1926

January – William Dawson Johnston begins his duties as a Library of Congress acquisitions representative in Europe. His headquarters are in Paris.

April 23 – Joseph Pennell dies, bequeathing most of his estate to the Division of Prints in the Library of Congress, to be used to promote its collections and services. He chooses the US government as beneficiary “because the United States is spending money on prints and encouraging art and artists.”

October–November – James B. Childs, chief of the Documents Division, visits Russia, Latvia, and Lithuania “to form new connections” for the acquisition of government publications.

79. Library benefactor Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge sitting with the Manhattan String Quartet during a recording session in an NBC studio in 1925.

1927

March – The new bookstack in the northeast courtyard is completed. The book collection now totals more than 3.5 million volumes. The first separate custodial unit for the Library’s rare books is located on the top floor of the new bookstack; Putnam assigns V. Valta Parma to be keeper of the Rare Book Room.

April – Putnam announces two new endowments: one for a chair in American history, the other for a chair in fine arts. The Librarian explains that a “chair” takes the form of an honorarium paid directly to a division chief for work in “interpreting” the collections to the inquiring public.

June – The recent endowment for a chair for American history enables Putnam to appoint the well-known historian J. Franklin Jameson of the Carnegie Institution as the chief of the Library’s Manuscript Division.

September 1 – The Library initiates two large projects, each funded for a five-year period by John D. Rockefeller. Project A will enable the Library to acquire, on a greatly expanded scale, copies of source materials in foreign archives relating to American history. Project B provides for the further development of the Library’s bibliographical apparatus, in particular the National Union Catalog.

November 18 – Archer M. Huntington of New York City establishes an endowment for the purchase of books relating “to Spanish, Portuguese, and South American arts, crafts, literature, and history.” On April 24, 1928, he donates funds to establish a chair of Spanish and Portuguese literature. On November 17, 1936, he donates funds to the Library of Congress Trust Fund Board “to equip and maintain” in the Library a room to be known as the Hispanic Society Room of Spanish and Portuguese Arts and Letters and to establish and maintain a chair of poetry of the English language.

80. Robert Winslow Gordon, the first head of the Archive of American Folk Song, in the Library’s new recording studio in 1930.

1928

February–April – Charles Martel, chief of the Catalog Division, joins two former Library of Congress colleagues—William Warner Bishop and J.C.M. Hanson—in Rome to install in the Vatican Library “the methods of cataloguing in vogue in American libraries.” The Carnegie Corporation pays for the project.

May – Using funds donated by “public-spirited citizens,” Putnam establishes the Archive of American Folk Song in the Music Division. The project will protect and preserve the folk songs and ballads now “endangered by the spread of the radio and the phonograph, which are diverting the attention of the people from their old heritage.”

May 21 – President Coolidge approves an act of Congress authorizing the purchase of land, at a cost not to exceed $600,000, directly east of the Library to be used as a site for a second Library of Congress building.

July 1 – Putnam establishes a division of Chinese literature, which he plans to make into “the center on this hemisphere for the pursuit of oriental studies.” Sinologist Arthur W. Hummell is placed in charge.

December 11 – More than 100 private citizens meet and organize the Friends of Music in the Library of Congress; the first president is Nicholas Longworth of Ohio, the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

81. Speaker of the House of Representatives Nicholas Longworth, the first president of the Friends of Music in the Library of Congress, in the mid-1920s.

1929

April 5 – On the occasion of his thirtieth anniversary as Librarian of Congress, Putnam is honored by a festschrift edited by William Warner Bishop, director, University of Michigan Libraries and superintendent of Reading Rooms, Library of Congress, 1905–15, and Andrew Keogh, director, University of Yale Libraries. The Library now has an annual appropriation of more than $1 million, a book collection of more than three million volumes, and a staff of nearly 800.

September 10 – Through the Library of Congress Trust Fund, the Beethoven Association of New York establishes the Sonneck Memorial Fund, to be used by the Music Division for the advancement of musical research. The fund is named for Oscar G.T. Sonneck, a former officer of the association and chief of the Music Division.

October 29 – Harry F. Guggenheim, president of the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics, provides funds for the endowment of a chair of aeronautics and for the purchase of aeronautical material. On January 1, 1930, the Library establishes a new Aeronautics Division.

1930

February 7 – Congressman Ross A. Collins of Mississippi makes a one-hour speech in the House of Representatives advocating the purchase of the Otto H.F. Vollbehr collection of incunabula, which includes one of the three perfect vellum copies of the Gutenberg Bible. The cost would be $1.5 million.

82. In 1930, in the midst of an increasing financial crisis, Congress approved the $1.5 million purchase of the Vollbehr collection of incunabula for the Library. Among its treasures is this Gutenberg Bible, printed by Johann Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany in 1455. It was the first great book printed in Western Europe from moveable metal type, and therefore marked a turning point, not only in technology, but also in the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern world.

April 1 – As a result of a cooperative project with the American Library Association, the Library begins supplying Dewey Decimal Classification numbers on its printed catalog cards.

April 16 – The Carnegie Corporation gives the Library $5,000 to organize a collection of pictorial archives of early American architecture.

June 4 – In reporting in favor of the purchase of the Vollbehr collection to the House of Representatives, Library Committee Chairman Robert Luce of Massachusetts points out that the purchase would set a new precedent, because the US government has not previously “to any significant degree engaged in aiding the arts from the Public Treasury, in other words, subsidizing culture.” On June 16, testifying in favor of the Vollbehr purchase, Putnam reminds the Senate Library Committee of the 1815 purchase by the government of the library of Thomas Jefferson for $24,000, “in proportion to the resources of the country a sum not much short of the million and a half” asked for the Vollbehr collection. Moreover, “what is true of that purchase is certainly true of the one before you.” It would form “a most admirable substratum for a (greater) national library, such as yours is not yet, but should develop into.” President Hoover approves a Supplemental Appropriations Act, which includes $1.5 million for the Vollbehr collection, on July 3.

June 13 – President Herbert Hoover approves an act of Congress that authorizes the extension and remodeling of the east front of the Library, to include a new Rare Book Room, and an appropriation of up to $6 million for the construction of an annex building, to be located on the land east of the Library, which was acquired by the act of May 21, 1928.

1931

March 3 – The president approves the Pratt-Smoot Act, which appropriates $100,000 annually to the Library to “provide books for the use of the adult blind readers of the United States” and its territories.

September – In his new book The Epic of America, historian James Truslow Adams pays tribute to the Library “as a symbol of what democracy can accomplish on its own behalf. . . . Anyone who has used the great collections of Europe, with their restrictions and red tape and difficulty of access, praises God for American democracy when he enters the stacks of the Library of Congress.”

“Anyone who has used the great collections of Europe, with their restrictions and red tape and difficulty of access, praises God for American democracy when he enters the stacks of the Library of Congress.”

— Historian James Truslow Adams, 1930

1933

February 10 – Because he “knows of no greater contribution this government has made to the public than the Library of Congress,” Representative Simon Fess of Ohio, chairman of the Joint Library Committee, urges his fellow members of Congress to appropriate funds to construct the Library’s annex.

1934

February 15 – At a meeting of the House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee, Putnam states that the Library’s collection is now the largest in the world, but he cautions that the methods of counting used by the British Museum and the Bibliothèque nationale de France “are somewhat different than ours and it is not safe to undertake comparisons.”

March – The extension of the east front of the Library building is completed, providing new, specially designed quarters for the Rare Book Room, which are modeled after Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

May 9 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt approves an act adding sound reproductions for the use of the blind to the Library’s service for the blind program.

June 19 – President Roosevelt approves an act of Congress establishing the National Archives of the United States. It stipulates that “all archives or records belonging to the Government of the United States (legislative, executive, judicial, and other) shall be under the charge and superintendence of the Archivist.” The Librarian of Congress and the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution are included as members of the advisory council for the new organization.

1935

January 21 – In a letter to Carl H. Milam, secretary of the American Library Association, Putnam rejects the idea of locating a federal library bureau, which would coordinate the activities of federal libraries, at the Library of Congress, asserting that the functions of such an agency “would tend to confuse and impede the service to learning which should be the primary duty of our National Library.” Instead, the Librarian feels the bureau “should be associated with one of the executive departments of the government.”

March 6 – Former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., dies, bequeathing his private library to the Library of Congress.

April 8 – Radio station WMAL in Washington, DC, broadcasts part of a concert by the Kolisch Quartet from the Coolidge Auditorium—the first radio broadcast of a Library chamber music concert.

June – The Library provides approximately 25,000 duplicate volumes from its law collections to the newly established Supreme Court Library, located directly across from the Library at First Street on Capitol Hill.

June 6 – President Roosevelt approves an act increasing by $2,866,340 the limit on funds to be appropriated for the construction of the Library’s new annex.

June 12 – The Architect of the Capitol awards the contract to construct the Library of Congress Annex.

83. Gertrude Clarke Whittall, who between 1935 and 1938 donated five Stradivari instruments to the Library, established a foundation to support concerts in which the instruments were to be used, and donated funds to build a pavilion in which they were to be housed.

November – The Library publishes the Guide to the Diplomatic History of the United States, 1775–1921, by historian Samuel F. Bemis and bibliographer Grace Gardner Griffin; they dedicate their volume to Herbert Putnam, “that organizer of opportunity.” Bemis, chairman of the George Washington University History Department from 1924 to 1934, also headed a Library of Congress project funded by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., from 1927 to 1932, which enabled the institution to acquire, on a greatly expanded scale, resource materials from foreign archives for the study of American history.

December – Philanthropist Gertrude Clarke Whittall donates four stringed instruments made by Antonio Stradivari to the Library. On March 2, 1936, she establishes a foundation to support the maintenance of the instruments as well as concerts in the Coolidge Auditorium in which those instruments will be played. In January 1937, she adds a fifth Stradivari instrument to her gift. In 1938 she donates funds to build an elegant pavilion in which the instruments are to be housed and displayed. The Whittall Pavilion, adjacent to the Coolidge Auditorium, opens on March 6, 1939.

84. In 1935, Mrs. Gertrude Clarke Whittall donated the “Castelbarco” cello, made by Antonio Stradivari in Cremona, Italy, in 1699 and originally owned by Count Cesare Castelbarco of Milan. Whittall was passionate about the instrument, declaring, “As for the ‘Castelbarco’ ’cello, any artist who has once drawn his bow across its strings will be haunted forever by its unforgettable tone. When all the strings are playing together the ensemble is like a heavenly choir, for they all speak the same language.”

1936

January – The Library publishes the first issue of the Digest of Public Bills, prepared by the Legislative Reference Service at the direction of Congress. The Digest was a description and status report concerning legislative bills currently being considered by Congress that were not of a private or local nature. On November 1, 1967, the Library installs two leased computer terminals to be used in the preparation of the Digest of Public General Bills and Resolutions, the first use of computer terminals in the Library.

January 3 – Herman H.B. Meyer, director of the Books for the Adult Blind Project, reports on the rapid development of “talking books” and announces the inauguration of a new annual publication, Talking Book Titles.

March 1 – At the suggestion of the Association of Research Libraries, the Library establishes an interlibrary loan clearinghouse.

85. In 1937, designer Rockwell Kent (right) presented the Library with a new bookplate (left) for its rare book collection. Its design, emphasizing the institution’s “national character,” was described by Mr. Kent: “The central part of my design, the book and the American eagle, towering as it does monumentally over a background suggestive of our cities and mountains and a foreground dotted by little figures that may be taken to be the publica, is as all-embracing a graphic expression as I could contrive of the importance that the Library of Congress should be to America.”

1937

June 23 – Describing the new Library Annex at an American Library Association meeting, Martin S. Roberts, the superintendent of the Main Reading Room, points out that with its 249 miles of shelves, it will hold about 10 million volumes—or about twice as many as the main Library building.

1938

January 3 – Putnam reports that Joseph Auslander, lecturer on poetry at Columbia University and poetry editor of the North American Review, has been hired for the present year to serve as the Library’s first consultant in poetry.

March – A five-year juvenilia bibliographic project is inaugurated, using funds donated by J.K. Lilly, Jr.

March 1 – Using funds from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Library establishes a Photoduplication Service to supply “distant investigators with microfilm and other photoduplicates of materials otherwise not available for use outside of Washington.”

June 20 – President Roosevelt approves an act of Congress providing that “upon separation from the service, by resignation or otherwise, on July 1, Herbert Putnam, the present Librarian of Congress . . . shall become Librarian Emeritus.” Putnam’s annual salary as Librarian Emeritus will be $5,000.

November 1 – The Carnegie Corporation gives the Library a three-year grant totaling $13,500 for the development of its Indica collection and “for the promotion of greater interest at large in the study of India.”

December – The Library begins to move staff and materials into its newly completed Annex Building.

86. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, starring Jimmy Stewart, was one of the first popular films to feature a scene at the Library of Congress.

1939

Actor Jimmy Stewart stars in director Frank Capra’s classic political film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. In one scene, he admires the Great Hall in the Library’s Jefferson Building; the “shrine” displaying the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, then on public view at the Library, can be seen in the background.

January 3 – The Annex Building is opened to the general public with the exception of the two sixth-floor reading rooms, which are not ready until the spring.

January 27 – In a special tribute addressed to Putnam, the American Council of Learned Societies informs the Librarian that he, and the collaborators and associates whom he has chosen, have made the Library of Congress “an indispensable instrument on the American continent for the promotion of learning and the increase of knowledge.”

January 30 – In its request for funds for fiscal year 1940, the Library asks for $1,000 to initiate a program of “microfilming the more important newspaper files in the Library to preserve them from complete loss through disintegration.”

April 5 – On the 40th anniversary of Putnam’s taking the oath of office as Librarian of Congress, the reading rooms of the new Annex open to the public.

May 11 – In a letter to President Roosevelt, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter endorses the president’s suggestion that poet and writer Archibald MacLeish would make a good Librarian of Congress, primarily because “only a scholarly man of letters can make a great national library a general place of habitation for scholars.” On June 7, President Roosevelt nominates MacLeish to be Librarian of Congress. The Senate Library Committee, chaired by Senator Alben W. Barkley of Kentucky, holds hearings on the MacLeish nomination on June 13. MacLeish is the only nominee. The Senate committee continues its hearings on June 19. Representatives of the American Library Association testify against the nomination, reiterating the resolution adopted the previous day by the association at its annual conference in San Francisco: “the Congress and the American people should have a Librarian . . . one who is not only a gentleman and a scholar but who is also the ablest library administrator available.”

Senator Barkley presents an executive report favoring MacLeish’s confirmation on June 20, and on June 29, after a two-hour debate, the Senate confirms MacLeish’s nomination by a vote of 63 to 8.

May 24 – Under the terms in the will of the composer’s mother, Mrs. Rose Gershwin, the Library receives its first manuscripts by George Gershwin. The group includes the original scores of Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris, and Porgy and Bess. Through the years, the continually expanding Gershwin collection comes to include other musical manuscripts, correspondence, documentation, and pictorial materials, such as photographs and both paintings and drawings by George and Ira Gershwin. The Ira and Leonore S. Gershwin Fund is established in 1992. On March 17, 1998, the George and Ira Gershwin Room near the Coolidge Auditorium opens to the public.

87. The Gershwin family presented a series of gifts to the Library, including this original score of Porgy and Bess (left), and a self-portrait painted by George Gershwin (right).