Librarian from the Library of Congress to speak in Northfield, Minnesota

I wish I could attend this presentation down in Northfield, Minnesota at Carleton College. Hopefully some of my blog readers will attend. If you feel like sharing about this event, I'd be happy to publish it on this blog and give you full credit.

"Mark Dimunation, Chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, will give a talk on digitizing library materials. His presentation, entitled “Living with the Real Thing: From the Original to the Digital,” will take place at 4:30 p.m. on Thurs., May 10 in the Carleton College Boliou Hall, Room 141. This event is free and open to the public."

Dimunation is a graduate of Carleton's St. Olaf College. Read more about him and the presentation in Carleton News. http://apps.carleton.edu/news/news/?story_id=841544

Awesome Library of Congress Documentary

I really need to get back to my client work this morning, but something else has captured my interest. It's a 91 minute documentary about the Library of Congress by C-SPAN. I assume it must have been broadcast on C-SPAN but I have missed it.

"The Library of Congress, is a behind-the-scenes look at the national repository, providing the history of the institution, a tour of its iconic Jefferson Building, and glimpses of some of the library's rare book, photo, and map collections. The film also featured some of the presidential papers housed at the Library of Congress, ranging from George Washington through Calvin Coolidge. Viewers learned how the library uses technology to preserve its holdings and expand public access to them, as well as how technology is helping to uncover new information about some of the items in its collections."

The images, the history (of the library and the country), the statistics, and all the rest are enlightening. It's been a long time since I researched or visited the LOC and now I am itching to go back.

Is it worth your 91 minutes? I am not finished yet, but am enthralled by it. Click here to view it.

1784 Map of the U.S. to be displayed at LOC

An article in Sunday's Washington Post tells the tale of how the Library of Congress will be able to display the first map of the United States. "The first map of the United States, created in 1784, has been purchased for the record price of $1.8 million by Washington philanthropist David M. Rubenstein, who is lending it to the Library of Congress."

This map is an original drawn by Connecticut resident Abel Buell and Rubenstein wants the LOC to display it for five years. He said "I just think Americans don't know enough about their history. Showing documents spurs them to learn more." I agree with this statement. Whether I am teaching beginners or advanced family historians, the ability to see a document connects them more fully to the document and time period. It also spurs them to find such documents that relate to their own ancestry.

The Christie's auction house website describes the map as "the first map of the U.S. published in America, the first map printed in America to show the flag of the United States and the first map to be copyrighted in the United States." That would be the NEW United States of America! 

Rubenstein has purchased other historical documents and made them available for public viewing. The map had been put up for auction by the New Jersey Historical Society as a means of raising operating funds. I think we will see more historical societies, archives, and libraries employing such methods to keep them going in today's era of extreme lack of governmental support for historical organizations and libraries.

Click here to read the full article. Click here to see the map description at Christie's auction house.