preserved for all time. This is the 30th year that the Library of Congress will add films to the National Film Registry!

Today, I will join members of the National Film Preservation Board for their annual meeting. The board was established by the National Film Preservation Act to serve as a public advisory group to the Librarian of Congress. This distinguished group of film scholars, artists, industry leaders and experts works on important issues related to the preservation of America’s film heritage. In the past year, I have visited the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Library in Los Angeles and met with filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan. I admire their passion and dedication to film preservation, and I am grateful to the entire board for its service.

One of the board’s duties is to advise me on annual selections for the National Film Registry. At their meeting today, members will begin the process of developing a list of titles for my consideration. Given that the Registry selections exemplify the range and diversity of American film, it’s important for us to get lots of input. In addition to hearing from the board, we invited the public to submit nominations. For this year’s Registry, we received 30,000 votes for 6,300 different films! Thank you for your contributions.

Like many of you, I love the magic of movies. I enjoy all the watching, discussing and debating that goes into selecting the Registry films. The Registry creates a lot of excitement and conversation. One of the most important things it does is raise awareness about film preservation. I am proud of the role the Library plays in preserving and providing access to our film heritage. Visit the National Screening Room to see a set of films we recently made available online.

We will announce the 30th National Film Registry selections on Dec. 12. Over the next few weeks, we will celebrate past Registry titles. Stay tuned!

Free to Use and Reuse – and Animate! A Parade of Posters

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A French poster from the early 1900s advertises noodles and pasta using images of celebrities, some holding packages of the product.

This month, we’re highlighting selections from the Library’s vast international poster collection on our Free to Use and Reuse page – and an animation contest.

The posters we’re showcasing – on themes from travel, sports and entertainment to consumer goods and more – reflect a special collaboration between the Library and Poster House, a new museum that will open in New York City next year. The museum’s staff worked closely with specialists from the Library’s Prints and Photographs Division to select the 31 posters featured. Each connects in some way to a global cultural event or trend from the 1890s through the 1960s.

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A pair of skiers promotes the Jantzen skiwear brand in this 1947 poster.

Poster House now invites you to re-imagine the selected posters using digital animation: Can you tease new meaning out of a scene? Can you illuminate something interesting? Can you make viewers laugh?

The contest is open to students, professionals and amateurs alike. Download high-res images of the posters on the Library’s free-to-use page, and get to work!

Poster House will accept submissions starting in December, and a panel of judges from the design, advertising and poster communities will decide on 20 favorite animations in the spring. Winners will be displayed digitally in Poster House’s exhibition window on 23rd Street in New York leading up to the museum’s opening in spring 2019.

Address your questions about the contest to submissions@posterhouse.org.

To find out more about the Library’s poster collection and the highlighted posters, read this blog post from the Library’s Prints and Photographs Division.

Scroll down to enjoy more examples of featured posters!

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A 1947 poster humorously recalls the well-known image of George Washington crossing the Delaware River – but in this case the river is filled with cherry pies.

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A 1941 poster promotes the health benefits of drinking milk.

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A theatrical poster from the 1890s features magician Harry Kellar.

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This 1903 poster advertises Swiss chocolate.

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A 1950s poster glamorizes air travel to Chicago.

New Online: Recordings from the Archive of Hispanic Literature

This is a guest post by Cataline Gómez, a reference librarian in the Hispanic Division. It was first published on “4 Corners of the World,” the blog of the Library’s area studies divisions.

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A listener enjoys a selection from the archive last month while sitting on the steps of the Library’s Jefferson Building. Photo by Catalina Gómez.

To celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month this year, the Library released new digital material on the Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape. For the past three years, we have provided online access to a growing number of recordings through the archive’s portal. The launch of 50 new recordings adds to the existing digital archive of prose writers and poets from all over the Americas and Spain and Portugal reading from their works.

The archive is a historical collection of close to 800 audio recordings of Luso-Hispanic writers. Since its inception in 1943, curators in the Hispanic Division have continued expanding on this project by recording, in the Library’s recording lab and abroad, some of the most important writers and poets of the 20th and 21st centuries. Our efforts to digitize this collection are ongoing; with the 2018 launch, there are now 200 recordings available via online streaming.

This launch includes recordings from the 1950s onward, with many sessions recorded in the past five years. Reflecting the regions’ immensely rich cultural and linguistic diversity, the list includes the literatures of nations such as Haiti, Cuba, Spain, Colombia, Panama, Puerto Rico, Chile, Argentina and more. It also includes, for the first time, recordings of works in indigenous languages, such as the recording of Mexican scholar Ángel María Garibay (1892–1967), who reads Aztec poetry in Nahuatl and Spanish; Mexican writer Andrés Henestrosa (1906–2008), who reads works in Zapotec, a pre-Columbian language from Oaxaca, Mexico; and poet Andrés Alencastre (1909–84), who reads verses in Quechua, the language of the Inca Empire. Another linguistic gem included in this release is a reading by Spanish writer Unai Elorriaga (1973– ) in Basque or “Euskara,” a Pre-Indo-European language spoken in northern Spain.

We hope you enjoy these literary treasures! Below is the complete list of newly available recordings:

Argentine playwright Griselda Gambaro
Bolivian poet Yolanda Bedregal
Brazilian author and poet Adriana Lisboa
Brazilian author and poet Tatiana Salem-Levy
Chilean author Manuel Eduardo Hübner
Chilean poet Angel Cruchaga Santa María
Colombian author Héctor Abad Faciolince
Colombian author Pablo Montoya
Colombian essayist and novelist Eduardo Caballero Calderón
Colombian poet Héctor Rojas Herazo
Colombian poet Juan Gustavo Cobo Borda
Costa Rican poet Mía Gallegos
Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas
Dominican poet Enriquillo Rojas Abreu
Dominican writer José Gabriel Alcántara Almánzar
Ecuadorian writer Alfredo Pareja y Díez Canseco
Ecuadorian writer Demetrio Aguilera Malta
Guatemalan-American author Francisco Goldman
Haitian poet René Bélance
Honduran poet and writer Rafael Heliodoro Valle
Mexican author Cristina Rivera Garza
Mexican poet and short story writer Juan José Arreola
Mexican poet and writer Andrés Henestrosa
Mexican poet Homero Aridjis
Mexican writer and translator Angel María Garibay K.
Mexican writer María Luisa Mendoza
Mexican-American poet Juan Felipe Herrera
Nicaraguan poet, scholar, and folklorist Ernesto Mejía Sánchez
Panamanian poet Ana Isabel Illuca
Panamanian poet Ricardo J. Bermúdez
Panamanian writer Joaquín Baleño C.
Peruvian author Alonso Cueto
Peruvian poet and writer Alberto Hidalgo
Peruvian author Santiago Roncagliolo
Peruvian poet Andrés Alencastre
Peruvian poet Xavier Abril
Peruvian-American author Daniel Alarcón
Puerto Rican author José Agustín Balseiro
Puerto Rican writer Rosario Ferré
Puerto Rican author Esmeralda Santiago
Salvadorean poet Manlio Argueta
Spanish author Antonio Muñoz Molina
Spanish author Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Spanish author Enrique Vila-Matas
Spanish author Unai Elorriaga
Spanish poet César Antonio Molina
Spanish poet Clementina Arderíu
Spanish poet Vicente Aleixandre
Spanish-Argentine author and poet Andrés Neuman
West Indian playwright David Edgecombe

New Online: Diarist Documents Eventful Times on the Confederate Home Front

This is a guest post by Michelle Krowl, a historian in the Manuscript Division.

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The first page of Betty Herndon Maury’s diary.

“A diary, faithfully kept in such eventful times as these, must be interesting to our own children,” wrote Betty Herndon Maury on June 3, 1861, explaining her purpose in keeping a journal after Maury’s family chose to leave Washington, D.C., to cast its lot with the new Confederate States of America. By October 1861, Maury feared that she already had recorded so much that her diary would be “too voluminous” for her daughter, Nannie Belle, to read later. Fortunately for posterity, Maury continued to write, recognizing that “these are such eventful times and there are so many interesting incidents that I do not know which to omit.” Maury’s two-volume diary is now available online at the Library of Congress.

The impact of the war on Maury’s family occupied a central place in her diary. She lamented that her father, famed oceanographer Matthew Fontaine Maury, did not receive assignments in the Confederacy worthy of his talents and reputation, but recorded his contributions to the war effort. Her husband (and cousin), William A. Maury, left his legal career in Washington, D.C., to join the Confederate government in Richmond, while his wife and daughter “refugeed” with relatives in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Will’s extended absences and preoccupations caused Betty to question her role in their relationship and express disappointment when he left her behind, a common response of spouses during the Civil War.

Betty frequently wrote about her daughter, especially as the war brought out both Nannie’s feisty nature and her anxiety. To the offer of candy from a Union soldier in occupied Fredericksburg in May 1862, Nannie coolly replied, “No I thank you Yankee candy would choke me.” But fears of the unknown weighed heavily on Nannie’s mind by January 1863. “She is the most singularly nervous child I ever saw,” Betty recorded. “She shrinks from going out and is afraid to go to sleep for fear of dreaming bad dreams.” Betty’s father had advised her to shield Nannie from “things above her comprehension,” and she agreed that children absorbed more adult conversation than suspected.

Betty felt no such compassion for another family member, future president Chester A. Arthur. The husband of Betty’s first cousin Ellen Herndon Arthur, to whom she had been close before the war, came to Fredericksburg in May 1862 as quartermaster of the New York State troops. “I met him on the street but did not speak to him,” she boasted in her diary. “I could not shake hands with a man who came as an invader, to desolate our homes and kill our brothers and husbands.” Betty would later reconcile with the Arthurs, but Betty’s familial affection was a casualty of war in 1862.

The war also impacted the households in which Betty lived by disrupting the institution of slavery, long before Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862. The presence of the Union army near Fredericksburg prompted many slaves to exploit opportunities in the changed environment, if they remained in the vicinity at all. “The negroes are going off in great numbers,” Betty recorded on April 25, 1862. “We hear that our own three are going soon.” Still, slave escapes were not her primary concern. “I am afraid of the lawless Yankee soldiers, but that is nothing to my fear of the negroes if they should rise against us.”

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An architectural rendering of the Dixon-Maury House in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where Betty lived in 1861 and 1862.

“Matters are getting worse and worse here every day with regard to the negroes,” she noted in May. Hundreds of slaves escaped, and some of those who stayed demanded wages. Betty claimed to be relieved that most of their servants had gone, citing their perceived “insolent and idle” behavior.

Betty documented in her diary other changes on the home front. The disruption of domestic arrangements forced elite white women to perform more manual labor – cleaning, dying and spinning wool, making hats – and to make do with the clothing they had on hand when military activity stranded them from home for extended periods. When items were available to purchase, a currency shortage caused confusion as to the prices in coins, U.S. paper currency or “Virginia money,” and consumers might get their change in stamps. Lodging was a perpetual concern for Betty, who wondered where she would go after the death of the relative in whose house she lived in Fredericksburg in 1862, and then again in February 1863 after being evicted by her landlord in Richmond. When the diary ended on February 18, 1863, Betty was pregnant with her second child, homeless and uncertain where to go. That daughter, Alice Maury Parmalee, donated her mother’s diary to the Library of Congress in 1928.

New Online: Theodore Roosevelt Papers

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Theodore Roosevelt, 1884.

This is a guest post by Michelle Krowl, a historian in the Manuscript Division.

On Feb. 14, 1884, Theodore Roosevelt marked an X in his pocket diary, followed by the words, “The light has gone out of my life.” That morning his mother, Martha Roosevelt, died of typhoid fever. That same afternoon, in the same house, his wife, Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt, died of kidney disease, just two days after giving birth to their daughter. On another page, Roosevelt recalled his relationship with Alice, concluding, “For joy or for sorrow my life has now been lived out.” He was 25 years old.

Roosevelt’s life had really only begun, however, and his papers at the Library of Congress record his extraordinary public career through voluminous correspondence sent and received, speeches and executive orders, press releases and public statements, diaries and scrapbooks. The Theodore Roosevelt Papers, now available online, document the multifaceted and remarkable life led by America’s 26th president.

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Roosevelt’s diary entry for Feb. 14, 1884.

T.R. entrusted his infant daughter to his sister Anna, and set off for the Dakota Territory. “Black care rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough,” Roosevelt later wrote. He exercised his grief by leading the strenuous life of a cattle rancher, and learned the politically useful skill of working toward a common goal with people from different backgrounds. “I got along excellently with everyone,” he wrote his son Ted in 1908. “I worked hard with them on the roundup.” Roosevelt’s western period also gave him a cowboy image, which political cartoonists used in years to come.

Roosevelt found happiness with his second wife, Edith, his children and public service. He served on the United States Civil Service Commission (1889–95), and then applied his abundant energy to the New York City Board of Police Commissioners (1895–97). There he honed skills that he employed for the rest of his career. He sought reform in the operation of the police force and went on “midnight rambles” to determine how many beat cops slept at their posts or engaged in corrupt activities. He cultivated the press to publicize his actions and learned from reporters like Jacob Riis about problems in the community. As the scrapbooks in the Roosevelt papers attest, T.R. made news as a police commissioner, and his prominent teeth and eyeglasses became symbols that forever more identified Roosevelt cartoons.

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An 1895 cartoon depicts Roosevelt solely by way of his pince-nez glasses and his prominent teeth.

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A 1900 cartoon also portrays Roosevelt by his glasses and his teeth.

Roosevelt followed his police work by serving as assistant secretary of the Navy, where he advocated Alfred T. Mahan’s principles of naval supremacy. When the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, Roosevelt refused to miss his “crowded hour” of glory and organized the First Regiment, U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, better known as the “Rough Riders.” He parlayed his fame as the hero of San Juan Hill into election as governor of New York, telling his friend Cecil Spring Rice in November 1898, “I have played it in bull luck this summer. First, to get into the war; then to get out of it; then to get elected.”

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Roosevelt flees the vice presidency in the cartoon “The Office Seeks the Man,” published in 1900.

Roosevelt, a Republican, continued his reformist and independent ways as governor, to the chagrin of his party’s establishment in New York. Political bosses hoped electing him vice president in 1900 would shelve him in a powerless position. Although he did not want the job, T.R. campaigned hard for President McKinley and reconciled himself to the end of his political ascent. In September 1901, however, an assassin’s bullet ended McKinley’s life, making Roosevelt president of the United States.

Roosevelt’s presidency is the best-known period of his political life, and it is documented extensively in his papers. Incoming correspondence captures the issues brought to Roosevelt’s attention, while letterpress copybooks record his voluminous output on subjects from coal strikes to conservation, from statues to socialism. Scrapbooks contain newspaper clippings on various aspects of the Roosevelt administration, and desk diaries reveal who met with the president on a daily basis.

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An April 11, 1908, letter from Roosevelt to his son Archie in which Roosevelt describes punishing Archie’s brother Quentin for putting spitballs on portraits at the White House.

Throughout his political career, Roosevelt enjoyed another life as an author. He published historical works; wrote about his experiences as a rancher, hunter and explorer; and regularly contributed articles to periodicals such as “The Outlook.” T.R. even briefly tried to change the English language itself by promoting economical spelling, such as substituting “thoroly” for “thoroughly.” The experiment failed, but Roosevelt accepted good-natured ribbing from associates and continued using alternative spelling in his personal correspondence.

After leaving the presidency, T.R. went on safari in Africa, sending specimens to the Smithsonian Institution. He then toured Europe in 1910. After breaking with the Republican Party in 1912, he formed the Progressive or “Bull Moose” Party and ran unsuccessfully for president. He went to South America in 1913 on an expedition to explore an Amazon River tributary later named in his honor.

The outbreak of World War I brought Roosevelt back into the public arena as an ardent voice for American war preparedness. T.R. even offered to raise troops, but the Wilson administration rebuffed his offer. “I am a man of action,” Roosevelt wrote in June 1917, “and the President has refused to let me take part in this great contest as a man of action.”

Theodore Roosevelt, the man of war who also received a Nobel Peace Prize, died in his sleep on January 6, 1919.

My Job at the Library: Engaging Spanish Speakers with the Collections

Benny Seda-Galarza joined the Library’s Communications Office a little more than a year ago as a public affairs specialist. Fluent in English and Spanish, he is helping to reach out to the Spanish-speaking community to raise awareness about the Library’s programs and services. In observance of Hispanic Heritage Month, Seda-Galarza answers a few questions about his background and career.

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Benny Seda-Galarza. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Where did you grow up and go to school?

I was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, an island in the Caribbean also known as “La Isla del encanto” – the island of enchantment. Imagine summer all year long, a salty breeze and trips to the beach in December – it is paradise! When I went to college, however, “home” became more of a state of mind. My alma mater is the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, where I earned a bachelor’s degree in communications. I also did an exchange program at New York University on scholarship and studied abroad at the Autonomous University of Madrid in Spain.

What drew you to New York?

I always wanted to become fluent in English and overcome the language barrier I thought I had. At one point, I became obsessed with “Mad Men” – the TV show based on the booming advertising industry of the 1950s in New York City – which fueled my desire to live in the city that never sleeps. Since New York University offered a scholarship to students from my university, it felt like a no-brainer – perfect my English and live in the city of my dreams. It was challenging at times, but it forced me to get out of my comfort zone. It is one of the best decisions I made in college. Being fully bilingual has opened many doors for me professionally, and it has also enabled me to support others in my community.

How did you make your way to Washington, D.C., and the Library?

After living in New York, I interned in the U.S. Department of Agriculture in D.C. and was later hired as a marketing specialist to lead efforts related to agricultural commodities. Beyond my daily duties, I supported outreach to the Hispanic and LGBTQ+ communities. When the Library announced a position involving reaching out to Spanish speakers, I was delighted to apply.

Describe your job at the Library.

I like to tell friends that I share the treasures of the world’s largest library with the nation and beyond. That means leading internal and external communications and marketing for new acquisitions, digital initiatives and public programs – from 16th-century manuscripts to audio books and online educational apps – on behalf of multiple Library divisions. I also write for Library publications.

In addition, my role involves planning and executing outreach to diverse audiences, including the Spanish-speaking community – I develop communications materials in Spanish and will soon establish a formal plan to support the Library’s engagement of Spanish speakers.

What events have you most enjoyed working on so far?

In my experience, every program or event in the Library is unique, and I truly enjoy the dynamism of working on totally different projects. However, if I were forced to choose, I would say it was pretty neat to meet André Aciman, author of one of my favorite novels, “Call Me by Your Name,” as part of the National Pride Month events in the Library.

What is something not many people know about you?

I secretly read my horoscope with my morning coffee, so I guess you can say I am a fan of astrology. I am a Scorpio with a rising in Scorpio as well, which explains a lot about me, and a Gemini moon. If you know, you know.

Hispanic Heritage Month: Early Titles by the Americas’ First Printing Press

This is a guest post by John Hessler, curator of the Jay I. Kislak Collection of the History and Archaeology of the Early Americas at the Library of Congress.

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Title page to the “Doctrina breve muy provechosa,” by Juan de Zumárraga.

On June 12, 1539, a boat set sail from the Spanish city of Seville containing a cargo that would change the face of the Americas forever. On board was Giovanni Paoli (1500–61), perhaps better known by his Spanish name, Juan Pablos. He had been sent to the New World by Juan Cromberger (d. 1540), one of the most successful printers in Spain, to establish the first printing press on the new continent; with Pablos came all the materials and knowledge necessary to start publishing books in the Americas.

Juan Pablos arrived in Mexico City in October 1539 and quickly set up a press that would become known as the Casa de Juan Cromberger. Between Pablos’ arrival and his death in 1561, he published 37 titles, taking over full ownership of the press after Cromberger’s death in 1540. Only some the titles printed survive to the present day.

His first book, the earliest known to have been published in the Americas, came off the presses in 1539. It was titled the “Breve y más compendiosa doctrina Christiana en lengua Mexicana y Castellana,” which translates to “Short Compendium of Catholic Doctrine in Both Nahuatl and Spanish.” The first archbishop of Mexico, Juan de Zumárraga (1468–1548), wrote the book, apparently in both the indigenous language of Nahuatl and in Spanish. Unfortunately, no copies of the book have survived. Through the centuries, it has taken on legendary status, as scholars, collectors and antiquarians have continued to seek it out.

The distinction of being the first book printed in the Americas that can still actually be read goes to another Zumárraga title, “Doctrina breve muy provechosa,” or “Brief and useful Catholic Doctrine,” dating from 1543–44. The Library’s Rare Book and Special Collections Division holds a copy of this extremely rare book.

In it, one finds explanations and philosophical arguments related to the moral and theological principles necessary for a Christian life – the book was part of Zumárraga’s project to convert the peoples of Mexico to the Catholic faith.

Specialists who sit down to read book – which because of the typeface is not for the faint of heart – are immediately struck by the fact that it copies, in Spanish translation, much of the content of a far more famous book, the “Enchiridion,” translated as the “Handbook of a Christian Knight,” by the great humanist scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536).

The “Doctrina breve” contains much more, however, than a simple copy of Erasmus’ text. It narrates the Catholic articles of faith, explains the sacraments, talks about the various kinds of sin and works of mercy, and it delves deeply, in its 168 pages, into the importance of living a moral life.

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Title page to the Nahuatl-Spanish section of Molina’s “Vocabulario en lengua castellana y Mexicana.”

The early printing press, wherever it was found, was often controversial. The one set up in Mexico City by Cromberger and Paoli in 1539 was no different, as it opened up the Americas to the revolution of print that was sweeping through Europe. In 1559, nine years after Zumárraga died, the Mexican church temporarily banned the “Doctrina breve,” somewhat mysteriously. The “Enchiridion” was also considered by many in the church to contain heretical doctrine; it, too, was prohibited reading in 1559.

As publishing increased in the New World, however, it was not only church doctrine that became the subject of the new print culture. Indigenous languages, histories and customs also began to be more widely studied and read, quickly producing such printed masterworks as Alonso de Molina’s (1514–79) “Vocabulario en lengua castellana y Mexicana,” a bilingual dictionary of Spanish and Nahuatl. Originally called the “Aquí comiença un vocabulario en la lengua castellana y mexicana,” it was edited by Juan Pablos in 1555 and was the first dictionary of any kind to be published in the New World.

In the Americas, the printing press gave voice to both indigenous and European thought, as the two cultures began the long and difficult process of accommodating each other in the 16th century. What started as a trickle of books in 1539 increased rapidly and became, to quote Johannes Guttenberg, “a spring of truth” that would “scatter the darkness of ignorance and cause a light heretofore unknown to shine amongst men.”