On May 14, the Librarian of Congress named 25 additional sound recordings to the National Recording Registry to ensure their preservation. (See story on page 130.) The selections for 2007 ranged from the first transatlantic broadcast (1925) to sounds from earth that traveled to outer space on the Voyager spacecraft in 1977. Works by “The King of Pop” and “Smokey” also made the list.
NPR host Michael Martin interviewed Oliver Wang, cultural critic and sociology professor from California State University at Long Beach, about several of the music selections on the registry. Wang pointed out that many of the musical selections were either best-selling albums of their time (Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and “Headhunters” by Herbie Hancock) or best-selling singles (“Oh Pretty Woman,” by Roy Orbison). “The registry has been really good to Motown,” Wang observed.
Barbara Barrett, Washington correspondent for The News & Observer in North Carolina, focused on the Elizabeth Cotten album “’Freight Train,’ and Other North Carolina Folk Songs and Tunes.” A self-taught guitarist, Cotten wrote the song “Freight Train” when she was only 12. Her album was released when she was 60.
“It is not an honor that is handed out freely,” said Glenn Hinson, chairman of curriculum and folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “For an African-American woman who was raised in a working-class neighborhood of Carrboro, N.C., and spent much of her life doing domestic service and caregiving, to achieve this level of national recognition … there are countless albums that could have been chosen for this kind of honor.”
Jose Antonio Bowen, a member of the National Recording Preservation Board who chose Cotten’s album for inclusion, said that by listening to every recording on the registry, “You’d get a range of the incredible variety of what goes into making America great.”
The announcement made news across the nation on several broadcast outlets, both radio and television, including in Vancouver, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Detroit, New York, Tampa, Memphis, Dallas, Richmond and Washington, D.C.
The announcement was also highlighted on a couple of sites typically known for celebrity gossip and news. Featured on tmz.com was the headline “Thriller Zombies to Drool on Library of Congress.” The Web site for E! Entertainment, eonline.com, also ran a news brief.
Other outlets running the story included Jet Magazine, The New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, Hollywood Reporter, Daily Variety, Library Journal, Voice of America, Associated Press, Reuters, the Canadian Press, the Sunday Mail (Australia), washingtonpost.com and cmtnews.com (Country Music Television).
A month prior to the National Recording Registry announcement, the Library unveiled to the public its new Library of Congress Experience for visitors, offering cutting-edge interactive technology, new exhibitions and a companion Web site, myLOC.gov. (See Information Bulletin, May 2008 and June 2008). The new features and programming continued to make the news throughout the summer.
For many, the highlight of the Library of Congress Experience has been the recreation of Thomas Jefferson’s library, complete with interactive kiosks. - Michaela McNichol
Mark Dimunation, chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library, gave Michele Norris of NPR a tour of Thomas Jefferson’s Library, one of the new interactive exhibitions. “[Jefferson] felt it extremely important that, to govern in an enlightened world and a world of reason, that governors required access to thought, philosophy, reason, law,” said Dimunation.
“This being the information age, you can virtually browse through many of them [Jefferson’s books] much as you would in a regular library,” said Norris.
The Home News Tribune and Asbury Park Sunday Press, both of New Jersey, ran an article on the Library of Congress Experience, presenting it as “Trip of the Week.” American Libraries also offered an overview of the Library’s new attractions.
Matt Raymond, the Library’s director of communications, was interviewed about the Library of Congress Experience on ABC News Now. He discussed the new exhibitions, including the interactive kiosks that allow visitors to turn pages of books and documents and zoom in on texts, and the companion Web site of myLOC.gov, which “mirrors” the physical Experience and allows visitors to build their own collection of digitized Library treasures.
“We’re going to try to infuse these new technologies as we go forward,” said Raymond, discussing the future of the Library. “This is the way people interact now, this is the way they get their information.”
