“A book used, after all, is fulfilling a higher mission than a book which is merely being preserved for possible future use.”

— Librarian of Congress Herbert Putnam, 1905

1906

May 17 – Writer H.G. Wells is among the luncheon guests hosted by Librarian Putnam at his “Round Table,” an informal dining room on the top floor of the Library. A few months later, Wells describes the event in his book The Future in America: “I found at last a little group of men who could talk. It was like a small raft upon a limitless empty sea. I lunched with them at their Round Table, and afterwards Mr. Putnam showed me the Rotunda.”

October – President Roosevelt congratulates Putnam on the purchase of the 80,000-volume private library of G.V. Yudin of Siberia. The acquisition will give the Library preeminence in Russian literature, not only in the United States but also, as far as Roosevelt knows, “in the world generally outside of Russia.”

64. G.V. Yudin, the wealthy Siberian distiller and amateur bibliographer, whose collection of Russian literature came to the Library in 1906, is pictured (next photo) along with sample slips from his handwritten inventory (above).

1907

April – The last shipment of the Yudin library arrives from Siberia. Since the sum paid for the collection “scarcely exceeded a third of what the owner himself had expended,” Putnam considers the acquisition “primarily a gift.”

November 4 – Putnam receives approval from the attorney general to use the following wording for gifts or bequests to the Library: “To the United States of America, to be placed in the Library of Congress and administered therein by the authorities thereof.”

December 20 – Responding to an inquiry from the president regarding a proposal from J. Franklin Jameson of the Carnegie Institution about the desirability of a Hall of Records for governmental departmental papers, Putnam approves, as long as the records themselves “are not appropriate for the collections of the Library.” On December 24, on learning of Putnam’s endorsement of an archives building, Jameson thanks the Librarian and restates his understanding of the position held by both: “that there is no conflict at all between the desirability of gathering into the Library of Congress as much as it cares to house of those manuscript materials which are primarily historical and the necessity (and utility to historical scholars incidentally) of providing a better storehouse for the main masses of administrative papers.”

65. In 1906, a large crowd gathered to hear President Theodore Roosevelt speak at the cornerstone-laying ceremony for the House of Representatives Cannon House Office Building. The Library, located across the street, loomed in the background.

1908

May 22 – Congress approves $320,000 to construct a bookstack in the southeast courtyard.

July – The American Library Association publishes the American edition of the Anglo-American cataloging rules, which represent a compromise between cataloging rules developed by the Library of Congress and other libraries. The editor is J.C.M. Hanson, chief of the Library’s Cataloging Division.

November – The Library purchases, from Albert Schatz of Rostock, Germany, Mr. Schatz’s renowned collection of more than 12,000 early opera librettos.

November 12 – In the Library’s Senate Reading Room, Putnam presides over a memorial meeting for Ainsworth Rand Spofford, who died on August 11. In his annual report, Putnam eloquently notes that Spofford’s title of Chief Assistant Librarian during the past eleven years “did not obscure his greatest office, that of Librarian Emeritus, nor the distinction to the Library or the honor to himself of the service which for thirty-two years he has rendered as Librarian-in-Chief.”

December 29 – The Librarian accepts a complete set of the world’s largest printed encyclopedia, the 5,041-volume Tu Shu Tsi Cheng, presented by the Chinese government “with the acknowledgements of China to the United States for the remission of the ‘Boxer indemnity.’”

1909

March 4 – President Roosevelt approves the Appropriations Act for fiscal year 1910. The new law authorizes the Librarian of Congress to transfer surplus materials to other governmental agencies within the District of Columbia as well as to other public libraries and also “to dispose of or destroy such material as has become useless.”

March 4 – The President approves an act of Congress that amends and consolidates the copyright law. The revision is based primarily on a bill prepared by the Copyright Office.

June 30 – Oscar G.T. Sonneck, chief of the Music Division, reports to Putnam on his “gratifying” success in soliciting gifts of original music manuscripts for the Library.

August – The Library publishes the first volume of A List of Geographical Atlases of America in the Library of Congress, which contains analytical descriptions of more than 3,200 atlases. The compiler, Philip Lee Phillips, chief of the Division of Maps and Charts, notes that atlases have not received the bibliographic attention they deserve.

December – Superintendent of the Reading Room William Warner Bishop informs an audience of academic librarians that the Library of Congress already is “on the way toward becoming a national lending library and bureau of information.”