Library of Congress's Blog, page 92

Preservation Week 2018: Celebrating Veterans and Their Families

This is a guest post by Jacob Nadal, Director for Preservation at the Library of Congress.

[image error]

Jacob Nadal. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Every spring, libraries all across the U.S. celebrate Preservation Week. This annual event highlights what we can do, individually and together, to care for our personal collections and to support preservation efforts in libraries, archives, museums, historical societies and collecting institutions in communities all across the country.

Preservation Week was launched in 2010 by federal agencies and professional societies concerned with preservation issues, with the Library of Congress and Institute of Museum and Library Services working in partnership with the American Library Association, the American Institute for Conservation, the Society of American Archivists and others.

Although preservation has a long history in libraries, Preservation Week is a 21st-century program, and the 21st century has been an important period for cultural heritage preservation. One of the reasons for this is simple: the 20th century saw the development of more technologies for recording and distributing information than any earlier period in history. Photography, film, video and audio recording all came of age. Publishing of books and journals expanded exponentially and continues to grow year over year to this day. By the end of the 20th century, every genre of media was amplified by digital technologies and, at present, digital information has dwarfed all other media.

[image error]

Paper conservators Gwenanne Edwards and Mary Elizabeth Haude prepare an 18th-century map for conservation treatment. Photo by Shawn Miller.

The challenges of preservation in the 21st century are larger and more complex than ever before. In response, librarians and archivists have a responsibility to raise public awareness and develop the skills and techniques necessary to preserve a diverse and growing range of information and artifacts.

The Library of Congress has a special role in this. Our vast scope of collecting requires us to support an extensive program of preservation services and research, and Preservation Week is a welcome opportunity to share our knowledge and sense of purpose. From time to time, though, Congress gives the Library special direction to attend to preservation issues of concern for the American people. It is a particular honor to share an example of this in the form of the Veteran’s History Project (VHP).

VHP is an example of this new preservation consciousness and a model for preservation in the 21st century. A congressionally mandated effort, it was launched at the Library in 2000 to collect U.S. veterans’ oral histories, original personal documents and images and ensure that they are preserved and kept accessible for posterity. VHP collects materials from World War I through the most recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, donated by veterans or their loved ones.

[image error]

Research chemist Lynn Brostoff analyses one of the Library’s Claude Laurent glass flutes with musician Robbie Lee looking on. Photo by Shawn Miller.

As older veterans pass away, records of their lives in the military are left behind, and families find themselves faced with the dilemma of what to do with these materials. To keep the records may mean deterioration of these fragile items. To part with them means losing possession of treasured pieces of family history. By donating material to VHP, veterans and their families can ensure that their material is not only preserved according to the highest archival standards, but also made available to their family members, researchers and the public for generations to come.

For more recent service members or veterans, preserving records presents new challenges. Traditional forms of communication and documentation—letters, photographs, handwritten journals—have been replaced by emails, digital images, social media and blogs, all dependent on an ever-evolving array of hardware and software. Fortunately, the Library provides many resources to aid in the preservation of these valued mementos—from guidance about preservation practices for individuals, to a world-class repository of personal accounts, open to the participation of all Americans who have served their country in uniform.

We are celebrating Preservation Week on Monday, April 23, will a full day of programming, including behind-the-scenes tours of the Preservation Directorate; a lecture on the Library’s enduring work to collect, preserve and honor the legacies of our veterans; and a special display of VHP collection items presented by Library conservators and the project’s archivists. If you will be in Washington, D.C., consider joining us.

Although Preservation Week is a moment in time, our preservation efforts are ongoing. In addition to Preservation Week events, we offer a variety of  tours, lectures and programs throughout the year. You can also reach out with preservation-related questions through our Ask a Librarian page.

If you would like to support our work to preserve and protect collections at the Library and across the nation, you can make a donation. Your contribution will help to sustain education and outreach programs, research and training and internships that launch careers in preservation.

New Online: Benjamin Franklin Papers

This is a guest post by Julie Miller, a historian in the Manuscript Division.

[image error]

Half-length portrait of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Wilson, 1761. Like Franklin, Wilson experimented with electricity; in the background of this painting, lightening strikes a village. Franklin sat for the painting while serving as a diplomat in London.

The papers of Benjamin Franklin at the Library of Congress have had almost as adventurous a life as Franklin had himself. They have been abandoned and recovered, cut up by a dressmaker to make patterns and used as collateral for debt. After surviving all of that, they narrowly escaped fiery destruction on a New York pier (more on this later).

Now, in a technological development that would have fascinated Franklin, the Manuscript Division is pleased to announce that the papers have been digitized and made available on the Library of Congress website.

The approximately 8,000 items that constitute Benjamin Franklin’s papers at the Library are organized in four groups, or series.

The first two, constituting the bulk of the collection, once belonged to Franklin’s grandson, William Temple Franklin, who used them as the basis of his “Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin,” published in 1817–18. The U.S. government purchased these two series from American book dealer Henry Stevens in 1882, housing them at the State Department until they were transferred to the Library of Congress in 1903 and 1922.

The third series consists of other Franklin papers the Library acquired by gift or purchase from various sources. The fourth series, which is not included on the Library’s website, contains copies of Franklin papers in other libraries and private hands.

[image error]

A May 23, 1785, letter from Franklin to George Whatley. Franklin is credited with inventing bifocal glasses, which he sketched here for Whatley, a London merchant and pamphleteer.

Now, for the first time, researchers can view the first three series online. They have long been available on microfilm, but the website provides enhancements and additional information not available on the film.

The front page of the Benjamin Franklin Papers site describes the contents of each series and the scope of the collection. A related resources link features a bibliography. Information for teachers and researchers is available in multiple links under the headings Teaching Resources and Expert Resources, while an articles and essays link provides a timeline of Franklin’s life and the story of the papers’ provenance. The papers are also searchable. For instructions, see “Learn More” below.

To return to the adventures of the Library’s Franklin Papers, we must go back to William Temple Franklin. He was partly responsible for the creation and preservation of these papers, but also for the dangers they were exposed to—dangers he was no stranger to himself.

Temple, as he was known, was born in London in 1760 or 1762, the son of William Franklin, Benjamin Franklin’s son. Taken from his mother, abandoned by his father, enduring early years in foster care, Temple was eventually rescued by his grandfather, Benjamin Franklin.

Between 1776 and 1785, when Benjamin Franklin was a diplomat in France, Temple served as his secretary, helping to negotiate the treaty that ended the Revolutionary War, among other tasks.

[image error]

A portrait of William Temple Franklin by John Trumbull, 1790. Yale University Art Gallery.

When the Franklins returned to the United States, despite his grandfather’s backing, Temple failed to find a job, possibly because of his reputation for flightiness. Benjamin Franklin, trying to help Temple, left him his papers, thinking he could profit by publishing them.

The portion of the papers Temple chose to publish, now series one and two, show the marks of his rough handling—his editorial scribblings, the damp of sea voyages, and the raggedness that resulted when he abandoned them after he was done with the “Memoirs.”

As a result of events that remain murky, the abandoned papers were discovered years later tied in bundles in the shop of a London tailor who had been Temple’s landlord. By this time, the tailor had cut up an unknown number of Franklin’s letters and writings to make patterns.

Henry Stevens, the book dealer, purchased the papers but ended up losing them to creditors. He eventually repurchased them with aid from Junius Spencer Morgan (father of banker and book collector J. Pierpont Morgan). Then, in 1882, Stevens sold them to the U.S. government.

Remarkably, the papers once again narrowly escaped destruction after traveling safely from England to New York—the pier they landed on burned just after a courier picked the papers up to deliver them to Washington.

For more about the colorful history of the Benjamin Franklin Papers and the life of William Temple Franklin, read the provenance essay on the Franklin papers website, and see works by Whitfield Bell, Claude-Anne Lopez, Francis Philbrick, Stacy Schiff and Henry Stevens in the bibliography included in related resources.

Learn More: Using the Franklin Papers Online

Because 18th-century handwriting can be hard to read, use the online collection in conjunction with Yale University’s published edition of Franklin’s papers, available at franklinpapers.org and Founders Online.

The published edition of Franklin’s papers is full-text searchable, but the images on the Library’s website are not, a by-product of the papers’ origins as microfilm. Be warned, finding what you want will require some patience. Your reward will be a glimpse of the impressions Franklin’s hand made on the page.

To find a letter or other document in the papers, follow these steps:

Look in the index (under Expert Resources) to see if what you want is at the Library.
If it isn’t at the Library, check Founders Online. An editorial note at the bottom of each letter gives its location.
If it is at the Library, the index will give its location in the collection. For example: The location of a letter from Franklin to his wife, Deborah Read Franklin, from January 6, 1773, is listed in the index as s1v11p39, or series 1, volume 11, page 39. Franklin’s copy of the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War, is listed in the index under Great Britain & U.S.—Treaty of Peace, September 3, 1783, and its location is s1v08p236, or series 1, volume 8, page 236.
Once you know where in the collection the thing you want is, the next step is to find it. Use the finding aid (expert resources). Click arrangement, which will take you to a box list of the collection.
Alternatively, from the front page of the collection, scroll down to description of series and click on the series it is in. From the list that results, find the relevant box, volume or folder. Within each series, everything is in chronological order.
Experiment with the images you find to see how you can view them singly or grouped in a grid, gallery, list or slideshow. In single image view, you can enlarge, rotate and download images as JPEGs, TIFFs and GIFs.

New Online: Unique Collection of Censored Japanese Books

This is a guest post by Benny Seda-Galarza of the Library’s Communications Office.

[image error]

“Kanikōsen” (“The Crab Cannery Ship”) by Takiji Kobayashi (1903–33) is one of the most famous works of Japanese proletarian literature. On the cover of this copy, the censor’s comments indicate the page numbers of passages that were selected for deletion and note concerns about protecting “public peace and order.”

The Library’s Asian Division has digitized an archive comprising more than 1,000 marked-up copies of monographs and galley proofs censored by the Japanese government in the 1920s and 1930s. The Japanese Censorship Collection reveals traces of an otherwise-hidden censorship process through marginal notes, stamps, penciled lines and commentary inscribed by the censors’ own hands.

Each of these books is “uniquely different from all other existing copies and editions of similar titles in Japan and elsewhere, making this collection a rich archive here at the Library of Congress for the historical study of censorship,” said Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden.

In prewar World War II Japan, the Home Ministry was among the most powerful of government entities. Not only was it tasked with censoring publications, it also held jurisdiction over police, infrastructure, elections, public health and religious affairs. Following Japan’s defeat, the ministry’s censorship library was seized by the Allied forces and sent to the Washington Document Center in the United States.

It was later transferred to the Library of Congress, along with massive volumes of books and other materials requisitioned from other official institutions, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Japanese Imperial Army and the South Manchurian Railway Company. The Library digitized the Japanese Censorship Collection in collaboration with Japan’s National Diet Library.

[image error]

Ihara Saikaku’s “Eiri kōshoku ichidaionna” (“The Life of an Amorous Woman) is a classic of late-17th-century vernacular fiction. The censor has penciled a light red circle around the lovers in the middle of the page, indicating an offending item.

“Prior to World War II, censorship prevailed in Japan with the official aim of protecting peace and order in society from subversive ideologies and guarding traditional customs from obscenity. Toward these ends, censors suppressed, deleted or revised publications that they deemed a threat to social and political stability,” said Eiichi Ito, a Japanese reference specialist in the Asian Division.

The majority of the collection dates from between 1923, when the Home Ministry’s building in Tokyo burned down in the Great Kanto Earthquake, and 1945, when the imperial Japanese government’s surrender marked the end of World War II.

Common targets of censors included works that espoused socialist ideologies or contained sexual themes, but many ultranationalist groups, especially those promoting antigovernment activities, drew the attention of the censors’ red pens as well. Their decisions are reflected by handwritten comments and Home Ministry seals stamped on copies of the books.

At present, 247 of the censored titles are available on the Library’s website for off-site viewing, but this number will continue to grow as more titles enter the public domain. All 1,327 items in the collection can be viewed on site at the Library.

For an in-depth discussion of the collection’s highlights, read this blog post by the Asian Division’s Eiichi Ito.

[image error]

In this excerpt from “Kanikōsen,” workers on a factory ship have come to realize the nature of their exploitation at the hands of the ship’s ruthless manager. The text underlined in red by the censor reads in part: “‘This canned crab is made out of our real blood and sweat.”

New Recordings Online for National Poetry Month

[image error]This post by Anne Holmes of the Library’s Poetry and Literature Center was first published on “ From the Catbird Seat ,” the center’s blog.

[image error]

Robert Hayden was U.S. poet laureate from 1976 to 1978. Photo by Timothy D. Franklin.

National Poetry Month is here, and we’re over the moon to announce the release of 50 additional recordings from the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature, now available to stream online.

The archive—a collection dating back to 1943, when Allen Tate was consultant in poetry—contains nearly 2,000 audio recordings of celebrated poets and writers participating in literary events at the Library of Congress, along with sessions recorded in the recording laboratory in the Library’s Jefferson Building. Most of these recordings were originally captured on magnetic tape reels and have only been accessible by visiting the Library in person.

As of this week, you can now stream previously undigitized recordings featuring poets laureate Robert Hayden, Maxine Kumin, Mark Strand, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Pinsky, James Merrill, James Dickey, Joseph Brodsky, Richard Wilbur, Robert Hass, Stephen Spender, Charles Simic, Josephine Jacobsen, Anthony Hecht and Howard Nemerov.

{mediaObjectId:'6805B24228350004E0538C93F1160004',playerSize:'mediumStandard'}

Make sure you also tune in for more from Lucille Clifton, Czeslaw Milosz, Michael S. Harper, Kenneth Koch and John Ashbery; and, for the first time streaming from the collection, you can now listen to Ron Padgett, Gary Snyder, Doris Grumbach, Elisavietta Ritchie, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Makoto Ooka, Mari Evans and Sherod Santos, just to name a few (okay, several).

We have more excitement in store as Poetry Month progresses, so stay tuned. For now, put on those headphones, blast those speakers and explore what the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature has to offer.

Inquiring Minds: Uncovering the Many Meanings of Slave Narratives

[image error]

Ohio State University undergraduate Carley Reinhard stands beside a poster about her research in the Slave Narratives Collection that she displayed at the 2018 annual meeting of the American Historical Association.

Carley Reinhard first encountered stories of slave capture in early 2017 in Professor Stephanie Shaw’s African-American history course at Ohio State University. Reinhard became fascinated by one narrative that tells of red cloth being used to entice Africans onto ships bound for North America.

During Shaw’s course, Reinhard asked Shaw to serve as her adviser on a senior research project to find out more about the narrative. The pair put together a winning grant proposal that funded Reinhard’s trip to the Library of Congress last summer to research the Slave Narratives Collection in the Manuscript Division. The collection contains more than 2,000 first-person accounts of slavery collected in the 1930s as part of the Works Projects Administration (WPA).

Reinhard subsequently won another grant to continue her research, and she was selected by the American Historical Association to display her findings in a poster session at its 2018 annual meeting, held in Washington, D.C., in January. While in Washington, she visited the Manuscript Division with Stephanie Shaw.

Here Reinhard discusses her research, her experiences at the Library and the career her project has inspired her to pursue.

Tell us a little about the red-cloth narrative.

It consists of various forms of a story former slaves recalled in WPA interviews about how their relatives were captured by slave traders who used red trinkets such as cloth to entice slaves. In some instances, individuals were invited aboard a ship to trade for these goods. In other cases, the cloth was laid out for someone to follow in almost a Hansel-and-Gretel fashion.

Among the narratives in the WPA collection, one of the most cited is the account of “Granny Judith,” relayed by her grandson Richard Jones:

Some strangers wid pale faces come one day and drapped a small piece of red flannel down on de ground. All de black folks grabbed for it. Den a larger piece was drapped a little further on, and on until de river was reached. . . . Finally, when de ship was reached, dey drapped large pieces on de plank and up into the ship ‘dill dey got as many blacks on board as dey wanted.

My initial question was how and why this story developed. My research expanded to include how it continued to change and develop as slavery expanded in the United States.

What is the significance of the narrative to the tellers?

Its significance develops over time. The source material I used conveys the story largely from the perspective of the grandchildren of the original tellers. The original tellers were sharing a piece of their own history, an account of why they were enslaved. The Slave Narratives Collection suggests that their children who passed along the story recognized this meaning, but also viewed the story as a form of resistance, confirming that their family was not always enslaved and that they were not born to be slaves. The aspects of the story that resonated with them differed from the emphasis of those who first shared it. As is common with literature, individuals ascribed new meaning to a story relative to their lives.

What have you discovered from studying the narrative?

I found that individuals incorporated the slave trade into long-established African oral traditions, creating stories about capture and enslavement infused with symbolism that indicted those who participated in the trade. Slaves shared these traditions as their personal history with their children and grandchildren to educate them about the dangers of deception as well as their own capacity to be free.

I was especially intrigued by how the capture narrative evolved over time. As slavery expanded throughout the United States and the fear of kidnapping rose, the stories of being seduced by red trinkets were modified to warn children of the dangers of kidnapping within America. Even after slavery ended, the stories were kept alive in new ways, and the red cloth became a tool for empowerment and protection. Different contexts changed the specifics and generalities of the myth, but West African folk culture survived across time, oceans and continents.

What was your experience like working at the Library?

I had a wonderful experience working at the Library. I primarily worked in the Manuscript Reading Room. As someone new to conducting research, I was thankful for the guidance and support of the reading room staff members. Additionally, even after my time at the Library, I felt supported and cared about by the staff. When I visited with my adviser, Stephanie Shaw, this past January, Jeffrey Flannery, the head of the reading room, took the time to meet with us to discuss the project, view the poster I prepared for the American Historical Association’s annual meeting and give us a tour of the Manuscript Division. This included a chance to see some of the original documents I had researched in microfilm format. Getting a chance to look at the photographs was a wonderful experience. The microfilmed collections are a great resource, but they do not hold a candle to the gorgeous originals.

What do you plan to do with your research results?

My hope is to continue to develop the research I am doing on the narrative and ultimately publish an article with my findings.

What are the next steps for you?

This project has been my most intellectually rewarding experience and has inspired me to pursue graduate studies in African-American cultural history. I am thrilled to be making the move from Ohio to Maryland this coming fall to begin graduate school at the University of Maryland. Following completion of the Ph.D. program, I hope to pursue a career as a professional historian.

Free to Use and Reuse: Cycling Season Has Arrived!

[image error]

Julia Obear, a bicycle messenger, wears the hat of the National Women’s Party while cycling in 1922.

On Sunday night, July 16, 1895, Hattie Strage of Chicago was arrested and fined for disorderly conduct. Her offense? Bicycling over the city’s fashionable South Side boulevards “arrayed in a bloomer suit consisting of flesh-colored tights and a short jacket.”

Women’s cycling attire was a subject of intense scrutiny at the dawn of the golden age of bicycling in America, as documented by newspaper stories highlighted on the Library’s Chronicling America site—the notice about Strage’s arrest appeared in the Mexico (Missouri) Weekly Ledger.

This month, as warmer weather signals the start of the cycling season, we’re adding to our Free to Use archive all kinds of themed content about bicycles. We’re including images portraying early women cyclers like Strage, but also historical ads featuring bicycles, cartoons, lithographs, maps and more.

The Free to Use archive features themed sets of content (such as travel posters, presidential portraits, Civil War drawings, dogs and, now, bicycles) that are all free to use and reuse, meaning there are no known copyright restrictions associated with this content. In other words, you can do whatever you want with it.

Scroll down for a few more examples and make sure to check out other sets in the archive. And if you find a creative way to reuse any of the images, let us know by commenting on this post.

Happy Cycling!

[image error]

Theatrical poster for Chas. H. Kabrich, the “only bike-chute aeronat,” who performed a “novel and thrilling” bicycle parachute act in mid-air, 1896.

[image error]

Actress Madge Lessing holds a musical horn to her lips while cycling, 1898.

[image error]

“Voyage a la Lune,” a French cartoon showing a man riding on a bicycle-like flying machine, circa 1865–70.

[image error]

A woman cycler is featured on a patent-medicine ad for hair oil, 1869.

Literacy: The Library Is Looking for a Few Good Organizations

[image error]This is a guest post by Guy Lamolinara, communications officer in the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress.

Do you work in the field of literacy or know someone who does? Then you may want to consider applying for a Library of Congress Literacy Award.

Applications will be accepted from organizations that have made outstanding contributions to increasing literacy in the United States or abroad. You may apply on behalf of your own organization or for another organization. Three prizes will be given in 2018:

The David M. Rubenstein Prize ($150,000) is awarded for an outstanding and measurable contribution to increasing literacy levels to an organization based either inside or outside the United States that has demonstrated exceptional and sustained depth in its commitment to the advancement of literacy.

[image error]

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden (left) and David M. Rubenstein present the 2017 American Prize to Sharon Darling of the National Center for Families Learning of Louisville, Kentucky. Photo by Shawn Miller.

The American Prize ($50,000) is awarded for a significant and measurable contribution to increasing literacy levels or the national awareness of the importance of literacy to an organization that is based in the United States.

The International Prize ($50,000) is awarded for a significant and measurable contribution to increasing literacy levels to an organization that is based outside the United States.

Other organizations will be honored for their “best practices” in various areas of literacy promotion.

The application rules and a downloadable application form can be accessed at read.gov/literacyawards.

Applications must be received no later than midnight on April 30, 2018, Eastern Time.

The application process is very simple, and taking the time to enter could reap large rewards.

The Literacy Awards are made possible through the generosity of David M. Rubenstein.

The Center for the Book at the Library of Congress administers the Literacy Awards program. The Librarian of Congress will make the final selection of the award winners with recommendations from literacy experts on an advisory board.

More information about last year’s winners and other literacy leaders is available in “Library of Congress Literacy Awards.”

New Online: Branch Rickey Scouting Reports

[image error]

Branch Rickey

Opening day for Major League Baseball took place last week, on March 29—the earliest opening date in MLB history, excepting for special international events. This year’s opening day also marked the first time in 50 years that a full slate of games was scheduled for the first day.

The Library of Congress is marking the beginning of the 2018 season by posting a series of scouting reports compiled by Branch Rickey (1881–1965), a former player, manager and baseball executive, best known as the man responsible for bringing Jackie Robinson into Major League Baseball in 1947, thereby breaking baseball’s long-established color barrier.

The Library’s Manuscript Division is custodian of a collection of Branch Rickey Papers, which offer a fascinating glimpse into the history of 20th-century baseball, viewed through the prism of this influential figure. Last spring, the Library released a handful of Rickey’s scouting reports on its website. Now the Manuscript Division has digitized all of the reports and made the entire set available online for the first time.

Jeffrey Flannery, head of the Reference and Reader Services Section of the Manuscript Division, helped develop content for the new online collection and assisted in processing the scouting reports. Here he answers a few questions about the reports and the Library’s Rickey holdings.

[image error]

Jeffrey Flannery (right) shows Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, scouting reports from the Branch Rickey Papers. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Tell us a little about Branch Rickey.

Beginning his major league career as a player and a manager, later serving as an executive with the St. Louis Cardinals during the 1920s and 1930s, Rickey was instrumental in developing the minor league system as a conduit for players to reach the major leagues. And, while with the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1940s, Rickey and Robinson achieved the monumental feat of successfully integrating Major League Baseball while developing pennant winning teams. These accomplishments form a lasting legacy for a Hall-of-Fame career, but an especially intriguing part of Rickey’s career is a valuable trove of scouting reports he compiled during the 1950s and 1960s.

[image error]

Rickey’s 1963 report on John Callison.

What do the scouting reports consist of?

The reports span the dates 1951 to 1964, with most of the items concentrated between 1951 and 1956, when Rickey was an executive with the Pittsburgh Pirates, and 1962 to 1964, when he served as a consultant with the St. Louis Cardinals. Rickey often compiled multiple reports on the same player, identifying skills and tracking progress, or lack thereof. The reports often take on a caustic tone and can seem a bit heartless, but also bring to life many known and many more unknown players from this era.

What insights do the scouting reports convey about Rickey?

The reports not only display Rickey as a perceptive and shrewd judge of baseball ability, but provide insight into Rickey’s character as well. In writing the reports in the way he did, Rickey revealed as much about himself as about any player—how he valued education, morality and code of conduct as much as a player’s talent. As an executive, Rickey also had a keen appreciation for the bottom line, as is made clear in some of the reports.

What items, for you, are especially compelling?

It especially resonates for me to see evaluations of players from the early 1960s, when I followed baseball as a young fan. John Callison, Steve Carlton and Bill White were players I had the good fortune to meet and whose careers I followed as closely as possible. To see them evaluated was a special thrill.

[image error]

Rickey’s 1964 report on Steve Carlton

Besides scouting reports, what do the Rickey Papers consist of?

The Rickey Papers consist of 29,400 items organized into 84 containers. The collection is divided into different parts, or series, with sections for family papers, general correspondence, baseball files, subject files, speeches and writings and miscellany files. The correspondence series makes up almost a third of the collection and documents Rickey’s extensive personal and professional interests and his association with the many prominent individuals with whom he was engaged in business or social activities. A finding aid provides a description of the collection with a container list.

How can researchers best access the Rickey Papers that are not online?

The scouting reports—approximately 1,750 arranged in three containers—account for only about 6 percent of the 29,400 items in the collection, so you can see that there is much more to the collection than the scouting reports. The Rickey Papers are available in the Manuscript Reading Room and open to individuals above high-school age who obtain a Library issued reader card and have a specific research topic. More information about accessing the Manuscript Division’s collections can be found on our website.

 

It’s #SpringFling Time! Help Us Celebrate the Season

This is a guest post by Naomi Coquillon of the Interpretive Programs Office.

[image error]

In this print by artist Hiroshige Ando (1797–1858), sightseers view cherry blossoms along the Sumida River in Japan.

As spring slowly blossoms in Washington, we’re gearing up for our celebration of all things windy, flowery and new with our Spring Fling Pop-Up Exhibition. Open April 6, 7, 13 and 14, the pop-up invites visitors to experience the living history of the National Cherry Blossom Festival through rare drawings and photographs; learn about the weather, seasons, gardens and botany from books and maps; explore the imaginations of leading writers through literature and poetry; discover springtime cultural traditions from around the world; and feel the beat of the season with music and films that depict these spirited months.

For those who can’t join us in person, follow the hashtag #SpringFling to see updates from the exhibit and join the fun by:

Practicing Hanami (blossom viewing). Widely celebrated in Japanese literature, poetry and art, “sakura” (cherry blossoms) carry layered meanings. For example, because they bloom briefly, the blossoms are often seen as a metaphor for the ephemeral beauty of living. At the same time, the joyful practice of “hanami” is an old and ongoing tradition. If there are no cherry blossoms where you are, explore our online exhibition Sakura: Cherry Blossoms as Living Symbols of Friendship.


Dancing to the Beat of the Season. “Appalachian Spring,” the Library’s Pulitzer Prize-winning music and ballet commission, will be on view in the pop-up exhibit, but you can see a 2016 performance of this classic work performed by the Martha Graham Dance Company in the Library’s Coolidge Auditorium here as well.


{mediaObjectId:'44CECEA8C2BC00F8E0538C93F11600F8',playerSize:'mediumStandard'}


Setting the Haft Seen Table. Nowruz, an age-old tradition observed from western China to the Caucasus, Anatolia and beyond, is based on celebrating the rebirth of nature and honoring the arrival of spring as earth’s cycle of life begins anew. Starting in ancient Zoroastrian Persia, the tradition of celebrating Nowruz continues to this day to be the most important annual festival in many regions of Eurasia. Symbols of spring are decorated with rich color in the floral and animal motifs seen in the material culture of these regions. Today in Iran, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan and Central Asia, symbolic foods such as Haft Maiwa (Seven Fruits) and display tables such as the Haft Seen table (seven symbolic items that begin with “S” in Persian) feature wheat sprouts, fragrant hyacinths or tulips, colored eggs and various other items that signify renewal, fertility, wealth and health for the year ahead. Staff from the Library’s Near East Section, part of the African and Middle Eastern Division, will curate a Haft Seen table at the exhibit with these symbolic items:

“Sabzeh” (سبزه): wheat, barley, mung bean or lentil sprouts growing in a dish, symbolizes rebirth.

“Samanu” (سمنو): sweet pudding made from wheat germ, symbolizes affluence

“Senjed” (سنجد): dried Persian olive, symbolizes love

“Seer” (سیر): garlic, symbolizes healing from diseases

“Seeb” (سیب): apple, symbolizes health and beauty

“Somāq” (سماق): sumac, symbolizes the color of sunrise

“Serkeh” (سرکه): vinegar, symbolizes age and patience

“Sekkeh” (سکه): coin, symbolizes wealth and prosperity

Telling a Springtime Story. We’ll invite visitors to the pop-up exhibit to take a close look at an item in our collections—including this work from Japanese woodblock artist Hokusai—and then to imagine, What happens next? Tell us what you think might be the next scene in the story by tweeting @librarycongress or using the #SpringFling hashtag.

Happy Spring!

World War I: The Women’s Land Army

This is a guest post by Ryan Reft, a historian in the Manuscript Division, in honor of Women’s History Month .

[image error]

1918 poster showing a woman tending a garden with a drawing of a soldier in the background.

“The man with the hoe is gone. Six hundred thousand of him left the fields of America last year,” observed the Los Angeles Times in April 1918. Hundreds of thousands more would follow as a mobilizing U.S. military called millions to serve. Wasted harvests and diminished agricultural production could be avoided, but it meant that others would have to farm the fields. “The woman with the tractor must take his place,” wrote the Times.

The Library of Congress exhibit Echoes of the Great War: American Experiences of World War I explores of the role of the Women’s Land Army, revealing a fascinating intersection of wartime exigencies, suffragist fervor and labor.

The idea of a U.S. women’s land army had circulated as early as 1915 due to labor shortages. U.S. entry into World War I and a series of lectures at Vassar College in 1917 by British feminist Helen Fraser brought the idea to greater prominence, points out historian Rose Hayden-Smith.

In the winter of the same year, with the nation’s food supply appearing to be at risk, food riots struck several cities.The most notable was in New York City, where “housewives reacted to an overnight jump in the price of vegetables by overturning vendors’ pushcarts and setting them ablaze,” writes historian Elaine Weiss.

Leading middle-class clubwomen in New York City founded the Women’s Land Army (WLA) in December 1917. Eventually, it established farming units in 33 states across the nation; its most successful ventures were in California, New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Illinois. Ultimately, somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 women worked for the WLA from 1918 through 1919, harvesting the nation’s food supply.

[image error]

A woman farming in California.

Known as farmerettes, WLA women came from a variety of backgrounds: Members included included college-educated women, union activists, working-class immigrants, native-born middle-class clubwomen, Jews and Catholics. Evidence suggests that in Southern California, African-American women, too, might have been given the opportunity to participate, although that would have been the exception rather than the rule.

Women were at the forefront of war mobilization through the Red Cross, the YWCA and the Women’s Committee on the Council for National Defense, among other organizations and agencies. But few of these forums offered women real policymaking influence. “[T]he government viewed the Women’s Committee as device for occupying women in harmless activities while men got on with the business of war,” noted one critic and WLA leader.

In contrast, the WLA remained female organized and women led; fundraising consisted of tapping local and national clubwoman networks along with countless movie nights, bake sales and variety shows, all aimed at filling WLA coffers.

Many farmers initially resisted the idea of women working in the fields, but they soon embraced it once labor shortages became starkly apparent and farmerettes demonstrated their agricultural bonafides.

The media everywhere loved the WLA. George Creel, head of the Committee on Public Information, recognized the WLA’s public relations value and promoted it frequently. Even the conservative Los Angeles Times wholeheartedly endorsed it, describing farmerettes as “gallant” and “robust.”

Despite the diverse backgrounds of WLA members, the organization remained framed by a paternalistic Americanism. Articles in its newsletter “touted openly the significance of farming for Americanization—a process of enforcing white middle class values, beliefs, and lifestyles upon America’s immigrants, African Americans, and the poor,” notes historian Cecilia Gowdy-Wygant.

Moreover, WLA leaders like Barnard College president Ida Helen Ogilvie openly appealed to racial prejudices in promoting the labor of white women. “What the WLA emphasizes is that the women we send out are intelligent, not the class of cheap labor supplied heretofore where three Mexicans were required to do the work of one white man,” she told listeners in a statement as racist as it was inaccurate.

The WLA’s achievements, much like the wartime gains made by organized labor, proved ethereal. Undoubtedly, the efforts of farmerettes and millions of other women who dedicated themselves to mobilization influenced Woodrow Wilson’s support of 19th amendment. But the large numbers of women in the wartime workforce soon diminished as soldiers returned home. When the WLA was placed under the auspices of the U.S. Employment Service, which never fully approved of it, the WLA was starved to death.

Perhaps Elaine Weiss best captures the rise and fall of the WLA during a critical moment that, despite its brevity, laid the groundwork for World War II’s Rosie the Riveter: “The California farmerette strode into 1919 atop a vegetable festooned float in the Rose Bowl Parade in January. . . . By September, she was gone.”

World War I Centennial, 2017–18 . With the most comprehensive collection of multiformat World War I holdings in the nation, the Library is a unique resource for primary source materials, education plans, public programs and on-site visitor experiences about the Great War including exhibits, symposia and book talks.