Library of Congress's Blog, page 93

World War I: An American Soldier’s Journey Home

This is a guest post by actor Douglas Taurel, who developed an original one-man show based on a World War I diary in the collections of the Library’s Veterans History Project. Taurel performed the show on November 11, 2017, as part of a full day of programming at the Library in honor of Veterans Day. A recording of Taurel’s performance appears at the end of this post.

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Douglas Taurel as Irving Greenwald

For its commemoration of the centennial of the First World War, Library of Congress staff invited me to write a new play based on the life of Irving Greenwald, a World War I soldier. Greenwald’s diary is preserved by the Library’s Veterans History Project and is currently on view in the exhibition Echoes of the Great War: American Experiences of World War I.

Irving Greenwald left 465 days of diary entries, and I set out to read all of them. Luckily, since Greenwald’s diary had been digitized, the process was simple—much easier than my last project, “The American Soldier.” That play is based on letters written by veterans from the American Revolution all the way through current-day Afghanistan, and took eight years to research and write. I located individual letters, mostly at the New York Public Library, photocopied passages from those I found especially compelling, then sorted and transcribed them before fleshing them out into monologues.

Greenwald was a very eloquent writer, so there was plenty to pull from, even in moments that weren’t obviously thrilling. I sorted the passages under basic headings such as Camp, Food, Funny, Death, Trench and more. I used a color-coding system: red meant this was important, green was a cue to stop and reread the material.

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Pages from Irving Greenwald’s diary dated Sept. 25 and 26, 1918. The diary is pocket size, compelling Greenwald to write in very small script.

Soon, I had the diary sorted into five basic sections: his camp life, being shipped off to France, arriving in Europe, his trench life and his time in the hospital after being wounded.  It took a month to tease out all the best passages on a particular topic.

But the play could not be longer than 45 to 55 minutes. “The American Soldier” was 7,500 words, and it ran 57 minutes; the Greenwald script was nearly 30,000 words long—more than 20,000 words too many.

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Irving Greenwald’s photograph from the collections of the Library’s Veterans History Project.

The hardest thing to do in writing, especially when it is poetic and eloquent writing that you have fallen in love with, is deleting. I stayed up late many nights reading and rereading, trying to get a feel for how I wanted to tell Greenwald’s story. I brought the draft down to 17,000 words, and then to 15,000.

From there, I moved passages around and added just a bit of connective tissue to help Irving’s writing take the shape of a fluid monologue. It was time to read it out loud, a critical step for getting a sense of whether a play is working or not. So I started reading this early draft out loud to my wife and to a few others, and something still felt off.

It is a frightening feeling as a writer when you feel stuck and can’t move the story forward. I had lived through this feeling before and know it doesn’t last forever. But when you are in it, it feels as if you are never going to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I tried listening to music, something I lean on for inspiration. I looked at images of World War I—the people, the places. And then an epiphany arrived: I knew how to tell my story.  Within one day, I was down to 5,800 words.

Here is a sample from the script:

I have just witnessed the wonder of life and the helplessness of death. . . . Why do men do it? Why do they kill? Why do they destroy?  The cost of it all, the futility of it. The war will never be won on the field of battle. Why not end it all and spare men and women? I have no courage tonight and no will to live. (Helplessness) I hold on by thinking of my Leah and my Cecilie. [Greenwald’s wife and infant daughter]

On Veterans Day 2017, I portrayed Irving Greenwald on stage in the Library’s Coolidge Auditorium, not far from the World War I exhibition and his diary on display. Present in the audience were Irving Greenwald’s daughter, Selma Ullman, and a number of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

It was a beautiful experience to work on and to bring to life his diary, and then to have the honor to meet his daughter and the rest of his family members. I will reprise the play at the Library on May 26 this year, in honor of Memorial Day.

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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.

That All May Read: Technological Innovations Extend Reach of National Library

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

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Family members in the recently launched ad campaign of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) react with joy at being able to share a reading experience thanks to a digital NLS audio book.

From braille to audio books, the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) has embraced technological innovations throughout its 85-year history to allow people with visual impairments and other disabilities to read texts all over the world.

NLS is a free braille and talking book library service for people with low vision or blindness or a physical disability that prevents them from reading or holding the printed page. Through a national network of cooperating libraries, NLS circulates books and magazines in braille and audio formats by postage-free mail or instant download.

NLS Talking Books traces its beginning to March 3, 1931, when President Herbert Hoover signed the Pratt-Smoot Act into law. The legislation authorized the distribution of embossed braille books through a network of regional libraries, administered by the Library of Congress. Two years later, the act was amended to include recorded books.

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Student Harley Cannon uses an open-reel talking book in 1969.

In the early days, talking books were produced on long-playing vinyl records. Later, slower speed, smaller and lighter records were deployed. Talking books recorded on open-reel magnetic tape began circulating in 1959; a decade later, the first books on cassette tapes were produced.

In 2009, as we transitioned into the digital era, digital talking book players started replacing analog cassette players. Now, all new NLS audio-book titles are produced on easy-to-handle digital cartridges that are about the same size as a cassette. Digital talking book players offer high-quality sound, multilevel navigation and variable speed controls. Each cartridge has 1 gigabyte of flash memory, allowing an entire book—even the complete King James Version of the Bible—to fit on a single cartridge.

Available accessories for the talking books machines include amplifiers for readers with a significant hearing loss, headphones for readers in nursing homes and hospitals where speakers are not permitted and pillow speakers for readers who are confined to bed.

NLS audio-book titles are also available on the internet through the Braille and Audio Reading Download, a web-based service that provides access to thousands of special format books, magazines and music scores.

As part of the National Library’s commitment to its users, it recently launched a major outreach campaign to educate the public about the free services it provides to U.S. residents and American citizens abroad with visual impairments and other disabilities.

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A patron listens to a talking book in the 1970s.

The campaign’s commercial, “Magical Moments,” tells the story of a little girl who wants to be an astronaut. When she realizes her grandfather, who has visual impairments, cannot read her favorite fictional book, “Astronaut Abbey,” her mother tells him about NLS, enabling the grandfather to read it by listening to an NLS audio book. Watch the commercial here on the Library’s YouTube site.

 The NLS network includes more than 100 libraries that distribute digital audio and braille books to a readership of approximately 500,000. Additionally, patrons can choose from more than 320,000 titles in the NLS International Union Catalog.

NLS also has a National Music Collection, which includes braille and large-print musical scores, recorded instructional guides and recorded materials about music and musicians. The collection is the largest of its kind in the world and contains more than 22,000 titles.

Partnerships with state and local libraries allow NLS to offer services to individuals who are blind and physically disabled in every state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam, as well as to U.S. citizens living outside of the country.

These services promote independence and wellness, offering a much-needed way for participants to enhance their lives by staying connected with the world through reading.

For information about how to apply for services, visit the NLS website.

Inquiring Minds: Library’s Collections Are a Gold Mine for Noted Biographer

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James McGrath Morris in the Library’s Main Reading Room in February. Photo by Shawn Miller

James McGrath Morris first came to the Library of Congress as a researcher in 1974. As a concerned citizen, he wanted to inform himself about a matter that was then in the news.

President Richard Nixon had recently appointed Sen. William B. Saxbe of Ohio as attorney general to replace Elliot Richardson, who had resigned during the infamous Saturday Night Massacre. Earlier, in Feb. 1969, Saxbe had voted for a pay increase for cabinet officers, including the attorney general, which had become law. At the Library, McGrath researched constitutional law, specifically whether a member of Congress could accept a position for which Congress had raised the salary during the member’s term in office.

The question became moot when Congress reduced the attorney general’s salary to what it had been before the 1969 vote. But Morris’ interest in the Library stayed with him. When, in the 1980s, he began writing narrative nonfiction, he returned to the Library. He has continued to visit and use the collections ever since—physical and electronic—while publishing a series of acclaimed biographies and works of nonfiction.

Morris’ most recent biography, “The Ambulance Drivers: Hemingway, DosPassos, and a Friendship Made and Lost in War,” was published in March 2017. His 2015 book, “Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press,” a New York Times bestseller, was awarded the Benjamin Hooks National Book Prize. His 2010 book, “Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print and Power,” was named by the Wall Street Journal  as one of the best books about American moguls. The Washington Post selected “The Rose Man of Sing Sing: A True Tale of Life, Murder and Redemption in the Age of Yellow Journalism” among its best books of the year for 2004. Morris is also author of “Jailhouse Journalism: The Fourth Estate Behind Bars,” which tells the story of inmates in U.S. prisons who publish their own newspapers.

Beyond books, Morris’ writing has appeared in newspapers and magazines including the Washington Post, the New York Observer, the Progressive and the Wilson Quarterly. He is a founding member of Biographers International Organization.

In 2010, Morris appeared at the Library of Congress National Book Festival to discuss his biography of Pulitzer. You can scroll down to listen to the webcast. But first read Morris’ responses to our questions about his career and his experience as a researcher at the Library.

Tell us a little about your background.

I’m in my 60s now. I worked for a decade as a journalist, a decade in the book and magazine business and a decade as a high school teacher. I’ve now worked more than a dozen years as a full-time author. I grew interested in writing when I was a teenager out of love for reading. As odd as it may sound, I gravitated to newspaper obituaries. They were engaging, well-crafted accounts of a person’s life mixed in with a lesson in history. So I think it’s no accident that I ended up writing biographies.

Many years later, when I became a high-school teacher—instructing government to seniors in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.—I introduced students to the Library. In fact, a few assisted me with research I was doing on a book, and I like to think they, too, fell in love with the Library. While the Library remains one of our nation’s most important cultural institutions, few young people have a reason to come into contact with it.

How do you select subjects to write about?

That’s a tough question. Selecting a subject for a biography is a bit like dating. Not only does the person have to be appealing, but it also must be a good match. And even when that works, there are other considerations: First, is there material by which one can write a biography? I once wanted to write a book about Edward Bellamy, the author of “Looking Backwards,” only to find all his papers had been lost in a house fire. Second, is there a publisher willing to take on the work? Biographies require a lot of research, so obtaining an advance is usually a crucial part of the question. I often come up with what I think are brilliant ideas only to find that neither my agent nor potential editors share my enthusiasm.

Which books have you researched at the Library?

After my first experience at the Library in 1974, I returned in earnest in the 1980s, when I was working on my book “Jailhouse Journalism,” which is about the newspapers and magazines that inmates have published in American prisons for 200 years. I had a rare thing—a stack pass. So I got to know the shelves in the Library really well. I also made discoveries that weren’t in the old card catalog.

Aside from “Jailhouse Journalism,” I researched “The Rose Man of Sing Sing,” “Pulitzer”and “Eye on the Struggle” at the Library. The latter book might not have been possible without the material in the Library’s Manuscript Division, one of the best and best staffed in the nation.

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

Perhaps some of the best days of my life have been spent in the Library. To sit in the Main Reading Room paging through a tome that others once consulted connects one to researchers of the past and those yet to come, all with a puzzle for whose solution they turn to the Library. Even now, when I come up the back stairs of the Jefferson Building to reach the Main Reading Room my heart beats a little faster, not from the climb, but from the anticipation of what awaits me.

What surprising finds have you made in the collections?

The most remarkable finds have, in a way, not been a surprise because of the Library’s mission to retain materials of historical significance. But I’m thinking back to the bound collections of prison newspapers I discovered on the Library’s shelves more than 30 years ago. Here were works assembled by some of the most marginal and forgotten Americans, yet the Library had the foresight to collect and preserve them. The most remarkable of these were the hand-cut stenciled pages of “The Prison Mentor,” a sample of which can be seen online.

What advice would you give to someone thinking about doing research at the Library?

When I come to work at the Library, I see hundreds, if not thousands, of tourists visiting the place, as if it were a static memorial to the past. Despite the efforts of docents, I’m not sure that these visitors—or the public for that matter—understand how alive the place is. It does not merely preserve the past but shares it with everyone in a most remarkably democratic and inspiring fashion.

I have conducted research in libraries and archives all across the United States and overseas. The gatekeepers of these places, particularly in other countries, often make it clear that one’s use of their facilities is a privilege. Not so at the Library of Congress. For its staff, the public’s access is a right, not a privilege. No matter who you are, the Library issues an open invitation to come in and learn. From books to documents, from music to movies, America’s story is here.

What are you working on now?

I’m writing a biography of the late writer Tony Hillerman, best known for his Navajo tribal police mystery novels. I anticipate it will be published in 2020.

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New Webinar Series: Discover the Library’s Ancient Mesoamerican Manuscripts

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The Library of Congress recently acquired the Codex Quetzalecatzin, one of the most important indigenous manuscripts from the earliest history of America to become available in the last century.

The Library of Congress holds three of fewer than 100 surviving Mesoamerican pictorial manuscripts that predate 1600: the Huexotzinco Codex (1531), the Oztoticpac Lands Map (1540) and the newly acquired Codex Quetzalecatzin (1570–95).

On three Wednesdays this spring, starting on March 14, John Hessler of the Library’s Geography and Map Division will host webinars exploring the subject matter and construction of these rare indigenous manuscripts, illuminating ways in which they reflect the daily lives of the Nahua people who created them and the cultural, political and economic negotations between the Nahua and their Spanish colonial administrators. Hessler is curator of the Library’s Jay I. Kislak Collection of the Archaeology and History of the Early Americas.

Registration is required. To register, click on the links provided in the descriptions below. The Library will record each session for future viewing on its YouTube site.

Wednesday, March 14, 2 p.m., Eastern

Codex Quetzalecatzin

In November 2017, the Library announced the acquisition of the Codex Quetzalecatzin, shown above. It was produced between 1570 and 1595 to represent the family tree of a prominent Nahua family. Codices such as these are critical primary source documents. For scholars looking into history and ethnography during the earliest periods of contact between Europe and the peoples of the Americas, the codices give important clues into how these very different cultures became integrated and adapted to each other’s presence. This webinar will provide participants with an in-depth look at this new acquisition, available to the public for the first time in more than a century, and examine the production and uses of codices in the early Americas.

Register here

Wednesday, April 11, 2 p.m., Eastern

Oztoticpac Lands Map

The Oztoticpac Lands Map is a Nahua pictorial document with Nahuatl writing drawn for a court case in the city of Texcoco around 1540. The document is written on amatl, a pre-European paper made in Mesoamerica, and involves the land ownership of the ruler Chichimecatecotl, who was executed by Spanish officials in 1539. In this webinar, participants will consider the adjustments and accommodations taking place in the early colonial period, as well as the skillful use indigenous peoples made of Spanish laws and courts to maintain their rights and win concessions for themselves.

Register here

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Oztoticpac Lands Map

Wednesday, May 9, 2 p.m., Eastern

Huexotzinco Codex

The Huexotzinco Codex is an eight-sheet document created on amatl paper. It is part of the testimony in a legal case against representatives of the colonial government in Mexico by the Nahua people of Huexotzinco. Scholars consider the codex to be the first pictorial representation of the Madonna and child in the New World. In this webinar, participants will consider the history of the early colonial period through discussion of the document’s content, context and construction, and will learn the process behind the Library’s efforts to conserve it for future generations.

Register here

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Huexotzinco Codex

Harriet Tubman: Teaming Up to Acquire a Rare Photograph

This post draws on the article “Pulling Together for Tubman,” published in the January–February issue of LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine. The issue is available in its entirety online .

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Harriet Tubman

Newly discovered portraits of long-famous Americans rarely surface—especially 150 years after they were made.

Last spring, however, a U.S. auction house put up for bid a photograph album that contained not one, but two such images from the Civil War era: a previously unknown photo of abolitionist Harriet Tubman and the only known photo of John Willis Menard, the first African-American elected to Congress.

Today, the album is jointly held by the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture—the result of a most unusual, and possibly unique, venture by these two public institutions.

The album, and the 44 portraits tucked inside, once belonged to abolitionist and teacher Emily Howland. Those photos collectively represent a community of abolitionists, government officials, students, teachers, friends and family—and a potential source of rich stories and research about aspects of American life during and after the Civil War.

Officials at both the Library and the museum immediately understood the historical significance of the album and its value to the public. “We saw the album as rising to the level of an important, national story that often is not well understood,” said Michèle Gates Moresi, the supervisory museum curator of collections at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

They also understood the importance of ensuring that the album remained in public hands, guaranteeing permanent public access and that the album and photos would remain together. Private dealers sometimes break such objects into pieces to sell separately—a real possibility in this case, considering the importance of the Tubman photo.

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John Willis Menard

“There was an idea of caretaking or stewardship—keeping her safe,” said Helena Zinkham, acting director of Collections and Services at the Library. “What it means for an album like that to come into the public space is that all those people in it will stay together as a community.”

Just as they have for a century and a half.

Without special support, however, the Library alone wasn’t likely to have the resources to mount a winning bid for the album.

So, the Library and the National Museum of African American History and Culture agreed to make a joint bid, hoping to preserve the album at their two public, national institutions and make the images widely available online.

The Madison Council, the Library’s private-sector advisory group, provided initial purchase funds, and the museum matched. The collaboration proved essential for a winning bid on auction day, where the final sale price rose well above the pre-auction estimate.

The Howland album now has undergone careful conservation treatment at the Library, and research is expanding the institutions’ knowledge of it—many portraits that once lacked names now have been identified.

Thanks to two federal agencies with a common cultural heritage and a shared sense of purpose, Emily Howland’s album, and the photos she kept inside it many decades ago, will stay together and remain accessible to the public for many decades to come.

New Online: Rare Photo of Harriet Tubman Preserved for Future Generations

This post draws on the article “Building Black History: A New View of Tubman,” published in the January–February issue of LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine. The issue is available in its entirety online .

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Alisha Chipman of the Library’s Conservation Division prepares to treat a newly discovered photograph of abolitionist Harriet Tubman, one of 44 portraits inside a photo album jointly acquired by the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Photo by Shawn Miller.

A remarkable photo album brought two major institutions together to restore and preserve an important piece of American history. Today, the album is available for the first time online.

The small, leather-bound album shows the signs of its age: broken in places, barely holding together in others, scuffed but somehow still elegant after a century and a half of use.

If time has taken a toll on the album, the photographs inside—placed there by a school teacher so long ago—are timeless and extraordinary.

Tucked into the album’s last page is a previously unknown photo of one of American history’s great figures: abolitionist Harriet Tubman, in what’s believed to be the earliest photo of her in existence.

Turning back a dozen pages reveals another treasure: the only known photo of John Willis Menard, the first African-American elected to Congress.

The album, and the one-of-a-kind photos it holds, were jointly acquired last year by the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in a most-unusual collaboration between two public institutions. Together, they worked to conserve the album for future generations and make it accessible to the public.

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This photograph of Emily Howland was taken in 1864, the year she acquired her photo album. Courtesy Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College, Pa.

The Library and museum each holds vast collections of material related to African-American history. To those, they have added this album, which once belonged to Emily Howland, a Quaker educator and abolitionist who taught African-Americans during the Civil War era.

“This album spoke to my heart in a way that no other compilation of portraits has in my 40 years of working with historical pictures,” said Helena Zinkham, acting director of Collections and Services at the Library. “Offering new faces for Harriet Tubman and John Menard is important for recognizing that the lives of historical figures are far more complex than a single surviving portrait can reveal. Many community as well as individual stories can also be told from this album—about the lives of African-Americans, women and families in the mid-1800s as well as connections among educators and abolitionists.”

When the Library received the album, the front cover and spine were detached from the book’s main body, the back cover was only tenuously attached and the leather covering was abraded and broken in places—a natural result of a century and a half of use.

The album’s design is part of the problem, said Jennifer Evers of the Library’s Conservation Division. “This is why albums are so problematic—the only thing holding these really heavy pages together is a strip of textile,” Evers said. “It failed in the ways you would expect it to fail with use over time.”

Another complication: The spine showed evidence of poorly executed repairs from long ago.

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Jennifer Evers paints in damaged areas of the album’s cover. Photo by Shawn Miller.

To treat the album, Evers removed those old repairs, cleaned the book’s components and repositioned and strengthened the spine with thin, long-fibered paper made from the bark of a mulberry tree. She also repaired the album cover, rebuilding it with layers of textile and leather meticulously toned or dyed to match the original cover and reattached it to the main body.

The photos themselves were in good shape, some yellowed or faded, some showing small tears and losses.

To treat the images, Alisha Chipman of the Conservation Division consolidated areas of loss and gently cleaned the photo surfaces—careful not to disturb inscriptions or hand-coloring. She repaired tears with thin, long-fibered paper, reattached lifting prints to their mounts and humidified and flattened creases and folds.

Now, this little leather-bound piece of history, given to Emily Howland generations ago and filled with rare images that reveal an era, will be available for scholars and the public for generations to come.

“The most rewarding thing is that, at the end, people are going to be able to experience it as an album,” Chipman said. “Now, everything will be safe and secure, and you can experience the entire album as it was meant to be.”

Watch this video showing the conservation treatment of the album:

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Baseballs: The Heart of the Matter

This is a guest post by Nanette Gibbs, a reference librarian in the Science, Business and Technology Division.

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Edward B. Eynon (left), secretary of the Washington Baseball Club, and Hugh L. Dryden, chief of the Mechanics and Sound Division of the National Bureau of Standards, test American, National and International League baseballs on February 21, 1938, using a specially designed machine. Photograph by Harris and Ewing.

Spring training is now under way, and in a few short weeks it will be opening day. In the Science, Technology and Business Division, we have something on nearly everything connected with the game of baseball: balls, bats, gloves, sports medicine, statistics, baseball cards, ballpark food and stadium architecture. In this post, I share some inside details we’ve uncovered in our exploration of baseballs.

Just about everything from measuring cups for cooking to baseballs and their construction follows a standard.  In our division, we have extensive holdings of the standards that the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) developed for baseballs. They fall under such topics as “standard test method for compression-displacement of baseballs and softballs,” a test method established by the sports’ governing bodies.

Reading these standards, we became curious to see for ourselves the inside of a baseball, so we purchased a few baseballs and softballs and approached a local hardware store to see if it would slice a few of them in half. Some were cut in half and showed clean edges, but we are particularly fond of a ball that revealed complex textures, including wool windings. For one ball, the inner core of cork orb and its two rubber outer layers fell right into our hands, allowing us to examine just how large the cork core is and how stiffened the rubber feels.

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The Library’s Collections Conservation Section created a special display case to house baseballs that had been cut in half. The interior of the balls shown here consists of woolly lining and cork encased in double layers of rubber.

When teaching a young player the game of baseball, you want to teach the player how to play catch. Without doubt, this exercise prepares players to throw the baseball accurately, and they will begin to win games. The red stitches, referred to as the “seams” on the ball provide various levels of grip, not unlike the treads on a tire. The stitches on youth baseballs are slightly higher, enabling the player to master the “two-seamed grip,” which is for pitchers; the “four-seamed grip” is for fielding.

[image error][image error]Younger players need to be able to grip the ball accurately to learn different pitches, while the professional player is skilled and does not need this feature. Major league baseball uses flat-seamed baseballs. College teams, which formerly used raised-seamed baseballs, now use the flat-seamed balls after the after the NCAA concluded a study on ball seams in 2015.

Rice University’s Wayne Graham advocated for the change, stating, “The fans love a balance in the game—they don’t need the 77 home runs, . . . but they need the excitement.” Simply stated, flat-seam balls travel faster. It is interesting to note that while attempts have been made to design a machine to mechanize the stitching of baseballs, they have been largely unsuccessful. Baseballs continue to be hand sewn.

The excitement described by Wayne Graham won’t happen unless all baseballs are in compliance with standards as published by the ASTM. Baseballs used in professional games must consist of a core made of cork and rubber, or similar materials, wrapped in yarn and covered with cow or horsehide. The ball’s core, also called the pill, needs to meet certain weight, diameter and composition requirements.

Today’s Major League Baseball ball uses what’s called a cushioned cork, first introduced about 100 years ago, in which a cork orb is coated with two layers of rubber. Wrapped around the core is yarn made mostly of wool except for an outermost layer of a polyester-cotton blend. This is wound by machine to ensure balls stay taut and spherical. Workers hand-stitch an alum-tanned leather cover to each yarny sphere.

Because wool and leather both absorb moisture, humidity can affect performance. Elastomer barriers prevent moisture from entering the baseball and are used by manufacturers to ensure that baseballs are more uniform.  The process of assembling a baseball involves two types of workers:  assemblers (who assemble the core parts of the baseball) and sewers (who stitch the cowhide covers onto the baseball by hand).

Very little has changed. In a patent application in our collections, filed for a “Base-ball” and patented on August 31, 1909, Benjamin F. Shibe, of Bala, Pennsylvania states:

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Interesting facts about baseballs

There are 108 double stitches on a baseball.
A professional baseball lasts only for an average of six pitches before being retired.
Official balls must weigh between 5 and 5.25 ounces and have a circumference of between 9 and 9.25 inches.
A box containing 12 Major League baseballs costs around $72.

Pic of the Week: Dolly Parton, the “Book Lady”

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Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden (left) and Dolly Parton unveil “Coat of Many Colors,” the book Parton donated to the Library this week. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Legendary singer-songwriter Dolly Parton visited the Library on Feb. 28 to donate a book: the 100 millionth given away by her organization Imagination Library.

For more than 20 years, Parton and Imagination Library have given books to children around the world. Along the way, she earned the nickname “book lady” from kids who received her books.

Hoping to spark a lifelong love of reading in children, the Imagination Library each month mails a specially selected, age-appropriate book to more than 1 million children in participating communities from birth until they begin kindergarten. The book arrives in the mail addressed not to the parent, but the child.

“To them, it’s personal,” Parton said. “They’re going to take that in the house and make somebody read it to them.”

In conversation with Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, Parton described her own childhood experiences with books growing up poor in the Great Smoky Mountains and the importance of reading for children.

Afterward, she read “Coat of Many Colors,” a book based on the classic song she composed nearly 50 years ago, to a group of children attending the event.

“We are so pleased to be part of a milestone,” Hayden said upon accepting Parton’s donation. “We are humbled that that book will join with millions of others at the Library of Congress.”

Women’s History Month: “Hidden Figures of Women’s History”

To celebrate the start of Women’s History Month, we’re pleased to share an excerpt from “Hidden Figures of Women’s History,” the March–April issue of LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine, available in its entirety online. The except features a vignette about Lois Weber, an early 20th-century filmmaker, by Mike Mashon, head of the Library’s Moving Image Section.   

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Filmmaker Lois Weber is among the trailblazers featured in the March–April issue of the Library of Congress Magazine.

Cathay Williams fought in the Civil War, posing as a man. Alice Marble became the best tennis player in the world and, during World War II, spied on the Nazis. Through her innovations, Lillian Moller Gilbreth improved everyday life for millions at home and in the workplace.

Why aren’t these women—these artists and athletes, reformers and rebels, explorers, journalists and scientists—better known or more appreciated today?

The just-published edition of the Library of Congress Magazine focuses on them: these “hidden figures” of history, women who broke barriers, accomplished great things or led bold and fascinating lives in eras of limited opportunity for women.

They explored the Arctic, flew the English Channel, mapped the ocean floor, directed films in the earliest days of cinema, published newspapers, made great music, fought for racial and gender equality and broke down barriers of what society thought women could do or should do.

Yet, they aren’t household names.

History remembers the great figures, women such as Susan B. Anthony, Rosa Parks, Billie Holiday, Marie Curie, Helen Keller, Harriet Tubman.

Driven by the same intrepid spirit, these hidden figures also lived extraordinary lives and helped shape the world we know today. Lois Weber, an early 20th-century filmmaker, is one such figure.

Even today, more than 130 years after the invention of cinema, it’s striking how relatively few female directors are working in Hollywood. Certainly, the history of silent-era filmmaking is dominated by names like D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin and Cecil B. DeMille.

But one of their contemporaries, Lois Weber, was responsible for an astonishing variety of films, noted for their directorial verve and addressing topics like economic inequality, birth control and the political rights of women. And she ran her own production company.

Weber began her career as a theater actress, frequently performing alongside husband Phillips Smalley. Like many stage performers, the couple was lured by the silver screen and, in 1907, started working in film. They quickly developed an on-screen persona as a sophisticated married couple and parlayed their reputation for highbrow entertainment into a 1912 contract with Universal Pictures to make films for the studio’s Rex brand. For the next several years, they co-directed an increasingly ambitious slate of films, almost all of them written by Weber.

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Lois Weber, far left, with world-famous ballerina Anna Pavlova, seated, on the set of “The Dumb Girl of Portici.” It was the first blockbuster directed by a woman—Weber—and the only feature film in which Pavlova appeared.

With the founding of Lois Weber Productions in 1917, Smalley increasingly assumed a subordinate role; the couple divorced in 1922. The films Weber made during this period define her career: “Where Are My Children?” (1916), a bold defense of contraception; “Shoes” (1916), in which an impoverished woman sells her virginity in order to buy the footwear she needs to keep her job; and four films from 1921—“Too Wise Wives,” “What Do Men Want?,” “What’s Worth While?” and “The Blot”—that collectively explore shifting sexual mores, women in the workforce and cultural upheaval in a frank, socially conscious manner. Weber often spoke of cinema as a vehicle for societal change; her filmography is dramatic testimony to that belief.

Weber’s output dropped significantly through the 1920s. She directed only a handful of films before her death in 1939, destitute and hardly remembered.

The Library is fortunate to have many of Weber’s surviving films in its moving-image collection and has invested considerable effort into preserving them. Two years ago, it completed a digital restoration of “The Dumb Girl of Portici” (1915), starring Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova in her only screen appearance. Lately, we’ve been working on 12 titles for a forthcoming BluRay release with our partners at Kino-Lorber, “Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers.”

The Library is proud to facilitate the rediscovery of important women directors like Weber and her contemporaries Alice Guy-Blaché, Grace Cunard and Elsie Jane Wilson, whose collective contribution to the art of cinema is worthy of celebration and critical re-evaluation.

Irish-American Heritage Month: New Resources

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“The Irish American” by George M. Cohan, sheet music first published in 1905. It appears in a set about Irish-Americans in our Free to Use and Reuse archive.

To celebrate Irish-American Heritage Month—and of course St. Patrick’s Day!—we’re adding new images to our Free to Use and Reuse archive and releasing a new resources guide associated with the Irish-American experience.

Last month, we launched our Free to Use archive featuring sets of themed content: travel posters, presidential portraits, Civil War drawings and all manner of dogs—mutts, services animals and fancy show champions. All the sets highlighted in the archive—and these are just a few examples—are fee to use and reuse, meaning there are no known copyright restrictions associated with the content, and you can do whatever you want with it.

The new content associated with Irish-Americans originates from collections throughout the Library—the American Folklife Center, the Geography and Map Division, the Music Division and the Prints and Photographs Division. Included are color lithographs, historical photographs, sheet music, maps and images of famous Irish-Americans—F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Ford, Grace Kelly and the Kennedys among them.

Our new resources guide introduces the wonderful primary and secondary resources on Irish-American heritage available through the Library of Congress. A variety of formats can be explored, including photographs, historical newspaper articles and audio recordings of interviews and music. In addition to freely available online resources from the Library’s collections, selected online resources from sites outside of the Library are also listed. Other materials, such as printed books and subscription databases, are available onsite at the Library and through other libraries. This selective guide is not intended to be exhaustive; see Search Tips for finding more materials.

Scroll down for a few more examples from our Free to Use archive associated with Irish-Americans 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!

Cheers!

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Jacqueline Kennedy and John F. Kennedy cut the cake at their wedding on Sept. 12, 1953. Photo by Toni Frissell.

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James Donovan, street sweeper in Fall River, Mass., 1916. Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine.

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Map showing distribution of the Irish natives in the United States, based on U.S. Census data from 1890.

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A mother pins clover on her son’s suit in a lithograph titled “St. Patrick’s Day in America,” published by Duval and Hunter of Philadelphia, c. 1872.