Nation’s Library Links History’s Chapters

Another truth America’s Founding Fathers held to be self-evident was that ignorance is the enemy of democracy. In December 1800, before our young government had finished moving to its new capital at Washington, the good ship American left London bearing 740 books bound for what was to become our national library.

In Philadelphia, the previous seat of the federal government, there had been libraries all over town. But when Congress set up shop in the remote muddy backwater of Washington, it had but 243 volumes to draw on for facts, figures and historical guidance in launching our experiment in democracy.

By spring, the dozen trunks of books had been shelved in the unfinished Capitol, where the library would be housed for the next century.

The Library of Congress has grown to become the world’s largest and arguably greatest library, housing some 119 million items, including 22 million books on 532 miles of shelves. On average 22,000 items come in every day, of which 10,000 must be cataloged and housed, the rest dispersed to other libraries and institutions around the world.

This month the library celebrates its bicentennial birthday with the launching of a Web site for young families; the issuance of a commemorative postage stamp; and major exhibitions on Thomas Jefferson and “The Wizard of Oz.”

The new Web site (https://www.americaslibrary.gov) exemplifies the institution’s world-leading effort to make its intellectual treasures available online.

The Jefferson exhibition will attempt to examine the library’s spiritual and functional father as critically as he examined the men and issues of his time. The “Oz” exhibition will celebrate the centennial of L. Frank Baum’s original American myth, the basis of one of our best-beloved movies.

For Jefferson, nothing was more important than the encouragement of the young in reading.

“I cannot live without books,” Jefferson said, and he didn’t believe a free country could either. The revolutionary firebrand also would no doubt heartily approve of the moral of Baum’s story, which is to swat humbugs, question authority and look inward for wisdom, strength and courage.

The problems and promise that face the Library of Congress in 2000 are not unlike those of 1800, just infinitely more complex: keeping its resources safe and yet readily available; keeping track of what’s where; preserving and restoring fragile books, documents, maps and other artifacts; serving the needs of Congress and the other branches of government; staying abreast of national and world art, the lively arts, history, the sciences and medicine, literature, government and scholarship; collecting the icons and ephemera that will help future citizens understand the attitudes and spirit of previous generations; and anticipating developments in information technology.

The library has been an international leader in computerization and document digitalization--and has paid some penalties for being in front in adopting recording and storage techniques and media that have rapidly become outmoded.

Maintaining morale and efficiency among a staff of 4,194 that’s perpetually overworked and underpaid remains a management nightmare, exacerbated by allegations of racial, sexual and cultural discrimination--all evidenced by several lawsuits and in-house studies. These themes resonate throughout “America’s Library” by James Conaway, who was commissioned to write the handsome coffee-table commemorative volume from which this account is largely cribbed.

One problem that the library has pretty well licked is fire. The original collection, which had grown to more than 3,000 books and half a hundred maps and charts, was destroyed when the British burned down the Capitol, the White House and other major government buildings in August 1814. The flames from burning Washington could be seen in Baltimore.

Former President Jefferson, who years earlier had seen his first collection of books go up in smoke at his Shadwell Plantation, immediately offered to sell Congress the cherished library he had accumulated at Monticello; it was perhaps the finest private library in America.

Jefferson’s offer was made in desperation as well as in service to his country. The Sage of Monticello was deeply in debt and the $23,950 he received was all paid out to his creditors within two weeks.

Still, Jefferson was passionately attached to his books, and it must have wrenched his heart to watch a wagon train bear the 6,487 volumes away to the District of Columbia. The news that fire almost destroyed the congressional library again in December 1825 may not be unrelated to Jefferson’s decline and death six months later.

Yet another Capitol fire, caused by a faulty flue on Christmas Eve 1851, destroyed 35,000 books, including two-thirds of Jefferson’s legacy. In recent years the library has removed the remnant Jeffersonian volumes from its stacks to a special collection. That collection, arranged in the unique 40-subject order in which Jefferson organized his books, is the climax of the main bicentennial exhibition.

After the third fire, Congress got serious about safeguarding its library and by 1853 had built a fireproof cast-iron repository for the remaining 25,000 volumes. There the library stayed until the opening in 1897 of the glorious temple of learning now known as the Jefferson Building. The Italian Renaissance edifice was put together by construction superintendent Thomas Lincoln Casey, who brought the $6.3-million building in ahead of schedule and $200,000 under budget.

While the library welcomes visitors, it points out that most questions can be answered and many research projects can be carried out faster and easier online through its Web address: https://www.loc.gov. From the library’s home page there are clear and logical links to more than three dozen major collections and categories, including images and sound.

Through the American Memory site, one may peer over Long Tom Jefferson’s shoulder and see more than 100 changes he’s made in a single paragraph as he writes, rewrites and revises the Declaration of Independence by the light of an intellect that is about to set the world on fire.