“Librarians in general are not people given to luxuries: they are content to live modestly; but they ought not have to live penuriously.”

— Librarian of Congress Herbert Putnam, 1910

1911

March 4 – The Librarian announces that he has arranged for the continuation of service to Congress whenever the House of Representatives is sitting, including all-night sessions, holidays, and “Sunday mornings when Congress is sitting, even when eulogies are being delivered.”

April 6 – In response to the introduction in Congress of several bills on the subject, Putnam submits a special report aimed at improving legislation through the establishment of a legislative reference bureau. Included are materials describing legislative reference bureaus in several states, particularly New York and Wisconsin. He concludes by emphasizing “that for the work to be scientific (i.e. having only truth as its object) it must be strictly nonpartisan.”

December 4 – Putnam notes that the Library recently declined to accept custody, from another government agency, of the records of the American military occupation of Cuba from 1898 to 1902. The reason was that “such papers should go to a national archives repository.”

67. The Government Printing Office truck, parked at the Library’s loading dock in 1912.

1912

January – In a handbook describing the Library’s organization, collections, and services, William Warner Bishop, superintendent of the Main Reading Room, emphasizes that since 1897 the institution, “while rendering greatly increased service to Congress, has begun a career of service to the whole nation.”

January 25 – Appearing before the House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee, Putnam proudly displays copies of maps, prints, and newspaper pages made by the Library’s new Photostat and Flexotype machines and asks the subcommittee to approve a small appropriation for the salary of the machine operator.

February 26 – The House Library Committee (part of the Joint Library Committee) holds hearings to consider a bill that would establish a congressional reference bureau. Witness James Bryce, British ambassador to the United States, testifies in favor, but only after he is satisfied that the subject “was one of entirely non-partisan character.” Charles A. McCarthy of the Wisconsin legislative reference department emphasizes the need for close supervision so such an office “will not go to sleep and become a great big bureau of red tape and checked so that it cannot be made a football of politics.”

March 16 – President William H. Taft issues an executive order directing the Librarian to review documents not wanted by the executive agencies in order to preserve “such of the papers as he may deem to be of historical interest.”

68. The Library’s most important illuminated Hebrew manuscript is called the Washington Haggadah because of its presence in the Library of Congress. It was completed in Central Europe on January 29, 1478. It is part of a major collection of Hebraica donated to the Library in 1912.