>> From the Library of Congress in Washington DC. ^M00:00:04 [ Pause ] ^M00:00:17 >> Good morning to all of you and welcome to the Dawson class for the year 2010. We're happy to see all of you. We started a little early on September 1st and now we're back for our first full week. My name is Jim Hughes, I'm the volunteer coordinator and I'm happy to have all of you here for the very special presentation we're about to hear. Through the years, the Library of Congress Dawsons have come to know John Cole mostly through his books about the library especially, "On These Walls: Inscriptions and Quotations in the Library of Congress," first published in 1995. This revised version with this gorgeous color photographs by Carol Highsmith was published in 2008. The blurb in the back of the book managed to boil John's 44-year career at the Library down to 2 sentences. [ Laughter ] >> Here they are, John Y. Cole is founding director of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. He has published widely about books and libraries in society as well as about the history of the Library of Congress. You will get to know John, his books and his love of the library through this morning's presentation and discussion. I would just add--I would like to add a brief word about his administrative career at the library. You can ask him more questions about both the history of the library and his personal involvement during the question and answer period. The Librarian of Congress, Daniel J. Boorstin who became Librarian of Congress in 1975 asked John to chair an important year-long administrative review of the entire library during the year 1976. It was called the Task Force on Goals Organization and Planning, and the creation of the Center for the Book in 1997--1977 was but one of the study's outcomes. With support from the present Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington, who took office in 1987 after Dr. Boorstin's retirement, John has expanded the Center of--for the Book nationally and internationally, served as co-chair of the library's bicentennial celebration in the year 2000, played a key role in the National Book Festival which was created in 2001 and then instrumental in the development of the library's new Young Readers Center which opened as part of the Center for the Book in 2009. John tells me that the shorthand title of his presentation this morning is what you should know about a unique national institution or why LC is great. [Laughter] Ladies and gentleman, John Cole. [ Applause ] >> Thank you. Thank you, Jim. Yes I'm a cheerleader for the Library of Congress but I want to tell you why today and would like to have a discussion with you about some of the characteristics that I am able to define. We can look at these together, I hope for a good part of this presentation. I enjoyed talking to the Dawsons. I also enjoy talking to the--each year's professional--new--excuse me, new class of new employees who are coming in and because I do have a background of the history of the Library of Congress and also as Jim has said, have been fortunate enough to be in a position to in essence practice what I preach as an administrative officer in some of the special projects, I like to try to convey my conclusions and also to thank you, the Dawsons and to thank even our brand new employees for taking an important part in spreading the word about what is truly a unique institution. What I have gathered here today is for a first time for a Dawson's presentation and I've just started doing it with some of the new employee presentations is the gathering of some of the publications and some of the posters and some of the promotional material that I have used through the years or been involved with and I want to--I believe after going through perhaps a very speedy 20-minute of tracing of the library's history by looking primarily at its buildings, its locations and its changing mission to stop, have a question and answer period and then also take you through, maybe a little later in the hour some of these publications and tell their stories. And so what I'm proposing to do is to tell you a bunch of stories--most of them pretty much true, alright. [Laughter] And then to try to answer any of your questions, so this is--should be a fun session and I enjoy it each year. We have to start though at the very beginning and what I have to show at the very beginning is really what--how I started. I began at the Library of Congress actually in the Congressional Research Service and soon got interested in the history of the library, and was transferred to what used to be called the old reference department because I decided I needed a PhD in American Studies and I've decided that my topic was gonna be how the Library of Congress became a national institution, and this was published--this is my first book. It's 1970 and it was published really coming during the period of my dissertation research and if any of you have done dissertations, know what you need basically is a chronology, and so this is a chronology of the Library of Congress--a chronological history starting at the beginning and ending in 1975 before Dr. Boorstin came to the library and before I even knew that he had planned to create a Center for the Book. But it is--in those days was spent time actually of course with all my citations and I have used it ever since. We lost this one out of print 25 years ago and we rediscovered it in one of the library's warehouses a year ago and we now have copies for sale for only 10 dollars in the LC sale shop. This is typical of something that you will all learn about the Library of Congress and in fact I've begun to think of it as an endearing characteristic, is that we are so big, you really have to be focused on a topic or a subject in order to learn what is really here. Another example which we will come to is the reconstruction of Jefferson's Library which you all know about--or will know about as part of what your training will be and I'm sure already is. We didn't know how many of the duplicates of Jefferson's Library we had on our own shelves until we really took the bibliography and went after them. And now when we proudly given the tour of the Jefferson's Library, we kind of downplay the fact that a number of those--there is a euphemism we used in that beautiful catalogue on which I worked, explaining that, you know, our rich collections, we manage to find a number of the duplicates which you now see as part of the reconstructed Jefferson's Library. It's a fact of life. We're the largest research library in the world with around 145 million items. We have around, I don't know what we're saying, 39 to 4--3900 to 4000 employees. We're complicated--the histories of our units are complicated. But we have a few wonderful things that bring us together and part of it starts at the very beginning which is outlined here and in the couple of the other books and it's really the Jeffersonian heritage and I early on did a book called Jefferson's Legacy. A short--a brief history of the Library of Congress and let me give you the briefest of that story if you do not have it. The library was really created from Philadelphia when Congress, which had always used books in--when it was in New York and in Philadelphia have appropriated 5000 dollars for the library--for books for the Congress and our first home was the New Capitol Building because we we're actually in the Capitol Building as Washington DC got created. So, we really preceded any other cultural institution and as we brag about the Library of Congress and talk to tourists about it, you know, we do--part of our pattern now is that we are the largest federal cultural institution in Washington and it's hard to beat that because we we're created in 1800 legally. We really started functioning more when the first books arrived in the Capitol in 1801 and the joint committee on the library which is indeed the oldest joint committee on Congress--of Congress got started in 1802. Now, a lot of that part of the history is documented in a book I was fortunate enough to work on for many, many years. ^M00:10:02 >> And it's the encyclopedia of the Library of Congress, but it even now is outdated, it came out in 2004 but one of--it has about a dozen essays about the Library of Congress and then alphabetical histories of functions and of administrative units and there are reference copies all over the Library of Congress. Right now, it's out of print and I'm not sure what the new edition will be if there will be a new edition. That's another subject. But one of the little coos I had was to talk to the Senate Historical Office to do--into doing the very first listing of all the members of the joint committee on the library from the beginning. And so that is in the back. Just so the rest of you can see this, this is the poster--we use to sell this when it came out in 2004. It's the only other presenta--general presentation about the library that I've been able to make to the staff as a whole until today when we are actually taking a look together at some of the resources that we've used in developing the library's history. We were proud of the encyclopedia because it had a color section which is now far superseded by actually the color photos by Carol Highsmith which are in the new edition of "On These Walls," but there still is a very handsome color section that begins this particular book and just so you get a sense of--these are the essays on different subjects and then we start with A and we march right through acquisitions to zebras. Not quite to zebras but to other units. And one of the advantages of this is that about 50 different library employees worked on it and they were the specialists of their divisions. And so the music division provided the history of the music division and collections. That is another wonderful aspect of the Library of Congress by the way, the specialists who are here. We are unique in several ways as I'm indicating. One, I really should point out is the fact we're a legislative branch. Congress created us but we're unique because the president appoints the Librarian of Congress and that has led to one of our--not really troubles but some of the discrepancies and some of the pushes and pulls in our history. But a second unique feature that I love is the specialists that have developed, you know, to care for the collections. All of which is a function of the copyright law that I'm getting ahead of my story. We're now still back in the Capitol. We're still looking at books coming from England as the first Library of Congress collection. The reason the collection was so important of course was that books were really the internet of the day. Congress had to have information and books and pamphlets were the way you got information. And the little library in the Capitol grew during the same years when Thomas Jefferson was the president of 1801 to 1809 and we all know part of the outcome of this story that is the Jefferson was a great book lover and he nurtured that little library. He recommended items for it. He left office but he actually also named the first 2 Librarians of Congress were really Jefferson's clerk, John Beckley and then--I'm gonna think of it in just a second, but of course, I will have to look at one of my books in a second. But in any rate, the first full time Librarian of Congress was George Watterston in 1815. So Jefferson had this great interest. Well, the British destroyed the Library of Congress when they invaded Washington DC in 1814 and Jefferson by then was retired to Monticello and he of course was greatly dismayed but he had an idea and that was as the owner of the greatest private library in our country at the time and someone who knew the value of books to Congress and to our government, because of course the president had been involved from the beginning in the library, he offered to sell at cost his wonderful library back to the Congress to recommence the Library of Congress, you know to keep that ball rolling. He had to sell it because basically he was broke and his creditors were asking for the money and his proposition was that his roughly 6400 volumes--6500 volumes would come to the Library of Congress for about 4 dollars a volume and around 25, 26,000 dollars in those dollars--in those days. This is all in a lot of our brochures, too so you'll see that and I'll tell you where to find all of these as we move on. And Congress only did this by--approved it by a vote of 10 and it wasn't--in the end, there were some people who'd--said, you know, why do we need Jefferson's Library? It has books and all of these subjects that Congress doesn't need. And to the contrary, Jefferson argued all these subjects needed to be--the Congress needed to know about fine arts and geography and science and music--Jefferson himself being violinist, because there was no subject to which a member of Congress may not have occasion to refer which is a very flattering thing to say to Congress. [Laughter] But it's also basically true. And Congress agreed to do this, to take on this comprehensive library. The second part of Jefferson's idea which really didn't transpire at the library. We couldn't really bring it off until after the Civil War was, well, members of Congress--well you need these books and all of these subjects in order to govern this growing country that's kinda stuck on the eastern seaboard, the people of America need these books too. You need to share this legislative library with the American people and in principle, Congress agreed. But, in practice, it didn't happen for a couple until after the Civil War. And I will explain that story as we kind of move through the morning. But first, I've gotta get us out of the US Capitol. We were in the Capitol with Jefferson's Library, fire was the great threat to all libraries in the 19th century and the Library of Congress had it share. Not only did the British burned the Capitol, but in 1825, there was a fire that did no damage but in 1851, a chimney flue broke or leaked and flames got in and two thirds of the Library of Congress in the Capitol was destroyed. Fifty five thousand volumes were lost including two thirds of Jefferson's 6500 volumes. So we were down to between 2000 and 2500. But, the Congress stepped up to the back actually and agreed--and they didn't have to do this because this was a very difficult period for the Library of Congress in the 1850s. They agreed to restore the funding to rebuild the Library of Congress and put it in the first iron-proof room in the Capitol. So there was a very important kind of architectural step that moved us ahead and there was an intention of Congress to move ahead. However, Congress in those days was--it was Congress was dominating not the library side, not anything like the National Library side and there was a chair of the library committee who really ran the Library of Congress from the 1840s until 1862 and he was a senator from Maryland named, James Pearce. A knowledgeable man, very well educated, love the classics, but he also was a--basically a confederate sympathizer as most many Maryland people were and he saw no national role for the Library of Congress. He rejected the second part of what Jefferson had wanted and kept the Library of Congress small and really did things like control the subscriptions, so some of the inflammatory items weren't really purchased. And so--and in fact, he favored moving the National Library to the Smithsonian which had been created in 1846. But you see, now I'm telling you chronologically, we were 1800. Smithsonian is 1846. Our other major sister cultural institutions, I mean the other biggie of course is the National Archives which really wasn't created until 1935. So as our story proceeds, you'll see the Library of Congress grabbing some of the archival functions that the arch--later would go back to the archive. But it came fairly close to losing the National Library function in the 1840s and '50s except a man named, Joseph Henry who was a great scientist, the head of the Smithsonian saw what was happening and Congress didn't know which way to turn with the Smithsonian or really with the Library of Congress but Joseph Henry knew he wanted Smithsonian to be science and he fired the librarian name--whose name was Charles Coffin Jewett who wanted the Library of Congress--I mean the Smithsonian to be the National Library. And Joseph Henry himself pointed up to the Capitol and said, "Some day, it's got to be the Library of Congress because it's got the building. It's got the national stature. It doesn't have the people yet." And that that was quite true. In the 1850s, we had a staff of 5 and by the time a man named Ainsworth Rand Spofford became a Librarian of Congress, a newspaper man from Cincinnati, we had 7. ^M00:20:07 >> But Spofford, he was the man who recognized the national potential of the library and centralized copyright at the Library of Congress in 1870. And his question was, "How do I build a national library with not much money," and his answer was, "I know, I'll do it like they did in England and in France and I centralize copyright so the Library of Congress gets 2 free copies of all books, prints, maps, anything that needs to be preserved by an author in order to retain the intellectual property rights to it." And Spofford said, "That's what' we will do. That's what our national library will be. It will be a great national accumulation of knowledge that the American people can rely on." And Spofford paraphrased Jefferson. He took Jefferson's argument about the need--every great nation has a great library that it can turn to as it grows and that library needs to be comprehensive and needs to be open to all. So, the 2 Jeffersonian principles that really have come through are comprehensiveness of knowledge and today, the Library of Congress with our great collections is really what we call a multimedia encyclopedia. That's what Dr. Boorstin used to call it who was my boss in 1975, the one who created the center. And he took great pride in the fact that we had--we we're a multimedia encyclopedia because when you think about it, the copyright office and the copyright laws, you know, cover all kinds of different formats and media. And to this day copyright is, you know, I think is still a very important part of our acquisitions policy. But now of course we've moved in to the electronic age and not only are we copyrighting all kinds of items that Spofford had never heard of, but of course we're copyrighting born digital things and getting--and so we've moved into this other world but the basis of it is the copyright office being part of the Library of Congress, that also is another unique feature. That doesn't happen. Not only are there very few if any, I can only think of one, other so-called national library that also is a parliamentary library but copyright also is an executive branch activity. And in the Library of Congress in my day, there was an effort in fact to move copyright out and tie it back to the patent office function from whence it sort of came in a general kind of way. And the library didn't want to do that and then in the end, neither did the publishers and neither did the copyright--people who were happy with what the copyright was. Now, copyright is a very difficult thing to administer and it's controversial but by and large because the Library of Congress is basically both legislative and also in a sense an executive branch with--it has this executive functions, we are nonpartisan. The Librarian of Congress from the beginning has been appointed by the president. Congress didn't even catch on until 1897when suddenly, this building--and this is a brochure I have for all of you about an essay I wrote about the importance of the building. When this building suddenly appeared, it will do--well I think we'll talk more about the construction a little later. And so what have we here? It looks Mr. Spofford, the librarian claims this is a national library. What is a national library? I know, let's have hearings and let's bring in some librarians to tell us what--if this really is a national library. Well, it turns out Spofford had come pretty close to making this into a national library. He hadn't quite done a couple of things but in the end, the building itself of course make such a strong statement about cultural institution than it is a cultural monument. The librarians criticism--criticism of the time was that Spofford, A had not thought of things internationally yet, but he really didn't have a chance, but that's true. And secondly, that he wasn't reaching out to other libraries and their definition of a national library would be a library that reached out and did technical services, centralized cataloguing, centralized acquisitions to other libraries. In other words, we were missing a leadership role in the library community. But basically, these other elements were there. The trick for Spofford was two-fold, one was to convince Congress to build the building. He centralized copyright in 19--1870. He said in 1871 said, "Alright Congress, we're gonna be flooded. We gotta have a building." He only had at that time maybe 12 employees but with--once copyright came, he got--eventually got up to 24 employees at the turn of the century but half of them were working on--before the building was occupied, but half of them were working on copyright. But his bigger challenge was in the Jeffersonian sense of convincing Congress that this should be the national institution and that the building when it was built was gonna be of such monumental proportions that it hardly could be anything but, you know, something pretty significant. And the story that's told in this brochure is Spofford's story of both copyright and getting the building built which is--was called the "Struggle for the Structure" of which I've called in several other articles. But what significant about that is once the building was built, one of the 2 librarians who testified at the hearings from outside saying Spofford did great except for these 2 things was Herbert Putnam. And he was from the Putnam Publishing family and he was President McKinley's nominee to become the Librarian of Congress from--in 1899. And it was Putnam who stayed for 40 years at the Library of Congress, the longest term and what he did was he completed the job that Spofford really didn't have a chance to complete. He started services to libraries and he went international in a very daring way. I mean in the 1905, he sent a Library of Congress employee to Russia, to Siberia to look a t a collection that's Putnam felt that was something we should purchase as the basis for our Russian collection. The same decade, he did the same thing for China, you know, for the Middle East and he just had a very international point of view. But at the same time, he was doing--started centralized cataloguing at the Library of Congress. With those little 3 by 5 cards, he--Putnam, I'm talking about now. So the 2 librarians that I'm talking mostly about now would--one would be Ainsworth Rand Spofford and he was the librarian who came to the library during the Civil War. He got Lincoln to name him Librarian of Congress in 1864 and he centralized copyright and built the Jefferson Building. It was terribly overcrowded in the Capitol but eventually everything was moved into the Jefferson Building. I have a picture to show you. I have marked in one of my books but I'm gonna finish. So then the 2nd one is Herbert Putnam. And it was during the hearings on this building that the Congress realized it had never given itself the power to confirm the president's choice as librarian. It's hard to believe. So, during the 19th century sometimes a new president came in and out went the librarian. And that protection, if you wanna call it that, was added to the sort of the structure of the Library of Congress in 1897. And the first librarian that McKinley appointed and was confirmed by Congress was a journalist named, John Russell Young who did a great job but we can't worry too much about him. There are limited timeframe. He is in all the books, because he died after a year and a half in office. And it was Putnam who came in as the 2nd appointment from McKinley and really kinda finished this job. And so what Putnam did was to redefine the constituencies that the Library of Congress had. We started of course with the president which brought in the executive branch and early on, executive branch people were authorized to use that little library in the Capitol. When the--after the fire in the Capitol, the big iron room was built and we have pictures of that and we'll do a little picture session in a few minutes. That was read across the Capitol looking down on the mall. It was the best place for tourists to look at the mall. So what happened was people naturally and the members of the public came in and looked at through the Library of Congress and look in the mall and as we do now. So we are--already then were serving Congress by virtue of being the Library of Congress, the executive by the president making the appointment, the public by using the Library of Congress over there in the Capitol. Copyright came in. We started serving publishers in the creative community. We had not gotten yet and I'm missing one of our major constituencies. I'm gonna mention this before the Young Readers Center. I'll get to that later. ^M00:30:01 >> But at any rate, we were slowly building it and then finally, you know, Putnam built the International Constituency and we--oh then, excuse me, I forgot. One little thing in Spofford. Spofford in addition to centralizing cataloguing--I mean to centralizing copyright persuaded Congress to give the library 100,000 dollars for the Peter Force Library incunabula. This was early books and also there were valuable maps there, so he was starting on the scholarly community and Spofford brought his friend, George Bancroft who was an American historian in to not only to write letters of endorsement to Congress for 100,000 dollars which was quite something in 19--1867 to buy that library, but also to help scholars know that they were welcome at the Library of Congress. Still a problem we have. We'll talk about that in the question and answer period. Because of our name, Library of Congress, and the tension that is sort of the natural one that I hope you can see a building where starting with Congress, we're adding kinda not to enthusiastically at the beginning the American public, and of course international intentions and now the internet has made us international. So in fact, we have fulfilled, you know, this Jeffersonian idea of--it's just taken a lot longer than Jefferson thought it would. But nonetheless, you know, we are unique in that sense. Just to--I'm gonna try to concentrate on getting us up to the present and then stopping and then I'm gonna go through and show you some photos of some of the things I've talked about. The other significant thing is that after Spofford then actually brought together these 2 functions. He said, "Okay, we're gonna do the Jeffersonian thing. We're gonna tie the national role to the legislative role. We're gonna do both." Congress hasn't always agreed with that. There's been kind of an up and down in attention just like there was with Mr. Pearce back in the 19th century. But basically, every Librarian of Congress has bought this idea. Everyone since Spofford and that includes the ones who follow Putnam who were Archibald MacLeish who was the Librarian of Congress, the writer from 1939 to 1944 while he was working as a speech writer actually for Archibald MacLeish. He not only took this as a natural assumption, this bringing together of the people's library with the legislative library, but he was a war time librarian and really revved it up and talked about the Library of Congress as a fortress of freedom. Hey, there's an audio visual. This is a book about the history of the Library of Congress by a woman who worked in CRS. And it was built--it was written in 1946--'42, I'm sorry published by Lippincott, you know, just as the US had entered the war. But the image that it was shown, of course and the idea behind it was that we were protecting America's freedoms and in a real way that was true, because way back in the 1920s--and this is Mr. Putnam building this constituency again, he went to the state department where he had special connections and persuaded them to loan the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to the Library of Congress for display in the Great Hall and was on display from 1923 until 1952 when we ended up giving it to the National Archives which hadn't been created until '35. But as you know the difference between--the basic difference between the institutions is the archives is where our--the documents of our government are kept and there's--no one could really argue that the 2 basic documents of our government were not the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. So the library reluctantly gave those up. In fact, the Librarian of Congress at that time was Luther Evans. He followed MacLeish [inaudible]. MacLeish was '39 to '44. Evans was '45--1945 to 1953 and left in 1953 to become the first secretary general of UNESCO. So you get that international thing back in. But Evans actually, and we've had a little bit of an oral history interview with him talking about it, was so worried about the Library of Congress' senior staff didn't wanna give up the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They felt, "We had them and we librarians were that way. We are archivist were that way and darn if we were ever gonna give them up." And there are a couple of articles that I've written and other people have written about this. So Evans in the end asked the joint committee on the library which basically is an advisory committee to the library to order him to give the Declaration and the Constitution up to the archives and the order was issued, I think the--probably the only direct order the joint library committee has ever issued, and it happened in 1952. The Librarian of Congress from '53, Evans then left and in 1953, a man named L. Quincy Mumford for whom our Mumford Room was opened--was named was from the Cleveland Public Library. And he was the only Librarian of Congress who's ever had a professional degree. And in my case, even though I am a professional librarian, I do not think it's a necessary requirement but it doesn't hurt. And so that was another kind of constituency but the library grew on both the legislative and the national sides under Mr. Mumford because of a huge infusion of depart--of educational funds in the '70s. And that's when we created our overseas offices. But the seeds of the overseas offices and our international role are in our collections. In fact, its' fair to say I think the functions of the Library of Congress--really they do grow out of the collections. And because the collections from the beginning are so broad and so international and--you know, our statistic is I don't know what it is, but 470 languages. Some of you--Jim has to patter down, I mean what we say. But it's because we have those collections, we have the units--the area studies units and that's why we have the specialists that I am so fond of. You don't have many people who have the wonderful specialties we have in the Library of Congress. And in that sense, it's because Congress bought that Jefferson Library all those years ago and we now, of course, honor it by not only it's reconstruction through the bicentennial but we honor it when Dr. Billington who is our present Librarian of Congress goes to Congress every year to get our funding and we're up to 640 million maybe a year from appropriated funds. We are careful. We want congress to stay to be our major supporter. We do not want everything to be funded by the private sector at all. We want it in a very controlled way and we have a Madison Council that helps us. But it helps us in direct--carefully directed ways by the library. But Dr. Billington as did Dr. Boorstin before him, when they go to Congress say, you know, what else to say, say why do you getting all these materials from all over the world? There is no subject to which a member of Congress may not have occasion to refer. And that is a bedrock kind of mission and statement, you know, for the Library of Congress. And it is a valid one. Its-but the key is, you know, to try to convince Congress and to keep working especially in a period of restrained budgets right now, you know, to keep our eye on this larger comprehensive unique role of the Library of Congress. Dr.--Mr. Mumford retired in 1954 even though the library grew tremendously under him. I remember this because that was back when I was kind of doing more for the library as a historian and I did one of the little retirement brochures for Dr.--Mr. Mumford. You know, how do you say what's happened in the last 20 years and I never forget saying that our appropriation went from 9 million to 90 million. Now, that doesn't sound like much but that was 1954 to '74 and I just said today, it's 640 million. But the collections grew and that I was able to come to conclusions that what happened in those days is what still happens in the general way. The legislative side which is really handled by the Congressional Research Service here, in my day it was the Legislative Reference Service, grows and has this essentially important nonpartisan function which actually leads to another unique feature of the Library of Congress. We truly are nonpartisan. While the Librarian of Congress is appointed by a political--by the president, you know, we are not the kind of agency that has a job change at the upper levels when a new administration comes in. It doesn't happen. There is an integrity and in the early days, a separate civil service system was built for the library with its separate retirement programs that has gotten closer to the government programs but it still has--the library still has this integrity and this reputation as an absolutely nonpartisan agency. ^M00:40:05 >> And we must be because of CRS, because they do work for republicans and they do work for democrats. They are very, very--we are very, very careful as an institution to retain that good reputation and we've done so. I've seen changes in that. I've seen Dr. Billington being more willing to let members of Congress make use of our wonderful Jefferson Building but it's done in an absolutely nonpartisan way. If the republicans rent it for something or take it or use it, the democrats do. So it's that nonpartisan right down the middle of the road integrity of the library that it's another--one of the Spofford characteristics carried through Putnam. I can't say that was a Jeffersonian characteristic actually. Spofford was the one who really needed to be nonpartisan in order to get the votes--to get both--to get the building actually. And then what happened was Mr. Mumford retired and Daniel Boorstin, historian from University of Chicago who had been actually a senior historian at the library at the Smithsonian Museum of National History, I think it was what it was called in those days, was named by Gerald Ford to be Librarian of Congress. And that was the period when Jim mentioned I got involved in the library as both a historian and as an administrative person being Dr. Boorstin's head of his task force which had people from all over the world actually plus a lot of Library of Congress employees, out of which came the Center for the Book. But he--Dr. Boorstin decided to retire in 1987 to go back to writing his big world history. He'd already written books about the history of the Library of Congress--I mean about the United States. And Dr. Billington who was at the Woodrow Wilson Center, at the Smithsonian was named by Ronald Reagan in 1987 and Dr. Billington who is also a very strong Librarian of Congress has been with us since, which does lead me and I will conclude on this and we'll do a little bit of Q and A. The other thing the library has been blessed with is, I would say since Spofford not only librarians who understood the role that the Library of Congress could play but we're strong enough in dealing with both Congress and in developing national constituencies to--and in maintaining this nonpartisan neutrality. And that was not an easy thing for Mr. Putnam to do in the--those 30 years because this was when Congress was asserting its role with his own skills managed to maintain this integrity that we've been blessed with strong leadership. And the Librarian of Congress is known at--whomever he is and so far it's been all he, but it will probably won't be for--I mean, of course it won't be forever, but who knows what will happen, has always had a strong reputation and the Library of Congress has managed to keep a strong reputation which you are part of course and I know that you will take--you do take pride in the library or you wouldn't be here, but I'm hoping that some of this and in our discussion, we can talk a little bit more about some of the items that I've hit. So that ends part 1. Thank you very much. [ Laughter ] [ Applause ] >> Archibald MacLeish was really the first librarian to start honoring Jefferson but he had a good reason and I don't know--oh, I did bring it. This is the Jefferson bicentennial celebrated at the Library of Congress in 1943. And it's a catalogue of exhibitions and what--and by then--I didn't even really talked about the other buildings, did I? Very quickly, the--this wonderful Jefferson Building of ours which we'll come back to is opened in 1897, Putnam built an open--what was then called the annex building, today is Adams Building that's built in the '30s, and opened to the public in 1939. And so when MacLeish was Librarian of Congress starting in '39 and we got around to '43 which was the centennial--bicentennial of Jefferson's birth, how better to honor Jefferson and his role in the library of congress than a library-wide exhibit where each of the divisions were asked to display whether they're in the main building or the annex, you know, what--how Jefferson affected their collections and so, what you had was, you know, something over in the science division in the annex building showing Jefferson in science. Something in music showing Jefferson in music of dimension of violation, as something prints and photographs Jefferson. So we really physically made the point that Jefferson's comprehensiveness. But then, MacLeish went further and he invited his good friend who in fact had helped President Roosevelt make the decision to appoint Archibald MacLeish just as Felix Frankfurter was the man behind the scenes there and it turns out, MacLeish invited Justice Frankfurter to come over and give the opening address, you know, for the Jeffersonian exhibit. So that Jeffersonian idea has grown and then Dr. Billington, during the bicentennial, had the notion of the reconstruction of the library which I've already talked about a little. But what is unique when you see this is that that library has been reconstructed and for the first time, it's in the Jeffersonian order. I mean Jefferson was, among other things, a librarian. I mean, he was a cataloger. He had his own system based on Sir Francis Bacon system. So, what you see there physically, you know, is really this--the heart of the Library of Congress both philosophically in terms of the range, of the comprehensiveness of collections and the intention to share them but also the intention to make them as useful as they could even though the Library of Congress only kept Jefferson's collection system--I mean I did mark something here through the 19th century. When Jefferson's books arrived at the--when George Watterston took them in to what we called Blodgett's Hotel which was where--downtown after the fire in 1815, they came in classification order with Jefferson's catalog and we just kept expanding Jefferson's system until the library opened--reopened in the Jefferson Building. What happened--I'll go through this, it gets a little confusing. Once in the Capitol, Spofford used--expand Jefferson System and in fact, here is something I found for the chronology years ago that I think Spofford might even have done it. This is the Tree of Knowledge and this shows, you know, how from this Jeffersonian initial sprouts of the trunks of the tree which you will see in the classification system when you visit it, little branches started to grow and these little branches grew and grew and they got heavier and heavier and pretty soon, the whole thing really crushed in the 19th century. But in a way, it didn't matter because Spofford, after he centralized copyright, yelled for a new building in 1871, he didn't get that building authorized until 1886 thanks to a couple of members of Congress nor did it open in 18--till 1897. So, Spofford ran out of space in the Capitol in 1875. Copyright material was pouring in. He decided to confiscate rooms throughout the Capitol, and by 1897, LC material was in 16 different rooms throughout the Capitol. He'd stopped cataloguing in 1881. He was just really hanging on to get this new building which he didn't get authorized until 1886. So all that maps went in one room, the prints went in one room, the newspapers went in one room, and by the time that we were finally ready to move, the Library of Congress in the Capitol was closed in the summer of 1897 and--we don't have photos of this but I've read about it. Not only they brought horse-drawn carts across and park them beneath the Capitol and started hauling out the material and in a couple of cases, they've actually built wooden shoots that came down and they shoved the material when the material can take it, you know, into the wagons and they carted across and they put it on the floor, a good deal of it of this newly constructed--this wonderful new Jefferson Building for sorting because it was just jumbled. And early on in my research, I found this photo. This is what the material looked like when it was dumped on the floor of the Jefferson Building. Up and down those hallways and you could imagine just to sort it out because of the multimedia nature of it, you know, it took a couple of years, and it turns out the second librarian who came over to testify in addition to Mr. Putnam at these hearings was Melvil Dewey, who of course had already created the Dewey Decimal System. ^M00:50:03 >> And he made a special trip to Washington to lobby his friend, Mr. Putnam by now Librarian of Congress that the Library of Congress should use the Dewey Decimal System and Mr. Putnam just shook his head and basically said to Mr. Dewey, "Well you're system is so limited and it's so good for public libraries but we if you could see on the floor"--I'm making this up but it's this idea. You know, "We are a research library, we are a multimedia encyclopedia and our intention is to be the largest and most important research library in this country and we just simply have to create our own classification system." In fact, it was based on another one, Charles Cutter System but it was not gonna be the Dewey System. Now, let me just say a word or two about the Jefferson Building. This is a book on the art and architecture which is still in print. Norton has now--in its 2nd or 3rd printing and it's a book of essays about--and I'm the coeditor but I helped organize this years ago and it was one of the first color books where it has essays that relate to the art and architecture of the building and part of what I'm giving you the copy of this reprint, "The Jefferson Building: The Book Palace of American People" was a brochure I wrote for the opening of an exhibit when the restored Jefferson Building reopened on occasion of its centennial which was 1997. I know you--what happened was I never got to the 3rd building, the Adams building, formerly the annex opened to the public in 1939, the building we're in, opened in 1980, it takes the Library of Congress roughly 25 years to get a building--of these 1st 3 buildings from the time it's first proposed until the time we actually get the building. But once the Madison building was opened, Dr. Boorstin, who was my boss at the time, went back to Congress in the end, got 100 million dollars for the restoration of the Jefferson Building and part of the--so this is my essay which was "Struggle for a Structure" which tells the story of the construction and you have--can probably see a number of the construction sites. But what you have is another section we put in which is called "Souvenirs of the Jefferson Building" and that's was the brochure that end the listing of the exhibit items which you don't have. But a number of things you will have there would be things from the postcard collection showing what a big hit the Jefferson Building was when it opened. And my argument there is because somehow Congress finally--Spofford finally got Congress not only to agree, but Congress wants to--gets involved and here are spoons and scissors with the souvenir of the Jefferson Building which you'll see are also in your brochure. The US Army Corps of Engineers was brought in here--tea cups with the Jefferson building, and the US Army Corps of engineers, the 2 key people were Thomas Lincoln Casey who was the general--Brigadier general in charge and his chief engineer, a man named, Bernard Green. They had just finished completing the Washington Monument. You remember, for many years, the Washington Monument was a stab starting at--from 1848 on. Well, after the war in the '80s, the United States were starting to really flex its muscle culturally which the Library of Congress benefitted from but Casey and Bernard Green not only topped off--to the top that beautiful Washington Monument, they finished the executive office building next door which was the war navy building, very plush. And then Congress ended up in 1886 shortly after the authorization of the Jefferson Building firing the architects and bringing in the Army Corps of Engineers, Lincoln and Bernard Green to finish and because they trusted them, well, it turned out that Bernard and--General Casey and Bernard Green were infused with the same nationalism on behalf of the structure and the growth of our country physically and culturally as Spofford was--had that nationalism for the growth of this national library and they really complemented each other. So by the time Thomas Lincoln Casey and General--and Bernard Green, they chose--rather than the 4-million dollar plan for the building, they chose the 6-million dollar plan. Rather than the small dome, they chose the larger dome. Rather than leaving the dome where it was, they put it up 100 feet. They kept getting money from Congress and so they decided without asking Congress initially to employ 100 American--100--20 American architects and 20 American--architects--artists and sculptures to decorate the building and of course part of the fund of the touring of the Jefferson Building is not only--they're coming together of art and architecture and painting in a public building for the first time, but doing it with American talent which makes the building that much more important as sort of a monument to cultural nationalism, but also it gave Spofford the space he wanted. So he was happy and the librarians who'd argued endlessly over the design, finally came together and it turned out the American public absolutely love the Jefferson Building when it opened. It wasn't called Jefferson, we can go through that later but it became a great tourist attraction and even the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Joseph Canon said it was the grandest building he'd ever seen. So suddenly, the Library of Congress arrived on the scene with congressional support, public support, professional support, and one of the jobs of the Librarians of Congress then, especially Mr. Putnam was to translate that into financial support which as I said with Teddy Roosevelt, Putnam helped to d. But if it hadn't been for the building and now this was--so I mentioned, if it hadn't been for the building, I don't think--and then the space and I showed the space problem. We wouldn't be where we are now but once that building was there, you know, the momentum has picked up and we're out of space entirely on Capitol Hill but I think some of you know about our storage up at For Meade, Maryland where this--Congress has given us money, we're--and we're trying to get additional money to build these modules which hold millions of books and now, other kinds of materials for offsite storage and the grandest one of all is Culpeper which is where in the couple of years ago, you know, we open and I'm sure you're learning about that as part of the process, this wonderful conservation motion picture broadcasting recorded sound not only storage area but reading room, motion picture theatre and conservation center. Technical laboratories and people don't think of the Library of Congress as a place with great technical capabilities but we have some--especially in the preservation and conservation area, you know, some absolutely wonderful scientists, some of 'em are now down at Culpeper but that's Library of Congress South, but that way was paved actually by the momentum of the Jefferson Building. And that is the book that we--Jim mentioned at the very beginning, the first edition of "On These Walls" was meant as a companion to Jefferson's legacy. But it turned out, the--it was--while it was the 2nd book, this was '93, this was '95. In 19--2008, we did this wonderful Carol Highsmith with color photos book which is based on my text but is a condensed text I'm afraid because this is commercial and it is sold in the shops. I wish we had one for everybody but we don't but it's still being reprinted, I think again. But it does--it isn't as comprehensive as this but this is online and as is the index and as is all the information, so one of these days, we'll take the color photos from Carol Highsmith and put them online to replace the black and white photos. But this has become--there are also in this book a brief--very brief history of the Library of Congress and some of the things that I've been talking about and we need to move towards the close. Let me just give you a couple of other things about the guidebooks because you're in the guidebook business. This is the 1st edition of Herbert Small's "Handbook of the Library of Congress" which was published when we opened in 1897. He--Small was a Boston newspaper man who also did one of--a handbook for the new Boston Public Library which opened at about the same time. But it's unique because it has--it's compiled by Herbert Small with essays on the Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting by Charles Caffin and on "The Function of a National Library" by Ainsworth Rand Spofford. ^M01:00:10 >> And Small actually interviewed some of the artists and so the descriptions in here while he doesn't quote them by name, these are really pretty authentic descriptions. We reprinted Small several times. The Library of Congress Professional Association, this is--has reprinted it but unfortunately, we and I'm part of this association ended up reprinting the later edition which didn't have the 2 essays and the essays of course are important because those are firsthand kind of accounts. We did, however, reprint in this--we put in color illustrations for Small's handbook, so if you come across this or use this, you're back to the initial--this is the art and architecture, the Norton book of the Norton description plus some of these additional essays by scholars on the paintings and the sculpture work plus the souvenir stuff plus my essay on structure and how Spofford brought of what's Spofford brought off in order to get the building. This is an ancient volume when the--this is--remember, I told you the story of Congresses--what have we here? Let's have hearings. Here are the hearings and they were published in this wonderful and original binding of a lot of these extra copies that people keep sending me because they know I'm gonna be interested. And the hearings are actually 300-pages long and part of it is transcribed with Mr. Spofford walking members of Congress through the Jefferson Building--well, it became the Jefferson Building saying what he planned to put where and they actually quote him and they have this. So you really get a great way of, you know, how--what he planned and then what actually happened which sometimes was true and sometimes didn't but to show you what they were thinking of. There are charts in the back-- ^M01:02:13 [ Pause ] ^M01:02:18 >> Compared--and this is a little fragile but it's been restored, comparing comparative tables so far as details that [inaudible] permit, a proposed force and expenditure in the Library of Congress--let's see if I can do this, as compared with similar services in the National Library of France, the Royal Library of Russia and the Boston Public Library. The British museum isn't in there. So you can see we're feeling the computation a little bit. And so--you know, in that sense the library is part of the political process. 1950, the Library of Congress and its work. So this would be something that library published a selection of pictures with descriptive text and what I love about this is you--I'll just pull one out so--here would be different reading rooms at different times but here would be Slavica [phonetic], we call it, the largest collection of Russian books outside of Russia approximately 25--265,000 volumes and pamphlets is available for using the Slavic literature, alcove, annex building, 5th floor. Then it talks about the Yudin Collection and that's the very collection I mentioned and here is our Slavic specialist under a photo of Mr. Yudin, you know examining in the collection. At the occasion of the bicentennial, the 150th anniversary, we did--and I've always enjoyed this. This is a little hardbound--it was the sesquicentennial, 175th, 1950 and so this was an exhibit that--about the library's history which is the last time we really ever done an exhibit about our history and this was the exhibit catalogue but this shows Archibald MacLeish, as Librarian of congress for the first time meeting with--well I shouldn't say first photo we've shown of him, he's with his colleagues, Davin Mearns who was the Chief of the Manuscript Division for many years and a historian of the Library of Congress whom I met early on and helped influenced my interest. A man named, Verner Clapp who was the chief assistant librarian for many years. Mr. Clapp was a contender for the position of Librarian of Congress in 1954 but it went instead to Mr. Mumford and Mr. Clapp left the library in a couple of years later, but not out of peak, it was to, in fact help be the first president of something called the Council on Library Resources which turned out to be a privately Ford Foundation grant operation and Mr. Clapp knew enough about the Library of Congress to know that the best way to influence and to develop funding for projects was that it come from outside. And so the Council on Library Resources really started funding and experimental funding for the Library of Congress which the government--we couldn't do. And cataloguing and publication which we've talked about earlier, early preservation funding, all came from the Council on Library Resources. And finally, let's see, this is the book that we did as our bicentennial history. And it's by James Conaway and I highly recommend it and I believe it's still for sale in the shop, if I'm correct. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov. ^M01:06:13 [ Silence ]