Library of Congress's Blog, page 90

On Exhibit: Herblock Looks at 1968

This is a guest post by Sara W. Duke, curator of popular and applied graphic art in the Prints and Photographs Division. She highlights three of the 10 new cartoons installed this spring the Herblock Gallery of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building. New drawings from the Library’s extensive Herbert L. Block Collection are introduced into the exhibition every six months.

The Herblock Gallery in the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress now offers visitors an opportunity to examine the heady year 1968 through the eyes of a cartoonist. Herb Block – better known to newspaper readers as Herblock – drew editorial cartoons for the Washington Post from 1946 to 2001. Fifty years ago, he reacted to events and issues we continue to wrestle with today: the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War and the election of Richard M. Nixon.

Refusing to shy away from controversy, Herblock used the power of his pen with bitter anger six days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis on April 4, 1968, to lambast the National Rifle Association and gun dealers.

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“Choose Your Weapons, Folks,” published in the Washington Post on April 10, 1968. India ink, graphite and opaque white over graphite underdrawing. A Herblock Cartoon, copyright the Herb Block Foundation.

While one might expect cartoons on Vietnam, civil rights and poverty in an exhibition about 1968, Herblock also addressed the issue of trade protection. The textile industry was pushing Congress to pass protective tariffs, much to the dismay of President Lyndon Johnson and his administration, which feared international retaliation aimed at other American products.

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“We’ll Cleverly Seal the Door Closed from Just One Side,” published in the Washington Post on March 29, 1968. Graphite, India ink and opaque white over graphite underdrawing. A Herblock Cartoon, copyright the Herb Block Foundation.

The biggest issue of 1968 was the presidential election. Democratic Party candidate Eugene McCarthy’s surprising upset in the New Hampshire primary led President Johnson not to seek a second term. Instead of coming together and uniting behind one candidate, the Democratic Party split – a fracture that did not heal after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy during the California primary on June 5, 1965. Richard M. Nixon emerged as the leader of the Republican Party during the primaries. From the time Nixon was elected to Congress in 1948, Herblock had portrayed him with a five o’clock shadow, a symbol of his mud-slinging politics. When he refused a televised debate with the Democratic Party candidate Hubert Humphrey, Herblock extended his shadow metaphor.

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“Right – We’ve Completely Overcome the Old Five o’Clock Shadow,” published in the Washington Post on October 25, 1968. Graphite, India ink and opaque white with overlay over graphite underdrawing. A Herblock Cartoon, copyright the Herb Block Foundation.

To learn more about the Herbert L. Block Collection – and to view many more examples of Herblock’s work – view the collection online.

Pic of the Week: Strads in the House

[image error]Library of Congress photographer Shawn Miller captured this stunning photograph of 10 Stradivari instruments – and Italy’s esteemed Quartetto di Cremona – during a special “Strad Shoot” in the Great Hall of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building on May 11. The occasion was a prelude to a concert that evening by the Quartetto, co-presented by the Library, the Embassy of Italy and the Italian Cultural Institute of Washington, D.C.

The Quartetto performs regularly on four beautiful instruments made by Antonio Stradivari – the “Paganini Quartet,” named for virtuoso violinist Niccolo Paganini, who once owned them. The concert offered a unique opportunity to bring the Paganinis together with the Library’s six priceless Strads, for a record-setting display of the great maker’s art.

Baseball Americana: Playing Behind Barbed Wire

Welcome to week three of our blog series for “ Baseball Americana,” a major new Library of Congress exhibition opening June 29 . This is the third of nine posts – we’re publishing one each Thursday leading up to the opening. This week, in recognition of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, we’re highlighting Library collections that document baseball as played by Japanese-Americans incarcerated in World War II internment camps.

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Observers watch a baseball game underway at the Manzanar War Relocation Center in 1943. Photo by Ansel Adams.

In 1943, Ansel Adams, America’s most-renowned photographer, turned his lens from rugged Western landscapes to a new and tragic subject: the plight of Japanese-Americans held in internment camps during World War II.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order that allowed the forcible removal of nearly 120,000 U.S. citizens and residents of Japanese descent from their homes to government-run camps across the West—desolate places such as Manzanar in the Sierras’ shadow, Heart Mountain in the Rockies, Poston in the Arizona desert.

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The entrance to the Manzanar War Relocation Center. Photo by Ansel Adams.

Adams went to Manzanar to photograph daily life in the camp, where residents, housed in temporary barracks and surrounded by barbed wire, built wartime communities and organized governing bodies, farms, schools, libraries.

They also played: Adams’ images capture internees competing in football, soccer, volleyball, softball and, of course, baseball—described in the camp newspaper as Manzanar’s “king of sports.”

Across the camps, internees organized leagues, played regular season and championship games, kept box scores and statistics and chronicled it all with stories in newspapers they themselves produced.

Today, those newspapers are held by the Library, a collection that includes more than 4,600 English- and Japanese-language issues published in 13 camps and later microfilmed by the Library. In 2017, the Library placed them online.

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The sports page from the July 27, 1942, issue of The Manzanar Free Press highlights batting statistics, game results and more.

Like those newspapers, Adams’ Manzanar photos also are part of the Library collections.

In 1965, Adams offered the images to the Library for safekeeping for posterity, to ensure that a record of the internees’ experiences behind barbed wire would forever remain accessible to the public.

“The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and dispair [sic] by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment,” Adams wrote in making the offer. “All in all, I think this Manzanar Collection is an important historical document, and I trust it can be put to good use.”

“ Baseball Americana ” features items from the Library of Congress collections and those of its lending partners to consider the game then and now – as it relates to players, teams and the communities it creates. The Library is partnering with ESPN, Major League Baseball and the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in presenting the exhibition, made possible by the Library of Congress Third Century Fund, the James Madison Council and Democracy Fund.

Inquiring Minds: Decoding the Design of America’s Libraries

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Kenneth Breisch discusses “American Libraries” at the Library of Congress in April. Photo by Shawn Miller.

For more than two centuries, American library architecture aspired to accommodate the physical dimensions of books and the furniture and spaces designed to store and display them. “American Libraries 1730–1950”—a new book by Kenneth Breisch—celebrates the history of that architecture, from classical temples to ivy-covered campus citadels to modern glass boxes—whose roofs now house more than just books, as technology continues to reshape our ideas about what a library can be.

Breisch is an associate professor of architecture at the University of Southern California, where he founded the university’s graduate program in heritage conservation. Previously, he worked for the Texas State Historical Commission and taught at the University of Texas, the University of Delaware and the Southern California Institute of Architecture. He has a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Michigan.

Breisch started visiting the Library of Congress in the 1980s to research his first book, “Henry Hobson Richardson and the Small Public Library in America,” in the Prints and Photographs Division. Several years ago, Ford Peatross, the now-retired curator of the division’s architecture, design and engineering collections, approached Breisch to write “American Libraries” for the Visual Sourcebook Series, a collaboration between W.W. Norton and the Library of Congress. Published in 2017, the book includes more than 500 images from the Library’s collections.

Here Breisch answers questions about his research on library design and his work at the Library of Congress.

When did you become interested in library design and architecture?

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, one of my professors suggested that I write my senior honors thesis on the Hackley Public Library in Muskegon, Michigan, where I had gone to high school. In researching the library, I became aware of a vast amount of material on library planning and design in the Michigan Library Science Library that had been produced over the decades by American librarians. It had never been carefully examined by architectural historians and led to my Ph.D. dissertation, “Small Public Libraries in America 1850–90: The Invention and Evolution of a Building Type.”

How did American library design evolve?

The earliest libraries in America date to the late 17th century and were associated with the country’s first colleges. They were relatively small—enclosed in a single room—and were typically located in buildings that also housed classrooms, offices and the college chapel.

Toward the middle of the 18th century, wealthy American gentlemen, such as Thomas Jefferson, began to collect books, amassing private libraries of several dozen or occasionally even several thousand books. About the same time, other gentlemen pooled their money to form private library associations, which often formed the foundation for the first public libraries. These began to appear during the middle of 19th century. While some of them erected book halls to house their collections, it was not until later in the century that the public lending library, as we know it today, began to emerge as an important American institution. But books were still stored in closed rooms away from the public, and their use was usually restricted to the adult population.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, American librarians began to promote the “modern library idea,” stressing the need for utilitarian design and open planning. These features became hallmarks of public library building during subsequent decades. Library patrons benefited from associated concepts supported by progressive librarians, such as public accessibility to previously closed bookshelves and children’s reading rooms, as well as the later introduction of computers and other new technologies.

How has the design of libraries reflected the aspirations of patrons or builders?

During the 19th century, in particular, library-building patrons were often local industrialists, or the widows or children of these businessmen, who were interested in giving back to the communities where they had accumulated their wealth. These institutions were often named for their donors and thus acted as permanent family memorials. This pattern was eclipsed in the late 19th century by Andrew Carnegie’s offer to fund the erection of library buildings all across the United States, a program that continued until the onset of World War I. Whatever his personal motives, his philanthropy introduced the American public library to hundreds of small communities, which would never have had such cultural institutions. Based on this foundation, the public library emerged as a central component in the establishment of American civic life, a position—although now occasionally under siege—it has not surrendered.

How does the Library of Congress fit into this mix?

When the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress was being planned in the late 19th century, its engineer, Bernard R. Green, introduced monumental metal book stacks to house the Library’s vast collections and conveyor belts and book elevators to efficiently deliver books to readers. In this respect, the building became the model for the modern and efficient library. Librarians, however, were less than pleased with what they viewed as the overly extravagant (and expensive) ornamentation of the Jefferson’s public spaces, so the Library also became for them a prime example of architectural excess, which they pointed to in promoting economy in library planning.

Which library buildings in the book do you find especially compelling?

Well, I have written books on the libraries of Henry Hobson Richardson and, more recently, on Bertram Goodhue’s Los Angeles Central Library building, so I have to admit being partial to these structures. But several more recent libraries such as the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale, which was designed in 1961 by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, or Louis Kahn’s Phillips Exeter Academy Library (1969–71), certainly stand out as two of the most beautiful buildings in the country.

Can you comment on your experience researching the book at the Library?

Due to the Library’s early and robust initiative to place images from the Prints and Photographs Division online, I was fortunate—since I live in California—to be able to develop much of my preliminary research over the internet. Because the division’s holdings are so vast, many images I used had not yet been scanned, so I also made numerous trips to Washington to look through the collections. Other images had not yet been cataloged, or had been very recently acquired, so I was introduced to still more “undiscovered” material through the encyclopedic knowledge of Ford Peatross. The result is a book that owes much to him, as well as many other generous members of the Library’s staff.

Pic of the Week: Uncovering Hidden Text in Documents

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Photo by Shawn Miller.

Middle- and high-school students visited the Library’s Preservation Research and Testing Division on May 9 as part of hands-on pilot program focusing on preservation science. Here, alongside Library scientists, the students use the Library’s hyperspectral camera system to discover concealed writing in documents.

For the past decade, the Library has relied on increasingly sophisticated hyperspectral imaging technology to elicit a trove of information the human eye cannot detect from manuscripts, maps and other artifacts. Imaging involves digitally photographing an object at multiple wavelengths spanning the ultraviolet through the visible and into the near-infrared. Discrete components in an object—inks, glues, parchment—respond in unique ways to the different wavelengths. So at one wavelength, one ink may almost melt away, revealing another ink below.

The Preservation Research and Testing Division is conducting its pilot with the Library’s Educational Outreach Office. The goal is to introduce students to preservation science and its importance to protecting cultural and historical heritage within the Library’s collections. In the fall, the program will be offered on a monthly basis.

For the story behind how the Library used hyperspectral imaging to detect hidden text in a 1780 love letter from early American statesman Alexander Hamilton to his future wife, Elizabeth Schuyler, read this blog post.

Baseball Americana: Baseball’s Greatest Hits

Welcome to week two of our blog series for “ Baseball Americana,” a major new Library of Congress exhibition opening June 29 . This is the second of nine posts – we’re publishing one each Thursday leading up to the opening, then we’ll feature posts about different topics related to the yearlong exhibition. As a bonus, we’re counting down the innings to the exhibit’s launch by asking baseball fans a question each week. Your second question is at the bottom of this post. Join the conversation! 

Baseball and music go together like the Yankees and championships, like history and Fenway Park.

[image error]No sport has inspired as much music: Pop songs and polkas, quicksteps and two-steps, mambos and marches, waltzes, foxtrots, rags, quadrilles, schottisches, cantatas and even operas have been written in celebration of America’s game.

The Library of Congress, through its copyright function, holds one of the world’s largest collections of baseball sheet music – a chronicle of more than 150  years of passion for the national pastime.

“Hundreds of examples reside among our general and special collections,” said Susan Clermont, a senior specialist in the Music Division. “But what makes our collection of baseball music unique is the works that came into the Library via the U.S. Copyright Office as copyright deposits. Here lie some of the most elusive examples of lesser-known published songs and unpublished works for which we hold the only copy.”

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Sheet music cover for “Base Ball Polka.” This version, by Jas. M. Goodman, was copyrighted in 1867, nine years after Blodgett’s composition of the same name.

Most of the music celebrated the pleasures of a day at the ballpark, great players, a hometown team or, as in the case of the earliest known baseball-related composition, a rival club. J.R. Blodgett, a player for the Niagara Base Ball Club of Buffalo, N.Y., wrote “The Base Ball Polka” and dedicated it to an opposing team, the Flour City Base Ball Club of Rochester.

Blodgett’s tune was submitted for copyright registration at the Library on Oct. 21, 1858, and, like many early baseball compositions, was an instrumental.

Those polkas, marches and waltzes fit the social nature of the game in the years just before the Civil War and in the decades that followed, says Tim Wiles, director of research at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Players wore festive uniforms, celebrated at banquets after the game and sometimes staged parades to and from the grounds. The run-over-the-catcher, win-at-all-costs mentality didn’t yet exist.

“To understand it, we need to lose the notion that it was just about beating the other club, which is part of baseball today,” Wiles says. “It was a bit of a celebration – of baseball, of civic pride and also of this newfound leisure activity these middle-class gentlemen in the clubs were able to have that maybe their fathers and grandfathers didn’t.”

Baseball Meets Tin Pan Alley

The game grew up, and the music grew with it. The American League began play in 1901, joining the National League. The first World Series was played in 1903. Big stars like Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson and, later, Babe Ruth emerged. Music publishing was changing, too.

“More and more people had the means to acquire sheet music, more and more people had the means to afford a piano upon which to play it. Making music in the home became very important,” says George Boziwick, chief of the Music Division at the New York Public Library of the Performing Arts and the curator of the 2008 exhibition “Take Me Out to the Ball Game: 100 Years of Music, Musicians, and the National Pastime.”

Tin Pan Alley, the popular-music publishing industry, produced thousands of tunes for the public around the turn of the century, many about baseball. The subject matter expanded, too: Baseball songs weren’t always just about baseball anymore.

After World War I, Bertha Stanfield Dempsey published “America’s Pinch Hit March,” a tribute to the Allies’ victory. The tune is an instrumental, but the sheet music’s cover illustration tells the story: Uncle Sam drops his bat and heads toward first, German troops futilely chase the ball in the outfield, the Allies round the bases, and the Kaiser stalks the mound in frustration after surrendering a war-ending base hit.

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“Base Ball Game of Love” (1909). Songwriters frequently used baseball as a metaphor for romance.

Most often, baseball is a metaphor for romance.

Love was in the air, on the field and in the stands: “You’re Hitting a Thousand in the Game of Love,” “If You Can’t Make a Hit in a Ball-game, You Can’t Make a Hit with Me” and “I Can’t Get to First Base with You,” a tune with lyrics credited to the wife of Yankees great Lou Gehrig.

“I’ve sacrificed and bunted my heart,” Eleanor Gehrig wrote. “The game is over … I can’t get to first base with you.”

Berlin, Sousa and Ruth

Baseball also attracted composers and lyricists with greater musical pedigrees: Irving Berlin, John Philip Sousa and George M. Cohan all wrote baseball songs now in the Library collections.

The first tune published by British playwright and songwriter Noel Coward was about baseball. In “The Baseball Rag,” copyrighted on Nov. 1, 1919, the composer of “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” went a little mad himself about America’s game: “It’s a dope, it’s a dream, it’s a yell, it’s a scream, Gee! That baseball rag.”

The music often celebrated favorite teams and great players: “Oh, You Red Sox” and “The A’s are the Craze,” Cobb (“King of Clubs”) and Ruth (“Babe Ruth: He’s a Home Run Guy”). Before the Babe, there was a King. In 1889, J.W. Kelly paid tribute to baseball’s first superstar, Mike “King” Kelly, with a hugely popular tune, “Slide, Kelly, Slide!”

“He was Babe Ruth before Babe Ruth came along. Kelly was immensely popular,” Wiles says. “That phrase, ‘Slide, Kelly, slide,’ still is in the baseball lexicon many years later. People will throw that phrase around in baseball circles without necessarily knowing who Kelly was or what it means.”

George J. Gaskin recorded “Slide” on wax cylinders for play on Edison phonographs – and produced the nation’s first pop hit single.

Some topics in baseball, and baseball music, are timeless.

“Don’t Kill the Umpire Until the Last Man is Out” (1963) followed “The Umpire’s Revenge” (1888), “The Umpire Is a Most Unhappy Man” (1905) and “Let’s Get the Umpire’s Goat” (1909) – the musical story of a clerk who invents a death in the family so he can leave work, attend a game and harass the umpire.

“Go somewhere and die, back to the bush, you’ve got mud in your eye,” Croker yells.

Nothing spurred the popularity and production of baseball songs more than the tune that put peanuts and crackerjack together and, 105 years after its creation, still is sung at ballparks across America.

Baseball’s Greatest Hit

On May 2, 1908, the U.S. Copyright Office received two copies of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” submitted by composer Albert von Tilzer and lyricist Jack Norworth.

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“Take Me Out to the Ball-Game” (1908) inspired imitations and a horde of other songs about baseball.

In the song, diehard fan Katie Casey asks her beau to take her to a game, not a show. After the second verse, Katie leads the crowd in the famous chorus. The song was immensely popular and, Boziwick says, struck a blow for women. Previous songs, he says, treated women at the ballpark in a condescending way: “She’s a regular fan, like a regular man. She knows just what to do and say.”

“Take Me Out to the Ball Game” was different. “The song is a welcoming experience,” Boziwick says. “It’s not a putdown, like other songs. It allows a woman to be at the ballgame and also to be knowledgeable and to participate. People don’t realize how important that was at the time.”

The tune also inspired a huge number of baseball songs – and imitations: “Take Your Girl to the Ball Game,” “Follow the Crowd to the Ball Game,” “Root! Root! Root!”

Much baseball music still is created today. “There are, by my estimation, about 1,000 baseball songs that have been written and published on record albums and CDs since World War II,” Wiles says.

The game might have been popular in any age. Sportswriter Ring Lardner in 1911 published a song in which he imagines Christopher Columbus sitting in the stands at a baseball game.

He’d have said, ‘Boys, I’m glad

I discovered this land.

Gee! It’s a wonderful game!’

A bibliography of published baseball music and songs in the collections of the Music Division is available on the Library’s website.

BONUS QUESTION

What would be your walk-up song?

“ Baseball Americana ” features items from the Library of Congress collections and those of its lending partners to consider the game then and now – as it relates to players, teams and the communities it creates. The Library is partnering with ESPN, Major League Baseball and the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in presenting the exhibition.

Inquiring Minds: Bringing Radio’s Golden Age Back to Life

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Karl Schadow works with radio dramas deposited with copyright registrations. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Karl Schadow began his lifelong love affair with radio drama in the 1970s when, as a youth in Schenectady, New York, he became a fan of “CBS Radio Mystery Theater.” The program was a surprise hit between 1974 and 1982, appealing to an audience that included many who remembered radio drama fondly as a form of family entertainment.

Schadow went on to become a microbiologist, working at universities across the United States. But he maintained his interest in radio drama, researching it as time allowed. His hobby took him to the Library of Congress for the first time in 1994 to investigate holdings from the 1920s through the 1950s—considered radio’s Golden Age.

Schadow has continued to visit the Library regularly ever since. Now based in Virginia, he is a full-time independent radio history researcher. He estimates that his quest has taken him to most, if not all, of the Library’s divisions and reading rooms. But he most often works with the Copyright Drama Deposit Collection in the Manuscript Division and recordings and scripts from the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division.

“Mr. Schadow’s work in the Library of Congress’ sound archives represent the best of radio research,” comments Josh Shepperd of the Catholic University of America, director of the Library’s Radio Preservation Task Force.

Created in 2014 as part of the Library’s National Recording Preservation Plan, the task force encourages preservation and research of radio history. Among its current projects, it is developing a national database to identify and make searchable information about historical recordings, beginning with radio broadcasts.

Here Karl Schadow answers questions about his research and his experience at the Library.

Tell us about favorite radio programs you’ve researched.

My fancy is mystery and horror. A favorite program is “Dark Fantasy,” which aired over NBC in 1941–42. It was produced at station WKY (Oklahoma City) and thus not by one of the “big three” (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles). There are recordings and scripts of this series housed in the Recorded Sound Division. Another similar program is “Murder at Midnight,” recorded in 1946 by Louis G. Cowan, an independent radio producer. All 52 scripts of this series are available in the Copyright Drama Deposit Collection. A third favorite is “Stay Tuned for Terror,” the scripts of which (by Robert Bloch of “Psycho” fame) are purported to be held at the Library. There is an ongoing search for the set of these elusive beasts.

What is your goal in reconstructing the history of radio’s Golden Age?

I want to enlighten as many people as possible as to the significance of radio’s history, especially dramatic series, often called “the theater of the mind.” Radio is an important part of popular culture along with literature, film, stage and television. Another objective is to continue to promote the legacy of all of those individuals who participated in these ventures.

What discoveries stand out from the Copyright Drama Deposit Collection?

There are literally thousands of radio scripts in the Copyright Drama Deposit Collection. While many well-known programs are to be found there, such as “Lux Radio Theatre” and “The Green Hornet,” it is the more obscure series, including those mentioned above, that offer the radio enthusiast the greatest opportunity for discovery.

How do copyright records generally support your work?

Copyrighted scripts may be the only source (print or otherwise) that is extant for a given radio program. The script identifies the author (whether an individual or a firm) and may also include names of the cast and production crew. Sometimes only an audition or first episode is registered for copyright. In other instances, entire seasons or broadcast runs have been preserved. Scripts submitted for copyright may also function as an additional copy or source for comparative study. For example, there are sets of scripts for “The Chase and Sanborn Program” featuring Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, in both the Recorded Sound Section (NBC Collections) and the Manuscript Division (copyright dramas).

What radio broadcasts in the collections have especially fascinated you?

The OWI (Office of War Information) audio is one of the more fascinating collections in the Recorded Sound Division. The OWI collected many programs aired on networks for distribution during World War II. For example, there are recordings of “Camp Grant in Review,” a variety program from an army installation in Illinois, which aired on the Mutual Broadcasting System. There are also recordings made in San Francisco of a daytime serial (soap opera), “Sparks of Friendship,” which aired only in the Midwest. They are contained in the George Garabedian Collection in Recorded Sound Division.

How do you share your findings?

My research has appeared in publications of the radio (“Radio Recall”) and pulp-magazine (“Blood ‘n’ Thunder”) fields, and also online at www.mysteryfile.com. Moreover, I’ve had the opportunity to write the program guides (liner notes) for several CD sets released by Radio Spirits. I’m now preparing presentations for meetings of the Metro Washington Old Time Radio Club and the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention.

What has your experience been like conducting research at the Library?

The staff of both the Recorded Sound Section and the Manuscript Division continue to go the extra mile in making materials available for research. The focus here, however, should be the subject matter of the research rather than my personal experiences.

For information about the Library’s efforts to preserve radio history and encourage its study, visit the website of the Radio Preservation Task Force.

Inquiring Minds: Sharing a Passion for Folk Music, Live from Brooklyn

An earlier version of this interview, conducted by John Fenn of the American Folklife Center, was published on “Folklife Today,” the center’s blog.

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Eli Smith (center) with his band, the Down Hill Strugglers. Photo by M. Smith.

A little over a decade ago, Brooklyn-based musician and promoter Eli Smith merged his passion for folk music with the inspiration he gets from fellow New York City artists and created the Brooklyn Folk Festival. Since then, Smith has engaged the Library’s American Folklife Center in numerous ways, doing research into the history of folk music, learning songs from the collections and brainstorming with staff on ways to excite interest in the center’s holdings. Here Smith answers questions from John Fenn of the AFC about the festival and collaborating with the Folklife Center.

Tell me about your relationship to folk and traditional music.

I became interested when I was a teenager, growing up in Greenwich Village. I heard recordings of Woody Guthrie and Mississippi John Hurt, as well as the New Lost City Ramblers. I read the liner notes and followed their sources. Smithsonian Folkways reissued the Harry Smith Anthology when I was in high school, and I got that. It was a revelation for me. When I heard that range of music—it was completely unlike anything I had heard before!

These were the kind of sounds that I’d been searching or hoping for, without even knowing it. Also the Deep River of Song series of Lomax recordings was being issued back then on CD, and those were also a revelation to me, along with the amazing reissues of music of old 78s on the Yazoo label.

I followed the music, listening as much as I could, learning about the musicians and the styles and sounds. I learned how to play the guitar, banjo and harmonica; some mandolin and fiddle; other instruments. Exploring the history of the music in my own neighborhood, going back into the 1960s but even earlier—the 1950s, 1940s, 1930s—and connecting with older generations of musicians and cultural workers was important for me. They played the music themselves, but were also devoted to presenting it and perpetuating the music by, among other things, bringing it to audiences and issuing recordings.

What inspired you to launch the festival?

There was such a good scene of musicians in New York City when I first thought of the festival in 2008 (and now) that I felt we needed a yearly festival to properly present the music. I wanted these wonderful musicians, who I felt were not receiving their due, to have an opportunity to play for a large audience and to help spread awareness and understanding about the music. I also felt, and still feel, that most music festivals that are calling themselves “folk” festivals are not presenting a true range of “folk” music. Most folk festivals are actually singer-songwriter/indie rock festivals. It’s false advertising! I wanted a folk festival that was more in line with the early Newport Folk Festivals or University of Chicago Folk Festivals from back in the early 1960s. By that I mean I wanted to present a folk festival that was really counter cultural—folk music being a cornerstone of the American counter culture—and a festival that really represented the huge diversity and deep roots inherent in the idea of folk music. We have made that our goal at the Brooklyn Folk Festival.

  What surprises you most about the festival, 10 years on?

I’m somewhat surprised that we managed to keep the festival going for 10 years. That’s a long stretch, especially for an event in New York, where things can be pretty tough. But I have to say, the time has flown by! The festival remains vibrant and we intend to keep it going.

I produce the festival with the Jalopy Theatre and School of Music, which is the home for folk and traditional music in New York City today. The first two years, the festival was at the Jalopy, but it outgrew our small space. We have moved to successively larger venues, and are now at St. Ann’s Church, a beautiful Gothic cathedral-type building in Brooklyn Heights. This space has allowed the festival to expand: two stages, an area for dances and workshops, film screenings and, new this year, the first-ever Brooklyn Fiddle Contest.

Tell us about the Archives Roadshow.

The collections at the AFC are so amazing and inspiring to me and my friends in our music scene here in New York. But they could, of course, be better known by the public.

Through conversations with Nancy Groce and Todd Harvey of the AFC, we established this idea of making a visual display that could be easily transported to different venues, combined with a touring group of musicians, whose work has been profoundly influenced by the collections at the AFC. These musicians would play pieces they had learned from the AFC’s collections, and speak about the recordings, their history and their own relationship to them.

We wanted to bring the music directly to audiences, live and in person! The idea was to make it exciting, immediate and relatable to people, and hopefully inspire them to visit the AFC in person. Or, at the very least, look at the online collections.

What other connections do you have to the AFC?

I have done research at the AFC, for my own edification and knowledge as a musician, but also to compile and release on the Jalopy Records label the album “Lost Train Blues: John and Alan Lomax and the Early Folk Music Collections at the Library of Congress.” Everyone at the AFC is so great, welcoming and knowledgeable when I come to do research.

What is your favorite discovery from the AFC archives?

That’s hard to answer. I loved hearing more of Jess Morris’ playing, the great Texas fiddler. I really enjoyed hearing everything he recorded with John Lomax back in 1942 (listen to an example below). I have also loved exploring recordings that Sidney Robertson Cowell made, or Willard Rhodes’ recordings of, for example, Cherokee Christian hymns. Also hearing the Gant Family was amazing.  And Jesse Wadley’s recordings. But there’s so, so much! It’s crazy.

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2018 National Book Festival Poster Evokes Thrills and Discovery

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2018 Library of Congress National Book Festival poster. Illustration by Gaby D’Alessandro

Original art is once again part of this year’s Library of Congress National Book Festival as the design for the 2018 festival poster is being unveiled this week. The illustration was created by Gaby D’Alessandro, 31, a Dominican illustrator based in New York City. The poster includes a whimsical hot air balloon carrying a young reader into space.

D’Alessandro studied fine art and illustration at Altos de Chavón and moved to New York City in 2008 after receiving a scholarship to Parsons School of Design. She graduated from Parsons in 2010, with a BFA in Illustration. D’Alessandro shares some thoughts on this year’s design and her love of reading ahead of the National Book Festival, which is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 1 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.

Tell us about your background. What drew you to want to become an artist and illustrator?

I’m very introspective, and I’ve always enjoyed telling stories as a way to express myself and connect with others. When I was in high school, my main creative outlet was theatre, and a few years before going to college I discovered I also liked drawing and I learned that I could tell my stories through illustration, so I eventually decided to pursue that as a career.

Your design for this year’s National Book Festival poster includes a colorful hot air balloon flying into space. What was your inspiration? Tell us about your creative process.

The creative brief for this assignment was very open, and I had the freedom to experiment and come up with an image that felt personal and exciting to me. I was asked to convey the joy of reading and show how books promote the discovery of new ideas and exploration of new worlds. I kept this in mind and tried to find the right visual symbols to communicate how I feel when I’m reading something inspiring. I wanted my image to evoke the thrill and sense of discovery that books bring into my life.

Why were you interested in being part of this year’s National Book Festival?

I felt honored to be given the opportunity to collaborate with the National Book Festival and to have a platform to reach so many people with a positive message. I strongly believe in the importance of reading, so I was very happy to work on a piece that would be used to promote that.

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Illustrator Gaby D’Alessandro. Photo by Isaac Weeber

Tell us about what you enjoy reading or a book that made an impact on you.

I enjoy reading magical realism by authors like Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar and Jorge Luis Borges. I also like books that explore human relationships and emotions, like “The Neapolitan Novels” by Elena Ferrante. And I’m interested in non-fiction books about human behavior and the role we play in the world, like “Sapiens” by Yuval Noah Harari. I think each of these themes influence my work as an artist.

Your clients as an illustrator include magazines, newspapers, museums and other organizations. What kinds of pieces do you create most often? Is most of your work in editorial illustration and helping to tell a story? How do you approach your various projects?

Yes, most of the assignments I receive are for editorial illustration, but my process is similar for other types of projects as well: After reading the article or brief I’ve been assigned, and taking notes, I try to research the topic further and begin collecting reference images. I later brainstorm and write down preliminary ideas and work on quick thumbnail roughs, from which I choose around three favorites to develop into more detailed sketches that I send to the client. Once a sketch is approved, I work on the final in Photoshop, using a Wacom tablet. I sometimes work traditionally for personal and gallery pieces, but I choose to draw digitally for illustration assignments because it streamlines the process and allows me to make quick changes.

What kinds of challenges would you like to take on as an artist – perhaps something you haven’t tried before?

I would love to work on children’s books and perhaps write and illustrate my own story someday.

Baseball Americana: “Laws of Base Ball,” Babe Ruth’s Shoes and Jackie Robinson’s Letters to Be Displayed in New Exhibition

This is a guest post by Brett Zongker of the Communications Office.

W elcome to the blog series for “Baseball Americana,” a major new Library of Congress exhibition opening June 29. We’ll be publishing nine posts – one each Thursday – leading up to the opening, then we’ll feature posts about different topics related to the yearlong exhibition. This first post is an overview of the exhibition. As a bonus, we’re counting down the innings to the exhibit’s opening by asking baseball fans a question each week. Your first question is at the bottom of this post. Join the conversation!  

[image error]The 1857 handwritten “Laws of Base Ball,” cited by historians as the game’s “magna carta,” will be among the artifacts featured in the new exhibition “Baseball Americana” opening June 29 at the Library of Congress. The exhibition will explore baseball’s past and present and how the game has forged a sense of community for players and fans across the country. Also on display will be Babe Ruth’s shoes, the Rockford Peaches uniform and Jackie Robinson’s letters.

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The “Laws of Base Ball” as decided during the Base Ball Convention of 1857. The handwritten corrections reflect negotiations that took place during the proceedings.

The founding documents of baseball that would shape the modern game as our national pastime were ironed out in January and February 1857 at a convention called by the Knickerbockers Base Ball Club in New York City. Corrections were made by hand as the details were negotiated by New York-area ball clubs, including whether to play seven, nine or 12 innings to a game. The convention established a uniform set of rules, many of which are still in use today, including nine players on a side, nine innings to a game and 90 feet between bases.

Long thought to be lost, the original “Laws of Base Ball” manuscripts were saved by an heir of a Knickerbocker delegate to the convention. They resurfaced in 1999 and sold at auction, but their significance was not understood. They were sold again in 2016, and the buyer is lending the documents for their first major exhibition.

In addition to the extensive baseball holdings of the Library of Congress, “Baseball Americana” also will feature items from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, including Babe Ruth’s shoes and his 1921 agreement with the New York Yankees, Dottie Key’s uniform from the Rockford Peaches and Ty Cobb’s 1908 contract with the Detroit Tigers. A selection of baseball gloves, bats, balls, shoes and catchers’ masks from past and current professional players will show how the game has evolved over the centuries.

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Babe Ruth’s shoes. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Featured artifacts from the Library will include Jackie Robinson’s letter of thanks and appreciation to baseball executive Branch Rickey after Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier, the first handwritten and printed references to “baseball” in America from the 1780s, historical images, early baseball cards, film footage from the 1890s to the present, broadcasts of iconic baseball moments and rare interviews with Hall of Fame players.

ESPN’s Statistics and Information Group collaborated with the Library to develop original content in the form of statistics, trivia questions and historical comparisons to offer new insights into America’s game for everyone, from rookies to the most die-hard baseball fans. These items are designed to give a unique spin on the Library’s collection, spark conversation and compare baseball present with baseball past.

Major League Baseball is also contributing video footage from its massive and incomparable archive for the exhibition to help create an immersive experience for visitors.

“Baseball Americana” will open June 29, just before Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., hosts Major League Baseball’s 89th All-Star Game on July 17. An All-Star Family Day program is planned for Saturday, July 14, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with a variety of activities for all ages.

The yearlong exhibition will be on view in the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First St., S.E., Washington, DC. The exhibition will be free and open to the public Monday through Saturday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

To coincide with the exhibition, Harper Perennial will release an updated edition of “Baseball Americana: Treasures from the Library of Congress” in May. This illustrated history of baseball includes more than 350 images and numerous milestones of the game.

The exhibition is made possible by the Library of Congress Third Century Fund, the James Madison Council and Democracy Fund.

“ Baseball Americana ” features items from Library of Congress collections and those of its lending partners to consider the game then and now – as it relates to players, teams and the communities it creates. The Library is partnering with ESPN, Major League Baseball and the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in presenting the exhibition.

BONUS QUESTION

How did you become a baseball fan? Include your answer in a comment to this post!