June 9
Today was a pretty short day. We didn't have to be in until 10:00 am and got finished with everything just slightly before 4:00pm - and that doesn't count the nearly 90-minute lunch we had too. And, of course, we are getting paid for a full 8-hour day. It's nice to be a government intern!
The first thing in the morning was a meeting with this somewhat intimidating man, Mark Diminuation, whose official title is "Chief, Rare Book & Special Collections Division." Also, by "intimidating," I mean kind of prissy and cranky. Like, two of us arrived like ten minutes early and Mr. D. made a comment along the lines of "Oh, you guys are here ALREADY?" in sort of a snippy tone. I suggested we leave and come back and he was pretty pleased with that suggestion. In fact, I think had I suggested we leave and never come back, he might have been even more pleased! Needless to say, he hadn't made a good impression on me when he talked to us briefly on Tuesday (during our preservation presentations) and only solidified that impression first thing this morning. I wasn't looking forward to being in a small room with him for an hour or two. As it turns out, though, he's one of those men who clearly loves his job and is only happy when talking about his job. And, as can probably be determined by his job title, he's the rare books guy. So, we got to see some of the Library's treasures - always a pretty cool thing and of course this is definitely true of the Library of Congress. Some of the more interesting things in the collection were two seemingly unrelated books - one by Henry David Thoreau and the other a 2nd edition Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman... turns out these two books were exchanged by the authors and inscribed to one another at a meeting in Brooklyn during their day. Kind of cool. Also, he showed us a book that was in Thomas Jefferson's collection (who sold his library to Congress to help rebuild their collection after a fire during the War of 1812 burned the Capitol). So, this book, which just happened to be a copy of The Federalist Papers, also featured some inscribing, in which Jefferson wrote on the inside front cover who wrote each of the particular papers. Apparently, it was only his estimation, however, since the Library also owns a copy by James Madison, who did the same thing and probably knows better. Ironically, we also saw three things that belonged to old Presidential girlfriends/mistresses. Kind of weird.
So, anyway, yeah, rare books are pretty cool and it was definitely interesting. After lunch, we got a tour of the Motion Picture division. Well, only the interns in the MBRS (Motion Picture, Broadcasting & Recorded Sound) division got to go on that tour but it was pretty interesting - similar to the one of the Recorded Sound division that we got the other day, although the vast majority of the motion pictures are offsite so their archives are not as plentiful as the ones in Recorded Sound. Ironically, most of the Motion Picture archives are stored in Ohio at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Well, maybe that isn't exactly ironic but interesting nonetheless. One of the cool things that the Motion Picture interns get to do is just go through their mail, which is backlogged for months. What that could mean is them opening up copies of upcoming motion pictures or television shows, because due to copyright deposit law, anyone seeking a copyright for a flim or television show must send a copy to the Library. Kinda cool and it makes me a little jealous... although we got some pretty cool jobs described to us in recorded sound, too... although I'll get to that later...
After the Motion Picture tour, we got a history lesson from John Cole (Director, Center for the Book - which is the Library's outreach division). Kind of interesting, kind of not. I won't lie. Hey, I love history as much as the next person (actually more than the normal person) but I couldn't help noticing that this man has an almost scary fascination with Ainsworth Spofford, a former Librarian of Congress who was the one who got the Copyright Office infused into the Library.
Okay, and then, after the Ainsworth Spofford lovefest, we got emergency preparedness training. Umm, yes, that is what it sounds like. We learned how to put on QuickMasks to protect ourselves from any potential WMD/chemical warfare attacks. I'm guessing not many of you have had that fun!! Some dipshit even took our picture while we were wearing the masks…
So, before leaving the building, we (Thom, Ali & I) had to sign out and got to talk to our two supervisors there. Gene said he came up with some ideas of what to do... although I guess Monday and Tuesday we are actually going to be doing MARC records or cataloging of some sort. Oy. But other upcoming projects include some reference work - investigating who (which record companies) might not be properly copyright filing and depositing their CDs - and also looking through all of the copyright records of unpublished works, trying to see if we can find some "treasures" - i.e. an unpublished song written by someone well-known - perhaps doing some name searches. Maybe I could be tricky and try to find songs copyrighted by like Robert Zimmerman or something, who I know is Bob Dylan. Of course, my knowledge of these sorts of things is pretty limited so the chances of me finding a treasure is also pretty slim, but I'm going to do my damndest to try to find something. Music knowledge be damned.
One final thing from today is that I found out my email address there will be cwid@loc.gov, just as I suspected. Heh. Easy enough. Not that we seem to be anywhere near actually getting computers or workstations or anything of the like, but that will be my email address. Yay! It's really official when they start handing out ID badges and email addresses.
The first thing in the morning was a meeting with this somewhat intimidating man, Mark Diminuation, whose official title is "Chief, Rare Book & Special Collections Division." Also, by "intimidating," I mean kind of prissy and cranky. Like, two of us arrived like ten minutes early and Mr. D. made a comment along the lines of "Oh, you guys are here ALREADY?" in sort of a snippy tone. I suggested we leave and come back and he was pretty pleased with that suggestion. In fact, I think had I suggested we leave and never come back, he might have been even more pleased! Needless to say, he hadn't made a good impression on me when he talked to us briefly on Tuesday (during our preservation presentations) and only solidified that impression first thing this morning. I wasn't looking forward to being in a small room with him for an hour or two. As it turns out, though, he's one of those men who clearly loves his job and is only happy when talking about his job. And, as can probably be determined by his job title, he's the rare books guy. So, we got to see some of the Library's treasures - always a pretty cool thing and of course this is definitely true of the Library of Congress. Some of the more interesting things in the collection were two seemingly unrelated books - one by Henry David Thoreau and the other a 2nd edition Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman... turns out these two books were exchanged by the authors and inscribed to one another at a meeting in Brooklyn during their day. Kind of cool. Also, he showed us a book that was in Thomas Jefferson's collection (who sold his library to Congress to help rebuild their collection after a fire during the War of 1812 burned the Capitol). So, this book, which just happened to be a copy of The Federalist Papers, also featured some inscribing, in which Jefferson wrote on the inside front cover who wrote each of the particular papers. Apparently, it was only his estimation, however, since the Library also owns a copy by James Madison, who did the same thing and probably knows better. Ironically, we also saw three things that belonged to old Presidential girlfriends/mistresses. Kind of weird.
So, anyway, yeah, rare books are pretty cool and it was definitely interesting. After lunch, we got a tour of the Motion Picture division. Well, only the interns in the MBRS (Motion Picture, Broadcasting & Recorded Sound) division got to go on that tour but it was pretty interesting - similar to the one of the Recorded Sound division that we got the other day, although the vast majority of the motion pictures are offsite so their archives are not as plentiful as the ones in Recorded Sound. Ironically, most of the Motion Picture archives are stored in Ohio at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Well, maybe that isn't exactly ironic but interesting nonetheless. One of the cool things that the Motion Picture interns get to do is just go through their mail, which is backlogged for months. What that could mean is them opening up copies of upcoming motion pictures or television shows, because due to copyright deposit law, anyone seeking a copyright for a flim or television show must send a copy to the Library. Kinda cool and it makes me a little jealous... although we got some pretty cool jobs described to us in recorded sound, too... although I'll get to that later...
After the Motion Picture tour, we got a history lesson from John Cole (Director, Center for the Book - which is the Library's outreach division). Kind of interesting, kind of not. I won't lie. Hey, I love history as much as the next person (actually more than the normal person) but I couldn't help noticing that this man has an almost scary fascination with Ainsworth Spofford, a former Librarian of Congress who was the one who got the Copyright Office infused into the Library.
Okay, and then, after the Ainsworth Spofford lovefest, we got emergency preparedness training. Umm, yes, that is what it sounds like. We learned how to put on QuickMasks to protect ourselves from any potential WMD/chemical warfare attacks. I'm guessing not many of you have had that fun!! Some dipshit even took our picture while we were wearing the masks…
So, before leaving the building, we (Thom, Ali & I) had to sign out and got to talk to our two supervisors there. Gene said he came up with some ideas of what to do... although I guess Monday and Tuesday we are actually going to be doing MARC records or cataloging of some sort. Oy. But other upcoming projects include some reference work - investigating who (which record companies) might not be properly copyright filing and depositing their CDs - and also looking through all of the copyright records of unpublished works, trying to see if we can find some "treasures" - i.e. an unpublished song written by someone well-known - perhaps doing some name searches. Maybe I could be tricky and try to find songs copyrighted by like Robert Zimmerman or something, who I know is Bob Dylan. Of course, my knowledge of these sorts of things is pretty limited so the chances of me finding a treasure is also pretty slim, but I'm going to do my damndest to try to find something. Music knowledge be damned.
One final thing from today is that I found out my email address there will be cwid@loc.gov, just as I suspected. Heh. Easy enough. Not that we seem to be anywhere near actually getting computers or workstations or anything of the like, but that will be my email address. Yay! It's really official when they start handing out ID badges and email addresses.
posted by Cheri W. | 9:51 PM
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