Rare Bookin' It

I learned some things in my few hours in the Rare Book Reading Room: 1st off, I saw the two actual boox exchanged between Whitman and Thoreau! Both copies dedicated to the other on their title pages. Walt mention'd the walk and chat they took! How bout that! Can u imagine? ++ Also, the great Clark Evans talked more about Thomas Jefferson's books and how we got them, keep them, and use them, especially using E. Millicent Sowerby's Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, originally published 1952-1959. It's annotated with extensive entries describing the books TJ sold to the Library of Congress in 1815. ++ I saw a couple of the Lincoln's assassins broadsides. $100,000 Reward! The Murderer! Rare Book has thousands of these AND they get cataloged. They also have a few LP's of speeches ... OOOOH! I also saw Lincoln's grammar book from KY! The one he devoured as a young lad, making the 12-mile trip to "school" ~ He only had less than a year of total proper schooling, but this book this small book right in front of me! had a direct hand in forming his profound command of language.

I learned the LC acquired the Czar of Russia's Library in 1930. The Imperial Collection? That's crazy! How in the world did that level of imperial materials end up here?? In 1930? We were broke, yet that's the year we also acquired the Gutenberg Bible. Sheesh! ++++ I also learned the Liberry went 130 summers of Washington baking heat before they installed the first air conditioner ... of course, now the treasur'd collexions are closely monitor'd with temperature and humidity controls etc so it's all good ... ++++ For a long time, too, the "rare" books were simply mixed among the General Collexion and some were simply marked "Office" which meant the Liberrian kept the volume IN HIS OFFICE. If you needed the book, you simply went and knocked on his door to get it. Easy.


I learned our HUGE collexion of Incunabula -- printed materials from before 1501 -- is well cared for yet difficult to catalog since they usually have no title page or other informationstuffs. ++ I learned about the Beadle Brothers special Dime Novels. We have about 40,000 in our Rare Book section, and some are handsome to the maximum, heck yes.

Classy Liberry Action

Today was the first day of my new library class. Every Tuesday and Thursday for the next 6 weeks I get to visit the Library of Congress reading rooms and hear all about their reference collections. What each division has, had, and wants, changes all the time, and these years things are moving swiftly. We began in the new Copyright offices, which are very attractive. All new fixtures and layout with a harmonious mix of modern and classic make the new digs hospitable and even inspiring. It's sooooo cleanly and clearly organized, especially the rooms with the old catalogs. It's the largest card catalog in the world, with all the original writings on the cards, and we cruised through several searches using Ernest Hemingway as our example for making our way through somewhat complex copyright issues and practice. I learned you can search it all for free but they charge $150 and hour to do it for you.

Then we went downstairs to the 1st floor of the James Madison Bldg to visit the way-impressive Manuscript Division. This is where treasure abounds. We were greeted with archived samples of special papers as we sat down for orientation. On the handsome table in front of me was Ralph Waldo Emerson's letter to Walt Whitman from the summer of 1855 (YES! Emerson ADORED Leaves of Grass and he was letting Walt know!), also, right in front of me -- RIGHT IN MY FACE! -- was Alexander Graham Bell's sketches for a telephone from 1876. Holy crap on a crapstick! I'd seen pix of this, but this was a real LC Moment: AGBell pencil scratchings, shadings, and intimate lettering just there. Dig.

So yeah, the LC's got the originals, and sometimes they can simply break 'em out and show us: our treat. Then we got to actually go back into the manuscript stacks. Yes! The whole presidential papers room (Washington to Coolidge) all in neatly labeled boxes and bindings. Our guide even opened up one of George Washington's diaries, showing off all the classy conservation box-making skills around it, and proceeded to hand it TO ME! I held it, I read aloud from it: "Mercury around 74. Later up to 77. Mild and cool throughout ..." [that kinda weather stuff, the quote is phony, the little personal George Washington journal I held in my hands today was mighty real. Oh heck yes it was.

I also learned: we digitize most of our manuscripts from microfilm and not off the originals ... 1938 to 1977 was the Card Catalog's heyday ... titles are not copyrightable ... we have something called Rachmaninoff Holographs, which sounds tantalizingly stimulating.

Paul Dunbar Y'all

Today I learned the great Paul Dunbar was friends with Orville Wright! They lived nearby and went to Dayton Central High School together. Paul's mother was a freed slave named Matilda, and she read and sang to Paul, who was soon reading and singing back to his mother. His daddy Joshua was an escaped slave who served in the 55th Massachusetts Infantry and the 5th Massachusetts Colored Cavalry > right on, sir ... Paul was the only black kid at DCHS and an active scholar all his life: debating society, literature society, school paper, city papers, writing at home all the time, working as an elevator operator, sometimes selling his books of poetry for a buck a pop while he was working the elevator. Oak & Ivy ! Majors & Minors ! Later he worked at the Library of Congress! Of course they didn't take advantage of his gigantic brains and capabilities. Instead, they simply took advantage of him, giving him a menial job where he became unhappy, then he breathed in too much bookdust, which thereby aggravated his already bad respiratory action into full tuberculosis and so he left the LC after a year. DANG! He kept on writing poetry and novels, but he only lived to be 33 ... he does have a legacy as a true man of letters, which will continue to grow, though, yo, so checkit: lookit all the schools after which he is named!