Library of Congress Magazine November / December 2024

Features
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6Lives Reimagined
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12Library at 225
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20Jefferson’s Library
Departments
- March / April 2025
Vol. 14 No. 2 - Mission of the Library of Congress
- The Library’s mission is to engage, inspire and inform Congress and the American people with a universal and enduring source of knowledge and creativity.
- Library of Congress Magazine is issued bimonthly by the Office of Communications of the Library of Congress and distributed free of charge to publicly supported libraries and research institutions, donors, academic libraries, learned societies and allied organizations in the United States. Research institutions and educational organizations in other countries may arrange to receive Library of Congress Magazine on an exchange basis by applying in writing to the Library’s Director for Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington DC 20540-4100. LCM is also available on the web at loc.gov/lcm/. All other correspondence should be addressed to the Office of Communications, Library of Congress, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington DC 20540-1610.
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news@loc.gov
loc.gov/lcm
ISSN 2169-0855 (print)
ISSN 2169-0863 (online) - Carla Hayden
Librarian of Congress - William Ryan
Executive Editor - Mark Hartsell
Editor - Ashley Jones
Designer - Shawn Miller
Photo Editor -
Contributors
Katherine Blood
Nathan Cross
Olivia Dorsey
Carla Hayden
Sahar Kazmi
Wendi A. Maloney
Mari Nakahara
Adam Silvia
April Slayton
Neely Tucker
Connect On

Think Pink
The Washington Sakura Matsuri (the Japanese name for the festival) collection at the Library includes over 30 vibrant posters — beginning with 1987 and ongoing — commissioned to promote the festival. Their artist-designed images spark joy and reflect on natural beauty, friendship between Japan and America and local and global communities coming together in celebration. Inspired by the glowing blossoms, pink is almost always involved!

Soldiers’ Stories
Their fates intertwined years later, when their families united through the marriage of Lockett’s son to Singleton’s daughter — and again in 2024, when their mutual granddaughter donated their manuscript collections to the Veterans History Project.
The Singleton and Lockett collections are the Veterans History Project’s first from African American veterans of World War I, and their letters, journals and photographs offer glimpses into the adversity and resilience that characterize the African American experience of that war.

Through the lens
The Prints and Photographs Division recently acquired three collections that document such work by the Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer: “Children in Peril,” “Escaping Human Trafficking” and “Ryan White and the Battle Against AIDS” — the last a chronicle of the American teenager who became an international symbol of the fight against the disease.
People magazine had hired Yamasaki and reporter Bill Shaw to contribute to a special feature on living with AIDS, along with other teams in major cities across the U.S. The pair arrived at White’s home in Cicero, Indiana, in summer 1987 to begin work.
Reimagined Lives
The piece, titled “Complex,” was one of many on view as part of artist Maya Freelon’s immersive exhibition “Whippersnappers: Recapturing, Reviewing, and Reimagining the Lives of Enslaved Children in the United States” at Historic Stagville in Durham, North Carolina.
The Bennehan-Cameron family enslaved more than 900 people at Stagville, once one of the largest plantations in the state, at its peak in 1864.
The Magical ‘Maple Leaf Rag’
Tucked inside were two copies of sheet music for a highly syncopated, upbeat piano piece with intense flurries of notes — more than 2,000 in a song that took less than three minutes to perform. It was called “Maple Leaf Rag,” and it blew the doors off everything.
“Maple” sold 75,000 copies of sheet music in six months and went on to sell millions both as sheet music and in dozens of recordings. It changed the lives of both men and changed popular music. It became the signature piece of ragtime, which itself lent its name to an era of American life and helped set the foundations for jazz.

Forged in Fire
It was built that way. For good reason.
Not once, but twice, within the decades preceding the building’s design, the Library literally went down in flames.
On Aug. 24, 1814, during the War of 1812, British troops set fire to government buildings in Washington, D.C. The Library’s 3,000 or so reference books, then housed in an unfinished U.S. Capitol, provided ready fuel for the fire.
America’s
Greatest
Library


How it started:
How it’s going: 225 years later, the Library has amassed what is widely considered the greatest collection of knowledge ever assembled. And, while Congress remains the Library’s first audience, the Library also reaches millions of people around the world, who now have access to its unparalleled resources.

▪ Right: On New Year’s Eve in 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed this document appointing Spofford the sixth Librarian of Congress. Manuscript Division
Making a national library
“Know ye,” Lincoln proclaimed on New Year’s Eve in 1864, “That reposing special Trust and Confidence in the Integrity, Diligence and Discretion of Ainsworth R. Spofford of Ohio, I do appoint him Librarian … .”
Spofford would serve as Librarian of Congress for over 32 years — a period during which, thanks largely to his drive and vision, the Library grew into a position of national prominence.
At the time of Spofford’s appointment, the Library was a small institution that served only Congress. The Boston Public Library, Boston Athenaeum and Astor Library in New York City were bigger, as were the Harvard and Yale libraries.

The Librarian’s Historic Office
This inscription — meaning “Books, delight of the soul” — adorns the circular mural in a corner of the ceremonial office of the Librarian of Congress in the historic Thomas Jefferson Building. Beneath the words, a young woman holds a book in one hand and touches her heart with the other.
Her sentiment is clear, and it is present in embellishments throughout the office. Occupied by Librarians of Congress from 1897 to 1980, the space is a magnificent ode to the power of the written word.
Owls, lamps and books appear repeatedly among the office’s decorations, and illustrations on the north and south walls trace the evolution of the poet. Nearly everywhere you look, there are gold engravings, stately marble and figures of trumpeters blaring their song.
Thomas
Jefferson’s
Library
Smith did so, and Jefferson sold Congress 4,931 titles (encompassing 6,487 volumes) for $23,950 the next year, forming the DNA of today’s Library of Congress, now the largest library in the world. But even in that 1814 offer, Jefferson indicated he wasn’t going to include everything he had. That would come later, after his death, “so that the whole library, as it stands in the catalogue at this moment should be theirs, without any garbling.”






News Briefs
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‘Star Trek II,’ ‘Social Network’ Among Films Added to Registry
In December, the Library announced the addition of 25 films to its National Film Registry for their cultural, historical or aesthetic importance to the nation’s film heritage.Popular Hollywood releases chosen include the first Star Trek film added to the registry, “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” from 1982, and Eddie Murphy’s first feature film on the registry, “Beverly Hills Cop.”
The public submitted nominations for over 6,700 titles. Several selected titles received strong public support, including: “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” “No Country for Old Men,” “The Social Network” and “Dirty Dancing.”
The selections bring the number of titles on the registry to 900. Some films are among the 2 million moving image collection items held at the Library. Others are preserved in coordination with copyright holders or other film archives.
MORE: loc.gov/item/prn-24-105 -
Date Set for 2025 Edition Of National Book Festival
The Library will host the 2025 National Book Festival on Sept. 6 at the Washington Convention Center, festival organizers recently announced.The event will mark the 25th anniversary of the festival, which was co-founded in 2001 with first lady Laura Bush. In 2025, the festival will expand its footprint in the Washington Convention Center to host booklovers from across the region and nationwide. Updates on plans will be shared at loc.gov/bookfest and at the Bookmarked blog at https://blogs.loc.gov.
The festival is free and provides a full day of conversations with dozens of authors, poets and illustrators from a variety of genres about their latest books. The festival offers readings, giveaways, book signings and activities for children and young adults, as well as the opportunity to purchase books from the festival’s official bookseller.
MORE: loc.gov/item/prn-24-104
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Gifts to the Library, Gifts to the Nation
In 1999, council members Jerry Jones — the owner, president and general manager of the Dallas Cowboys — and his wife, Gene, kicked off the Library’s bicentennial celebration with a $1 million gift. They were joined in support by several other council members.
At the time of this gift, then-Librarian of Congress James Billington observed that in the meditative space of Jefferson’s library, you feel as though you are communing with the spirit of the man himself. Jerry Jones noted that “all of the people of this country should help make the Library of Congress a truly vital and active treasure house of knowledge.”

Join Friends of the Library of Congress.

CARLA HAYDEN
In a neat cursive script, President John Adams added, “Approved,” followed by his signature and the date: April 24, 1800 — 225 years ago this April.
With that — an act of Congress that also provided for the furnishing of congressional offices and the construction of sidewalks in the capital city — the world’s greatest library was born.
The Library of Congress couldn’t be recognized as such at the time, of course.
The collections of the Library — set in a room at the back of the new U.S. Capitol building — held a scant 152 titles and three maps. From that modest beginning, the Library grew into a global treasure of more than 181 million collection items — the greatest collection of human knowledge ever assembled.



Current Exhibitions

Opens March 28
COLLECTING MEMORIES: TREASURES FROM THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Ongoing
THOMAS JEFFERSON’S LIBRARY
Ongoing
More Information
