[music clip] ^M00:00:15:00 James Hughes: Good morning everyone. Welcome to this session of docent training for the class of 2006. This morning we're fortunate to have with us Clark Evans, who is head of Reference and Reader Services in the Rare Book and Special Collections Reading Room [Rare Book Reading Room]. Clark has been helping the docent program in its training for 10 years, and we always look forward to this presentation; it's one of our favorites. Thank you for helping out. Clark Evans: Jim, thank you very much, and it's a great pleasure to be here. Well, of course our venue today is Dining Room A in the James Madison Building, and it will suffice, although ideally our best venue to give a presentation on the rare books would indeed be in the Rare Book Reading Room, which is located on the second floor of the Jefferson Building, LJ239. And if I actually had the privilege of taking you as a group into the Rare Book vault area -what I should say is the Rare Book stacks, the very first room we encounter as we enter the Rare Book stacks is the Thomas Jefferson library. I'm probably preaching to the choir here, so this is elemental information you're no doubt already familiar with. But the Jefferson library is indeed the nucleus for the current Library of Congress [Library] collection. You well know that the British Army came into Washington during the War of 1812 and they burned several of the public buildings in Washington, including the Congress, which then housed the original Library of Congress. So as of 1814, September 1814, Congress had no books whatsoever. Then former President Jefferson, recently retired to his home at Monticello, offered up his library to restart the Library of Congress. Also, as I'm sure you're aware, it was not a gift to the nation; it was actually purchased by the Congress, $23,950 for the thousands of books in Jefferson's library. And it was a closed vote, as I'm also sure you're aware. Jefferson's library was somewhat controversial. Good Yankee congressmen like Daniel Webster thought it was something of a scandal that we should be acquiring Jefferson's library for the congressional library because it contained literature, sciences -- things that you would not typically expect to find in a legislative library. And some of the titles were somewhat radical, perhaps, for Mr. Webster. Well in any event, I just brought along one book, so far as I'm aware, from Thomas Jefferson's library this morning. But this first book that I'm showing you today is simply titled "Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory," and it's a Cambridge Imprint of 1810. Well, nothing too terribly exciting there, but association means everything very often in rare books. And at the top of the title page, in ink it says "John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, January 1, 1812." Here we have a book that was a gift from our second president to our third president. And so we have a double presidential association, but if you look more closely at the title page, you'll find that there's actually a triple presidential association because the gift book is written by a then relatively unknown Harvard professor named John Quincy Adams, who of course not so many years thereafter would be president of the United States himself. So once again, just one book I brought along today from Jefferson's library. It's a special book when you think about it. As perhaps you know, Adams and Jefferson throughout most of their political lives were not on particularly good terms. They were on opposite ends of the political spectrum, but by 1812 both men are then about 70 years of age, they're getting a bit venerable, and their mutual friend Benjamin Rush decides that it's time to melt the ice between the two statesmen. So in their final years they had a very warm relationship, and one of the beauties of the Library of Congress is when you're looking at a treasure in one division, if it piques your curiosity you'll want to go to other sections of the Library of Congress to find out more about it. Well, in the Manuscript Division we obviously have the correspondence of both Adams and Jefferson, and the actual gift of this book is elaborated upon in the correspondence papers of the two individuals in the Manuscript Division. Perhaps you recall on Christmas Eve 1851, a fire spread through the Capitol Building. And it destroyed approximately -- I don't know what the precise figure is, but approximately two-thirds of the Library of Congress was lost that night in 1851. And at that point the Jefferson materials would not have been segregated into a particular collection. They were dispersed throughout the general collections. Indeed, that was very much the case right up into the 1940s. If you would peruse the general collections of the Library in the early 1940s during World War II, you would find loads and loads of Thomas Jefferson books in the open stacks of the Library. The person who was largely responsible for saving the Jefferson materials and putting them into Rare Books was an English lady named E. Millicent Sowerby, S-o-w-e-r-b-y. And starting in 1952 with the final volume that came out in that decade, she was the compiler of the catalog of the library of Thomas Jefferson which was then, and still is, the definitive bibliography of Jefferson's books. But yes, yes, sadly two-thirds of Jefferson's books along with the rest of the Library of Congress was lost in 1851. Did the Congress buy back books that were lost that night? In recent years the Library's been very blessed to have the Madison Council, and these are for the most part very wealthy Americans who are interested in the collection's building within the Library of Congress. And one of their projects of great value was to reconstruct in so far as it's been possible, the lost books from Jefferson's library. And happily, that's been a very successful project. I don't know what the exact figure is, but over 90 percent of the Jefferson library as it existed in 1815 does exist today. Of course, those books that were purchased and acquired by gift are not the copies that Jefferson actually handled, but they are the same editions. So we have a nearly complete bibliographic reconstruction of the 1815 library. You may recall, for those of you who were here a few years ago during the bicentennial, the year 2000, all of the Jefferson Books were on display just off the Great Hall. And I believe there is discussion to have the Jefferson library once again on public display. Something is in the works there, but I don't want to have any of you hold your breath, because in the Library of Congress as well as the rest of the government, things can take years before they're finally resolved. But there is still talk about making the Jefferson library on full display to the public. Well, I mentioned the second and third president, why forget the first one? Of course the Jefferson library is our prime collection for Colonial America, but indeed we do have a gathering of books, not a large one, that belonged to President Washington, Gen. Washington, and here's one case in point. This is "The History of My Own Times," volume I [sic, Part 1] this is the autobiography of Frederick the Great of Prussia, and very prominently on the title page it is written in ink, "G. Washington." Washington was not shy, once again, about putting his signature on the title page, nor was Adams, but Jefferson does not sign his books, at least not for the most part. Very few books in the Jefferson library have Jefferson's marginal notes. The few that do have them of course are greatly treasured; once again, a book from George Washington. Washington was not a bibliophile like Jefferson, but he was a very literate individual. As you can see, I'm starting off with a very pronounced presidential bent. Now let's go to our fourth president. And one of the charms of the Rare Book [and Special Collections] Division is that in addition to Rare Books we have wonderful artifacts; items that you would more typically expect to find in a museum such as the Smithsonian. What we have here is a miniature that was done in 1782 by the then most famous artist in early America, Charles Wilson Peale of Philadelphia. And here we have pictured in this miniature a young James Madison. A lovely item and there's an accompanying miniature as well. I won't take it out of its casing for the moment; and once again, there may be some glare factor. Here we have a young lady. Now, if we think of James Madison and we think of Madison and romance, we think of Dolly Madison, one our most famous First Ladies. But in point of fact, the young lady pictured here is not Dolly Madison; it's a young lady named Catherine Floyd. She lived in Long Island, N.Y., and she and Madison were engaged. And they exchanged these wonderful Peale miniatures as engagement presents. To make a long story short, Catherine, who was nicknamed Kitty, Kitty Floyd, she breaks off the engagement. So she's been lost to history, but through her descendants and through the descendants of James Madison the two miniatures have been reunited, perhaps without Dolly's permission, in the Rare Book and Special Division's collection [laughter]. Once again, an example of museum type artifacts that we have in our collections. As you can see, I'm starting showing items of a very particular Americana nature. And most of the items that I'll be talking about this morning are indeed American items. But that's somewhat misleading because as I'm sure you're aware people gravitate to the Rare Book Reading Room for our European treasures as much as for our American treasures. We're not an exclusively American collection, as I would tend to think the Manuscript Division is. So we have wonderful European treasures. Actually, let me digress for one moment. You're no doubt aware that we have the largest gathering in the Rare Book Reading Room of what's popularly called incunabula. That's a Latin term meaning cradle of, or birth of, and when you apply incunabula to books, the earliest printed books. Well, the first and foremost incunabula is the Gutenberg Bible, which is on permanent display in the Great Hall. And that's one of nearly 7,000 books from the 15th century that we have in the Rare Book Reading Room. Incunabula bibliographically is defined as anything from about 1450, approximately the time of the Gutenberg Bible, through the end of that century, through the year 1500. I just pulled -- because incunabula don't necessarily travel very well, I did not bring any along with me here today. But here's a book that actually slips into the early years of the next century. We're looking at a Ptolemy "Geography" the year 1512. And of course people ask, "Well, the older the books, the worse the condition, correct?" Wrong. Books that are 300, 500, 700 years of age tend to be in quite tolerable physical condition. This is just a miscellaneously pulled item, but it has its original pigskin binding. Once again, the year is 1512. When you open up the book, it's obviously printed on paper, and the paper is of good stock and is still very pliable and in excellent physical condition. So once again, this is just a typical item that we have. Well, taking somewhat care there are two maps that have been folded and unfolded tens of thousands of times in the back of the "Geography." And perhaps you'll be having a presentation from the Geography and Map Division, so I won't belabor this particular fold out map. But I just wanted to show you briefly the European knowledge of the Western Hemisphere, 19 years, I believe, after the return of Columbus to the Spanish court of Ferdinand and Isabella. Here we have pictured on this fold up map North and South America. And if you notice, the Europeans have a very good handle on the east coast of South America; Panama, Cuba, the Caribbean, Florida, but as you work your way up the eastern coast of North America, right about indeed where Washington, D.C., is, you start swimming. And the west coast of both North and South America is but a straight line, incognito as it's identified on the map. The Europeans have heard of Japan, and for some reason they placed it in Kansas, but there it is [laughter]. We have in the Rare Book Division thousands and thousands of broadsides. That's actually been renamed nowadays as the Printed Ephemera Collection, and when we think of a broadside perhaps we initially think of a monographic item that is on a single sheet of paper. Sometimes it's on two or three sheets, but basically a poster, let's say, that you would attach to a tree. "Wanted: Deadwooded Dick," or something like that. Well, that's a broadside. And here is one broadside that I would be remiss if I didn't elaborate upon just a little bit. This is popularly called the Dunlap Broadside, and indeed at the top it immediately identifies itself "In Congress, July 4, 1776, A Declaration." Indeed, this is the very first printing of the Declaration of Independence [Declaration]. Well, as you take your various tour groups through the Library -- of course a mecca point when you're discussing the Declaration is not the Library of Congress, it's the National Archives because there indeed we have the actual handwritten, the original handwritten document itself on display; albeit very faded, I regret to say. So why am I pointing out this very first printed version? Because I think indeed it is very important as well. This, once again, is the very first printing of the Declaration of Independence and you may well ask, "What is the date of the printing?" The date -- July the 4th, 1776. Once again, the printer is John Dunlap. He had a printing establishment in the shadow of Independence Hall, Philadelphia. And he had a draft of the Declaration that very day, so he actually set the type of the Declaration on July the 4th. And indeed I don't know with total confidence if the broadsides came off the press before midnight -- they possibly did -- but they were certainly on the streets of Philadelphia the very next day; very few extant copies of the Dunlap Broadside. People ask, "How many copies are extant?" or, "What is the value of this document?" I can say that it's actually been five or six years ago, perhaps even more, the last time that a Dunlap Broadside was placed on the market, and it sold for over $8 million. So, obviously they have very great value. Our copy in the Rare Book Room is complete and in excellent condition. The Library, as perhaps you know, has a second copy of the Dunlap Broadside; it's in the George Washington Papers. That copy is in very sad physical condition, but it's a sacred copy because that's the copy George Washington actually read to the troops. The very first public declaration of the Declaration of Independence was made by George Washington from the copy in the George Washington Papers. When you come into the Rare Book Reading Room, you'll be immediately struck by the architecture of the room. Our reading room opened in July of 1934, and it was designed after a room at Independence Hall, Philadelphia, so it's very appropriate we're talking about Independence Hall at this moment. And we had, of course, at that time, and still today we have wonderful early American treasures. One of our many special collections is simply called the American Imprints Collection. This is a collection of books printed from Colonial America. The first book, by the way, called the Bay Psalm Book ["The Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre"] at times -- it's on display in the American Treasures Exhibition -- the Bay Psalm Book was printed in Cambridge, Mass., 1640, and so far as we're aware, it's the very first book ever printed in Colonial America. We are very fortunate to have the copy that we have. There's only at most a dozen copies of the Bay Psalm Book extant, and our copy came to the Library of Congress only in the late 1960s. It was always number one on our desirada list, and through the wonderful generosity of a Connecticut family we finally acquired our copy of the Bay Psalm Book in the late '60s. Also, the copy here at the Library of Congress, which is quite fragile, is one of only three extant copies that have the original binding. Well, here's another early printed item, rather smallish. And it is indeed Poor Richard's "Almanack" printed by Benjamin Franklin. And this particular edition is the almanac for the year 1743. As perhaps you know, Franklin of course was first and foremost a printer throughout much of his life, and "Poor Richard's ..." was his most popular, continuously printed item, beginning in 1733. And we have most of the early Poor Richard's almanacs, along with thousands of other almanacs. I think my favorite is "The Davy Crockett Almanac ..." printed in Nashville, Tenn., while he was still living, by the way. Alas, it's on display today. One item that I often like to bring along is the very first Bible printed in the United States. Now, some people, when they hear about that term, the first Bible printed in the United States, they think of this book. This is a Holy Bible, King James Version, printed by Robert Aitken, and also, again, of Philadelphia. And the year is 1782. And perhaps to your interest, this was actually commissioned by the United States Congress; something you would not have being done today. But this is not the first Bible printed in the United States; it's the first English-language Bible. The first Bible printed in the United States is popularly called the John Eliot Indian Bible, and that was done nearly 120 years before in 1663, Cambridge, Mass. And I do regret that I don't have the book with me today, because it's a spectacular book. Whereas the Bay Psalm Book is very fragile and delicate and rustic looking, our copy of the 1663 edition of the John Eliot Bible is beautifully printed and in excellent physical condition. I'm going to mention something of a more thematic nature now. We have many collections -- yes? Male Speaker: You said that the first English Bible was printed later, but the 1663 was the first in any language. What language is it? Clark Evans: It was in an Indian language, and it was native to the tribes of -- that's an excellent question. It was Massahatan [sic, Algonquian], they call it in the catalog, but it's basically the tribe that was native to Massachusetts. As soon as you went into the interior, west from Boston, you would hit the tribes. And it was interesting, they didn't have a written language, and Eliot translated the full Old and New Testament[s] phonetically. So he just took the verbal language and he transcribed the entire Scriptures. It's a miraculous book in more ways than one. Here I have a codex, but if you can look closely, we're not looking at the product of a printing press. Once again from Colonial America, I believe the year here is 1762, and this is a manuscript cookbook. Ann Field who was an American lady, wrote down her recipes into this book, and so we have an actual manuscript cookbook. And this is from our Katherine Golden Bitting Collection. The Rare Book Division is blessed to have two major collections of cookbooks, and of course there's always perpetual interest and popularity in cooking, including television; just turn on the Cooking Channel. Here's Ann recipe for fruitcake, on the next page "How to Make a Porcupine," a veal recipe on the opposite page of that, and "How to Collar a Pig" on the next page. So this is a wonderful window into the kitchens of the 18th century, and once again, in manuscript, which of course is the exception to the rule. Overwhelmingly our cookbooks are obviously printed books, and overwhelmingly the manuscripts at the Library of Congress are at the Manuscript Division. Getting back to early printed books, of course I mentioned the Gutenberg Bible and incunabula. We do have a gathering of illuminated manuscripts in our Rare Book stacks. And these books date as far back as the 11th, 12th century, and we have certainly close to 200 manuscript books from medieval and Renaissance times, and they're wonderful to behold in many cases, because, once again, many of them are brightly illuminated. And I wish I could bring those along to you today, but they don't lend themselves to a presentation of this nature. But if you are in the Rare Book Reading Room, I would be happy to show you some of our illuminated manuscript treasures. In the late 1800s -- sometimes called the "Gilded Age"-- wealthy Americans could travel to Europe and they could bring back European treasures for a relative pittance. And one of our collections in the Rare Book Division is a John Boyd Thacher Collection. Mr. Thacher was interested in several areas. He was interested in Columbus and the early discovery of America. He was interested in the French Revolution and he was interested in early printing. One of the greatest gatherings of early printed books that we have came from John Boyd Thacher. And additionally, when he was traveling in Europe he would pick up manuscript items of famous figures in European history. When you go into the Thacher Autographed Collection in our division and you think of any famous figure in European history, whether it be a king, queen, pope, what have you, we likely will have an original manuscript in the Thacher autographs. Here's a case in point: This is a letter written by Queen Elizabeth I of England, and I believe the year here is 1568. And this is a letter, written in French by the way, which was the language of the royal courts of Europe at that time. This is a letter that Elizabeth I is writing to Catherine de Medici of Italy. And forgive my inadequate French translation, but the gist of the letter is she's talking about her protection over Mary, Queen of Scots, and telling Catherine de Medici, Mary's fellow Catholic cousin, that no harm will come to Mary, Queen of Scots. Well, if you recall your history, Mary did meet an unfortunate end. Perhaps I've talked a bit too strongly about American history. Let's move over a little more to literary works that we have in the Rare Book Division. Certainly when people come to the Rare Book Division they would expect to find the first editions of famous writers, especially American writers. Here's a case in point: This is the first edition, I believe it's Boston, 1849, "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers," and the author, the great Henry David Thoreau. So here we have a first edition of Thoreau of "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers." Well, that in and of itself would give the work some rarity, but even more so when you have it owned by a very famous person, such as indeed in this case, Walt Whitman. We have a large gathering of books signed by Walt Whitman, or at one time were owned by Whitman as part of his library, and this being a case in point. To make the book doubly special, in pencil -- by the way, you may be interested to know that pencil has a more permanent writing quality to it than ink. Ink ultimately fades, graphite does not. In any event, on the first fly leaf, Walt Whitman writes this in pencil: "Thoreau called upon me in Brooklyn in 1856, and upon my giving him L of G ["Leaves of Grass"] he gave me this volume. We had a two hours' talk and walk. I liked him well. I think he told me he was busy at a surveying job down on Staten Island. He was full of animation, seemed in good health, looked very well." Signed "W.W." -- Walt Whitman. Well, that's a lovely inscription showing the friendship of these two lions of American literature, Thoreau and Whitman, meeting in Brooklyn, N. Y., in 1856. And in passing, Whitman mentions that they exchanged books that day. Obviously this was given to Whitman by Thoreau. Well, this is a gift to the Library of Congress as part of the Feinberg-Whitman Collection. And one of the beauties of a national library is you have embarrassments of riches. When a library picks up a particular library and other collectors in that same subject hear about it, they ultimately want to give their collections to that same institution because it strengthens or complements the existing collection. Once again -- from our Feinberg-Whitman collection. Just a few yards away we have the Catherine Houghton Whitman Collection. And here I have an 1856 edition of "Leaves of Grass," and once again on pencil when you open up the fly leaf, "H.D. Thoreau from Walt Whitman." The very two books that these two men exchanged as a pleasantry on that day in Brooklyn 1856 are reunited at the Library of Congress in two separate collections, just a few yards from each other. And of course we'll travel to the Manuscript Division [laughs]. I'm going to be plugging the Manuscript Division periodically because obviously the papers of Whitman are located there. Here we have an actual literary manuscript. This is Rudyard Kipling's final draft of chapter one of "The Jungle Book." Now, it's no surprise that we would have Walt Whitman collections here at our national library, but why would we have rarities of famous English authors? Well, Kipling was widely popular in the United States. And not one, but several Americans had wonderful collections of Kipling, and they decided, once again, to give their collections to the Library of Congress. So as we open this up we actually see that this is 1893, Kipling's final written draft of chapter one of "The Jungle Book." And this is from our Carpenter-Kipling Collection, one of many manuscripts. By the way, this was a gift to Susan Bishop from Rudyard Kipling, February 1893. And the following year, 1894, is when "The Jungle Book" first appears in print. And you can actually take out one of the first editions of "Jungle Book" and do a direct textual comparison between this draft and what ultimately appeared in print. There are a few changes, by the way. We have wonderful collections of Charles Dickens, another English novelist who had a great following here in the United States. You may recall that when Dickens was first writing his novels, he was actually more popular in America than he was in England. The English took a while to warm up to Dickens. And his novels tended to be serialized, and great throngs of people would be waiting on the docks of New York when Charles Dickens novels would appear. And they would travel over, obviously, and people would be waiting at the docks to gobble up his serialized versions of the novels. Well, in any event we have wonderful Dickens materials, including his walking stick and his traveling kit. So we have Dickens's walking stick, his cutlery that he would use, his wine opener. Now, back to America. Here we have the very first printing of Edgar Allan Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue, Philadelphia, 1843. And once again, to make it doubly rare this is actually signed by Edgar Allan Poe. It's addressed to Francis J. Gerard, I believe, Esq., with the respects of the author at the United States Hotel in Philadelphia; a great rarity. Now, I think I'm showing you, at least for the most part, items that perhaps you would expect to find in our Rare Book Reading Room. But what would you perhaps not expect to find in the Rare Book Reading Room of the Library of Congress? What I have here is what's commonly called a dime novel. And this particular one which I'll talk about is from the 1890s, but dime novels first appear in the United States about 1860. Indeed, the very first dime novel publishers are commonly thought of as the Beadle brothers. Irwin Beadle lived in Buffalo, New York, and in 1860 he came out with a paperback novel that caught like wildfire. And the following year he and his brother traveled to New York City to found the firm of Beadle & Brother. And they were the first major dime novel publishers. Well, why is this significant? Up until 1860 if you wanted to buy a book, a hard bound book, you would perhaps go to a bookstore, but the cost was typically a dollar and a half or two dollar, which at that time was an enormous amount of money. And if you remember, you know the old saying that you make a dollar a day when you're working, and that's true enough. So for working men and women of the time, they really couldn't afford to buy books per se. Suddenly in 1860 you have paper bound literature appearing at novelty stores and newsstands and what have you. And instead of a dollar and a half or two dollars, they're charging five and 10 and 15 cents. So if you have small change in your pocket, you can suddenly go and buy a book. This was a terrific revolution at the time. So once again, dime novels appear and they become wildly popular. But let's be honest, most of the titles in dime novel literature were not fine literature. They were popularly thought of as "blood and thunder tales;" they were tales of the frontier, Wild West tales, detective tales, and respectable people tended to look down upon them. So libraries did not collect dime novels, even though they were the most widely read literature of the day. They're very rare to see today. This particular dime novel that I'm initially showing you is from the Spanish American War, 1898, and the title is "The Hero of the Brigade" by Douglas Wells. Well, in point of fact, that's a pseudonym. Douglas Wells is a pseudonym. He also went under the pseudonym of Clark Fitch, but in any event, Douglas Wells was a pseudonym for Upton Sinclair. So these ephemeral and somewhat disreputable dime novels often disguised very famous authors. And so we have, in point of fact, in addition to opening up a window to popular culture at the time, we have first editions by famous writers. Here's a dime novel from 1867; one of the ten cent novelettes printed by Elliott, Thomas & Talbot of Boston. And this particular dime novel is called "The Foundling," and the author, Pearly Parker -- once again, a pseudonym -- that's actually Louisa May Alcott. We also have first editions of Theodore Dreiser, and indeed Mark Twain, no less. Mark Twain also wrote in the dime novel format. The very first appearance of the short story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" was in a dime novel. We have dime novels in the tens of thousands, and indeed not only in the 19th century, but well into the 20th century they were not part of the collections policy of the Library. The Rare Book [Reading] Room actually did not begin until 1927. There was no department in the Library of Congress servicing, servicing rare books until the late '20s. That may be surprising because going back into the 19th century there was a Manuscript Division, there was a Geography and Map Division -- Department of Maps they called it in those days -- but no Rare Book section. So, what rarities the Library had were actually kept in the Office of the Librarian of Congress. In the late 19th century that Librarian would have been Ainsworth Spofford. Well, if you go today into the card catalog of the Library - the old card catalog off the Main Reading Room -- and you browse through those old cards, sometimes under a call number you'll see the term penciled in "office." That has come to mean the Rare Book Division, but at the time when users would see that written term "office," they would knock on the door of the Librarian, Ainsworth Spofford no less, and he would then service to you the incunabula or whatever the rarity was in the Main Reading Room, and you returned the book, of course. Well, that digression is getting back to, once again, the first Rare Book [Reading] Room in the late '20s. The first curator of rare books was a gentleman named V. Yalta Parma. And I may come back to him later, but just briefly, he had a particular affinity for dime novels. And he would go down into the copyright cellar-go down into the cellar of the Jefferson Building, which then housed the copyright deposits, and he would gather up these dime novels and transfer them under the custody of the Rare Book Division, which at the time was quite unusual because they were not considered valuable or important works. Now, looking back retrospectively, we're most appreciative because dime novels are terrifically important, especially if you're interested in the popular culture of America. Another thing that Mr. Parma began collecting was juvenile works. Once again, by the '20s the Library of Congress was well established as our national library in practice, if not in name. But the collections policy precluded the Library from collecting children's books, amazingly. When the Rare Book Room first opened in 1934, one of the very first people to use the room was a graduate student from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. And she was interested in our children's books, and was astonished to find that we had few, if any. So that inspired Mr. Parma to once again begin a juvenile collection in our Rare Book stacks. And once again, more of a popular culture bent, here's one example of a work that Mr. Parma started to collect. And this is an early edition of Horatio Alger, this particular title "From Farm to Fortune," dating from the late 1800s. And of course Alger was enormously popular at the time with boys, so one of many of thousands of books that we have in our juvenile collection. Speaking of children's books, people ask, "Well, what's the oldest children's book that you have?" Well, this is called a hornbook. And in Colonial America, juvenile works, by and large didn't exist; there were very few. "Goody Two Shoes" perhaps was in print by the 1780s. But there were very few children's books, and what there were, were owned by rich kids. So what did you take to school? Well, if you were very fortunate you might take something like this. This is what's called a hornbook, and this is made of ivory, and the inner casing is made of silver. And here we have stenciled in both the alphabet, a through z, both upper and lower case, and some numbering. So that's what you would take to school, as modest as that. Of course, once again this is a beautiful example, and we have some made of wood and just paper, you know; very rustic and very, very poorish looking. Getting back to the juvenile works: first edition, 1938, of Tolkien's "The Hobbit." This is a work that for many, many years was kept in the general collections of the Library and only relatively recently would it have been transferred into the Rare Book Division; obviously a book of great value today, but not necessarily in the 1930s; another example of something that's been saved for posterity in our Rare Book holdings. The dime novels inspired other types of collecting that once again you would not typically expect to find in Rare Books. We have a large gathering of what's called the Big Little Book Collection. And Big Little Books were something that got popular in the '30s. Perhaps some of you in the audience might even recall them, some of our veteran members here. This particular one probably is from about 1933, "S.O.S. Coastguard." And they're just little pulp items you would buy for five and 10 cents, and they tend to be very fragile. But we have them by the thousands through copyright deposit. Also the dime novels inspired other formats as well, including pulp magazines. Here I have the September 1929 issue of "Black Mask" magazine. And the pulp magazines tended to be in this format. They were 7x10 inches in size, produced as the name implies, on pulp paper, so they're very fragile. But they were enormously influential and helped popularize detective and science fiction themes. This particular one is the very first appearance of "The Maltese Falcon" by Dashiell Hammett. It doesn't quite look like Humphrey Bogart, but if you see the very first movie version of "The Maltese Falcon" starring Ricardo Cortez, it does look a little bit like Ricardo Cortez. We also have "Weird Tales," "Astounding Stories" and several other pulp magazine titles. Most pulp magazines were actually kept not in the Rare Book Room but in the Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room. Happily, perhaps, they were microfilmed, so the texts in these pulp magazines have been preserved, the outside covers. And of course there's quite a bit of interest in the cover art. That was also filmed, but I believe they were sent to a university. Perhaps a final thing to mention on things perhaps you don't expect to find in the Rare Book Division: mass market paperbacks. You go to the Giant Food, Safeway, and there's the romance novels, the Louis L'Amour Westerns in paperback. Surely these are not rarities, are they? But through copyright deposit, many of these works come to the Library of Congress; at least, a selected portion of them make their way to the Rare Book Room. What I'm holding now is the very first Dell paperback mystery. This dates from 1942, the title, "Death in the Library," a Dell mystery by Philip Ketchum, and obviously a little bit of red ink there at the bottom. A former employee of the Library of Congress named Chuck Goodrum was a great aficionado of detective fiction, and he authored quite a few titles. One of his titles is one of my very favorite titles for a mystery: it's called "Dewey Decimated." [laughter] The Dell paperbacks were a gift to us from Dell Publishing, and that's wonderful to actually have the publisher's own archive of their titles. That came to us in 1976, and so we were most fortunate, and I think that really inspired us to collect other paperback works. I don't know if there are any World War II vets here today. If so, maybe you may recall these items; they're called the Armed Services Editions. During World War II there was a cooperative project between the government and publishers to put out hardback titles in paperback format. And here's just two examples; we have a complete archive. One of the foremost scholars on the Armed Services Editions is Dr. John Cole of our Center for the Book here at the Library of Congress. So once again, just two examples. And of course this is very important, because the soldiers would get these free of charge. The soldiers and sailors would acquire these Armed Services Editions free of charge, and they just got in the habit of reading paperback works. So obviously it was a tremendous boon to paperback publishing starting in 1946, when the soldiers and sailors returned home. I'm going to bounce now to our 16th president. And this volume that we're now viewing is one of my most favorite objects in the Library of Congress. It's a weathered brown leather binding, and the title is perhaps not of great interest: "The English Grammar and Familiar Lectures," a Cincinnati Imprint of 1828. Well, this is the earliest book we know of, in the possession of Abraham Lincoln. You may recall he was born in Kentucky, 1809, raised in Indiana, and as a young man of not more than 21 years of age he migrates into Illinois before he ultimately settles in the state capital of Springfield. He lives for a couple of years in the little village of New Salem, Sangamon County. So one of the very first things he does when he comes into this village is he goes up to the schoolmaster of New Salem, a gentleman by the name of Mentor Graham, and he asks if he could borrow a grammar book. Lincoln wanted to learn more about the science of the English language. Recall that Lincoln had less than a year of schooling in his entire life. That's not an apocryphal tale; it's true. I think he said once that if he totaled up his total schooling in a classroom setting, it would amount to about 11 months. So he was very much a self-educated individual. So, once again, he goes to the village schoolmaster and asks if he could borrow an English grammar book. Well, astonishingly, the schoolteacher of the village had no grammar book, but he knew a farmer who lived six miles outside of New Salem named John Vance. Lincoln travels the six miles - actually 12 miles round-trip, by foot, he does chores on John Vance's farm and he comes back to the village with this very book we're looking at now. And if you go to the Manuscript Division and go into the William Herndon reminiscences -- Herndon being Lincoln's law partner -- everyone in New Salem well recalls young Lincoln walking around the village with this book in his nose. So he really devoured the book. After Lincoln was finished with the book he passes the book on to Ann Rutledge. Remember the tale that Lincoln had a village sweetheart in New Salem, Ann Rutledge? And it is true enough, although some modern historians have tried to downplay it. So, actually the book makes its way to the Library of Congress not through Lincoln's descendants, but through Ann Rutledge's descendants. In fact, Jane Hammond tracked the book down to a Rutledge descendant living in Montana, and she accepted the book from the Rutledge descendant only with the understanding that it would be given to the Library of Congress, which indeed it was in 1932. So I think it's a wonderful work. People ask, "How did Lincoln write the Gettysburg Address? How did he write the two Inaugural Addresses?" How did he write all those wonderful speeches that we have here at the Library of Congress, happily. And I think a small part of the answer is this very modest grammar book that we see here. Once again, handling the book with great care -- here's another wonderful, unique treasure relating to Abraham Lincoln. If we had to name one event that catapulted Lincoln onto the national scene, indeed helped elect him to be president in 1860, it would be the Lincoln-Douglas debates. As you recall, he ran for United States Senate in Illinois in 1868 against the sitting Senator, Stephen A. Douglas. And Lincoln, as the challenger, challenged Douglas to a series of debates throughout Illinois, and to his surprise, Douglas accepted. So we think of those debates as the most famous in American history, but there was actually no official stenographer for the Lincoln-Douglas debates. To the extent that we have a relatively true rendition of what Lincoln and Douglas were saying in these public forums, it's only through a work such as this, Lincoln's own scrapbook of the debates. What he would do is he would clip out the newspaper clippings that were covered in the press, and if he, Abraham Lincoln, was giving a speech, they would be clipped out of the Republican press, and if Sen. Douglas was giving a speech, Lincoln clipped it out of the Democratic papers. While there's still much debate today about how partisan the press can be, in the 1850s it was extraordinary. And if you went to an opposition newspaper to find out what your candidate was saying, you would have doubtlessly had a butchery of their words. So Lincoln was very wise, for the historical record, to have done that. And indeed, two years later in 1860, Lincoln sends this book to a printer in Columbus, Ohio, to be used as a proof copy for the very first printings of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Lincoln once again pastes these newspaper clippings in, and there's quite a bit of marginalia in Lincoln's hand throughout the volume. Whenever Lincoln refers to himself, it's always in the third person. Here it says, "Mr. Lincoln was present," not "I was present." Occasionally if Lincoln disagrees with what is being said in the press, he will write marginal notes trying to make corrections. On this particular opening during the Ottawa debate, he's obviously taken an issue with what was being recorded in the paper, and he's making the correction here in the margin. So, another wonderful Lincoln treasure. As perhaps you know, Lincoln never wrote a book. He did write several autobiographical letters about himself, which are accredited to the Manuscript Division. Here's an item, of course, which is most wonderful. This is the [Lincoln's] first inaugural Bible. March 4, 1861, President-elect Lincoln arrives in Washington. As perhaps you know, he arrives unannounced in the middle of the night, on an unannounced train. There was only one person to greet him at the train platform. Why was that? Well, there was an assassination attempt on him in Baltimore, and the Pinkerton detectives had him take an unscheduled train into Washington because there was a legitimate fear for his life. And of course, what was happening in March 1861? Well, the country literally was disintegrating. The lower South had seceded, the upper South is threatening to secede from the Union, and Lincoln was elected with 39 percent of the vote. Remember, the reason he was elected was because the Democratic Party split three ways in that election. He was going to take the oath of office that day. It was a cold, blustery day. Presidential inaugurations in those days were held on the east front of the Capitol, not far from where we are today. And when Lincoln puts his hand on this Bible, who is the chief justice of the United States? Well, none other than 84-year-old Roger Brooke Taney, author of the Dred Scott decision, one of the most notorious decisions in the history of the Supreme Court. So, Taney is no particular friend of Lincoln or emancipation. So you can sense the tension that was in the air that day. The Bible itself is an 1853 Oxford printed edition of the Bible. It's not Lincoln's personal copy of the Bible, but the Library of Congress does have the Lincoln family Bible; it's in the Lincoln Papers in the Manuscript Division. And there are genealogical notes put in by Mary in the margins here. Of course, at any given time some of the most wonderful treasures in the Library are on display, happily for you and your visitors. More often than not the contents of President Lincoln's pockets on the night he was at Ford's Theater are on display. And of course that's one of the most popular things, is it not, for visitors to see at the Library of Congress. Another example of one of our many, many broadsides, here we have the broadside which was publicly displayed in and around Washington at the time of the assassination, dated April 20, 1865, "War Department ... $100,000 Reward!" -- big bucks in 1865, lots of money. Well, this is a rarity in our Broadside Collection. Obviously it's the product of a printing press, but if you notice at the top there are hand applied, actual photographs. And that's one of the first examples you'll ever find where photographs have been applied to a printed document for public display. At the top and in the center, appropriately, John Wilkes Booth, the assassin and two of his co-conspirators are also pictured. Looking to my right now, we have David Harold, which indeed, he accompanied Booth when he escaped into Maryland and eventually Virginia. On the left, John Surratt, who is also recognized as one of Booth's conspirators. Well, briefly, you perhaps know the tale, Booth and Harold are apprehended, and along with several other people -- well, Booth of course is killed by Boston Corbett in that barn down in King George County, Va. But Harold and several other conspirators met their ends here in Washington at Fort Lesley McNair, Fourth and P Streets, Southwest. They were hanged. Another person who was hanged that day, the very first woman, and one of the few women ever executed by the United States, Mary Surratt, who was indeed the mother of John Surratt. Well, John Surratt escapes the country and he makes his way to Rome, Italy. He's actually a member of the Papal Guard, and he's not extradited back to the United States until two or three years later. And when he had his trial there was a hung jury; that was a civilian trial. So if he was interested in preserving his life he was very wise to have done that, because had he been tried by the military tribunal in 1865 he certainly would have been on the gallows as well. We have many wonderful broadsides. Speaking of the assassination, one of my favorite broadsides to show -- not here today, alas -- is the broadside post board which was put out by the "Boston Globe" on the streets of Boston, and in very bold letters it says, "The President Is Dead!" But they quote a famous individual of the time, saying that "While Lincoln is dead, the government yet lives." And the person they quote was a Gen. James Garfield of the Union Army. And I think occasionally you'll come across broadsides that are somewhat prophetic or ironic, and of course, as perhaps you know, 15 years later James Garfield was elected president, and he himself was assassinated. Now let me show you things of a more European interest. Here we have "Grimm's and Andersen's Fairy Tales." So we're back to a children's book, and in this particular instance, this is an edition printed in London in 1906. And of course the book is very nice indeed, with wonderful, colorful illustrations. But I don't know if in fact it's necessarily a rare book, or it certainly does not have great monetary value as an edition. The reason I pulled this is it's from what we call our Russian Imperial [Collection] library. We indeed in our division have the libraries of several more famous individuals, and the Russian Imperial library is the library of Tsar Nicholas and Alexandra of Russia. As we open up the binding there's actually a little library seal, and on the second flyleaf, on the half title page at the top it says, "For darling Olga, from Papa and Mama, Christmas, 1906." So this is a little Christmas inscription from the tsar and tsarina to one of the royal children. And it's a rather poignant book, is it not, because I'm sure most of you are aware of the very sad fate of that family that occurred in 1918 when the Bolsheviks murdered them. People ask, "Why in the world is there a Russian royal library in Washington, D.C.?" In a nutshell, during the late 20s the Bolsheviks, under Stalin, are entrenching their power in Moscow. But they're deeply in debt, so to generate money they start to sell off many of the Tsar's treasures, including the royal library. Well, as perhaps you know, no Western government recognized the Soviet Union in the late 1920s. That did not occur for the United States until 1933, under FDR. So we acquired this library in 1930, and the intelligent speculation is that the Soviets contacted an antiquarian middleman, shall I say, and the Library purchased it through an antiquarian, not directly from the Soviet Union. We have the libraries of many famous individuals; of course, the aforementioned Thomas Jefferson. We have the library of Oliver Wendell Holmes, not only the jurist but his famous father, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes of Boston, the famous medical doctor of the 19th century. We have the libraries of the famed suffragettes Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt. On a more notorious front, 1945, 1946 the Allied Armies have conquered the former Nazi Germany, and they're coming across materials that were owned by Hitler and other Nazi leaders. And we have the Adolf Hitler library [Third Reich Collection] in the Rare Book Division, and we have the library of Harry Houdini [Harry Houdini Collection], let me find an appropriate opening. See that lower panel? That's Houdini. Obviously that's in a Slavic language; that's Houdini touring in Russia. You may recall that Harry Houdini, a famous escape artist and a magician, died on Halloween night, 1926; but several years prior to that he decided to give his books on magic and spiritualism to the Library of Congress, so happily we received his library. And I pulled this -- this is a scrapbook from his memorabilia, and I brought it along just to show you how our Conservation Office does wonderful things in preserving pieces of memorabilia; ephemeral items, little postcards and photographs and letters. There's a Vaudeville postcard where he and his wife Bess are on the Vaudeville circuit. "The Houdinis, introducers of metamorphosis;" that's the trick that the Houdinis became very famous for in the 1890s. Perhaps you knew that Houdini was the very first man to fly in Australia; he's the Orville Wright of Australia. There's a photograph of his plane, another more original photograph. Here's a photograph of Houdini with Theodore Roosevelt. But Houdini was somewhat egocentric. Actually, this is an airbrushed version. The original photograph is above, and you can notice there's a larger gathering of people in that photograph, all of whom have been airbrushed out of the picture, with only Houdini and the president remaining. Well, he was in show business. So it's wonderful. The original photograph's -- a picture of Houdini here in Washington in 1922. Well, perhaps I'm digressing; just a final item to mention. The very first object that you see in the Houdini scrapbooks is a postcard. You know, Houdini was a stage name. His real name was Erich Weisz, and actually he was born in Hungary, but he was raised in Wisconsin; Appleton, to be precise. And his father was a distinguished rabbi in Wisconsin. In any event, as a young boy of not more than 10 years of age, young Erich runs away from home. And the very first object that we see in the scrapbook is a postcard that Houdini writes to his mother. Let me just read a few sentences: "Dear Ma, I am going to Galveston, Texas, and I'll be home in about a year. My best regards to all. Did you get my picture? If you didn't, please write to the Mead Brothers." That's the name of the circus company. It's signed, "Your truant son, Erich Weisz." Well, I've shown quite a few items, and I think my voice is getting a little bit worse for the wear. Let me show you - let me discuss a few other items, though, about the collections. I'm getting back to the idea that some of our most wonderful items are artifacts. Another library that we have is the library of Woodrow Wilson, President Wilson. And that actually came to the Library of Congress in 1946. As perhaps you know, President Wilson died in 1924. You may well recall that indeed the last year he was president in 1920 he was in very poor -- and many historians would argue that his wife, Edith Galt Wilson, actually ran the country those final months. In any event, in 1946, Edith -- who was still very much alive then and indeed into the 1960s -- Edith gave President Wilson's library to the Library of Congress, and she included among that many diplomas and medals that were given to the president, and perhaps none more distinguished than what I'm holding now. This is the Nobel Peace Prize given to Woodrow Wilson at Versailles in 1919. Well, of course that was the end of the Great War, what we nowadays call World War I, and at least when Wilson first arrived at Versailles the press and public were singing his hosannas. Remember, he was the author of the Fourteen Points, the thrust of which was self-determination for the various peoples of Europe. So in any event, through the Fourteen Points and for other reasons the Nobel Committee awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize, and here it is. At least we're looking at the front of it. Alfred Nobel, perhaps you recall the tale; he was actually a Swedish scientist, was he not? And one day, in perfect health, he picks up the newspaper -- Alfred Nobel picks up the daily newspaper, and he turns to the obituary section and he finds himself reading his own obituary. What had happened is his brother had died, but at the newspaper office there was a breakdown in communication, and the newsmen thought that he, Alfred Nobel, had died. So what does he read about himself? Well, he reads that he was instrumental in developing dynamite, and how that in turn was used in munitions and warfare. And Nobel had a real crisis of conscience that day as he realized his legacy to mankind was munitions. So he spent the final years of his life working for peace, and that's really the inspiration for the Nobel Peace Prize that we see here. I could go on; you're just seeing a smattering of our many wonderful Rare Book treasures. As perhaps you know, the Rare Book Reading Room is open on weekdays, Monday through Friday, 8:30 to 5:00. Like most other reading rooms of the Library of Congress, it's open to everyone. No appointments are required. Once the readers acquire their Library of Congress ID card they have complete access to come into our reading room. And they're allowed to view our rare books; they're not allowed to paw over them. So, obviously there's full camera surveillance in our reading room, and there are certain restrictions on access. But very few of the items that I've shown you today could not be viewed by the general public in our reading room. So, partly due to my weak voice today, I'm going to cut things short, but of course open things up for questions. If you have any questions, I'd love to try to answer them. The question was, how do we keep our older books from deteriorating? Well, as I may have briefly mentioned, our very oldest books, books that are hundreds of years of age, tend to be in very good shape. The major problem we have at the Library of Congress in terms of deterioration are really materials from the 19th century. Actually, getting back to dime novels, why were dime novels able to be mass produced so cheaply? Well, there are several reasons, one of which was there was wonderful mechanization going on with the power presses at that time. But another reason why books became so cheap after the Civil War is paper which was traditionally made out of linen and rag and other types of cloth, starting around 1870 they introduced wood pulp into paper production, which was widely available but it's highly acidic. So the deterioration we have at the Library of Congress by and large are books starting around 1870 through, let's say, 1920, and even beyond. So that's really where our main problem is, but nevertheless, I don't want to over state the fact that the books prior to that are indestructible; they are not. Many of them are very fragile, the bindings as well. And once again, the Rare Book Room opened in July, 1934, and we were the first section within the Library of Congress that had air conditioning and some temperature and humidity controls in the stacks. That was considered very cutting edge at the time. A little honesty here: Washington, D.C., is not the best venue for a national library. We know about the miserable hot summers we have here, and the terrible humidity, and up until that time, and for the general collections beyond that time, the collections baked during the summertime. There are still some living employees today who recall the days when they would have to close down the Library of Congress to both the public and the staff on some of those hot summer days because it was so miserable. And of course the books couldn't go home; they stayed there and suffered [laughs]. So that's part of the deterioration problem we have throughout the Library of Congress. But in 1934 it was cutting edge to have air conditioning and temperature and humidity controls. The question is: The lady quite rightly says some might even say the most important figure in the history of the Library of Congress is Ainsworth Spofford, and I may concur with that. And why do we not have a room named after Ainsworth Spofford? Well, I'm going to defer that question to Dr. Billington [laughs]. But it is hard to underestimate the importance of Ainsworth Spofford. He was, once again, appointed Librarian in 1864, by President Lincoln, by the way. And he served as Librarian right up to the late 1890s, when we were opening the current Jefferson Building. And you're right, I mean, there were so many things about him that were important, but perhaps none more so than the fact that he was instrumental in bringing about the copyright change in the late 1860s, where the Library of Congress, not some other institution, was the recipient of two copyright deposit copies. And his intent was to make the Library of Congress the national library, and he was successful; maybe more than he had hoped, because I think he didn't fully appreciate the flood of material that started to come here in the late 1860s, and we did not have the room for it. You've probably seen pictures of what the Library of Congress looked like in the 1880s and 1890s, books piled to the ceiling, so it was quite a mess. But happily the Jefferson Building, when that opened in 1897, corrected that problem. After a brief hiatus we had another Librarian appointed in 1899 named Herbert Putnam, and he served for 40 years, did he not, and another 16 years beyond that as Librarian Emeritus. The staff today can recall Herbert Putnam walking the halls in the early 1950s. But think about that -- from the Civil War through World War II we basically had two people run the institution: Ainsworth Spofford and Herbert Putnam. This is a good question. Sometimes we associate format with the reading room, and as perhaps I briefly mentioned, you would think manuscripts go to the Manuscript Division, but there are indeed manuscripts in the Rare Book Division. There are photograph albums in the Rare Book Division, there's sheet music in the Rare Book Division, but very much the exception to the rule. The reason why we may have formats that you may not expect to be in Rare Books is because they're part of a larger book collection, and the benefactor, the person giving this to the Library decided he or she wanted everything kept together. So that's why we have these unusual formats in Rare Book. But in the case of the Beethoven ccores, without question the Music Division is the custodian of those materials. Yes. Yes, ma'am? Female Speaker: Why did famous writers publish dime novels, and why did they use pseudonyms? Clark Evans: They wrote in the dime novel format because they were starving. If you look back, some of our most famous people came out of very modest circumstances, and they needed to eat and they needed to support their families. So people like Dreiser and Sinclair, if you go back to this time period in the late 1800s they had not become popular or famous as writers at that point, so they were perfectly willing to humble themselves and write these sensationalistic novels, because once again, it allowed them to live from week to week. They probably used pseudonyms because that was common at the time by all writers in dime novel formats. Ned Buntline, Buffalo Bill, it doesn't always mean that those books were written by Buffalo Bill and Ned Buntline; they were popular pseudonyms for other writers as well. But once again, if these writers had any artistic pretensions they were probably delighted to have a pseudonym, because they wouldn't necessarily want their names attached to dime novels, okay? All right, so I think that does it for today. I thank you once again, thank you for your patience with my modest illness today, and please do come to the Rare Book Room, open, once again, on weekdays. With groups -- our foyer does not necessarily lend itself to having groups come in, but if you gave us a heads up, if you did have a group that had a particular interest in our division, if you call me or someone else in the [Rare Book] Reading Room in advance we could perhaps set up a special accommodation for you. One of the items the sometimes tourists love to see is the world's smallest book. If you have any children with you in your groups, they say, "Well, gee whiz, I heard something that the Library of Congress has the world's smallest book." Well, indeed we do. If you come to the Rare Book Reading Room we have "Old King Cole" printed in Paisley, Scotland, 1985. It was printed, a little more than 20 -- and it's the record holder as the world's smallest book; literally the size of a pin head. It's a little yellow dot under this plastic case, and you would need a microscope to read the book. A magnifying glass would not be helpful, it's that small; literally pin head size. Female Speaker: What about the largest? Clark Evans: The largest book? You know, I've been asked that for 30 years, and I never have complete confidence. But you know my co-worker, Debra Wynn, do you have...? Debra Wynn: I think it's actually in [the] Prints and Photographs [Division], and it came to New York two or three years ago from the government of Bhutan. And it's a huge double elephant folio, and I'm not sure of the exact dimensions. Clark Evans: Debra, I'm delighted you're in the audience because you could answer that question accurately. It's in Prints and Photographs, then, and I believe that. The largest book we sometimes mention within the Rare Book Division is "Audubon's Birds of America," you know, the original elephant folio of 1827, and that's a huge book. Regardless of what is the world's largest book, it would make an amusing photograph to have the world's smallest book in direct juxtaposition with the world's largest book. So, thank you. Yes, one final...? Female Speaker: You wouldn't be able to see both of them at the same time. Clark Evans: No, you wouldn't. You'd have to have Clark Kent eyesight to see the world's smallest; the big one would not be a problem. Female Speaker: I have a question. Clark Evans: Yes, ma'am? Female Speaker: Could that book be larger than the Gutenberg Bible? Clark Evans: Yes, in terms of its overall physical dimensions. The Gutenberg Bible -- by the way, the Library's copy is, I think, in three physical volumes. But the Gutenberg Bible's quite thick; you can view size in several ways, like what's the thickest book? You know, if you see some of those Webster's dictionaries, they're that thick, but usually when people think of a large book, they're thinking of how the book runs in terms of its length and width, and certainly these double elephant folios fit the bill. Thank you very much; I was delighted to be here. [applause] [end of transcript]