Author’s Note and Acknowledgments

I am grateful to several individuals who helped make this publication possible, particularly Julie Chrystyn Opperman, a member of the James Madison Council, the Library’s private-sector donor group. Her generous contribution in support of this volume was a vote of confidence that came just at the right time.

In the Library’s Publishing Office, editor Amy Pastan’s assistance with illustrations and text was invaluable. Support from Director of Publishing Becky Clark and editors Aimee Hess and Margaret Wagner was much needed and appreciated.

Cheryl Fox, collections specialist in the Library’s Manuscript Division, helped with both photos and textual questions. Raymond White and Peter Stark traced acquisition dates for several specific collections. Additional help in locating images came from Katherine Blood, Ann Brener, Kia Campbell, Glen Cooper, Barbara Dash, Peter Devereaux, Jeffrey Flannery, Paul Fraunfelter, Eric Frazier, Jennifer Gavin, Grant Harris, Megan Harris, Todd Harvey, Martha Kennedy, Michelle Krowl, Harold Leich, Shawn Miller, Barbara Natanson, Robin Rausch, Cheryl Regan, Marietta Sharperson, and Georgia Zola.

I want to thank several people at D Giles Ltd., first of all publisher Dan Giles, who persistently pursued the idea of a publication that would build on my first book, For Congress and the Nation: A Chronological History of the Library of Congress (1979). Also, for their skilled work, managing editor Allison McCormick, production manager Louise Ramsay, designer Alfonso Iacurci, and copy editor Jodi Simpson.

I am fortunate to have served on the staff of the Library of Congress since 1966 and to have been learning and writing about this unusual institution for nearly as long. Sarah L. Wallace, a former director of publishing, suggested my first article, which was published in the Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress in 1971.

In the decades following, I worked closely and with pleasure on various projects with publishing directors Dana Pratt (1978–1993) and W. Ralph Eubanks (1995–2013) and staff members Joanna Craig, Frederick B. Mohr, Evelyn Sinclair, and Blaine Marshall, among others.

Two historically minded Library officials stimulated my interest in the Library’s history. David C. Mearns, a distinguished staff member from 1918 until 1967, served as Assistant Librarian from 1949 to 1951 before becoming chief of the Manuscript Division. Dan Lacy started his career at the National Archives and was Assistant Librarian of Congress from 1950 to 1951 before joining McGraw-Hill Publishing. We met in 1976 when I headed Librarian Boorstin’s Task Force on Goals, Organization, and Planning, and Dr. Boorstin appointed Lacy to be chair of the Task Force’s advisory group on publishing. As a publisher Lacy also played a leadership role in two reading and book promotion organizations that preceded the Library of Congress Center for the Book: the American Book Publishers Council and its successor, the National Book Committee (1954–1974).

Other Library officials and administrators who have encouraged me along the way are listed below in rough chronological order. Before the year 2000, they included Charles D. Goodrum, Paul L. Berry, John G. Lorenz, Mary Lethbridge, Alan Fern, William Matheson, John C. Broderick, and Carol Nemeyer. In recent years, encouragement has come from Ralph E. Ehrenberg, Roberta Shaffer, and David Mao.

Former staff members to whom I am grateful for their interest, ideas, and occasional personal “LC history” files are listed below, also roughly in chronological order. Before the year 2000, they included Marlene D. Morrisey, Helen-Anne Hilker, Don Reines, Robert D. Stevens, Robert Zich, Connie Carter, Nancy E. Gwinn, Janet Chase, Lucia S. Rather, Warren Tsuneishi, Arthur J. Lieb, Margaret Shannon, Kurt Maier, William Sittig, John Knowlton, Mary Wolfskill, John Wolter, Lou Jacob, John Wayne, Alice D. Schreyer, and Lynda Corey Claassen. In recent years encouragement came from Helen D. Dalrymple, Frank Evina, Kathy Woodrell, Maurvene D. Williams, Evelyn Timberlake, Josephus Nelson, Judith Farley, C. Ford Peatross, Helena Zinkham, Abby Yochelson, George Thuronyi, Maria Pallante, Carl Fleischhauer, Giulia Adelfio, Peter Armenti, Cheryl Adams, and Audrey S. Fischer.

Finally, I value the friendship of four library historians whose own work—about the Library of Congress and library history more widely—has encouraged me to expand my interest in the multiple roles the Library of Congress has played in American life and culture. In particular, Donald G. Davis, Jr., and Wayne Wiegand invited me to contribute to several reference works they planned and edited; Jane Aikin co-edited and helped me plan the Encyclopedia of the Library of Congress, a ten-year project that concluded in 2004; and Mary Niles Maack planned and edited The Library of Congress and the Center for the Book, a festschrift published in my honor in 2011.

5. This ca. 1800 watercolor of the planned US Capitol shows the future home of the Library of Congress.