Display Day success

It's with a bittersweet smile that I realize I am done with my internship in a week. This month in particular seems to have run away without me. In the past three weeks I have answered approximately fifty digital reference questions, registered at least 15 new researchers, pulled material from more than thirty different collections and had some lovely visitors and fun outings along the way.

This past Wednesday we had the "crown jewel" of the internship program, Display Day. All 38 of us Junior Fellows were able to show off our work in the 26 projects we have been working on since week 1. The process of getting to this day was a long and involved one - but great as I really got to see what goes into developing a exhibit. First, as fellows, we were asked to pick a few items that best displayed our work, we had to propose the items to the Display Day Committee and once we were approved, we had to clear all the items with conservation to make sure they were aptly protected on the day. We also wrote labels to accompany our items and had those proofread by exhibit staff at the Library and then we had to make sure our "blurb" was ready for the day and look up a few extra details to flesh the whole thing out. On Tuesday we had a rehearsal day to set up our tables and then the acting Librarian of Congress, David Mao, came and visited each one of our tables and listened as we described our projects and items on display.

On the actual day, we were set up and ready to go by 9, when the photographer from the Library and the video team arrived to get some extra footage. We opened to Library staff, congressional members (not that I remember seeing any, especially since Congress isn't in session), and friends and family at 10 AM and were pretty much continuously presenting to anyone who passed by our table until we closed at 3. I did get to have a lunch break, thank goodness! And it was a wonderful treat to be able to share both the Day and lunch with my Grandma, who drove from Baltimore to visit. Interestingly, when my friend Katie (the intern in the Manuscript preparation section) went to lunch, I was responsible for manning her exhibit and trying to describe her project to passer by's. It was fun to describe the process of how a collection arrives at the Library in disarray and then an archivist reads through and creates an organization system, then the rehousing of the materials and typing a finding aid so researchers will be able to navigate the collection.

Our display (pictures below), was centered on William T. Hornaday, for those of you who haven't read the previous blog posts. He was responsible for creating life-like exhibits in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in the 1880's and 1890's and was sent to the west in 1886 to retrieve specimens of Buffalo for the museum. The whole exhibit centered on the journal we have of his from that 1886 expedition that is a new acquisition of the Library and has never before been displayed. Trying to link the materials on the table, however, to my actual project, which was reference, was a tad difficult. I liked to always start my schpeal with letting the person know that I worked as a reference intern in the Manuscript Reading Room and that the items on the table were just a small representation of what I've gotten to work with this summer. And that's absolutely true!

My reference highlights this week are mostly generated by the email reference questions this week than researcher interaction. I am particularly proud of finding an unpublished manuscript titled "An Enlisted Man in the Chancellorsville Campaign" from the Civil War. The manuscript, penned by Lucius Swift, seemed not to exist on its own in the Library catalog, nor did the Manuscript Division have his papers in custody. Doing what any self-respecting reference librarian would do at that point, I turned to Google to try and see if there was a footnote, reference, anything mention at all of it online. Every time I typed in some variant of the title, I would get a few references to a book titled "The Campaign of Chancellorsville" by John Bigelow which was published in 1910. I took a chance, and typed his name into the Library's catalog search and sure enough, we did have his papers on-site at the Library. I figured it was a long shot, but I pulled up the finding aid to the collection and searched for Chancellorsville among the papers - there was a box that contained notes for his book. I went over to the stacks and started searching through that particular box. It was incredible the letters he had from people who were present at the Battle of Chancellorsville and for the Campaign and their recollections would take up letters of 10 pages or more. One man recalled that he wasn't sure if Gen. Joseph Hooker was sleepy or drunk that day! Finally, after about 10 minutes of rifling through, I discovered a letter written by Lucius Swift to John Bigelow and attached was an excerpt of his Manuscript! Win!

I was so excited that I found it and was a bit disappointed that I couldn't reveal my whole saga to the writer of the email inquiry, just because of how cool it was. Nevertheless, the recipient was very thankful and I felt like a history sleuthing boss yet again. :) I'm going to be sad to say goodbye next week to the awesome people I've met through this 10 week journey - especially all the reference librarians I work beside everyday. But in a week I will be home, and as much as I love DC - there is something about Columbia that just makes it home.

The cover of the Display Day program

The little recaps of the Manuscript interns projects this summer

Looking down from our display towards the end of the table

The other side of the table

The "small" room of the two used for Display Day - the guy in the white shirt is the other reference intern, Luke

 

Yours truly in action - explaining the display to a Library staffer

Library Stacks and other Adventures

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.

The ceremonial office of the Librarian of Congress

The incredible ceiling in the office

The infamous stairs that go up to the reference desk in the Main Reading Room

Looking down the rows of stacks towards the far (east?) wall

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