Knowledge as a key to democracy is one of the principles on which the Library of Congress was founded, and its Bicentennial programs highlight the active role the institution plays in fulfilling its mission to make its resources "available and useful to Congress and the American people." These programs include:
Local Legacies
There are now more than 1,000 Local Legacies projects taking place in every state and the District of Columbia. This effort, cosponsored by the U.S. Congress and the Library, is engaging volunteers to document the cultural traditions that make their area unique. A portion of this documentation will be sent to the Library for permanent residence in the American Folklife Center, and in May 2000, all members of Congress and Local Legacies participants will be invited to the Library to celebrate their contributions. A selection of the Local Legacies materials eventually will be available on the Library's Web site, so they can be seen by all.
Gifts to the Nation
The Gifts to the Nation Program, in which donors are helping the Library acquire rare and important materials for its collections, will enable the institution to make these items -- many of which are in private hands -- much more accessible.
National Digital Library (NDL) Program
The continuing expansion of the NDL Program (www.loc.gov) is another effort to share the riches of the nation's library with all Americans by making available online more than 5 million items relating to American history.
Yet the Library is not merely celebrating its own birthday. The Bicentennial theme "Libraries, Creativity, Liberty" reminds Americans that all libraries are the cornerstones of democracy.
Other Programs
Symposia, exhibitions, publications and the issuance of a U.S. commemorative stamp and two commemorative coins honoring the institution will also mark the Library's 200th birthday. Images of the Jefferson Building are featured in both the postage stamp and the two coins that will be issued on April 24, the Library's 200th birthday. The stamp features a photograph of the interior of the Main Reading Room's dome, an image that symbolizes the universality of knowledge reflected in the Library's collections and in the Main Reading Room's iconography. The two commemorative coins highlight the building's exterior, particularly the dome and the "Torch of Learning" at its apex.
The Library and Democracy: Looking Ahead to 2000
Wisconsin's Sen. Robert M. La Follette, who sponsored the amendment in 1914 that established the Library's Legislative Reference Service (now Congressional Research Service)
Thomas Jefferson's 1815 statement about why Congress should buy his wide-ranging personal library -- "There is, in fact, no subject to which a member of Congress may not have occasion to refer" -- has shaped the Library's philosophy of sharing its collections as widely as possible.
Thus it is fitting that an early contribution to the events of 2000 comes from the Congressional Research Service, which, on Feb. 29 March 1, continues this Jeffersonian theme with a symposium on "Informing Congress and the Nation." Historian Merrill Peterson will discuss Congress and the nation during the middle years of the 19th century in his keynote address. Subsequent panels and presentations involving historians, former members of Congress and journalists will discuss the evolution of services to Congress and changing perceptions of Congress and the "informing function" itself.
The next week, March 6-10, the Law Library takes the lead in the Bicentennial symposium "Democracy and the Rule of Law in a Changing World Order." Cosponsored with New York University and organized in cooperation with the Library's Office of Scholarly Programs, this conference will focus in part on the Library's increasingly important role as an international resource for law and public policy.
A major event on April 24 will be the opening of the exhibition "Thomas Jefferson." It will explore Jefferson's "dreams of the future" through books and documents that influenced him as well as the works that he produced, drawing on the Library's unparalleled collection of Jefferson material. The exhibition's last area will present the library that Jefferson sold to the Library of Congress in 1815. It will integrate existing volumes with replacement books, acquired as Bicentennial "Gifts to the Nation," and representations of volumes still needed to re-create the personal library at the core of Jefferson's "genius." The exhibition's accompanying 176-page hardcover book, with an introduction by Garry Wills, will be published by Viking Studio Press in cooperation with the Library.
Three other Bicentennial publications are under way. Each, in its own way, celebrates the Library's unique connection through Congress and the legislative branch to the American people. In April 2000 Yale University Press will publish America's Library: The Story of the Library of Congress, 1800-2000, by James Conaway. A new guidebook, The Nation's Library: The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., by Alan Bisbort and Linda Barrett Osborne, will be published later in the year by Scala Books. A one-volume reference work, The Encyclopedia of the Library of Congress, edited by this writer and Jane Aikin, will be published in late 2000 or early 2001. All three books are being developed and published in cooperation with the Library's Publishing Office.
The Library and Democracy: Some Milestones
Left, in the Great Hall of the Jefferson Building is Elihu Vedder's mural, Government; right, the transfer of the Declaration of Independence from the State Department to the Library -- via mail wagon -- on Sept. 30, 1921.
Ainsworth Rand Spofford, Librarian of Congress in 1864-1897, applied Jefferson's concept on a grand scale and permanently linked the Library's legislative and national functions. It was imperative, Spofford felt, that the great national collection he was developing (largely through copyright deposits) be shared with all citizens, for the United States was "a Republic which rests upon the public intelligence." Once the Jefferson Building opened to the public in 1897, the Library's collections and services could be shared fully with the people. The building itself is replete with works of art, quotations and inscriptions celebrating both knowledge and democracy. Among the most notable and conspicuously located artworks (above the entrance to the Main Reading Room from the Great Hall) are Elihu Vedder's five small but stunning paintings about "Government" and its vital links to learning.
The Library's statue of James Madison by Walker Hancock. The nation's fourth president is memorialized in the Library's Madison building.
Librarian of Congress Herbert Putnam (1899-1939) made the Library the home of many of America's sacred political documents. In 1903 he persuaded his friend President Theodore Roosevelt to issue an executive order transferring the records and papers of the Continental Congress and the personal papers of Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, Monroe and Franklin to the Library from the State Department. In 1921 the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were transferred to the Library, where they were displayed in a "shrine" in the Great Hall from 1924 until 1952, when the two documents were transferred to the National Archives. In 1925, in his new book, Epic of America, historian James Truslow Adams paid an elaborate tribute to the Library, which he saw "as a symbol of what democracy can accomplish on its own behalf."
Each Librarian of Congress since Putnam has found ways to emphasize the Library's role as a cornerstone of democracy. A wartime Librarian (1939-1944), Archibald MacLeish, spoke eloquently about the importance of libraries, librarians and the Library of Congress in preserving democracy. One of his many projects was the creation in 1941 of a "democracy alcove" in the Main Reading Room, a place where "readers may find the classic texts of the American tradition," along with the writings of American statesmen, "analyses of the theory and practice of democracy" and related works.
The dedication of the Library's third major building on Capitol Hill as the nation's memorial to James Madison and the subsequent "renaming" of the other two buildings in honor of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams was a project spearheaded by Librarian of Congress Daniel J. Boorstin (1975-1987).
Since the early 1990s, Dr. Billington has led the Library in projects focusing on "democracy-building" in other countries. First the Library provided advice to parliamentary libraries in the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Recently, the Russian Leadership Program (www.loc.gov/rlp) has brought emerging political leaders from most of the Russian Federation states and republics to the United States to witness democracy in action.
