Have been coming to again and again this month. This is the fourth installment of the series. We have focused mostly on architecture. You might recall we had House Speaker on the folklife, but this one is different to me. It speaks very clearly and closely to my heart as a historian. I know visitors that come to d. C. , they want to go to library of congress, they are in on and they should be. Researchers cannot wait to read in the main reading room. It lands a certain something lends a certain something to the seriousness of what they are doing. Scholars that really know the score walk right past the Jefferson Building and go into you may not like the way it looks, but the madison ling is where it is at. That is where the manuscripts is where it is at. That is where the manuscripts are. I am getting this from the website. 60 million items over 11,000 separate collections, truly the greatest manuscript treasure of American History and culture. To talk to us about that collection is Jeff Flannery, an old friend of the society in particular friend of scholars who work in American History, like my former colleagues and i. For 40 years, put together a document history project, and it brought us to jeff nearly every week. He and his staff helped us produce those volumes. Jeff is the head of the reference and services section. He has been in the management for 31 years, and that is all i will say. Jeff. [applause] Jeff Flannery well, thanks for coming today, and i feel especially honored to be here at the invitation of the United States capitol historicals ready. Chuck and lauren have been very helpful in preparing the talk. It is a great honor to be here to speak to the group. Is purpose of my talk today for the Manuscript Division, but it is more than that. I want the audience to know who we are, who the Manuscript Division is, how we work. And our place at the library, the role of scholarships. I am hoping that you will be enlightened to some degree by my remarks, and then afterwards if you have questions, i would be glad to answer them. Technology that many of the people whose papers are at the library of congress would have had no inkling of. Power points. That is many of these folks predeceased us. There are some questions about this. I will start with the basics. What is the manuscript . How do manuscripts get used . How does the manuscript reading room different from the main room and other reading rooms, and how do we achieve our mission . That is questions about the collection, then we will talk about access. What kind of subjects are covered by the collection . How does one find manuscript material that is relevant to research . Are any of the materials online . I will spare you the specimens. There the suspense. There is a lot online. And if you visit us, what do you need to know you start coming in . Is it cold . My colleagues have an issue with that. I can answer in the affirmative it is cold. You might want to bring a sweater or jacket if you are doing extended research. What is the manuscript, and how to researchers use it . I dont want to trip over my definition, so i will read a little bit of this. It is an unpublished handwritten or typed document that has historic or literary value. That is the basic definition. Re is much more difficult detail, but that is the basic one. How the manuscript reading room differs from the reading rooms . We are format driven, format based. We only provide primary source materials. And what is the mission of the definition . We were established as a separate unit in 1897. The library is, was established in 1800. We are the oldest federal cultural institution. Sorry for the smithsonian area they cannot claim that. The smithsonian. They cannot claim that. And we moved to the magnificent Jefferson Building as a separate unit. The mission of the division is to acquire, organize, describe, and make accessible original materials that primarily document American History and culture. Manuscript . Are unpublished primary source documents that ,nclude many types, diaries correspondence, notebooks, accounts, journals. Scrapbooks, press clippings, photographs, everything. Handwritten and type written. Microfilm,terpress, computer diskettes. There is the typical example. We have a letter written by Thomas Jefferson on the left to his daughter patsy, giving some fatherly advice. Commission for Robert Todd Lincoln in the union army as an officer, signed by his father. Next to that is a typescript thet of a book called emergence of totalitarianism by a political philosopher. Next to that is a map of jefferson, washington dc. He drew in an accompanying letter. That is not a manuscript. That is Sigmund Freuds pocket watch. It came with his papers. We have taken it, but it is not a manuscript. We put them in boxes, put them on shelves. There are stacks. They are always limited to members of the public, but that is where we keep the material. It is house off of the reading room housed off of the reading room. As chuck had mentioned earlier, we have 65 million items and 11,000 plus collections. I know an item can be a single scrap of paper. It can be this scrapbook here by newton chittenden, who was an amateur anthropologist that documented native americans in the Pacific Northwest in the early 19th and 20th centuries. The definition can vary. It can be 400 pages in a diary. It could also be a rough draft of the declaration of independence by Thomas Jefferson. This is among the top treasures. This is jeffersons draft with byotations by, or revisions john adams and benjamin franklin. Kept in, it is not even the division itself. We have it in a fault under vault under strict climate and temperature concerns. Why, what is the purpose . Why do we need it . They have crossed everything out. It cannot be that important. Why is it special . According to my colleague, i will not take the wraps, but there are 86 changes on that. Not count them. Scholars come back to these changes and revise what were the intent of the founders in the declaration . These are debates still going on today. Scholars need access to these original source materials to interpret these documents. And as i said, not every , be ast might have valuable as a rough draft, but they are all important. They are unique. That is another characteristic of the them of the collections. This is a letter written by Theodore Roosevelt to one of his sons, dated 1890. He was not yet president , but he was serving on the Civil Service commission. He is writing to his son. He says his sons name was theodore too, but he was called blessed ted. I sent you a picture letter because you are not old enough to read writing. You will be glad to see your, when he comes back. Do you want to play in the barn with him and go swimming when he returns . Your loving father. He gives him a little story. A cow go out to see the world, they meet up there and are frightened. He chases them as fast as they can run. When they get home in safety they make up their minds they will never run away again. [laughter] one can only imagine the older Theodore Roosevelt was saying, i got got a letter from his wife saying we got this kid running around, give him some control. Are special, not only because they are unique, irreplaceable documents written by famous people in American History. Many collections are not related to historical figures at all but document important moments in history from a variety of perspectives, including science, literature, art, architecture, politics. The documents that the arm the authors speak for themselves. Compare the private and public lives of an individual even to discover something new. Individuals who come to the manuscript reading room do so for all sorts of reasons. Dissertation, writing articles, discover material for exhibits, track down evidence or track down legal argument or hypothesis, find an ancestor, or look to artistic inspiration for novels or music. Everyone over High School Age with a Serious Research idea can use the collection. This is our organization and division. There are three sections. We have a staff of historical specialists and administrative staff who have curatorial responsibilities, divided by subject era or historical periods. These are responsible for acquiring collections. With donor relations. Looking at outreach and exhibits. Many of the collections that come to the Manuscript Division, buy gifts or copyright deposit. We purchase material sometimes, but we have a limited budget. When the collections are required, preparation goes to work. They will arrange and describe collections. Aids,ill create fighting don box lists, and they stack them. And the reference staff, where i work, we actually serve the collections. We will physically bring the material out to the reading room. We answer questions about the collections. Phone, letter, or email. These are some of our staff. Who work on the materials for acquisitions. This is dr. Michelle who is one of our acquisition specialists with the lincoln papers. Of coarse this is what our archivists get to deal with, and technicians, sometimes materials will show up in boxes. Maybe underneath on the bottom of the picture. A lot of times they come in a suitcase and have mold, so we have to get the Library Preservation folks to treat that. Excitement, that opening something for the first time and going through it and sorting it. You are probably the first to put eyes on these things since the person that wrote the letter. It is a very exciting time when the collections come into the division. I have been known to put my nose back there and start looking around. Archivists dont like that. This is one of our processing areas. You need a lot of space, so we have these tables. They start the process of sorting materials, putting it in order, getting some intellectual control over collections of documents. After they are finished organizing materials, they will put them on the shelf. You might think those are books in the foreground. They are not. Where webound items have tipped in the actual documents onto the backing page. This was a common preservation method up until world war ii thee excuse me, many of things were organized chronologically. After that professional practice changed, and you went into a series of boxes were you put the materials in acidfree fullers and stored them in acidfree boxes folders and stored them in acidfree boxes. When you visit us, this is where you go, the manuscript reading room. This is where the researchers interact with the materials as well as get guidance from the staff. Our reading room can be busy. Weously after hours can have as many as 10,000 researchers visit us over a year. It fluctuates between 8500 and 1000. People fill up the seats, someone looking at a folder of Robert Oppenheimer tapers, atomic scientist, and next to him is someone looking at the charles dean papers, architecture drawings by the famous designers. And behind them someone trying to trace any ancestor in the records of the maa cp that we naacp that we have. It changes from one table to another. This is the way the reading room used to work look. This is in the Jefferson Building. You cannot accommodate 40 or 50 people in that space, but it gives you a sense of Historical Research perhaps back in the 1930s or 1940s. You can see the bound volumes, many collections were that way. That table kind of lent itself to looking at that. That is a vision of the past. Some of the oldest material that we have of manuscript came to the library with a purchase of Thomas Jeffersons library in 1815. You probably know when the british burned the capital, they burned the books that came with the original library they have started collecting in 1800. Jefferson offered his library for sale to rebuild the collection. Part of that or manuscripts. Manuscripts that were manuscripts. They have been in the library since 1815. These were from the virginia company. Of theon was cognizant historical documents. He took great care preserving items, collecting them. These go back to the founding of the Jamestown Colony in 1607. You can see some books, different records documenting the establishment of that colony. Another significant i just love this picture. This is how i look in the morning sometimes. This is peter force, he was a former mayor of the. He was a of washington dc. Gathering documents for the american revolution. He was gathering the american archives. He never finished but that six or seven volumes printed got six or seven volumes printed. The transcribed letters related to the revolution. He transcribed letters related to the revolution. During that process he collected tens of thousands of documents and transcribed other documents that went into his collection. The library not the library, congress purchased for the for the sum of 100,000. That was big money back then, and formed the basis of the collection. In the 19th century, the state department had custody of many important manuscript collections, principally the letters of washington, jefferson, james madison, james accumulated,hese the accumulated these papers over time. By the early 20th century they were deemed such historical interest that they needed a more fitting repository to make these accessible to the research community. 1903, president Theodore Roosevelt by executive order transferred custody to the library of congress. And again since we bound those 1930s, andhe early you can see some of the washington papers, they are arranged chronologically. It is also a demonstration that the divisions collecting interest has evolved since its concentration of clinical and diplomatic history. Since world war ii, the division has selected cultural history, science and the archives of nongovernmental organizations. The focus is still primarily on American History. Among the crown jewels are the papers of 23 american president s, the library is collecting librarys collecting predates the Library System inaugurated with Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt and extended to the present. The library of Congress Still has, as a single institution, has more residential papers that any other institution. We dont have papers of every andident before hoover roosevelt. John quincy adams and john adams papers are at the nasa chooses Historical Society massachusetts Historical Society, and another state has rutherford b. Hayes and others. We have the most significant collection of papers in one place. More treasures can be found in these papers. This is a copy of the dunlap broadside inside the washington papers. It is technically a fragment because you see the bottom the dunlap broadside was the first printing of the american copies orn, about 100 so were done and sent to different colonies are they sent one to king george the third. I guess they wanted him to read it. This will have their copy in england. They still have their copy in england. There are 200 today. One went on the market a few years back and sold for over 1 million, so it can get you an idea. This is washingtons personal copy. John hancock, the president of the continental congress, since washington this copy sent washington this copy and asked him to read it to the troops. They were in new york, and he did. Washington had it read for the troops, and they got so excited and wound up about it, they went down to the bottom of new york city and pulled down the statue of king george the third. And later brought it down turned it into bullets for the American Army, which i thought was interesting, now the American Army was shooting pieces of george the third at the british. Closeup of it. What kind of subjects are . Vered by the collections how do researchers find manuscript material that is relevant . What resources are available . I think i answered that. We are adding things on line to our website. Almost any subject you can think of, jefferson very famously, when he offers his library to congress, said there would be no subject a member of congress could not refer to in his library. The division has followed that up. Politics, military history, civil rights, art, anything you can imagine in the u. S. Experience is documented in our collections. Catalogs andies of finding aids that extend back to ,he early days of the division in the early 20th century when they published handbooks that provided guidance to what was in the collections to now more modernday fighting aids finding aids. We usually do not describe collections on the item level. There are some exceptions like the president s papers president s papers, but we have them on the folder and subject level. Every day well not but we are adding content every month to the online presence. In some respect putting ourselves out of business. The president ial papers, up from washington to lincoln, have been digitized. They are all online. We get very little calls for researchers coming in the rooms to look at those collections. One of the largest collections of papers that we have, personal papers, or the papers of Daniel Patrick moynihan. The collection is 1. 3 million items. It is kept in 3100 containers. This is the largest collection of personal papers the division has. And of course we solicited moynihans papers back in the 1970s when he had served in the kennedy, johnson and nixon administrations at various posts. He was the ambassador to india. Little did we realize it would be he would be a three term senator from new york and add voluminously to that collection. It is a frequently consulted collection, and is one of our more valuable ones. It also helps to highlight the more than 900 collections we ine of members of congress the division. Most of those divisions collections date from the federal congress and the continental congress, and they are of individuals that served before world war ii. After world war ii, congressional collections become much larger. And theyffs increase, produce more paper, and it makes it difficult to take these collections because of how large they are. We are also one of the centerpieces or the study of american judicial history with the papers of dozens of Supreme Court justices going back to the finding of the nation. Thurgood marshall and Harry Blackmun are two examples, but we have papers like oral warren oral warren earl warren, douglas, so we are the center for a scholarship on the history of the court. Everypapers are consulted day by readers who are interested in how the court came to make decisions, what kind of insight they can gleam from the justices making these decisions. This is an example of one of the papers. Earl warren, dated in may, something 1954. It is addressed to the chief, by felix frankfurter, an associate justice, and he said dear chief, this is a day that will live in glory. It is also a great way in the history of the court. Day in the history of the court, and not in the least for the tip really for the deliberation which brought about the result. He was talking about brown versus board of education, which was a unanimous 90 decision that overturned legal segregation in the country. All of the justices recognized the importance of this case, which of course was overcoming the years of precedent set by plessy versus ferguson for legal segregation. Frankfurter is congratulating warren because he cobbled together, he got the justices to vote as one, unanimous decision. Which would show the public that the court was united in this decision, and one can only 4magine if that was a 5 decision back in 1954, the opposition to this decision would have been much more enhanced, if it was a more divided decision. Well, one of my favorites, george patton. We have his papers which included diaries. 5,has an entry from march 1943, where he says, am leaving in a few minutes for algiers, hope for the best. This terminates this volume. General keys will see that gets to you. It is to frank to be shown to anyone but it may one day be of historical value. His place in the world and his work. We have a significant collection of his papers, which highlights of many military collections that we have which document conflicts from the colonial period p to the present. We have the diaries of not just generals and leaders, but ordinary serviceman, especially in the civil war. As well as the papers of leaders like john paul jones, john j pershing, george patton, and admiral william crowell. We are a center for the study of military history. Things, youof the can open a box and go through it. Here is a dispatch received by the uss ranger, l raid on pearl harbor. This is not a drill. Was is how the military spreading the news about the attack. Papers. E from pattons this is a map for the invasion of sicily. You can see on the bottom righthand corner that it was a classified document at one time labeled secret. Also at the top has it, which highlights the fact that we have classified documents which have topsecret designations. Of course in time these documents become declassified and we stamp it on so we can prove we are not letting things being declassified before their time. Having the agencies like all their fingers at us. We have records of nongovernmental organizations, the largest of which is the records of the naacp. There are over 3 million items. This is the largest collection we have. It has over 8600 boxes. It is also the most frequently used collection we have. The division is one of the centers for the studies of Civil Rights Movement in the 20th century. The records of the organization kobach to its founding in 1909. Go back to its founding in 1909. We have the records of other organizations. The records of the National Urban league and National Womens party, brotherhood of sleeping car importers, league of women voters, and american colonization society. Voluminouse large collection. But we can also have a collection that is just one piece of paper. This is hourly Harvey Oswald collection. This is a letter that he wrote in 19 to qqq to the 1962 to the American Rescue committee where he is trying to get help for his wife to try to come to the United States. His wife was russian born. Of reformersapers and nonpoliticians. This is booker t. Washingtons papers. We have the papers of people like susan b anthony, margaret sanger, and frederick douglass. Again it is not just politicians per se, but people involved in reform activities. We also have the papers of many novelists, authors. Womens papers just recently went online. Is a as you might see, very famous picture of whitman on the right that circulated in the 19th century because he was interested in nature. He wrote about it quite a bit. Here he was saying, look, i am so good at nature that butterflies land on my finger. Well, that was a cardboard butterfly that he had. We have that in the collection too. We have the papers of such notable authors as philip roth, ralph ellison, and vladimir nabokov. Some papers of others like archibald mcleish. She was a poet in the mid20th century. He didothers double duty at the library of congress. Here is a letter from ernest mcleish in 1943. Mcleish sent hemingway transcripts of ezra pounds propaganda recordings that he did for the italians in world war ii for mussolini. Hemingway is reacting to that. He is saying, thanks for sending the status of ezras rantings, he is obviously crazy. He was crazy as far back as the latter cantos. He deserved punishment and disgrace, but what he really deserves most is ridiculed. A a lot of saying, people thought that pound became a traitor and should be executed, but here anyway is saying that may be a little too harsh. We have the papers of many inventors. Individuals associated with the history of technology, including Alexander Graham bell. This is one of the earliest if not the earliest drawing of the telephone in 1876. The papers of performance like jim cronin and jessica tandy. We have the papers of more than 200 journalists extending back from the founding of the nation up to the present. Eric several rights papers. The division completed the organization of the New York Times columnist anthony lewiss papers, making them available. Here is a letter of an architect. Of course sometimes they make for the most interesting reading because of their visual eye. They include drawings. It breaks up the monotony of the text every now and then. Gilbert writing, visiting washington in 1905. This is us looking at the senators after dinner. I guess that is what they did for tourist entertainment back on. Back then. I said our collections document primarily American History and culture. So i lied to you. We do have the papers of sigmund freud, who was an important figure, but not an american. The came too the division could be a whole separate session. They have gone through much study and interest in recent years and the library has recently digitized them and put them online. But you have to know your german, they are not in english. This is freuds prescription for the wolfman, a famous case i know nothing about. In ours an hou collection on the papers of carl cycling. Carl sagan. This is the golden disk. If other life finds out about earth, this is what it is like. It has a recording of chuck berrys rock n roll song. Not only do we have papers that were generated by americans, we also in the beginning of the 20th century started a project to custody documents related to American History but from foreign repositories. As you might remember, the u. S. Was not established as an independent country until 1776. The archives of Foreign Countries have many documents relating to our history, especially france, britain, spain, and germany. 1900s, the the early library sent a team of individuals to identify these documents and distorted transcribing them. And started transcribing them. He did not have xerox machines, so they had handwritten transcription. As technology progressed, we went to to what was called xerox copies and then microfilm. These were repositories in spain. Are in theirls native languages and we do not provide translations services. Areyou will have to know your foreign languages. Not only did we copy materials, but we also acquired materials from original materials. This is from our records of the russianalaskan church. Theheir official title, Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of america, the diocese of alaska. 87,000 items and over 750 boxes. We reproduced it on 402 microfilm reels. These are Church Records that include registers of birth, marriage, deaths dating from the time of peter the great along with confession and communion records. They most mostly document communities in alaska, but also in canada and some part of the continental United States. Those are the original documents, and letters, and books. Polishre the declarations of admiration and friendship for the United States. Ofhave over 111 volumes signatures and artistic drawings that the government of poland commissioned. Figure,g to one approximately 1 6 of the population of poland in 1825 signed these volumes. Then they gave them to the United States as a gift to celebrate in 1926. This is another celebration this is another collection we put online. There is other genealogical interest in the collection. Organization,ster the National Archives and records administration. Because we have papers of so many prominent government officials. This is anotherwe cross pollinae National Archives, which holds the official records of the government. Many people sometimes dont know the difference. We have the personal papers of individuals, their personal property that they gave to the library. The official records of the government and up at the archives, of which we are not. Hamilton fish is a great example. He was secretary of state under grant. He served in congress. Over 350 containers of his papers. If you are starting some aspect of his life, you will want to come to the library of congress to look at his papers. You also want to go to the National Archives where the department of state records are housed. So how do you get access to these materials . Documents that describe the contents. Of and students in the case the moynahan papers can be hundreds of papers on. The breakdown by box numbers which allows researchers to request material. It tells Important Information including how the collection was size and extent. You can go to our webpage f or those. You can also call us. We answer the phone in the size and extent. ManuScript Division. This is our webpage. Contact information is on the right. There are links that can take you to the finding aids online collections. What do you need to know before visiting the manuscript reading room . You should know a few things. This is on our webpage. Sometimes donors in those excess impose access restrictions. You should know that before visiting us. Sometimes collections are offsite. We are continually growing so we have to find storage. These are tencent collections. Some of the documents still have classified markings on them. In for disclosure i should mention we have a active preservation program. The division in the library microfilm collections, we digitize them and to make the surrogates available. I dont want anybody to get the impression that they are going to run out after this talk and get that George Washington dunlap broadside. No, we have it on digital edition. You are more than welcome to look at the surrogate, but not the originals. We want these documents to be preserved for future generations. Thexcept we accept gifts in perpetuity. We are located in the Madison Building. Not as ornate as the jeffersonville building. This is the entrance to our meeting room. There are our hours. We have lots of rules when you come in. We want people to treat the documents with respect. Again, it is part of our general preservation program. We dont allow you to put your personal belongings in. We have lockers in the front of the room. We will give you notes and paper. We will even give you a pencil. We have 36 cameras in the room. We have a big monitor there. We have a dedicated Security Officer at the front of the room that does entrance and exit inspections. These are unique items. Many of them are very valuable. We want to make sure they stay in the room and are treated with respect that they should be accorded. We have many important researchers come into the room. I cant tell you all of them, but even some of georges descendents. That is the end of this. I hope some of you have questions. I would be glad to answer them. I want to thank you for your kind attention. Perhaps he will get inspired, youre going to write the book and article and go to the Manuscript Division and do your research. Thank you. [applause] back, sir. Ne in the i will limit myself to two brief questions. Where was the Manuscript Division in the Jefferson Building, and where is the preservation room in the Madison Building . F my understanding is where was the main Script Division in the Jefferson Building . It was in what they call the northwest curtain. It could have changed a couple times over the course of those years. In the 1940s the division transferred to the adams building, which is the building behind the Jefferson Building on 2nd street. In 1981, we moved into the Madison Building. We have been there since 1981. We are in a big long preservation room. Jeff the preservation room. Lab is on theon ground for of the Madison Building. That is where we house some of these vaults. They dont even let me see it. A comment and a question. Sometime ago i was using a rather bulky piece of material from the Manuscript Division, which would have been very awkward to photograph myself. I got a beautiful copy from the library Reproduction Services for a very reasonable price. Jeff they would be glad to know it was reasonably priced. [laughter] minor question. I was making of the photo you had thinking of the photo you had of processing material. When you take out the letters, do you keep the emblems . Jeff the practice has changed over the years as you might expect. In the divisions earlier years, they cap envelopes, but now the Standard Practice is that we dont. Like i said, do not be surprised if you open up a box of collections and you see envelopes in there. That takes a lot of time and effort to reproduce. Right now we would not keep them unless of course they shed some light on the enclosures. It could be taxed or Something Like that. Text o Something Like thatr. Could you talk about what i call the two stars of the library and the acquisition process for one, the gutenberg bible, and secondly, the first map of america . Jeff those are outside my area of expertise. I know that the gutenberg bible, and i have some colleagues that might set me straight on that that the gutenberg bible was purchased as a special 1920stion back in the or somewhere around there. I think they got special money from congress to do it. The first or somewhere around there. Map my buddies in the geography and map division i know much more about that. I might have to defer to them. One of the strengths of the library is that we are specialized. I dont get out of the Manuscript Division much. I would be speaking out of turn about those items. The gutenberg bible is in the librarys rare and special book collection division. Librarys part of the geography map division. I will have to take a pass on that. You mentioned the copyright office. Those items are published, arent they . Jeff actually not. You can copyright anything. I could copyright the text of my powerpoint here today if i wanted to register it. WenuScript Division dont get a lot of material from the copyright office. Are most significant collection is a series of dramatic works that go back to the 20th century up to 1970. It is a voluminous collection. These are unpublished dramatic works that were sent in to be registered for copyright. Many of them were never produced. On it does cast a light american creativity from the early 20th century. For instance if you were studying the harlem renaissance, the great outpouring in the 1920s of africanamerican culture and arts, you could find many plays that africanamerican copyright butr never saw the light of day. So we do get some collections. Of course the library builds its collection from the print collection, its music collections built from transfers from the copyright office. The president ial papers that have not gone online. What is the schedule for putting online the ones that have not already been digitized . Jeff there probably is a schedule. I cannot recall. I might go out on a limb and say you would probably see most of them in the next five to 10 years. The 23 collections that we have in the next five to 10 years will be available. I understand they probably have been scanned. It is just a question of getting the right descriptive data up there. Those other collections include some of the largest ones we have the Woodrow Wilson papers, howard taft papers, William Roosevelt papers. Those are some of the largest we have. Thousands of containers. Hundreds of thousands of documents. E, and theget up ther library is committed to that. It will take time. Years 120 years standards have changed in terms of authentication. Do you go back on the old ones to apply current standards to them, or once it is locked in it is locked in . Jeff if i understand you right, have collecting policy evolved over the years . Lets say in the early 1900s we would take a collection we especially took collections of copies, which would be in private hands. The thought was that we will accept those photocopies that somewhere down the line we will get the original. That did not happen in some cases. Today we might apply a much more rigorous standard to taking copies of something. We want the originals. Thingsrigorous could evolve tha. Acquisitions are one of the most tasks that the staff of the division do. How do you evaluate the Research Potential for a collection, and whether it is worth the librarys effort and resources to acquire and process inhouse it . Tasks that the staff of the division do. Those are all important considerations. A lot of thought goes into that. 1900 one dated the first census of when they did the first census of the division. We are now north of 65 million. That does not include unprocessed. We have to apply much more rigorous standards today than in past. A question about the integrity of collections. The implications are that if the collection has a butterfly or medal, it is part of the collection, it stays in the Script Division. That was not always the case. Some collections have been really raped and things have gone to rare books. Is there any possibility, especially with modern technology, of things getting back in the collection they belong in, for at least copies of them . Cases it ise appropriate to transfer materials to another collection. We get lots of audio tapes in collections and videotapes. They have to go to our sister division because that is a format based issue. Perhaps what you are alluding to is our peer collection. Those collections came in the 19th century. We do not have a Rare Book Division in the 19th century. We do not get a Rare Book Division until the 1930s. I will defend my predecessors if i can. They made the best decision based on the format and resources on how to make that material available, how to house it. Today we might take a longer dispersehat and not the collections. It is based on format. Can we go back and put them together . That is a difficult task given the state of the librarys records. Sometimes we have good records that shed light on when a collection came in, how it was treated, where and when, and sometimes we dont. When the library was in the capital, it was in a cramped area. Pictures, we have things on the floor everywhere. Sometimes organizational records, the librarys records may not have been preserved as we have liked them to be. For an institution we do a pretty good job of tracking the origin of the collection and things like that. I know scholars want everything in one spot. I dont blame them. Sometimes that is difficult to do. We are talking about an institution over 200 years of practice. Sayeff, i just want to us if you have a titldal wave. Cspan audience here. Thank you. [applause] sundays at 7 00 p. M. Eastern series ofstories, a six interviews with prominent photojournalists. Thursday, a conversation with Frank Johnston out his photos and career. When they brought oswald out, he was within three feet of me out jack ruby, who leapt from behind me and went in between bob jackson and i, and fired the gun. We were all thrown to the floor because there must have been 100 these in that basement that sunny morning. Watch our photojournalist interviews on oral histories sundays at 7 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan3. 1967, nearly 500,000 u. S. Forces were serving in vietnam and 11,000 americans died. Of the next on reel america, a needy film from the ear. The American Navy in vietnam, the film describes aircraft carrierbased helicopter and fighter jet strikes, swift boat patrols, amphibious marine landing, medical and community eight, and construction by navy engineers. Dawn, somewhere deep within the river delta, a Vietnamese River Assault Group moves against the viet cong. With it goes an American Navy lieutenant. He serves in a guerrilla war of seek and destroy
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