Posted on: October 24th, 2008 by Matt Raymond
It isn’t unusual for docents like Malcolm O’Hagan to find that they have inspired visitors after a tour of the Thomas Jefferson Building. (I have written about such inspiration before.) It is, after all, one of the great buildings at the heart of one of the great institutions of the world.
But what wasn’t expected was that a visitor would be inspired to set his inspiration down in verse.
A man named Bob Bein recently went on such a tour led by Malcolm and was so moved that he wrote the poem “The Library of Congress” in July 2008. We reproduce it here with Bob’s permission, for which we are grateful:
Oh such grandeur at the temple entrance,
symbolic stone figures flank
majestic marble staircases,
statues with torches blaze the path to wisdom,
skylights brighten layers of understanding.
Truly a temple of knowledge,
human gods of arts and sciences look on
thirsty believers eagerly awaiting
meager droplets of passed down lore.
Even higher are images of human aspirations—
Understanding, to lift a curtain of ignorance,
Encouragement, pushing Man closer to perfection.
This is the inside of a brain:
an enormous domed space,
grand art inside the skull,
study desks ringing
the central station,
axon-like conveyor belts speeding
expertise to anxious disciples.
Classic pneumatic tubes
carry nerve impulse notes
demanding diverse media
following searches of endless
brain cell card catalogs and appeals
to new computer circuitry.
Genuflect, and respect
the sum of stored knowledge,
despite how much more will accrete
we will always feel incomplete:
the notion of infinity
includes infinity plus three.
Posted in Poetry, Thomas Jefferson Building | No Comments »
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Posted on: October 24th, 2008 by Matt Raymond
If you haven’t yet seen the exhibition that David McCullough calls the one “every American ought to see,” you might want to make a trip to the Library within the next few days.
The original rough draft of the Declaration of Independence in Thomas Jefferson’s hand, with edits by John Adams and Ben Franklin, will be cycling out of the “Creating the United States” exhibit Oct. 29. It will be replaced by George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights, a document that influenced Jefferson and the Founding Fathers.
It will likely be your last chance to see the “real deal” for the next several years. (”Creating the United States” and the rest of the Library of Congress Experience will be available for visitors at least until 2011.)
Even if you can’t make it to DC, there’s a terrific online version of “Creating the United States” that includes an interactive that lets you virtually explore the draft along with several of its antecedent documents.
The Washington Post wrote about the exhibit today here.
Posted in Exhibitions, New Visitors Experience | 2 Comments »
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Posted on: October 23rd, 2008 by Matt Raymond
All eyes in the United States over the next couple of weeks will be on the current presidential campaign.
Here at the Library of Congress, we’re taking a bit of a look back — and a musical one, at that.
A few days ago, we opened an exhibition called “Voices, Votes, Victory: Presidential Campaign Songs,” which runs through March 7, 2009:
The exhibit presents a sampling of campaign songs found in the rich collection of sheet music housed in the Music Division of the Library of Congress. The earliest items are rare melodies that honored America’s first presidents for winning and maintaining the young nation’s liberty. Some of the most potent political rhetoric of the 19th century is found in “songsters,” pocket-sized books of lyrics that allowed passionate voters to be ever-ready for an impromptu “sing” to stump for their party’s candidates. Yet other examples show that friends and families joined to campaign around parlor pianos, a trend that continued well into the 20th century.
Even the covers of early campaign-song sheet music were an attempt at spin, featuring elegantly engraved portraits of candidates, sometimes in uniform.
I wonder what a 2008 “songster” might look like?
You can check out the exhibit in the Music Division, which is on the first floor of the Library’s James Madison Building at 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C.
Posted in Exhibitions, Music, News | No Comments »
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Posted on: October 22nd, 2008 by Matt Raymond
I know it is late notice, but if you have some time on your hands this afternoon (and you’re in DC), you might want to stop by an open house from 1 to 4 p.m. in the Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections Division (the Lessing J. Rosenwald Room, across from room 239 in the Thomas Jefferson Building).
The Division will be featuring several new acquisitions, a few of which I’ll describe after the jump. Light refreshments will be served.
Read More
Posted in Books, Curators, Events | 1 Comment »
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Posted on: October 21st, 2008 by Matt Raymond
Further to my Friday post, I wanted to point out that Kay Ryan’s webcast from last week has now been put online, here. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
Posted in Books, LC Web site, Poetry | 1 Comment »
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Posted on: October 17th, 2008 by Matt Raymond
Well, I’ve been a very bad blogger. But we’ve been pretty busy around here.
Let’s see, what have we been up to? Well, we’ve begun taking a little bit of the Library on the road — first in Fort Lauderdale Sept. 19 and next in Denver on Oct. 27 (with Dallas, San Francisco and Los Angeles to follow).
You might have heard that we recently had a little get-together with about 120,000 of our closest friends. Our terrific team made more than 70 webcasts from the National Book Festival available in record time! You can watch your favorite authors here.
We’re getting close to some exciting Web 2.0 announcements, which we will be sure to bring you as soon as they’re ready. I also expect we’ll see a report relatively soon about our Flickr pilot project.
Our new Poet Laureate opened the literary season last night to an overflow crowd. (I’ve never seen so many people try to get into the Mumford Room!) Kay Ryan read and spoke for about an hour and then mingled afterward and signed books; the crowd was extremely entertained. One thing I was struck by was how very young the audience seemed (I was surrounded by teens), which I think is a good sign for future generations of poetry lovers.
I also had the tremendous pleasure earlier this week of attending a taped interview of Kay Ryan and the Librarian of Congress with Charlie Rose in New York, which we believe should air sometime next week. I won’t spoil it, but I don’t ever remember seeing Charlie laugh so much during an interview — it was a great discussion, and a lot of fun!
I completely neglected to blog about Hispanic Heritage Month (VERY bad blogger!), but I will point out, albeit a couple of days late, that the Library and some of our federal colleagues worked on a great Web site here.
And thanks to Audrey Fischer in my office, I can bring you a little report on Disability Employment Awareness Month, after the jump.
Read More
Posted in Books, Events, LC Web site, Libraries, National Book Festival, News, Photos, Poetry | 3 Comments »
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Posted on: September 17th, 2008 by Matt Raymond
I stopped by our Prints and Photographs Division this afternoon to meet blogging legend Robert Scoble, partly because he was interviewing Helena Zinkham, the acting chief of P&P, about our Flickr project, but also to tell him how his book “Naked Conversations” has had an important impact on impelling the Library’s blog forward. Before I knew it, he had turned his camera on me and beamed an interview live to the world via 3G. (Shameless self-promotion alert.)
Robert is also working on a more in-depth piece on the Flickr project, which I’m eager to see. It’s always great when the HD camera comes out!
While I’m at it, in recent days and weeks, there has been a lot of Web 2.0 momentum building here at the Library. I’m confident that this will soon lead to new ways in which we will reaching out to user communities and making the Library’s yummy goodness even more widely known and accessible.
Posted in Blogging, LC Web site, Photos, Technology | 14 Comments »
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Posted on: September 16th, 2008 by Matt Raymond
Tomorrow is Constitution Day, when we celebrate the Sept. 17, 1787, signing of that foundational document. If you’re a student who is putting the finishing touches on an assignment or essay, or a teacher who wants to inspire his or her class, you have come to the right place.
The Library of Congress has excellent Constitution Day resources, including this page that has been updated to reflect materials in the new exhibition “Creating the United States.”
The Law Library of Congress also has a site entitled “A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates.” The THOMAS legislative tracking system also has links to a number of Library sites about the Constitution.
When delegates to the Constitutional Convention adjourned their business, Benjamin Franklin famously replied to a woman who had asked what kind of government had just been formed: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
It was an audacious experiment, launched by a group of men both ordinary and extraordinary, and it has been tested many times. But 221 years later, we are still here.
Posted in Collections, Education, History, LC Web site | 3 Comments »
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Posted on: September 5th, 2008 by Matt Raymond
Carol Highsmith brings us more (copyright-free) photos from the closing-night convention festivities in the Twin Cities:
John McCain accepts the presidential nomination
Sarah Palin waves to the delegates
As in Denver, St. Paul had its share of protesters
Cindy McCain joins her husband on stage
The running mates and their spouses
Balloons!
Photos from Wednesday in St. Paul are here.
You can find photos from Denver here and here.
Posted in News, Photos | 8 Comments »
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Posted on: September 5th, 2008 by Matt Raymond
“Talk, talk, talk,” you say. “That’s all Matt does is talk to the 2008 National Book Festival Authors. But when will we, the readers and fans of those authors, get a chance to ask the questions?!”
Well, you can come in person, of course, to the National Book Festival on Sept. 27, 2008, from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on the National Mall in DC. But if you just can’t wait that long, our longtime charter sponsor, The Washington Post, has begun to schedule online chats with National Book Festival authors.
The first three have been scheduled, and are as follows:
Bob Schieffer (CBS newsman and author), Monday, 9/15 at 2 p.m. EDT
Arthur and Pauline Frommer (noted travel writers), Tuesday, 9/16 at 10 a.m. EDT
And Alexander McCall Smith, (prolific writer of fiction and nonfiction), Friday, 9/19 at 11 a.m. EDT
You can follow the links above and start submitting your questions now, or anytime up to and even during the chats. We expect to be able to announce at least a couple more in the days leading up to Sept. 27.
(By the way, two years ago we did about six author podcasts. In 2007 we doubled that. This year, I expect we’ll get pretty close to, if not more than, 20! To subscribe in iTunes, go here.)
Posted in Books, Events, National Book Festival, Podcasts, Washington DC | No Comments »
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