173. Gene Luen Yang, a writer of graphic novels and comics, became the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature in 2016. He was accompanied at his inauguration by former ambassadors Kate DiCamillo (2014–15) and Jon Sciezska (2008–9). Yang will travel nationwide over the course of his two-year term promoting his platform, “Reading Without Walls,” which shows kids and teens that reading is a vital part of their lives.
2008
January 3 – Children’s book author Jon Scieszka is appointed the first National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. The position was created “to raise awareness of the importance of young people’s literature as it relates to lifelong literacy, education, and the development and betterment of the lives of young people.” The Librarian of Congress selects the National Ambassador, based on recommendations from a committee representing many segments of the book community. Ambassadors serve a two-year term. The Library’s Center for the Book and the Children’s Book Council administer the National Ambassador initiative, which is supported by private funds. Subsequent National Ambassadors are Katherine Paterson (2010–11), Walter Dean Myers (2011–13), Kate DiCamillo (2014–15), and Gene Luen Yang (2016–17). In addition to appearances around the country, each participates in the National Book Festival.
September 10 – Librarian Billington presents the first Library of Congress prize to a distinguished novelist, the Library of Congress Lifetime Achievement Award for the Writing of Fiction, to Herman Wouk. This initial award inspires subsequent annual awards, each presented in connection with the National Book Festival. From 2009 to 2012, the Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for fiction is given to John Grisham (2009), Isabel Allende (2010), Toni Morrison (2011), and Philip Roth (2012). Recipients of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction are Don De Lillo (2013), E.L. Doctorow (2014), Louise Erdrich (2015), and Marilynne Robinson (2016).
September 19 – National Treasures, Local Treasures: The Library of Congress at your Fingertips, an educational program that brings the resources of the Library of Congress to selected cities across the country, debuts at the Broward County Library in Fort Lauderdale, the home of the Florida Center for the Book. Hosted in 2008 by affiliated state centers in five states, National Treasures, Local Treasures introduces Library of Congress state-oriented resources and includes demonstrations by Library educational specialists about how to bring their state’s history alive with rare primary source materials available on the Library of Congress website. Each program includes special guests from the state, including local authors and library directors, and members of Congress. In addition to the Broward County Library, the hosts are the Denver Public Library (October 27), the Dallas Public Library (November 24), the San Francisco Public Library (December 11), and the Los Angeles Public Library (December 12).
2009
January 27 – The Library launches its Twitter feed.
April 7 – The Library’s YouTube channel, created June 9, 2007, goes public.
174. In April 2009 Librarian Billington announced the launch of the Library’s World Digital Library.
April 21 – In Paris, Librarian Billington announces the launch of the World Digital Library (WDL), an international collaborative project with support from UNESCO and others. Working with and drawing on the resources of cultural institutions around the world, the WDL makes available online copies of professionally curated primary source material freely available in multiple languages. Resources and formats vary widely and include rare books, maps, manuscripts, musical scores, prints, photographs, and film. WDL partners are mainly libraries, archives, or other institutions that contribute to the project in other ways—for example, by sharing technology, or by convening or co-sponsoring meetings of working groups—or that support the project financially. The partnership now includes works from more than 180 organizations in 81 countries and offers more than 12,000 items to educators, scholars, and the general public.
175. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her young children, seen here, and Representative Robert Aderholt and his young son helped open the Young Readers Center in the Jefferson Building in 2009.
October 29 – Billington opens the Young Readers Center in the Jefferson Building, the first Library space devoted to the reading interests of children and teens.
176. This Civil War–era image of an African American Union soldier with his wife and children is from the Liljenquist Collection, which the Liljenquist family began donating to the Library in 2010.
2010
March – Collector Thomas Liljenquist donates to the Library more than 500 ambrotype and tintype photographs of both Union and Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. The images are displayed at the Library from April 12 through August 12, 2011, at an exhibition, Last Full Measure: Civil War Photographs from the Liljenquist Family Collection. The family continues to add to this collection.
July 2 – The Library announces that a recent hyperspectral imaging of Thomas Jefferson’s rough draft of the Declaration of Independence has “clearly confirmed past speculation” that Jefferson made an important word correction in his writing of the document. Scientists in the Library’s Preservation and Testing Division have verified that he changed the phrase “our fellow subjects” to “our fellow citizens.”
177. Poised to depart from the Jefferson Building, the “Gateway to Knowledge,” an 18-wheeler containing information and facsimile treasures from the Library, began a one-year tour across America in 2010–11.
September 26 – A specially designed 18-wheel truck containing information and facsimile treasures from the Library begins a one-year tour to cities and towns across America. The first stop is on the grounds of the Handley Regional Library in Winchester, Virginia. By the time the tour concludes on September 21, 2011, at the Culpeper County Library in Culpeper, Virginia, the Gateway to Knowledge rolling exhibition visits 40 locations in 34 states. It is made possible through the support of Abby and Emily Rapoport and other members of the Library’s James Madison Council.
2011
J. Edgar, director Clint Eastwood’s biographical film about longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover stars actor Leonardo DiCaprio. Hoover worked at the Library of Congress for five years before joining the Department of Justice. The movie includes a scene featuring the card catalog area in the Main Reading Room, and implies that Hoover’s obsession at the FBI with both recordkeeping and investigative work were influenced by his brief Library of Congress career.
178. The Library launched its National Jukebox interactive website in May 2011, making thousands of historic sound recordings—such as the Victor Talking Machine Company’s “Bandana Days—One Step”—available to the public.
May 10 – The Library launches its National Jukebox, an interactive website that allows users to play thousands of historic sound recordings—many of them unavailable to the public for more than a century. The more than 10,000 previously out-of-print recordings cover popular music, opera, comedy, religious music, and political speeches produced by the Victor Talking Machine Company. The National Jukebox is a collaboration between the Library and Sony Music Entertainment.
2012
June 14–16 – The Library hosts its first “Mostly Lost” film workshop to tap the collective knowledge of film scholars and archivists for information about unknown or little-known silent or early sound motion pictures. Films are screened before an audience of “detectives,” who are encouraged to call out anything—actors’ names, locations, set details—that might aid in identification of the work. The popular workshop, hosted in the state-of-the art theater at the Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation in Culpeper, Virginia, becomes an annual event.
179. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey (2012–14) signed copies of her book at a 2013 reading.
180. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, a groundbreaking book on environmental science published in 1962, was one of 88 books selected by Library of Congress specialists and curators for the 2012 exhibition Books That Shaped America.
June 25 – The Library opens Books That Shaped America, an exhibition of books selected by subject specialists and curators throughout the Library. Its purpose, according to Librarian Billington, “is to stimulate a national conversation on books written by Americans that have influenced our lives, whether they appear on this initial list or not.” Many of the 88 books are first editions from the Rare Book and Special Collections divisions and rarely on view. Members of the public are encouraged to comment on the books in a survey on the Library’s 2012 National Book Festival website and to nominate other titles for subsequent additions of the exhibit. On June 16, 2016, America Reads, a follow-up exhibit, recognizes the public’s choice of 65 books that have had a profound effect on American life. Forty of these books are chosen directly by the public. An additional 25 titles are selected by the public from a list created for the 2012 Books that Shaped America exhibition.
September 13 – Natasha Trethewey, the 19th Poet Laureate Consultant to the Library of Congress and US Poet Laureate, opens the Library’s 2012–13 literary season, which also marks the 75th anniversary of the Library’s Poetry and Literature Center. Trethewey’s first term is noteworthy for her “Office Hours,” during which she meets with the general public in the Library’s Poetry Room—harkening back to a tradition established by her predecessors in the consultant’s post from 1937 to 1986. On June 10, 2013, the Librarian appoints her to a second term. Her signature Poet Laureate project in 2013–14 will be a regular appearance on PBS NewsHour’s Poetry Series, featuring on-location poetry-related reports in various US cities, conducted with NewsHour Senior Correspondent Jeffrey Brown.
181. The Library of Congress acquired the personal papers of American astronomer, astrobiologist, and popular scientist Carl Sagan in 2012. The Sagan collection was donated by writer (most notably of the TV series Family Guy), producer, and director Seth MacFarlane, and is officially designated The Seth MacFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive. Carl Sagan is shown here in 1979 with a Viking Lander model.
182. A visitor took advantage of an open house day on February 18, 2013, in the Library’s Main Reading Room to photograph the interior of the dome 160 feet above her. The Library hosts approximately two million public visitors each year.
2013
September – The Library announces the availability of the Braille and Audio Recording Download (BARD) online service through its National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. BARD permits patrons to download braille and talking books to their mobile devices without cost.
September 22 – The Library announces the first recipients of the Library of Congress Literacy Awards, organizational prizes initiated and funded by philanthropist David M. Rubenstein. Awards go to Reach Out and Read (Rubenstein Prize, $150,000), 826 National (American Prize, $50,000), and PlanetRead (International Prize, $50,000).
183. Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, a major figure in the American Civil Rights movement, visited the Library’s 2014 exhibition The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom.
2014
July 29 – The Library opens to the public and makes available online a collection of approximately 1,000 pages of correspondence between 29th US President Warren G. Harding and his mistress, Carrie Fulton Phillips. The letters had been locked in a vault in the Library’s Manuscript Division since their donation to the Library in 1972.
July 29 – The Library launches an online site for its collection of World War I sheet music.
November 6 – The Library opens a 10-week exhibition, Magna Carta: Muse and Mentor, which celebrates the 800th anniversary of the first issue of Magna Carta. The 1215 Magna Carta, on loan from England’s Lincoln Cathedral, is the centerpiece of the exhibition, accompanied by rare materials from the Law Library of Congress and other divisions. The exhibition’s focus is on how this great charter of rights and liberties stands at the heart of English and American law and has influenced the legal systems of many other democratic nations. Magna Carta: Muse and Memory also celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Lincoln Magna Carta’s first visit to the Library of Congress.
184. President Barack Obama, along with Michelle Krowl of the Manuscript Division, viewed the original manuscript of President Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address on March 8, 2015. Accompanied by his two daughters, the president made a private visit to the Jefferson Building to examine the manuscript, which the Library placed on display for four days to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s speech.
185. A participant went behind the scenes at a Library tour during the 2014 Summer Teacher Institute.
2015
April 7 – The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB), a collaboration launched in 2013 among the Library of Congress, WGBH Boston, and the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, launches its website. The project saves and makes digitally accessible significant at-risk historical public television and radio programs before they are lost to posterity. By the summer of 2016, approximately 68,000 items comprising 40,000 hours of programming from the late 1940s to the present have been digitized for long-term preservation.
April 15 – The Library places online a selection of recordings from its Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature, a series of audio recordings of renowned poets and prose writers reading from their works. Highlights include Robert Frost interviewed by fellow Library of Congress Consultant in Poetry Randall Jarrell in 1959; Kurt Vonnegut giving a lecture in the Library’s Coolidge Auditorium in 1971; and Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz reading with Paul Muldoon in 1991. The archive, established in 1943 when Allen Tate was Consultant in Poetry, contains nearly 2,000 recordings of poets and prose writers.
186. Singer and songwriter Willie Nelson was the 2015 recipient of the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. The all-star tribute featured performances by Nelson, as well as Edie Brickell, Leon Bridges, Rosanne Cash, Ana Gabriel, Jamey Johnson, Alison Krauss, Raul Malo of The Mavericks, Neil Young, Promise of the Real, Buckwheat Zydeco, and past Gershwin Prize honoree Paul Simon.
September 3 – The Library marks the 15th anniversary of its National Book Festival, which was first held on September 8, 2001—three days before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Western Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon. This anniversary event, which also honors Thomas Jefferson, the Library’s primary founder, attracts more than 100 leading writers and a record number of book lovers to the Walter E. Washington convention Center. It is the second year at the indoor center following 13 successful years on the National Mall. Author headliners include David McCullough, who participated in the first festival in 2001, and Louise Erdrich, winner of the 2015 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.
187. In 2015, school children from the Rosa L. Parks Elementary School, in Prince Georges County just outside Washington, DC, came to the Library to look at items from the newly acquired Rosa Parks Collection.
September 16 – The Library launches an online selection of records from its Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape, a series of audio recordings of renowned poets and prose writers reading from their work in their native languages. The archive, which began in 1943, contains nearly 700 recordings of poets and prose writers participating in sessions at the Library of Congress and at other locations in Spain and Latin America.
September 30 – Librarian James H. Billington retires, telling the staff “it has been the great honor and joy of my life to lead the Library of Congress for 28 of my 42 years of public service in Washington,” and praising his colleagues at “this amazing American institution.” As the 13th Librarian of Congress, Billington doubled the size of the Library’s traditional collections while simultaneously creating a massive new digital Library of Congress. He also established the National Book Festival; the John W. Kluge Center and its Nobel-level John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity; the Library’s four-building, state-of-the art audio-visual conservation center in Culpeper, Virginia; the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song; and other programs to “get the champagne out of the bottle” for the American public.
October 1 – Deputy Librarian of Congress David H. Mao becomes the Acting Librarian of Congress.
2016
February 1 – The Library releases statistics for fiscal year 2015. Its collection now comprises more than 162 million physical items in a wide variety of formats. In fiscal year 2015, it added 1.7 million physical items to its permanent collections; registered more than 443,000 copyright claims; and responded to more than one million reference requests from Congress, the public, and other federal agencies.
February 24 – President Barack Obama nominates Carla D. Hayden, chief executive officer of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland, to be the 14th Librarian of Congress.
February – The Library completes the digitization of thousands of manuscripts and photographs that once belonged to civil rights icon Rosa Parks and makes the collection available online to the public.
April 20 – Carla D. Hayden testifies before the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration regarding her nomination by President Obama to become the 14th Librarian of Congress. On June 9, the committee votes unanimously to forward Hayden’s nomination to the full Senate with the recommendation that it be approved. On July 13, the US Senate confirms Carla D. Hayden by a vote of 74 to 18.
188. On August 25, 2016, the Library’s Communications Office recorded a welcome photo and video in the Great Hall for Carla D. Hayden, the new Librarian of Congress.
September 14 – Carla D. Hayden is sworn in as the 14th Librarian of Congress. She is the first woman and the first African American to hold the position. The Library’s collection of more than 162 items includes more than 38 million cataloged books and other print materials in 470 languages; more than 70 million manuscripts; the largest rare book collection in North America; and the world’s largest collection of legal materials, films, maps, sheet music, and sound recordings. In fiscal year 2016, the Library employed 3,149 permanent staff members and operated with a total 2016 appropriation of $642.04 million, including the authority to spend $42.13 million in receipts. Since its founding in 1990, the James Madison Council has sponsored more than 350 projects and initiatives. Its financial support has exceeded $223 million, approximately 54 percent of the private funds raised by the Library during this period.
189. On September 14 in the Library’s’ Great Hall, with her mother holding a copy of the Library’s Lincoln Bible, Carla D. Hayden take the oath of office to become the 14th Librarian of Congress. Chief Supreme Court Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., (left) administers the oath as Speaker of the House Paul D. Ryan observes.