June 10

Ah, our last day of orientation week. I'm going to miss the come-in-late, leave-early schedule of orientation week but I'm actually looking forward to starting work on the projects, too. Yeah, yeah, I say that now before I put in 8-hour days working on unchallenging projects but hey, it's only 9 weeks.

In the morning, we met with one of the Library's reference librarians, who proceeded to give us yet another history of the library presentation. I really liked her presentation, but it was about the fourth time I heard most of the stuff. I guess the goal is to have all of us spouting the history of the Library by the time we leave. Interesting for sure, but how many times do I have to hear about how Thomas Jefferson was a destitute man thanks in large part to his passion for collecting books. Creditors were after him and, after a fire during the War of 1812 destroyed the Capitol and the Library housed there, he offered to sell his books to Congress to start the Library again. He fetched like $26,000 for his over 6,000 titles - which went directly to the creditors. And, of course, he immediately returned to buying books he couldn't afford. Interesting, sure, but even the most interesting story gets a little tiresome after hearing it over and over.

Immediately after that - where she also very very briefly showed us how to use our checkout privileges and reserve books - we got an insider's tour of the Jefferson building. I'm not sure what the public tour involves (maybe I should go on one of those, too…) but we saw some of the private rooms that Congresspeople and members of the Congressional Research Service can use when doing research at the Library. I took some pictures so once I get them developed, maybe I can post them. I'm not guaranteeing any skill there but I'll try. On the tour, we got more history of the Library, along with an extensive explanation of all the art and architecture incorporated in the building. Our tour guide was pretty long-winded. It's amazing the intricate detail involved with the art and architecture. The Jefferson building was built in 7 years and everything in it was finished by 1897. Some of the stuff seems to be a little ahead of its time apparently.

After lunch, we officially divided into our individual units and I guess will remain there for the rest of our tenure. We three Recorded Sound interns FINALLY met the staff from Special Materials, which is where we will be working half of the time. We FINALLY got a look at our workstations and yes, I do indeed get a computer and a telephone and even a cubicle. Oh, and a mentor. Our first order of business will be adding more details to database records… for instance, in many cases, song titles were not included as access points when CDs were added into the database so it will be our job to go back through these CDs and add more access points. Not too difficult but I'm excited to handle (and potentially listen to…) various CDs. I'm excited to get to start with that task.

Yeah, so, the catalogers we met are a different breed for sure. On the odd side definitely. I guess I shouldn't make a snap judgment from the approximately 12 minutes we spent with them but, then again, maybe it wasn't that inaccurate. One of our coworkers vehemently invited Ali and myself to the upcoming Flag Day celebration in the department. Whatever that means. Neither of us committed - primarily because we aren't really accustomed to being in charge of our own time at the Library. But, also, we were a little frightened by his insistence that we come. What exactly does a Flag Day celebration look like? I'm envisioning a parade around the office with flag bearers and perhaps a cake… seriously. I don't go anywhere without my camera here so I'm thinking there might be a good photo op. on Tuesday. I'll let you know. See you Monday.

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.

June 8

Day 3 of orientation week was pretty interesting, definitely the best day so far. You know - out of all three of them. We spent most of the day with Frank Evina (Senior Copyright Information Specialist). He's basically a copyright guru and spent about 2 hours or more explaining the ins and outs of Copyright to us. I actually was pretty interested in it and now FINALLY have an understanding of the whole process - no thanks to Martha & a semester of 618, of course. If I took the 618 exam again, I might actually willingly try to answer the copyright question now! Interestingly, the first three types of works that were protected by Copyright were maps, charts and books. Now, there are like zillions of things that can get someone a copyright. Okay, maybe not zillions... but a lot. So everyone who registers their creative work for a copyright is required to send two copies of that work to the Copyright Office, which passes it on to the Library. Therefore, technically, the Library has held two copies of every copyrighted work - however, it doesn't hold on to everything (although we were told that 'weeding' isn't in the Library's vocabulary).

Anyway, after the Copyright information session (seriously, I'm not kidding, I found this fascinating), we got a tour of the Copyright Office, which basically meant a tour of their immense card catalog. They have cards for every item ever given a copyright, since 1890 (I think that was the year…). Things from 1978 onward are available electronically but the previous 100 years are only found in these card catalogs. On the tour, we also got to walk through the mailroom, I guess you'd call it. Book cart after book cart held two copies of every recent book seeking a Copyright. Some of my fellow interns were looking for the latest Harry Potter book but we didn't see it. They figured it was too early for the Copyright Office to have it, but I honestly doubt it. I worked in a book store and I know how early we would get street-dated stuff… I'm sure it was already sent in for a Copyright, although it does depend on how much of a mail backlog they have in the Copyright office and I'm not sure about that. Anyway, I pointed out two copies of what I assume is the latest Peter Benchley book. Something about sharks, of course. I think it might have been this book (I honestly don't remember the title I saw on the cart), which came out April 26, so maybe there is a bit of a backlog...

Anyway, we went right from the Copyright Office tour to the grande dame of tours at the LOC - a tour of the stacks. Oh yeah, that's right. I saw the stacks at the Library of Congress. On Tuesday morning, we were given these yellow passes to put with our ID's and no one was quite sure what they would do for us… as it turns out, they are stack passes for the General Collection. We lowly interns can go into the stacks ANY time we want and retrieve ANY books we want and CHECK OUT any books we want. Seriously, it's an amazing privilege. Out of the approximately 4500 employees at the Library, only about 600 people are given the stack passes. None of our supervisors in the program even have that access. Why we have it is beyond me but I'll take it.

Yes, let's be honest. The stacks are pretty boring. They are nothing spectacular. Personally, they reminded me exactly of the stacks I've seen since I was a little kid at the Cleveland Public Library. And, with something like 34 million books (something like that…), it's not like we are exactly going to be browsing the stacks. But, we could! I guess that is one of the most requested things from the public, though - can we see the stacks? So, I will always be one of the few people in the world who can say they have indeed seen the stacks of the world's largest library.

And the final event of the day was receiving our Metrochek cards. Those are the prepaid public transportation farecards - we can use on Metro rail and bus lines to commute to work. Yes, so we get to commute to work for free. Well, almost for free. I can commute for free, but for some people, the $105/month maximum that we can receive is simply not enough to cover the cost of commuting. That's a fantastic benefit to have - to not have to worry about the cost of commuting. Basically, I can rely on public transportation and not have to drive my car at all, if I wanted.

All in all, a good day.

June 7

Today was just more orientation activities and it was just so-so. We had meetings in the Jefferson building, which is basically the main building of the LOC - the building most people think of when they think of the LOC, the one with the fancy architecture and the nice exhibits and the grand reading room. Even the meeting room we were in was very decorative and ornate - but we were behind the scenes of where the public would go. We interns will all be working in the Madison building, which is basically to the south of the Jefferson building and luckily, there are tunnels between all the buildings (there is a third building as well, the Adams building) to prevent us from getting cold, wet or, as is the case now, melting from the 95-degree heat. Tunnels even lead to the House (and I think Senate) buildings.

Our subject matter today was preservation and we got PowerPoint lectures on different areas of preservation and proper handling of materials. I don't think any of this information was really new to me - how to handle books, how to retrieve books from shelves, how to correctly store books, all that jazz... it's all stuff I've heard before. Preservation just isn't my thing, though, and particularly when a couple of the preservation women just read their presentations to us, I was thisclose to falling asleep. After the lectures, we did head down to the preservation lab, where they showed us how they have protected and saved certain items. With the visual aid, the material was a little more interesting, although the lab certainly isn't designed to hold about 30 people and that's at least how many people were there as the lectures were made to not just my group of interns, but another group of longer-term interns who are there through Sept. 30, not to mention all of our division supervisors.

After lunch, we (we meaning the three Recorded Sound interns) met again with the supervisors from the Recorded Sound division. There was even time for a tour of the archives. We saw thousands and thousands and thousands of LPs in storage. I want to stress - thousands. Actually, it's probably millions. Not to mention that they basically have two copies of every item. Pretty cool. There are also listening rooms and stuff like that for all types of formats. Most of the stuff seemed to be the vinyl LP format, but there are also different kinds of tapes and even recordings created on glass. A little brittle, as you can imagine.

The last thing we did today was hear from the Librarian of Congress, Mr. James H. Billington. He was nice enough, but kind of long-winded and took about 20 minutes each to answer questions from the audience. Yawn! Is that rude to be bored by the Librarian of Congress? Yeah probably, it is… Anyway, Mr. Billington is certain we will all find great treasures among the Copyright deposits we are searching. He was a big advocate of using the money to bring in interns like us to clean up the Copyright deposits and he hopes to make this an annual thing.

I met a couple more co-workers today and also found out all the different divisions we are working in. Three are in Manuscripts and will be dealing with plays; six are in Motion Pictures; three are in prints & photographs; two are right in the copyright office and three are in Music - not to be confused by us three in Recorded Sound. It's interesting because that doesn't even begin to touch all the different areas in which we could have expressed interest when we applied. I don't know what happened to those other areas (History, Literature, Popular Culture, Folklore... those are some that come to mind) but I guess it might have something to do with the fact that those units couldn't find room for the interns or couldn't pull everything together in the about 8 weeks that they were given. In all, there are like 20 interns out of some 200 applicants, apparently. So yes, I feel rather privileged to be among the 10% chosen. Interestingly, the group has few library science students. Thom & I from Recorded Sound are like half of the library science students, although some of the undergraduates seem to have some interest in perhaps pursuing an MLS. Maybe I should talk them into going to Syracuse... (or not...). There is a gal who attended the University of Texas, another attending the University of South Florida (I think) and another who will be starting the program at Catholic University soon. There are two other graduate students that I know of and the rest are all undergrads.

June 6

I'm at the Library of Congress! Yay! And they actually had my name on the list, too, when I arrived to check in. You never know with my luck… Figuring out the DC public transportation system first thing in the morning without getting run over by cranky and rushed workers was a little stressful, but I managed without any problems and even got to work about 20 minutes early. Most of you who know me at all would be really surprised to hear that I was early to anything!

Intern-related things were pretty unorganized at first, which we were sort of led to believe will be the norm since the Jr. Fellows program was pulled together pretty quickly this summer. Pretty much the first thing we did was head down to get fingerprinted and ID'd. You wouldn't think it would really take that long to take pictures, make ID badges and get fingerprints of approximately 25 students but it did. After the 90 minutes or so that was allotted to that task, only about six of us had both gotten our ID badges and been fingerprinted. Luckily, I was one of them - one less thing to worry about. The new-fangled fingerprinting of 2005 involves putting this Purel-like stuff on your hand and then doing it all via scanning directly to the computer. No dirty hands or anything. Kind of amazing. Do they do that at police stations, now, too, I wonder? My ID badge turned out okay - I remembered to smile (something I did not do for my new driver's license) and it says Library of Congress in big letters so it's pretty much all I could ask for. Also, it says that I'm only there until August 12th, which is a relief because last week they temporarily told us we would be there through the 19th. Anyway, apparently, I have to wear my ID everywhere. And don't think I'm going to take it off once I get back to Syracuse…

After that security stuff, we listened to library personnel give welcome comments. Some former interns told us what a great opportunity was ahead of us - as if we didn't know that already. After lunch, we spent hours doing paperwork. And more paperwork. Oh yeah, and more paperwork. It's pretty crazy how much paperwork we have to fill out for a 10-week position.

Sometime during the day, I found out I was assigned to the Recorded Sound division. Although I knew that was one of the possibilities, there was also the chance I would end up in Motion Pictures and I really wanted to be there. This other intern, Thom, found out who the four Recorded Sound interns were and unwittingly let me know that I was one of them. I seemed to be like the only intern who didn't know exactly which unit I was in for sure... Apparently, that is because others have expertise in their given areas. I, however, know NOTHING about recorded sound. Nothing. So, I'm a little bummed about that. Our two recorded sound supervisors, Nancy and Gene, are both really cool, though. I like them both a lot and am glad I'm working for them, especially after meeting a couple of the other supervisors. The other Recorded Sound intern is this 20-year-old gal, Alexandra, from San Francisco and Brown University. The fourth Recorded Sound intern never showed up for some reason. It was a guy who I know I was just destined to marry and now, because he's chosen not to come to the LOC, I will probably die an old maid. Ha ha. Anyway, despite meeting our supervisors, we didn't really learn much about what we would be doing this summer. Specifically, I mean. Something about copyright and something about CDs. Luckily, tomorrow we don't have to be at work until 9:30 so I don't have to get up quite as early. Setting my alarm for 5:15am goes against every fiber of my being.