The Hispanic Division of the Library observed its 65th anniversary in October with a panel discussion of the division's 60-volume guide to Latin American scholarship and the entry of congratulatory remarks into the Congressional Record.
Cândido Portinari's "Discovery of the Land" (1941), one of four murals in the Library's Hispanic Reading Room
Central to the division's anniversary commemoration was its celebrated "Handbook of Latin American Studies," which came to the division when it was formed 65 years ago, in 1939. With the help of 150 contributing editors, the handbook is still published, in electronic as well as print format. To mark this anniversary, the division organized a panel discussion, "The Hispanic Division and the Handbook of Latin American Studies: Scholarship and Technology," featuring scholars' discussions of the handbook's contributions to academic study.
Panelist Roberto González Echevarría, Sterling Professor of Comparative Literature at Yale University, addressed the importance of the handbook to the study of Latin American literature since the 1930s. He said literature, history and all the humanities are intersecting "in new and wonderful ways" to explore the past and the present.
Franklin Knight, the Leonard and Helen Stulman Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, recalled his first visit to the division to do research 35 years ago, when Howard F. Cline was chief. Echoing former chief Cole Blasier's reference to the division as a "home away from home for Hispanists from around the world," Knight elaborated on the various periods and schools of history analyzed in the handbook. Knight, a former president of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), recalled that Cline and Blasier founded this major international multidisciplinary professional association in the Hispanic Division in 1966.
Dan Hazen, assistant director for collections development at the Widener Library of Harvard University, said the "Handbook of Latin American Studies" has been indispensable in developing Latin American studies for almost seven decades. He also cited examples of the contributions of Hispanic Division chiefs and specialists in professional associations such as LASA, the Seminar for the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM), American Historical Association (AHA), and others.
Peter T. Johnson, curator emeritus of the Iberian and Latin American collections at Princeton University, traced the trajectory of U.S.-Latin American relations as reflected in the 60 volumes of the handbook. During these complicated decades, the publication always maintained its scholarly objectivity, he said.
Interior of the Hispanic Reading Room, Thomas Jefferson Building
Johnson also spoke warmly of longtime handbook editor Dolores Moyano Martin, who died last year, and her 29 years of stewardship of the guide, which during her tenure was made fully available online. While Blasier was division chief and Martin was editor, volume 50 of the "Handbook of Latin American Studies" was the first Library bibliography to become available electronically through MUMS. During the l990s Martin and her staff undertook the retrospective conversion of the first 55 volumes of the handbook, with the generous collaboration of the MAPFRE Foundation of Spain. Both the retrospective conversion and all ensuing volumes are online on the HLAS database, which is accessible in English, Spanish and Portuguese.
Carolyn T. Brown, director of collections and services, welcomed the panelists and an audience of more than 50 guests to the event. Division Chief Georgette M. Dorn gave a brief history of the division, followed by a PowerPoint presentation by Everette Larson, head of the reading room. He displayed the many digitization projects which the division has undertaken, including the "United States and Brazil: Expanding Frontiers, Comparing Cultures" and "The United States, Spain and the American Frontier: Historias Paralelas."
The History of the Hispanic Division
The primary function of the Hispanic Division continues to be the development of the Library's Hispanic and Portuguese collections; the facilitation of their use by the Congress of the United States, other federal agencies and scholars; and the explanation and interpretation of the nature and content of the collections online and through published guides, bibliographies and studies.
Although the division wasn't formally established until 1939, the Library of Congress has been collecting materials about Spain and Portugal and the early history of the Americas since its creation more than 200 years ago. Thomas Jefferson's private collection, which served as one of the cornerstones of the modern Library of Congress when he sold his books to Congress in 1815, included almost 200 volumes about Spanish and Portuguese America, the Caribbean and the Iberian Peninsula, in Spanish, French, Italian or Latin—all of which he could read with ease.
The Library acquired additional materials related to the Hispanic world and the history of the Americas throughout the 19th century, sometimes as mandated by Congress (following the U.S.-Mexican War, 1846–848, for example) and sometimes by gift.
The opening of the new Library of Congress building in 1897 (now the Thomas Jefferson Building), led to a reexamination of the purpose and mission of the institution. New departments for manuscripts, maps and music were created, and Librarian of Congress John Russell Young (1897–1899) recognized the need for increased emphasis on the acquisition of materials related to the nations of the Western Hemisphere. Knowledge of the Library's growing specialization in the Hispanic and Portuguese field, in turn, began to attract important new gifts.
In 1927 Archer M. Huntington, Hispanist, poet and president of the Hispanic Society of America, established the Huntington Endowment Fund at the Library of Congress. The interest from this gift continues to be devoted to the purchase of books related to Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American arts, crafts, literature and history.
Huntington gave the Library a second endowment the following year to facilitate the selection and servicing of those materials and helped to create a consultantship in Spanish and Portuguese literature. The first appointee was Juan Riaño y Gayangos, a distinguished Spanish diplomat who had served from 1914 to 1926 as ambassador to the United States. In the first year of his appointment, the Library received a magnificent collection of Spanish manuscripts relating to the early colonial history of Mexico and Peru from Edward S. Harkness, and from John D. Rockefeller Jr., funds to permit the photocopying of foreign archival manuscripts relating to the history of America in Mexico, Spain, France, England, Germany and Austria.
From left, Angela Zavala of TYIM Publications celebrates the Hispanic Division anniversary with Barbara Tenebaum of the Hispanic Division and Cole Blasier, former chief of the division. - Yusef El-Amin
Father David Rubio served as consultant from 1931 to 1943 and helped the collections grow from 15,000 to more than 100,000 monographic volumes and made further efforts to collect special groups of materials, including sound recordings. During this period, Huntington came forward once again and gave the Library a grant for the construction of the Hispanic Room (now the Hispanic Reading Room) and a trust fund for its maintenance. Rubio described the meeting with Huntington when this subject was raised:
"After five years of work and several journeys to Spain and Portugal, we now had some one hundred thousand volumes in the Hispanic Section. ... Dr. Putnam [Librarian of Congress from 1899 to 1939] very pleased with my labor, informed Mr. Huntington of the state and progress of his foundation and invited him to pay a visit. ... After lunch ... we walked around Deck A, where the Semitic Division [Semitica and Oriental Literature Division, created in 1914] was then located. On seeing it, Huntington asked: 'Where is the Hispanic Division?' I replied: 'We are waiting for some [patron of the arts] to help us found it.' ... Mr. Huntington said goodbye to us and some months later the director of the Library called me to his office and said: 'We have here a new gift from Mr. Huntington to create a special room dedicated to Hispanic Culture.'"
The establishment of the Hispanic Foundation in 1939—the origin of today's Hispanic Division—was a natural outcome of generations of collection development that had begun in 1800. The Hispanic Room, designed by the architect Paul Philipe Cret and completed in 1939, was intended to draw the researcher into the beauty of the Spanish and Portuguese Renaissance reflecting the taste of 16th and 17th century Iberia, with its vaulted ceiling, wood-paneled alcoves, Puebla blue tile and wrought iron balconies. Huntington and division chief Lewis Hanke commissioned a mural of Christopher Columbus' coat of arms painted on stainless steel, which hangs on the south wall. The room was dedicated on Oct. 12, 1939.
The Brazilian government and Nelson Rockefeller commissioned Brazilian muralist Cândido Portinari to execute four large murals on the walls of the vestibules of the room, which he completed between October 1941 and January 1942. The figures and objects depicted by Portinari are designed to represent the whole succession of historical periods since the arrival of the Spaniards and Portuguese in America rather than to apply only to one age. In the four panels, "Discovery of the Land," "Entry into the Forest," "Teaching of the Indians" and "Mining of Gold," the artist represents Indian, black and white peoples in America.
The Hispanic Division is the center for bibliographic and reference services and continues to collect significant materials from the Luso-Hispanic world and to record authors for the Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape, which now includes some 660 authors, among them eight Nobel Laureates. Important materials, however, can also be found in the Library's general collections as well as in almost every other special custodial division in the Library: Rare Book and Special Collections, Manuscript, Geography and Map, Music, Prints and Photographs, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound, Serial and Government Publications, African and Middle Eastern, the Law Library and the American Folklife Center.
Leadership of the Hispanic Division
Georgette Dorn, chief of the Hispanic Division, speaks with Roberto González Ezhevarría of Yale University - Jim Higgins
Lewis U. Hanke, the first division chief (1939–1951), established the Hispanic Division as a center for Hispanic scholarship and brought with him to the Library the "Handbook of Latin American Studies" and its network of contributing scholars. He had started it at Harvard University three years earlier. Francisco Aguilera, assistant chief and specialist in Hispanic culture, focused on the humanities and began the Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape in 1943.
Howard F. Cline, who served as chief from 1952 until his death in 1971, developed a division specialty in ethnohistory, and, among other publications, pioneered the preparation of the 16-volume "Handbook of Middle American Indians."
Historian Mary Ellis Kahler headed the division from 1973 to 1978 and paid particular attention to the Portuguese and Brazilian collections. She was followed by anthropologist William E. Carter, who, during his tenure from 1978 to 1983, began a series of public events at the division.
Literary scholar Sara Castro Klaren, chief from 1984 to 1986, spearheaded an international symposium and exhibition commemorating the 400th anniversary of Cervantes' "La Galatea."
A political scientist specialist in U.S.-Latin American relations as well as Latin American-Soviet relations, Cole Blasier, served as chief from 1988 to 1993. He hired two new specialists, Iêda Siqueira Wiarda for Brazil and Portugal and Barbara Tenenbaum for Mexico, who continue to serve in the division; encouraged automation of the "Handbook of Latin American Studies"; and instituted a formal program to bring interns to work in the division.
Named chief in 1994, Georgette M. Dorn has overseen the publication of "Hispanic Americans in Congress, 1822–1995," which is accessible online, and the completion of several digitization projects, such as "The Spanish-American War: The World of 1898" and "The Portuguese in the United States," as well as collaborative digital projects with the national libraries of Brazil and Spain. More information about the division's current activities and copies of some of its publications can be found online at www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/.
