Well it's been a few weeks since I've updated and of course those few weeks have been anything but boring at the library. At the end of last week (Friday, July 1st), the Junior Fellows were invited to meet the acting Librarian of Congress, Mr. David Mao. After a great Q&A session, probably the best part of the meeting was his offering for us to come visit the ceremonial office of the Librarian in the Jefferson Building. If you go back to one of my first blogs, you'll see the picture of the door with the word "Librarian" over top, and this room is what lay behind the door. The room, complete with balcony, domed roof, and vault is one of the most beautiful rooms in the building, in my opinion. The intricate wood carving and decorative paintings on the ceiling are all a tribute to learning, knowledge and books. One of the funny things I discovered while in the room, was that the acoustics can play tricks on your ears, much like the Capitol building or the dome at St. Paul's in London: I could hear my friends whispering to each other as if they were right behind me even though they were on the opposite side of the room. At first I was confused, but after figuring it out, we had some fun "telephone"-like whispering games. We also got to take a peak at the vault door, which is where in 1975, he then Librarian of Congress found the contents of Abraham Lincoln's pockets from the night of his assassination at Ford's Theater. (They had been sitting there since their placement in 1937 and obviously forgotten about...)
This past Friday's excursion was just as interesting and almost more awe-inspiring. We got a fabulous tour of the Jefferson Building's Stacks, where most of the library's on-site books reside. (The other parts of the collection are housed in the Adams and Madison Buildings). The Jefferson Building is the first and probably most recognizable of all the library's buildings - it was opened in 1897 and was thought to be the solution to all the space problems that the original Library of Congress had to deal with when it was housed in the Capitol Building. Obviously, with the addition of two more buildings and two more off site storage facilities over the next century or so, the building proved to be beautiful and functional, but not nearly big enough for the Library's ever growing collection. Even now, as you can see from the pictures below, there are books on the floor of the stacks and shelves that are packed to full capacity.
One of my favorite parts of the tour was getting to see the space directly underneath the Main Reading Room of the Library. The stairs that are in the pictures below go right up to the middle of the reference desk in the Reading Room. (And for anyone else who loves National Treasure, those are the same stairs that Abigail and Reilly have to fly down to escape in National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets!) I did not know that the Library acquires about 200,000 books every year - helped by the Mandatory Deposit requirement that every copyrightable book published in the US must send 2 copies to the Library. The Library might not keep all these copies, or they may choose to send them to be stored off sight, depending on the content, but the collection continues to grow at a massive rate. Some of the original courtyards of the Jefferson Building were filled in to make more room for stacks in the early 1900's, which is why you can see the brick wall at the end of the stack in the picture below. There are two courtyards left in the building of the original four.
Other fun happenings this week at the library included a consultation with the board in charge of the Display Day coming up quickly on the 27th of July! Luke and I loaded our materials for display into a cart and hiked over to the Adams building to meet with the conservation department to check the documents and pictures we want to display will be properly housed and preserved during Display Day. It was incredible to have the conservation department measure and make cradles and bolsters for the Hornaday journal and the sheet music we found right on the spot. They event took this map we have of the Bronx Zoo from 1915 (Hornaday being the founder of said zoo) and measured it to make a custom Mylar covering for it. The next hurdle after this meeting is writing our Labels for the display, for which we were given the size templates and the number of labels we are allowed to use so the table is explained but not cluttered. I do love seeing all that goes into the exhibit process, especially now that I'm interested in exhibition development as a possible career. Not only does the department have to liaise with all the different library services division to acquire the material for displays, but they have to go through conservation and labeling issues as well as organizational questions of how to best utilize the space. I find it all completely fascinating.
This week will already be week 7 of the 10 week internship and I can't believe how fast time is flying. I'm loving the hustle and bustle of the Reading Room just as much as when I first started - except now I think I'm building the stamina to deal with all the walking! July is such a great month because in addition to my birthday, I'm looking forward to visitors coming up (including my family - hooray!) and all the fun we'll have exploring DC and looking at the museums on the weekends, so there will be plenty of pictures and stories to come.
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| The ceremonial office of the Librarian of Congress |
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| The incredible ceiling in the office |
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| The infamous stairs that go up to the reference desk in the Main Reading Room |
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| Looking down the rows of stacks towards the far (east?) wall |
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| Note the books on the floor and then at the end of the row, the brick wall that used to be one of the walls of the courtyard |
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