Library Of Congress In Washington Research Articles

Mobility, materiality, and memory: Silas Sandgreen and the construction of Kalaallit cartography in the 1920s

Summary In 1925, Silas Sandgreen sent a map to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Instead of ink on paper, Sandgreen’s map featured strands of sinew binding painted driftwood islands to an animal hide, articulating the islands Kitsissut and Imerissoq of Disko Bay off the western shore of Kalaallit Nunaat. In the near century since its completion, the map’s materials have become indexical of their maker’s Indigeneity, functioning as erroneous evidence of “authentic” Inuit cartographic practices. A repeated fetishizing of alterity has divorced the object from its original conditions of creation, obscuring its origins and cultural meanings. This paper seeks to restore the historicity of Silas Sandgreen’s map by taking a new approach to its materiality. Taking cue from recent scholarship that frames the map as an artwork, we locate the object at the intersection of various social, political, and environmental ideologies sweeping Kalaallit Nunaat, and Sandgreen’s particular home islands, in the 1920s. In order to do so, we restore the maker’s biography composed from new findings in Indigenous-language archives, and juxtapose that biography alongside a visual and material analysis of the most prominent media of the map: sealskin and driftwood. By charting these material histories alongside social and ecological ones, we aim to provide a template that advances multiple interdisciplinary methodologies in the nascent field of Arctic art history.

Peter Artedi's “Manuscriptum ichthyologicum”, a source for Albertus Seba's Locupletissimi rerum naturalium thesauri accurata descriptio (1759)

A mid-eighteenth-century copy of a manuscript containing taxonomic accounts of a collection of fishes from Ambon and Suriname, originally prepared by the Swedish naturalist Peter Artedi (1705−1735) for use in the third volume of Albertus Seba's Locupletissimus rerum naturalium thesauri accurata descriptio (1759), is described. Unknown to historians of natural history prior to 1941 when it was briefly introduced by zoologist Daniel Merriman (1908–1984) of Yale University, the origin and circuitous history of ownership of the manuscript is traced from Amsterdam to its recently discovered presence in the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. The manuscript is important because it holds the only known evidence as to what part of the published accounts in the Thesaurus belongs to Artedi and what part was altered by subsequent editors. The manuscript contains a large number of errors – often misspellings and grammatical inconsistencies, which are probably the result of careless reading on the part of the copyist – but a close examination shows that the factual contents of Artedi's text were not changed. Although embellished in various ways, what we see today in Seba's account is a faithful interpretation of Artedi's contribution.

Hrvatski jezik u normama Međunarodne organizacije za normizaciju

In the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) system, language codes and language names are defined within the ISO 639 standard. At present, the standard consists of five parts (ISO 639 1-5). Infoterm (International Information Centre for Terminology), an organization founded by UNESCO, is responsible for ISO 639-1. ISO 639-2 is the responsibility of the Registration Authority of the Library of Congress in Washington, and ISO 639-3 is the responsibility of SIL International from Dallas, also known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics. SIL International declares certain dialects and subsystems of the Croatian language to be separate Slavic languages, supposedly independent of Croatian, and reduces the scope of the Croatian language, as an individual language, merely to the Štokavian dialect of the modern Croatian standard language. At the same time, it constructs „the Serbo-Croatian macro language“ and encourages the return of this phantom creation as an entity. This paper examines the activities of the SIL International and its approach to the Croatian language. The goal is to identify problematic points and propose scientifically based solutions for them. The paper does not question whether the actions of SIL International are the result of miscommunication and coincidence, or whether they are perhaps a part of a planned action that aims to promote a new geopolitical realignment on our part of the European map, with a Serbo-Croatian shadow over it.

Jan Sawka: Theatre of Image and Metaphor

Jan Sawka: Theatre of Image and Metaphor

Kyra Markham: An Introduction

Kyra Markham: An Introduction

Die Sweelinck-Tradition im Schweizerischen Engadin

Since the early eighteenth century, the printed editions of all Sweelinck’s psalm compositions are present in the municipal archives of Zuoz, Oberengadin. A number of these compositions have become part of the local musical culture and have been preserved in dozens of manuscript copies. The original prints of Sweelinck’s psalms appear twice, both times as part of an extensive convolute. One was purchased in Amsterdam in 1707 by the Swiss nobleman Balthasar Planta. The other was in the possession of the same Balthasar Planta in 1741. Already before 1832, the books were dispersed: a part remained in Zuoz, a part ended up in the Library of Congress in Washington, and a third part is untraceable.

François de Fossa, Louis Picquot and the transmission of Luigi Boccherini’s guitar quintets

Abstract Boccherini’s eight guitar quintets g.445–53 are among the composer’s best-known works. Nonetheless, the history of the presently preserved manuscripts is far from clear. The Marquis de Benavente, for whom they were written, must have had a manuscript (now lost) containing presumably twelve such works, of which three were published, arranged for double-viola string quintet, in Bordeaux in 1817. A vital role in the transmission of the works is also played by a manuscript including eight quintets copied in Madrid from the marquis’s manuscript by the soldier-musician François de Fossa. Until now it has been generally assumed that Fossa’s 1811 manuscript can be identified with a manuscript now in the Library of Congress in Washington. However, the Washington manuscript differs from the description that Fossa gives of his 1811 manuscript in several important ways. Closer inspection tells us that the Washington manuscript, although indeed copied by Fossa, must have been made later—perhaps around 1825—probably with the intention that it would serve as copy for a printed edition. While preparing his Notice sur la vie et les oeuvres de Luigi Boccherini, Louis Picquot contacted Fossa in 1847, and Fossa sent the manuscript to Picquot, probably again hoping that it could be published. It remained in Picquot’s library, however, and was purchased in 1922 by the Library of Congress from the Berlin antiquarian bookseller Leo Liepmanssohn. Another important source for Boccherini’s guitar quintets, a manuscript now in the Bavarian State Library in Munich, contains copies of guitar quintets acquired by Picquot via other routes. From the histories and the contents of the preserved sources of the quintets it can be concluded that Boccherini wrote twelve such quintets, of which nine are preserved today.

Charles Malik, his idea of ‘reason’ and the formula ‘being endowed with reason’ from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’s Article 1

The original (drafted) meaning of the word conscience in Article 1 of UDHR has particular attention toward developing an interpretative frame of the Document. However, the preceding phrase of the formula -“being endowed with reason”- has not attracted consideration, if any. Maybe because there is no direct source as clear as conscience, this article intends to fill that void. For that intent, it will review the available sources of Charles Malik’s academic years as a professor of philosophy at the American University of Beirut, which are storage at Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

ЗВ’ЯЗКИ КДУ ІМ. Т. Г. ШЕВЧЕНКА З ОСВІТНІМИ Й НАУКОВИМИ УСТАНОВАМИ КРАЇН ПІВНІЧНОЇ І ПІВДЕННОЇ АМЕРИКИ (1944–1975 РР.)

The world’s leading countries use international cooperation in the education and science field to influence and confirm their authority. The countries of North and South America and the USSR used scientific and educational relations as a means of communication. For Kyiv State University named after T. G. Shevchenko, this provided an opportunity to expand the geography of international relations. Therefore, the aim of the article is a comprehensive study of the connections of KSU named after T. G. Shevchenko with scientific and educational institutions of the countries of North and South America in 1944–1975’s. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the fact that the scientific and educational ties of KSU named T. G. Shevchenko with scientific and educational institutions of the USA and Canada, as well as Latin American countries in 1944–1975’s, have been highlighted for the first time. The methodological basis of the research was the methods of historical retrospection and problem-chronological and analytical methods. The conclusions. It is noted that at the end of the Second World War (1944–1945), the establishment of ties by Kyiv University with educational and scientific institutions of the countries of North and South America was not possible due to the reconstruction of the city and the university itself. And during the period of post-war reconstruction (1946–1950), the Soviet-American confrontation was added to the mentioned problems, which then turned into the Cold War. It is indicated that some scientists from the countries of North America began to visit Kyiv State University named after Taras Shevchenko since the mid-1950s. The prerequisite for this was the liberal socio-political changes in the USSR associated with de-Stalinization (1953–1956) and the Khrushchev Thaw that began in 1956. It is noted that ties between American, Canadian and Soviet universities began to be established after Soviet leader M. Khrushchev visited the USA in 1959. Delegations from American universities visited Kyiv University to familiarize themselves with the organization of educational and scientific work. At the same time, guests from South American countries began to visit Kyiv University. It is indicated that with the establishment of diplomatic relations between the USSR and the Republic of Cuba in 1960, frequent guests at Kyiv State University named after Taras Shevchenko joined Cuban scientists and delegations. Furthermore, Kyiv University has established close cooperation with the Central University of Las Villas Province. From the same year, young people from Latin American countries began to enroll in the Preparatory Faculty for Foreign Citizens. It was clarified that in the mid-1960s Kyiv State University named after Taras Shevchenko’s most active international book exchange was with the Library of Congress in Washington. It was determined that despite the «international détente» in relations between the USA and the USSR in 1969, the ties of American universities with Kyiv State University named Taras Shevchenko in the first half of the 1970s did not go beyond isolated contacts.

Cartographic Treasures Destroyed “With Fire and Sword”? The Unwritten Story of the Map Collection of the Bavarian Army Library

This paper deals with the unwritten story of one of the largest collections of early-modern military maps in pre-war Germany, its later dispersion to different institutions, as well as the attempts to reconstruct this cimelia or treasured library of the former Bavarian Army, founded at the beginning of the nineteenth century. During World War II most of the maps of the Wehrkreisbücherei VII were stored in several locations outside of Munich, and survived destruction. After 76 years we can reconstruct the unwritten odyssey of this important map collection. One part was integrated into the Bavarian State Library, where some valuable manuscript maps were recently cataloged. The largest section was taken by American soldiers to the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., where it was stored for more than a decade. This cache was restored to Germany in 1962, when a political dispute arose between the German State and the Free State of Bavaria that was not settled until 1968. This collection became part of the Wehrbereichsbibliothek VI, located since 1978 at Munich’s Bundeswehr University. Unfortunately, due to political decisions in 1984, this section was relocated to a provincial museum.

Une analyse avec S. Freud : A.B., le jeune homme au fétiche

ContextIn the prospect of a theoretical and clinical revisiting of mostly unknown cases of S. Freud, the authors explore that of Carl Liebman, nicknamed “A. B.”. This patient appears anonymously in Freud's 1927 article devoted to fetishism. In France, he has been the subject of some studies that did not fully restitute this unusual clinical situation. ObjectivesThe aim of this research is twofold: on the one hand, to fully reconstruct this original case and, on the other hand, to identify interpretations of transference dynamics as well as theoretical overtures that could resonate with a more current clinical field. MethodBy relying on various sources and in particular on original material from the S. Freud archives available at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., this article focuses on the reconstruction of Carl Liebman's analysis with Freud and of his fate, particularly in psychiatry. ResultsThe analysis of the case makes it possible to identify the impasses to which Carl's various analytical and psychiatric treatments led, and to understand the elements inherent in the patient's functioning that contribute to the repetition of these patterns. ConclusionWe propose some new perspectives on the impasse that Carl would have experienced within his own adolescent process, especially since it was not heard or analyzed as such by the various therapists.

“A National Library for Canada”: The J.D. Barnett Collection

“A National Library for Canada”: The J.D. Barnett Collection Ian Rae (bio) This article will examine the development of John Davis Barnett’s private collection of over forty-two-thousand books, which Barnett had hoped to make the foundation of a National Library of Canada but which ultimately became the Arts Library at Western University in London, Ontario.1 Barnett, a resident of Stratford, Ontario, possessed “the greatest private library in the Dominion” at the time of his widely publicized donation to Western in 1918, according to the Ontario Library Review (“Honorary” 4). To give some idea of the scale of Barnett’s collection, the Library of Parliament in Ottawa, when it opened in 1876, contained approximately forty-seven-thousand volumes (“Inside”) out of the 79,486 collected by the governments of Upper and Lower Canada over the previous eight decades (Todd 1).2 Barnett, in the space of sixty years between [End Page 75] his arrival in Canada as a teenager from England in 1866 and his death in 1926, amassed approximately forty-two-thousand volumes in diverse areas of specialization, including early Canadian and American literatures, engineering, religion, Canadian and American history, and Shakespeare studies. Barnett negotiated with federal bureaucrats on a proposal to nationalize his library between 1915 and 1918; however, Ottawa did not construct a national library until 1953. Today, Barnett’s collection is not as well known as the libraries of his wealthier American contemporaries, such as the bibliophiles J.P. Morgan and Henry Huntington, who established private research institutions that still bear their names. Barnett’s collection was no secret in his day: James Henry Morgan observes in The Canadian Men and Women of the Time (1912) that Barnett “possesses one of the largest private libraries in Can[ada], a considerable portion of which is Shakespeariana” (62). In this essay, I will examine the collecting philosophies and public objectives that shaped Barnett’s national project and motivated his correspondence with renowned Shakespeare scholars, such as J. P. Collier, J. O. Halliwell, and F. J. Furnivall. Although Barnett’s collection was best known for its Shakespearean and Canadian contents, American library precedents hold an important place in his national project. The closest analogy for Barnett’s dream would be the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C., which was “shaped primarily by the philosophy and ideas of its principal founder, Thomas Jefferson, who sold his personal library of more than six thousand volumes to Congress to ‘recommence’ its library after its destruction by fire in 1814” (Cole 10). The Library of Congress also adopted Jefferson’s multilingual and interdisciplinary collecting philosophy because, as John Cole observes, “Jefferson believed that ‘there is no subject to which a member of Congress may not have occasion to refer.’ His belief in the necessity of an informed citizenry in a democracy shapes the Library’s determination to widely share its collections” (10). Likewise, Barnett prized the range, diversity, and integrity of his collection. Hence, when the Buffalo Courier reported in 1913 that Harvard University was courting Barnett to buy the Shakespearean component of his collection, the Courier also noted that the collection was not “likely to be dispersed”: Representatives of Harvard University have been negotiating lately, it is understood, to see if the famous Shakespearean library of J. Davis Barnett of Stratford can be secured for that great American seat of learning. It is rather curious that the [End Page 76] finest Shakespearean library in Canada should be in a city no larger than Stratford, and in the possession of a private citizen, yet such is the case.… There is nothing like it in Canada and it is scarcely rivaled in the United States in any private collection.… Mr Barnett has no need to sell, however, and takes his greatest pride in the growth of his library[.] (“Mr Barnett’s”) In this newspaper article, which was reprinted with commentary by the Stratford Beacon, Barnett also hints, perhaps for the first time, that he might donate his collection as a whole to Western: It is generally expected that [the collection] will eventually go to a Canadian university, probably as a gift or legacy, and in this connection McGill...

Material characterization and functional implications of a Claude Laurent glass flute

The Claude Laurent glass flutes (1805–1844) are singular elements that contributed to the transformation of musical instruments through the introduction of new styles and technologies. These flutes combine improved technical capabilities with aesthetic criteria, making them high-quality instruments and appreciated objects of art. Through the analysis of an 1823 flute, the present study is focused on the determination of their material characteristics and the relationship of these materials with the flute's structure and constructive process. The composition of the glass and metallic parts has been determined by XRF after establishing a specific calibration for each material and energy range. A potash-lime-silica glass, which shows similar composition to some previously analysed flutes conserved at the Library of Congress in Washington, was used for the glass parts of the flute. Composition of the metallic parts of a Laurent flute is presented for the first time. Regarding the larger parts, four different composition groups can be distinguished. The composition established can yield information about the constructive process and can be related to the function of each group. For example, a silver-copper alloy serving aesthetic reasons was used for all visible metallic parts, while hidden parts that demand higher mechanical resistance were made with bronze. Regarding the flute's smaller metallic parts, which consist of the keys and key levers and some mechanical pieces, such as screws or springs, the materials detected include a silver-copper alloy and steel.

An Interview with Abhay K.

Abhay K. (born 1980, Nalanda, Bihar) has published a memoir and seven collections of poetry. He is the editor of four poetry collections. His poems have been published in over 60 literary journals across the world including Poetry Salzburg Review. His poem-song 'Earth Anthem' has been translated into over 50 global languages. He received the SAARC Literary Award and was invited to record his poems at the Library of Congress in Washington DC.This interview was conducted through a series of emails in the month of September 2019.

Aerial Surveys and Geographic Information in Modern China

Abstract. Today when online satellite images are just a click away, access to geographic information showing the latest images of the globe has dramatically expanded, and historico-geographic research based on such information is flourishing. However, in the study of Chinese history, historical research employing GIS or similar technologies is still in its infancy, since “historical” geographic information with a high degree of precision are lacking. From within the ambit of Chinese geographic information, this report specifically highlights aerial surveys effected during the Republic of China era. To start, we review the history of domestic aerial surveys during R. O. C. period. Then, focusing on Nanjing as an example, we proceed to introduce maps that were actually created based on aerial surveys.Chinese aerial surveys date back to around 1930. At the Nationalist Party’s General Assembly in 1929, partisans proposed for the need for aerial surveys. In 1930, the “Aerial Photography and Survey Research Team” was formed within the General Land Survey Department at General Staff Headquarters (National Army of the Republic of China). Consequently, foreign technicians were invited to provide relevant education/training. In June 1931, China’s pioneer initiative in aerial photography took place in Zhejiang province. The aim of aerial surveys in those early days was to create maps for military purposes. Between 1932 and 1939, topographic maps of fortifications located in areas such as the Jiangnan district were prepared. Further, starting from around the same period until the Sino-Japanese War, land registry maps based on aerial surveys were also produced. After the Sino-Japanese War ended, the above-mentioned directorate handed over responsibility for aerial surveys to the Naval General Staff. However, in 1949 the Chinese Communist Party confiscated the maps theretofore produced.Although the aerial photographs and the geographic information produced therefrom during the R. O. C. era were seized by the People’s Republic of China, in actuality, some had previously been transferred to Taiwan. The topographic maps of the Nanjing metropolitan area (一萬分一南京城廂附近圖), based on aerial surveys and drawn in 1932, are currently archived at Academia Historica in Taipei. Comprising a total of 16 sheets, these maps were drawn on a scale of 1:10,000 by the General Land Survey Department.Similarly, other maps (各省分幅地形圖) produced by the General Land Survey Department, comprising a total of 56 sheets and partly detailing Nanjing, are now in the possession of Academia Sinica in Taipei. There was no information about photographing or making in these maps. But almost the same maps were archived at Library of Congress in Washington D. C. According to those maps at LC, based on aerial photographs taken and surveys conducted in 1933, these topographic maps (1:10,000 scale) were completed in 1936.The examples introduced above are topographic maps based on aerial photography. However, starting in 1937, land registry maps were also created. Detailing the outskirts of Nanjing (1:1,000 scale) and comprising a total of 121 sheets, they are now archived at Academia Historica. While the land registry maps were produced in 1937, supplementary surveys were effected following the Sino-Japanese War in 1947.Since the geographic information based on aerial surveys during the R. O. C. era in China were precise, they can serve as a source of manifold information. This report only delved into information developed by the Government of the R. O. C., but it is becoming evident that U. S. Armed Forces and Japan also produced geographic information of their own based on aerial surveys. If the comprehensive panorama captured by all three protagonists can be illuminated, further advances in Chinese historico-geographic studies employing geographic information will be forthcoming.

Concert Hall Acoustics and the Sounding Heritage of the Interwar Period in America: The Coolidge Auditorium (Library of Congress, Washington, DC, 1925)

Starting in 1895 with the work of Wallace Clement Sabine (1868–1919), the science of architectural acoustics was born. Sabine's work on the materialization of sound influenced countless architects and physicists alike, including the famous New York City–based architect Charles A. Platt (1861–1933) and MIT physics instructor Clifford Melville Swan (1877–1951), a former student of Sabine. Both Platt and Swan collaborated on the design of the Coolidge Auditorium, housed in the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Built in 1925, the five-hundred-plus seat chamber hall highlights the idealized listening environment of the interwar period in America, which was still reeling from the noise-filled horrors of World War I as it embarked on a progressive agenda to build the modern urban metropolis. In spite of the increased popularity at the time for large purpose-built halls to house films, big band jazz performances, and grand spectacle entertainment, the Coolidge Auditorium presented a small, intimate space with an explicit desire to reform music in America. In this article I explore this early twentieth-century listening environment and conclude by comparing the Coolidge Auditorium to the concert hall of today, which I argue is directly connected to the built environment of the early twentieth century, with its growing fascination with radio transmission and electronically reproduced music.

A Conversation with Sally McCallum

In this conversation, conducted during the IFLA conference in Wrocław, Poland in August 2017, Sally McCallum retells her beginnings at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. when she worked with Henriette Avram and Lucia Rather on the development of the MARC and UNIMARC formats. Other topics include conversion between MARC and UNIMARC, MARC21 and BIBFRAME projects, and her views on: RDA (Resource Description and Access); ISBD (International Standard Bibliographic Description); IFLA LRM (IFLA Library Reference Model); and UBC (Universal Bibliographic Control) in the face of technological changes.

A Century of Hebraica at the Library of Congress

A Century of Hebraica at the Library of Congress Brad Sabin Hill (bio) Words Like Sapphires: 100 Years of Hebraica at the Library of Congress, 1912– 2012. Exhibition curated by Peggy K. Pearlstein, with the assistance of Ann Brener. The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. October 25, 2012–March 16, 2013. http://myloc.gov/exhibitions/words-like-sapphires/pages/default.aspx Perspectives on the Hebraic Book: The Myron M. Weinstein Memorial Lectures at the Library of Congress. Edited by Peggy K. Pearlstein. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 2012. Pp. 240. The Washington Haggadah, Copied and Illustrated by Joel ben Simeon. Introductions by David Stern and Katrin Kogman-Appel. Translation by David Stern. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press and the Library of Congress, 2011. Pp. 248. T heH ebraicS ectionof the Library of Congress in Washington comprises the youngest of the world’s great Hebrew collections. That it should rate so highly is nothing short of remarkable. After all, the old European libraries had been gathering Hebrew books for centuries before the decision in 1800 to establish a congressional library in the new American capital. When the Bibliothèque de France was still the [End Page 101]Bibliothèque du Roi, it already held Hebrew manuscripts from the libraries of Catherine de Medici and Cardinal Richelieu. The state libraries of Munich and Berlin similarly incorporated Hebrew books from royal, ducal, or patrician collections from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. University and state libraries in Hamburg, Leipzig, Leiden, and Basel held collections assembled by Christian Hebraists of earlier centuries. The Vatican and Milan’s Biblioteca Ambrosiana had much Hebraica by the early seventeenth century, the royal library in Turin and the Medici library in Florence had large collections by the mid-eighteenth, and a collection assembled before the century’s end by an abbot in Parma soon made its Palatina one of Europe’s richest repositories of Hebrew. 1 In 1829 Oxford’s Bodleian Library acquired an extraordinary collection of books and manuscripts assembled by the bibliophile rabbi David Oppenheim of Prague—an acquisition that was pivotal for the development of Hebraica libraries in the English-speaking world. 2In London, the British Museum’s Hebraica from aristocratic and royal collections was supplemented in the middle of the century by the purchase of exceptional Jewish libraries from Hamburg and Padua and a hoard of manuscripts gathered by the antiquarian Shapira in Jerusalem. 3The English [End Page 102]libraries’ acquisition of Jewish collections was imitated on the continent. Important private libraries went to state institutions in St. Petersburg, Amsterdam, and (in 1905) Budapest, and in like fashion the municipal and university library of Frankfurt grew into a major resource for Judaica. 4With the addition of the immense private Chasanowich collection from Russia, the public library founded by B’nai B’rith in Jerusalem in 1892 became the core of the Jewish National and University Library, now the National Library of Israel. 5By 1900, the Old World and Palestine were replete with national Hebrew collections. At the outset the Library of Congress possessed not a single Hebrew book. Thomas Jefferson’s books, acquired for the nation in 1815, included Spinoza’s Opera posthumawith its Hebrew grammar (Amsterdam, 1677) and an even older Hebrew-Latin Mishnah, Baba kamma . . . de legibus ebraeorum(Leyden, 1637), and a few volumes of Judaica, but the congressional library possessed nothing remotely like the holdings of institutions across the sea. 6Nor, for that matter, did any other American institution of the day. It wasn’t until late in the century that institutional Judaica libraries were launched in America, first at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati and then at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York. 7In 1893 a valuable Hebrew collection built in [End Page 103]Italy went to Columbia University. 8Four years later the New York Public Library opened its Jewish Division, which served as a reading room for generations of Hebrew scholars, students, and laymen. 9Yet the Library of Congress, which by the early twentieth century had Chinese, Japanese, and Russian collections, still had no Hebrew books to speak of...

“The perfect library”Carrie Chapman Catt and the authoritative historiography

The very act of remembering was at the core of power dynamics in the suffrage movement, during the years of struggle and after the ratification of the 19th amendment in 1920. In the late 1930s, Carrie Chapman Catt, the former president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, decided to create her own “perfect library” on the woman suffrage movement, that she bequeathed to the Library of Congress in Washington. This paper explores the authoritative dimension of Catt’s endeavor and her effort to control the memory of the movement. Catt made it a personal affair: she obliterated historical accurateness to favor her vision, her agenda and her legacy. She saw herself as the sole custodian of suffragist remembrance.

Iudin’s “Second Library,” 1907–1912: Current Status of Research

The paper explains the history and contents of the book collection assembled by Gennadii Vasil’evich Iudin (1840–1912) between 1906, when he sold his 80,000-volume “first” library to the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, and his death in 1912. The paper also examines efforts in both Russia and the United States to reconstruct the contents of the second library.