The LOC.GOV Wise Guide : Finding New Treasures

College students working at the Library of Congress in the summer of 2005 as Junior Fellows summer interns identified hundreds of literary, artistic, film and musical gems among the Library's copyright deposits.

Photographs by F.A. Rinehart, taken at the Indian Congress of 1898, were rediscovered -- still attached to the original copyright submission form -- by Library of Congress Junior Fellows.

Rinehart (1862-1928) is considered one of the finest photographers of the late 19th century -- one who raised the then-new medium of photographic portraiture to an art form. In fact, Rinehart was the official photographer of the 1898 Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition in Omaha, Neb., where his studio was based.

The exposition was intended to showcase the developed West from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Coast, encourage business investment and demonstrate that the area had recovered from the financial panic of 1893. During the five months (June 1, 1898-Nov. 1, 1898) it was open to the public, more than 2.6 million people visited the exhibition's 4,062 exhibits.

For more information about the exposition and the congress, visit the Omaha Public Library's Web site.

The U.S. Copyright Office, which is a part of the Library of Congress, has been the major source of the materials that are added to the collections - which now number more than 130 million items. Because of the requirement that, generally, two copies of every work registered with the office must accompany the registration request, the Library has grown into the largest repository of knowledge in the history of the world and of the mint record of American creativity.

You can learn more about the Copyright Office at its Web site. Perhaps you will register a work that will one day join our collections.

A. F.A. Rinehart, photographer. Reproduction information: Not available for reproduction.

B. F.A. Rinehart, photographer. Reproduction information: Not available for reproduction.