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The Saturday Morning Post
To return The Library of Congress to its 19th century glory, Congress appropriated funds to restore and renovate the Thomas Jefferson Building starting in 1985.
The LoC has remained open in varying levels of capacity since then and has been closed completely since April 3 of this year to install new exhibitions. Tomorrow these new exhibitions, as well as the "New Library of Congress Experience", will launch.
After seeing the new exhibits and visitor “Experience,” we are happy to say that the Library of Congress has made it fully into the 21st century.
When the Library opens the bronze front doors of the Thomas Jefferson Building for the first time since 1990 on Saturday, visitors will no longer have to enter the building in the cramped lower level. Now you can enter where you were always meant to—right into the beautiful Great Hall.
Just off of the Great Hall, you can use one of the interactive kiosks to page through the LoC’s collection of rare bibles, which includes far more than their most hyped 14th century bibles, the Gutenberg Bible and the Giant Bible of Mainz.
From there, head up to the Mezzanine Level, where kiosks provide high-quality zoomable images of the Great Hall itself, showing angles on the sculptures, floors, and décor of the building that we've never been able to see before.
Photo by LaTur.
There are still some technical issues yet to be worked out. While we were looking at one kiosk, the screen froze (“Not Responding”). And another kiosk in one of the Exhibitions likewise bonked out. The information on these kiosks is supposed to be accessible on the new (not yet functioning) my.loc.gov, also launching on Saturday.
Besides the new Experience, though, the LoC is also opening two new exhibitions on Saturday, thereby continuing the new wave of exhibitions that began with Exploring the Early Americas, their new permanent exhibition.
One exhibit is the revamped Thomas Jefferson Library, which displays the massive collection of books Jefferson sold to Congress for a measly $23,950 in 1815, after the British burned the Congressional Library the year before.
The other exhibition, Creating the United States, features drafts of the Declaration of Independence, George Washington's copy of the Constitution, and John Beckley's Bill of Rights. In the exhibit, kiosks and other documents trace the political and ideological foundations of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, as well as how these documents fared throughout time. They succeeded, for example, by providing support to Civil Rights and Women's Liberation movements. But the Constitution squarely failed to support one Japanese-American man, who describes how he was interned in a camp during WWII.
Another, publicity-related aspect of the new Experience is the LoC's Inspiration Across the Nation campaign. The LoC is looking for creative works by Americans today, and the chosen works are to be added to the Library's collection.
Librarian of Congress Dr. James H. Billington said he expects the new Experience to “connect to a broader public the Library of Congress has ever reached before.” Part of the increased flow of visitors, he said, will no doubt come from the new passageway from the Capitol Visitor Center.
But Gerry Lenfest, Chairman of the James Madison Council, was so excited about the new Experience he said he thought the flow would be the other way around: the Capitol would get more visitors because of the masses that will now visit the LoC.
Either way, the new LoC is vastly improved and its changes should bring it on par with the Smithsonians and other D.C. must-see museums.
The Thomas Jefferson Building is located at 101 Independence Ave SE, and is open from 10-5 Monday-Saturday.
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So did LOC ever implement any security measures on their rare book collection? Or can people with a card still walk in with an X-Acto and walk out with prints to sell on eBay?
Awesome. I have been here eight years and didn't know that the Jefferson building ent. would ever change.
The LOC is one of the purdiest buildings in DC.
A "measly $23,950"?
In 2007, $23,950.00 from 1815 is worth:
$333,054.39 using the Consumer Price Index
$355,353.66 using the GDP deflator
using the value of consumer bundle
$355,353.66 using the unskilled wage
$9,954,908.27 using the nominal GDP per capita
$361,906,372.56 using the relative share of GDP
That's not measly.... That's one heck of a sale.
Priceless in terms of our nation's history. Books last, and will continue to last in perfectly readable form long after the electronic gizmos so popular these days wind up in the digital dustbin.
For a good reference book covering all of the artworks in the Jefferson Building, I recommend:
The Library of Congress: The Art and Architecture of the Thomas Jefferson Building
by Henry Hope Reed and others
W. W. Norton & Company, 1997
ISBN: 0393045633
title35 -- He was being facetious, but cool facts though, thanks for the conversion!
title: The curator, Mark Dimunation (who was featured in today's WaPost article), told me that the price was mostly arbitrary--that Jefferson wanted to donate the collection, but that Congress wanted to have some record of their buying it.
The exhibition pamphlet, on the other hand, says that besides wanting to see the library re-established, Jefferson was "short of funds." That makes you wonder how altruistic it really was. Maybe Jefferson just needed the cash!
Here's the WaPost article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/10/AR2008041004241.html
Cool! I never knew why people had to go in through the basement, and was always a bit sheepish when I took out-of-towners there ("It's really nice inside, trust me....").
I'm looking forward to seeing the great hall entrance and these new exhibits.
"...other D.C. must-see museums."
Ahem, LC is not a museum.
LC is not a museum.
It is unless you are Congressional Staff or have a "Researcher" card. Get the card -- it's no big deal.
The new Web site is actually myloc.gov and currently forwards to a temporary site with information about the new exhibits and features.
Thanks for the nice review!
You can read even more from Mark Dimunation here.
He says that when Jefferson returned to American from Europe in 1789, he had "considerable debt." Not sure what his financial state was in 1815, however.
One minor point: The new companion Web site is myLOC.gov, not my.loc.gov.
MATT RAYMOND
Library of Congress
cool to hear! hopefully you won't get overwhelmed like the newseum was yesterday, and turn people away at the door...