Press contact: Donna Urschel (202) 707-1639
Public contact: John Buydos (202) 707-1191

September 28, 2007

Aviation Historian Tom Crouch To Discuss Aeronautics Collections, Oct. 24

A nationally known aviation historian and biographer of the Wright brothers, Tom Crouch has been mining the treasures of the Library of Congress for more than four decades.

Crouch will discuss the Library of Congress collections, and his many hours searching through materials, in a lecture titled "Aeronautics at the Library of Congress: Forty Years of One User’s Experience." The talk will start at noon on Wednesday, Oct. 24, in the Mumford Room on the sixth floor of the James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C.

Sponsored by the Library’s Science, Technology and Business Division, the lecture is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations are needed.

The occasion of the lecture is to celebrate the future publication of a Library of Congress book titled "Aeronautical and Astronautical Resources of the Library of Congress: A Comprehensive Guide." The book, prepared by Ronald S. Wilkinson, John F. Buydos and others, will be available in late October.

Crouch, senior curator of the Division of Aeronautics at the National Air and Space Museum, is the author or editor of more than a dozen books and many articles for both magazines and scholarly journals. Most of his publications are based on research in the many divisions of the Library of Congress.

Some of Crouch’s books that draw most heavily on the Library’s collections include "Rocketeers and Gentlemen Engineers: A History of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and What Came Before" (2006); "The Bishop’s Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright" (1989); "The Eagle Aloft: Two Centuries of the Balloon in America" (1983); and "A Dream of Wings: Americans and the Airplane, 1875-1905" (1981).

Since 1974, Crouch has served both the National Air and Space Museum and the National Museum of American History in a variety of curatorial and administrative posts. In the fall of 2000, President Clinton appointed him chairman of the First Flight Centennial Federal Advisory Board. Crouch holds a Ph.D. in American history from Ohio State University, and an honorary degree in Doctor of Humane Letters from Wright State University. He has won several major writing awards.

The Library of Congress maintains one of the largest and most diverse collections of scientific and technical information in the world. The Science, Technology and Business Division provides reference and bibliographic services and develops the general collections of the Library in all areas of science, technology, business and economics, with the exception of clinical medicine and technical agriculture, which are the subject specialties of the National Library of Medicine and the National Agricultural Library. For more information, visit www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/.

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PR 07-197
09/28/07
ISSN 0731-3527

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