Library of Congress Blog
“Light and liberty go together.”

Howdy, folks! (Sorry, my Wyoming roots are showing.)  The Library of Congress finally has its own official Twitter feed.  You can follow us here: http://twitter.com/librarycongress

“Library of Congress” was too long as a user name, so in the spirit of Twitter itself, we’ve been truncated.

As I’ve been alluding for some time, we are on the cusp of many more forays into the Web 2.0, and I hope to bring more announcements soon (most likely weeks, not months).  We are going to be pushing some incredible content out to the world in new ways and in new spaces — just a smattering of the millions and millions of digital resources we have online, of course, but presented with the fantastic interactivity of these new Web tools.

We also hope it will be an enticement for folks to check out the vast treasure trove of free resources at LOC.gov.

For those of you who, like me, just can’t get enough of the Library of Congress, we will be prominently featured before a national television audience next week.

ABC’s “Good Morning America” will be originating its coverage of the Inauguration not only on Jan. 20, but also on Jan. 19 (which serendipitously is Martin Luther King Jr. Day).

Monday they will broadcast from 7 to 9 a.m. EST, and from 7 to 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday.  We’re not just a pretty backdrop for news coverage of this historic moment — they’ll also be telling some interesting stories about the Library, our remarkable collections, and what we do here.

Not only is the Library’s Lincoln Inaugural Bible playing a role in Tuesday’s ceremony at the Capitol, but we also have a tremendous wealth of resources about past Inaugurations.

A new twist is a project by the Library’s American Folklife Center to collect recordings and orations related to this year’s inauguration.  So fire up those video cameras and audio recorders!

The Library of Congress often provides Bibles from its vast collections for the use of Members of Congress during their swearing-in ceremonies. But it is not every day that a president-elect makes the same request for his inauguration. It is rarer still when that Bible is the same one upon which Abraham Lincoln first took the oath of office in 1861. (In fact, as far as we can tell, that Bible has not been used by a president since Honest Abe himself.)

But that’s exactly what Barack Obama is doing, in keeping with the very Lincolnesque theme of his inauguration.

The historic meeting between past and present, symbolized by a single book, has caught the public’s attention. (A quick search in Google News reveals at least 600 articles.)

Because there are few high-resolution images of the Lincoln Inaugural Bible available on our Web site, I wanted to provide several of them here.

The Lincoln Bible, by the way, will be among the items on display in “With Malice Toward None,” our exhibit opening Feb. 12 that honors the 200th birthday of our 16th president.

The images follow the jump. (Warning: The images that are linked to by the thumbnails are pretty large, each in the 5 to 6MB region.)

(All photos credit “Michaela McNichol”)

Title page of the 1861 Lincoln Inaugural Bible

The balance of the images follow the jump …

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As you might have heard, President-elect Obama will be using Abraham Lincoln’s Inaugural Bible when he is sworn in as the 44th president of the United States.

Lincoln is, of course, a major inspiration to the President-elect and a strong influence on the themes of the upcoming inauguration.

So we know you’re waiting with baited breath, as are we, to find out whether Obama is going to serve Lincoln’s favorite scalloped oysters — the recipe for which contained sherry as well as Worcestershire sauce and cracker crumbs. While this delicacy was not included on either of Lincoln’s inaugural menus, pickled oysters were served at the second inaugural. Yum! (No, seriously, that sounds good to me.)

White House cuisine has changed a bit with the times. Although French cuisine is still popular for state dinners, our contemporary presidents seem to be leaning toward Tex-Mex fare. On Inauguration Day you might wish to plan your own presidential menu. You could start off with Barbara Bush’s Mexican Mound (corn chips, ground meat and taco seasoning), followed by Bill Clinton’s favorite chicken enchiladas, topped with Laura Bush’s guacamole and served with LBJ’s “ranch spiced tea.” For dessert, jump back in time and serve Lincoln’s favorite lemon custard pie.

If Tex-Mex is not your thing, try Harry Truman’s tuna and noodle casserole with white cheese sauce and Pat Nixon’s baked stuffed tomatoes. If this seems too healthy, indulge a little with the Carter family’s peanut refrigerator cake or Warren Harding’s favorite bourbon balls. In moderation, of course.

Or maybe you want to celebrate the inauguration by using recipes from the time of our Founding Fathers, such as Martha Washington’s “Great Cake,” Thomas Jefferson’s macaroons or Dolly Madison’s pink peppermint ice cream. To wet your whistle, try John Adams’ “berry shrub” (blackberry or raspberry juice, sugar, brandy and rum), James Madison’s favorite whiskey sours (lemons, water, sugar, and aged bourbon whiskey, 100 proof), or a fine wine from Monticello.

Presidential food and entertaining at the White House always seem to capture people’s interest. The Library of Congress Science Reference Section frequently fields a number of queries relating to presidential cuisine. Take a look at science reference specialist Alison Kelly’s Presidential Food Guide for more information about cooking and entertaining in the White House.

Image: Executive pastry chefs during Bill Clinton’s tenure prepare a gingerbread White House.

(Mad props to Jennifer Harbster in our Science, Technology and Business division for helping with this post!)

Last week was one of the busiest (if not the busiest) week I’ve seen since coming to the Library. There was the Library’s presentation of the $1 million Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Study of Humanity. There were a lot of great, new interactive features that came online in the Library of Congress Experience (online and in the Jefferson Building.) There was a meeting of the Library’s private-sector advisory group, the James Madison Council. All of this came in the wake of the opening of the Capitol Visitor Center, which has led to several visitors now entering the Library via the passageway beneath First Street S.E. — a sight that warms my heart every time I see it!

And if that all weren’t enough, our boss, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington, got some wonderful recognition in the middle of all of it. Dr. Billington was one of 23 people (and one award made posthumously) to receive the Presidential Citizens Medal, which is the second-highest civilian distinction bestowed by the President behind the Medal of Freedom. (Only about 100 people have received the award since it was established in 1969.)

In comments to staff last week, Dr. Billington was especially gracious in pointing out that the people of the Library of Congress are the ones who help him achieve what he has, in order to make such recognition possible in the first place.

Congrats, Dr. B.!

In January, the Library embarked on something that took the online community by storm. In conjunction with Flickr, we loaded a few thousand images from the Library of Congress’ vast collections and asked the user community to get involved: Give us your tags, your comments, your huddled masses …

We were essentially conducting an experiment to see how crowdsourcing might enhance the quality of the information we are able to provide about our collections, while also finding innovative ways to get those collections out to people who might have an avid interest in them.

As we’ve said again and again, we’ve been bowled over by the response. Now, the Library has released its report on the Flickr pilot. (The full report is here; a summary is here. Both links are PDFs.)

After the jump is an account of some of our findings, as adapted from a piece intended for the Library of Congress Gazette, our in-house newsletter.

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Our very own John Hessler was featured in today’s Washington Post talking about some of the mysteries behind one of the grand-daddies of all maps, the 1507 Martin Waldseemüller World Map, the document that named “America” and one of the Library’s toppest of the top treasures. (OK, we don’t categorize the treasures quite that way, but a $10 million map would be among the “toppest” in my book.)

John will be taking questions during an online chat tomorrow (Nov. 18, 2008) at the Post’s Web site starting at 11 a.m. EST. You can read the chat here after it gets underway or submit your questions in advance.

Had enough of politics yet?  (Who’s that in the back who shouted, “No”?)

If so, you might want to tune into the Charlie Rose Show tonight for “A Conversation with Kay Ryan, U.S. Poet Laureate, and Dr. James Billington, Librarian of Congress.”  (I made a brief mention of the taping a couple of weeks ago.)

The show can be seen on your local PBS station.  Times vary; check your local listings.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did — but even more, I hope inspires many more Americans into a love of poetry.

Happy Halloween to all!

There’s no better time to point you to the LOC’s “Wise Guide” for October, which explores how trick-or-treating got started:

The origins of present day “trick-or-treat” date back to the Celtic tradition of offering gifts of fruits and nuts to appease wandering spirits. If not placated, the villagers feared that the spirits would kill their flocks or destroy their property. Others trace “trick-or-treat” to a European custom called “souling.” Beggars would go from village to village begging for “soul cakes” made out of square pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors.

The Wise Guide includes links to other Halloween-related resources at the Library of Congress.

Exhibits, especially major ones, take a lot of planning, often years’ worth.

There is fund-raising, exhibit design, curatorial work, object selection, conservation, writing the label texts, brochure design, fabrication, mounting, installation … and several other steps that I’m undoubtedly forgetting.

On Feb. 12, we’re opening the major exhibition “With Malice Toward None,” celebrating the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, made possible through the generosity of Union Pacific Corporation.

Even though that’s more than three months away, a lot of those steps have already taken place.

Yesterday, I got a glimpse of just one of the stages in the process. Just hours after objects for the exhibit were delivered to the Conservation Division, I visited our science lab to get an idea of the kind of preparatory work that is done before they’re put on public display.

Conservators of all kinds will be giving the objects various degrees of TLC over the next several weeks. Some documents will be “bathed” or treated to reduce the acidity and slow the decomposition of the ink and paper. Others may be delicately mended. Some pages will be “desilked” — which reverses a preservation process done briefly around the turn of the 20th century whereby a think layer of silk was applied to documents — in favor of modern techniques.

I hope to be able to link to a little more in-depth commentary on this process soon. In the meantime, I snapped a couple of photos with my phone that I wanted to share, and I’ve linked in this post.

The first is a box holding the contents of Lincoln’s pockets on the night he was assassinated; the second is the seed-pearl and gold necklace and matching bracelets worn often by Mary Todd Lincoln. The objects came to the Library in the 1930s as a bequest from Lincoln’s granddaughter.

They have been on display at the Library before, but because of conservation requirements, they’re rarely seen by the public. Starting Feb. 12, you will get another such opportunity. Stay tuned for more!