The Library's Junior Fellows summer interns join Librarian of Congress James Billington and Deputy Librarian Donald Scott in celebrating 135 years of copyright in the Library of Congress. Since President Ulysses Grant signed the law centralizing the copyright registration and deposit system in the Library on July 8, 1870, the Library has been the repository of the mint record of American creativity. More than 30 million items have been deposited for registration, but not everything has been fully processed. The purpose of this summer project was to locate and itemize some of these materials so they are more readily available to researchers. - Judith Nierman
College students working at the Library of Congress this summer as Junior Fellows summer interns identified hundreds of literary, artistic, film and musical gems among the Library's copyright deposits.
Library staff members saw some of these discoveries during a display arranged for them in August.
"The Library of Congress is the home of the U.S. Copyright Office, which registers more than 600,000 creative works each year, " said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. "By surveying items acquired through the copyright deposit system, these students are participating in the Library's multiyear celebration of American creativity."
Working closely with Library staff and curators in the Copyright Office; Manuscript Division; Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division; Music Division; and Prints and Photographs Division, 21 college students from across the nation processed portions of the Library's nonbook collections that came through the copyright registration process and identified a number of rare or unique items. A selection of these treasures will eventually be accessible on the Library's Web site at www.loc.gov.
One of 56 boxes of early 20th century copyright applications for pictorial works, which were reviewed by the Junior Fellows summer interns. - Michaela McNichol
The quest revealed a 1954 home movie of Marilyn Monroe playing golf; the text of a 1913 lecture by blind educator Anne Sullivan titled "The Education of Helen Keller"; a previously undocumented playscript for Charlie Chaplin's 1925 film, "The Gold Rush"; one of only nine operettas ("Desiree," 1882) written by John Philip Sousa, who was best known for his marches; and a 1929 Kellogg's Corn Flakes advertisement, which exemplifies the Library's collection of some 50,000 popular applied graphic arts.
Many of the items demonstrate that American creativity is inspired by historic events. These include a 1945 musical score titled "We'll Write the Last Page of Mein Kampf"; a series of stereographs that comically depict the 1870s grasshopper plague in Nebraska; artist G.A. Haist's image for the 1901 Pan-American Exposition held in Buffalo, N.Y., and post-9/11 songs such as "There's No God in Old Bin Laden" (Eric Free and the Freedom Band, 2002).
Items that capture presidential history include a candid photograph of William McKinley, taken hours before his assassination on Sept. 6, 1901, and a photograph of a blood-stained playbill from Ford's Theatre on the night of Abraham Lincoln's assassination.
American ingenuity is captured in a pair photographs taken during the 1901 automobile race between Detroit auto mechanic Henry Ford and manufacturing magnate Alexander Winton, which resulted in seed money for the former to launch the Ford Motor Co. A 1922 flipbook designed to teach piano and organ demonstrates one of the earliest forms of animation.
Left, a candid photo of a smiling President William McKinley, taken just hours before his assassination in 1901, was found among the copyright applications; right, interns David McKenzie, Bridgette Holley and Laura Stephenson present copyrighted treasures found in the Moving Image Section of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. - C.F. Latchaw and Michaela McNichol
America's favorite pastime is featured on some extremely rare baseball cards that were submitted for copyright in the late 19th century. A 1904 photograph depicts Hall of Famers Napoleon Lajoie (Cleveland Blues) and Honus Wagner (Pittsburgh Pirates) shaking hands.
The Junior Fellows Summer Intern Program is a joint project of the Copyright Office, Library Services, the Office of Workforce Diversity and Human Resources Services. The program, which is an extension of the Library's Junior Fellows Program, is made possible through the generosity of the late Mrs. Jefferson Patterson.
Left, a prohibition campaign song booklet from 1912; center, an ornately framed photograph of a torn playbill from Ford's Theatre on the night of Abraham Lincoln's assassination was copyrighted by T.D. Bancroft in 1901; center, the copyright application claims the paper is stained with the late president's blood; right, this rare late 19th century E.E. Strauss & Co. advertising poster, which the Junior Fellows summer interns found folded in a box of Copyright applications, received preservation treatment in the Library's Conservation Division and was then transferred to the Prints and Photographs Division. - Michaela McNichol
