LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MAGAZINEJULY/AUGUST 2024

SAVINGSOUNDS

HOW THE LIBRARY PRESERVESOUR AUDIO HERITAGE

InsideThe Bible That Helped Revive
An Extinct Native Language
Our All-Star Selections:
Favorite Baseball Items

Plus

Einstein’s Love Letters
A Compass Points to Mecca
The Gerry Behind‘Gerrymander’FEATURES

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Unusual device points thefaithful to Islam’s holiest site
for their daily prayers.

Library specialists work topreserve the audio heritageof America.

Collections chronicle
the history of radio
broadcasting.

The Way to Mecca

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MAGAZINE

Saving Sounds

Capturing Airwaves▪ The Library’s audio
collection extends from late
19th-century recordings
etched into wax to albums
like those shown above to themost recent achievements
in digital sound recording.
Shawn Miller▪ On the cover: Audio preservation specialist Melissa Widzinski cleans ahistorical recording at the Library’s National Audio-Visual Conservation
Center in Culpeper, Virginia. Shawn Miller

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MAGAZINEJULY / AUGUST 2024
VOL. 13 NO. 4
Mission of the
Library of Congress
The Library’s mission is to engage,inspire and inform Congress
and the American people with auniversal and enduring source ofknowledge and creativity.
Library of Congress Magazine isissued bimonthly by the Office ofCommunications of the Libraryof Congress and distributed
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libraries, learned societies andallied organizations in the UnitedStates. Research institutions andeducational organizations in othercountries may arrange to receive
Library of Congress Magazine on
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for Acquisitions and Bibliographic
Access, 101 Independence Ave.
S.E., Washington DC 205404100. LCM is also available on
the web at loc.gov/lcm/. Allother correspondence should
be addressed to the Office ofCommunications, Library ofCongress, 101 Independence Ave.
S.E., Washington DC 20540-1610.
news@loc.gov
loc.gov/lcm
ISSN 2169-0855 (print)
ISSN 2169-0863 (online)

DEPARTMENTS
2

Online Offerings

3

Off the Shelf

4

Extremes

5

Favorite Place

6

Page From the Past

10

Curator's Picks

12

Technology

13

My Job24

Around the Library

25

News Briefs

26

Shop the Library27

Support the Library28

Last Word

2

5

Carla Hayden
Librarian of Congress

12

April Slayton
Executive Editor
Mark Hartsell
EditorAshley Jones
Designer
Shawn Miller
Photo Editor

Contributors

Matt Barton
Chuck DMark Dimunation
Rob Friedrich
Jennifer Harbster
Sahar Kazmi
Josh Levy
Wendi A. Maloney
Rachel McNellis
María Peña
Cynthia Smith
Helena Zinkham

CONNECT ON

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loc.gov/connect

JULY/AUGUST 2024 LOC.GOV/LCM

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ONLINE OFFERINGS▪ The Library recently
placed thousands ofearly 1900s postcards
such as these online.
Prints and Photographs
Division

POSTCARDS FROMAMERICA‘Real photo’ cards reveal
turn-of-the-century U.S.
Greetings from Washington, D.C.!
And from Gordon, Nebraska; Black
River Falls, Wisconsin; San Francisco,California; and countless other big
cities and tiny hamlets spread acrossthe vastness of the United States.
The Library’s Prints and Photographs
Division recently placed online more than
8,000 “real photo” postcards from the early
1900s — cards that preserve images of life
as it existed in turn-of-the-century America.
The production and use of postcards
exploded in the United States after a federallaw, passed in 1907, allowed for messages
to be written on the backs of the cards
along with the addresses. Previously,
postcards were widely used, but messages
could only be added to the fronts ofcards, which detracted from the images.
At a time when relatively few households
had a telephone, postcards provided
quick and convenient communication.
Many people also collected cards
as souvenirs in albums.
Large commercial companies fed this newmarket with millions of cards featuring
popular landmarks and tourist sites,

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MAGAZINE

humorous pictures, holiday greetings andadvertisements. Local photographers
participated in the craze by printing
their negatives on a photographic card
stock, typically 31/2 by 51/2 inches in size.
Their images show an America hard at workand play, and the country’s innate senseof humor. In South Dakota, men top off a
giant haystack. A boy rides an enormous
prize rooster at the Minnesota State Fair. In
Olustee, Oklahoma, a couple poses in theback seat of their Overland automobile, their
dog in the driver’s seat, paws on wheel.
And they show an America moving
ahead into a new, modern era: A biplaneflies down Main Street in Mayville,
Wisconsin; an illustrated card from1913 calls for votes for women.
When photographers expected large
sales for a card, they could deposit
a copy of the card for copyrightprotection. The Prints and Photographs
Division now preserves thousands ofthose copyright deposit postcards.
The Collections Digitization Division scanned
all the cards in 2023, fronts and backs —now all waiting online to be explored.
—Helena Zinkham is chief of the
Prints and Photographs Division.

MORE INFORMATION
Postcards research guide
guides.loc.gov/postcards

OFF THE SHELFNORTH AMERICA’SFIRST BIBLE▪ Puritan minister John
Eliot translated the Bible
into the Wampanoag
language in the mid17th century. This copy
held by the Library is
the second edition,
published in 1685.
Rare Book and Special
Collections Division

Today, Eliot’s translation helps
resurrect an extinct Native
language.
After arriving in the Massachusetts
Bay Colony in 1631, English
Puritan minister John Eliot
made history not only with his
steadfast mission to convert
Native Americans to Christianity
but also for his evangelicalmethod: translating the Bible
into the Wampanoag language ofthe region’s Algonquin tribes.
Eliot believed Indigenous
communities would be more
receptive to the message ofChristianity if the holy scriptures
were written in their language, also
known as Natick. He learned thepreviously unwritten language andspent years translating the Geneva
Bible into it, getting significant
help from Native Americans
such as James Printer andJohn Nesutan, according to the
Massachusetts Historical Society.
Printed in Cambridge between
1660 and 1663, the Eliot Indian
Bible today represents a
landmark in printing history:
It was the first Bible printed in
North America in any language.
Eliot was a pivotal figure among
the Puritans. He helped settle theintertribal communities of Christianconverts, called “praying towns,” that
dotted the New England landscape between
1646 and 1675. The establishment of thesecommunities — 14 in total — was part of an
attempt to impose Puritan rules, mores andlifestyles on recent Indigenous converts.
Eliot’s efforts to convert more Natives
ultimately failed, in part because of bubbling
animosity between white Colonists and the
Wampanoags. And most copies of his Bible
were destroyed during King Philip’s War(1675-1676), a conflict that took a toll on theregion’s Indigenous population. A second
edition of the Eliot Bible was published in
1685 — the edition held by the Library today.

In recent decades, the Wampanoag nation
has used the Eliot Bible as a tool to help
resurrect its ancestral language, which
declined soon after the Mayflower Pilgrims
arrived and went extinct in the 19th century.
Founded by MIT-trained linguist Jessie
Little Doe Baird in 1993, the Wôpanâak
Language Reclamation Project uses
the Eliot Bible and archival records tobring the language back to Wampanoag
households, one student at a time.
—María Peña is a public affairs specialist in
the Office of Communications.

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EXTREMESTHE GERRY BEHIND‘GERRYMANDERING’
A cartoon put one governor’sname on a notorious politicalpractice.
The term for the political tactic ofmanipulating boundaries ofelectoral districts for unfair
political advantage derives its
name from a prominent 19thcentury political figure — andfrom a mythological salamander.
The term, originally written
as “Gerry-mander,” first wasused on March 26, 1812,in the Boston Gazette — areaction to the redrawing ofMassachusetts state senate
election districts under Gov.
Elbridge Gerry.
Though the redistricting was done at thebehest of his Democratic-Republican
Party, it was Gerry who signed the bill in
1812. As a result, he received the dubious
honor of attribution, along with its negative
connotations.
Gerry, in fact, found the proposal “highly
disagreeable.” He lost the next election, but
the redistricting was a success: His party
retained control of the legislature.
One of the remapped, contorted districts in
the Boston area was said to resemble theshape of a mythological salamander. The
newly drawn state senate district in Essex
County was lampooned in cartoons as a
strange winged dragon, clutching at theregion.

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MAGAZINE▪ Elkanah Tisdale used these wooden blocks to print
the original image of the “gerrymander” shown atleft. Geography and Map Division (blocks); Rare Book
and Special Collections Division (print)

The person who coined the termgerrymander never has been identified.
The artist who drew the political cartoon,
however, was Elkanah Tisdale, a Bostonbased artist and engraver who had the skills
to cut the blocks for the original cartoon.
Gerry was a signer of the Declaration of
Independence, a two-term member ofthe House of Representatives, governorof Massachusetts and U.S. vice president
under James Madison. His name, however,
was forever negatively linked to this form ofpolitical powerbroking by the cartoon shown
here, which often appeared with the termgerrymander.
The Library’s Rare Book and Special
Collections Division holds the original printof the image, and the Geography and Map
Division holds Tisdale’s original woodblocks— preserving the origins of the name for apolitical practice that continues over two
centuries later.
—Mark Dimunation is the former chief of theRare Book and Special Collections Division.

FAVORITE PLACE
85 YEARS OF THE
ADAMS BUILDINGThe year was 1939. Packard became
the first automobile company to offer
air conditioning. Pan American Airways’
Yankee Clipper made its first trans-Atlantic
passenger flight. Scientists at Iowa State
College developed the prototype for the first
digital computer.
For the Library, the year was notable foranother event: the opening of the John
Adams Building, 85 years ago.
The Adams — originally called the Annex, asin the annex to what is now known as theThomas Jefferson Building — incorporates
traditional beaux arts architectural styles,
including Italian Renaissance and classicalGreco-Roman details, along with fashionable
art deco designs.
At its core, the Adams contains 12 tiers ofbookstacks extending from the basement to
the fourth floor. Each tier covers 13 acres ofspace; together, the tiers can hold up to 10
million books. Staff offices and workspaces
encircle the bookstacks.
Topping everything off, on the fifth floor, are
two high-ceilinged reading rooms adorned
with murals by artist Ezra Winters, one
paying tribute to Jefferson and the otherfeaturing a procession of colorful charactersfrom Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” marchingacross the walls — including a cameo by
Chaucer himself.
Architectural sculptor Lee Lawrie adorned
the Adams with an array of modernist
details and deco designs: Sculptural reliefs
adorn bronze doors; plant motifs in metaland stone grow in elevator lobbies and on
water fountains, walls and other unexpectedsurfaces; owls dressed in nickel, aluminumor stone nest about the reading room andon the building’s exterior.

SHAWN MILLER; CAROL M. HIGHSMITH ARCHIVE/PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION

The highly symbolic designs and wealth ofdetail that Winter and Lawrie incorporated
into the Adams Building — along with theartistry of many others — make the Adams
much more than an annex. It is truly aworthy a companion to its older sibling, thehistoric, magnificent Jefferson Building.
—Jennifer Harbster is head of the Science
Reference Section.

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PAGE FROM THE PAST▪ Albert Einstein, shownat right with Margarita
Konenkova, wrote theseletters to her during theiraffair in the mid-1940s.
Manuscript Division(letters); Getty Images(photo)LOVE AND INTRIGUEAT PRINCETON
Small set of letters reveals
Einstein's brief affair with
Margarita Konenkova.
In 1945, Margarita Konenkova was returning
to Russia with her homesick husband,
sculptor Sergey Konenkov. Before she left,
she entrusted her New York neighbor with
six letters received from Albert Einsteinduring their passionate affair. The neighborleft instructions that, in case of her death,the letters be “burned without further ado.”
The letters were never burned. Instead, they
ended up in the Library of Congress, closed
to researchers until 2019.
Einstein, clearly infatuated, penned theletters between 1944 and 1945. One includes
a sketch of a “Half-Nest,” a cozy room that
resembles his home study. Though thesketch is simple, Einstein clarifies, he was
not drunk when drawing it. He simply wishedto capture the space he most associatedwith Konenkova.

6

alienation between Russians and Russian
Americans “a kind of personal expatriation.”
The affair was, of course, a secret. While
Einstein was a widower, Konenkova
remained married. Still, their friends werediscreet. When asked later whether an affair
had occurred, one only offered, “I certainly
hope so! They were two lonely people.”

THE LETTERS MIXEINSTEIN’S HUMANITYWITH HIS GENIUS. WE
SEE HIM INCAPACITATEDBY ILLNESS AND THEN
DEBATING ROBERTOPPENHEIMER.

The letters mix Einstein’s humanity with his
genius. We see him incapacitated by illness,grounding his sailboat in stormy weather,railing against birthday parties as “stupidbourgeois affairs” but attending them
anyway and smoking pipes that Konenkova
sent him.

In 1994, a Russian newspaper finallyrevealed the affair. Later, Sotheby’s, having
read the discredited memoir of an ex-Soviet
spymaster, announced that Konenkova had
been a spy, pressing Einstein for intelligence
about the bomb. Several historians havesince declared the claim implausible.

Then he becomes the renowned physicist
again, debating Robert Oppenheimer,
Bertrand Russell, Wolfgang Pauli and Kurt
Gödel in his home. Occasionally, politics
emerge. “I admire Stalin’s sagacity,” Einstein
declares, without context. “He does it
significantly better than the others, not only
militarily but also politically.” He worries
over nuclear secrecy and calls the growing

Of course, these letters contain no evidence
that Konenkova really was a spy. But they doshed a little light on a clandestine encounter
between two lonely people.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MAGAZINE—Rachel McNellis is an archivist in the
Manuscript Division, and Josh Levy is ahistorian in the same division.

JULY/AUGUST 2024 LOC.GOV/LCM

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THE
WAY
TO
MECCA
Rare compass points faithful
to Islam’s holiest site.

BY CYNTHIA SMITH

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MAGAZINE▪ A brilliantly colored
image of the Great
Mosque (left andopposite) decorates
the underside of the lidof this qiblah compass.
Geography and Map
Division

Five times each day, millions of Muslims theworld over turn toward Mecca in prayer,
facing in the direction of the Ka’bah, theblack stone considered holy in Islam.
Knowing the correct direction to
face — referred to as the “qiblah” — iscrucial to all Muslims. And for those
hundreds or even thousands of miles
over the horizon from Mecca, the qiblah
might be difficult to determine.
For centuries, qiblah compasses havehelped show the faithful the way byindicating the proper direction.
The Library’s Geography and Map Division
recently acquired a remarkable, vibrantly
decorated qiblah compass, made in Turkey
during the period of the Ottoman Empire.
The precise year of the instrument’s
creation is not known; however, it is believed
to date to the 18th or early 19th century.
Located in western Saudi Arabia about
50 miles from the Red Sea, Mecca is thebirthplace of the prophet Muhammad
and one of the holiest cities in Islam.
Within the city lies the Great Mosque,or Masjid al-Sharif. Situated in themosque’s center is the Ka’bah — thefocus of daily prayers by the faithful.
Muslims, no matter where in the world
they may be, pray five times a day facing
the Ka’bah. The prayers are based on
the phases of the sun: the Fajr (dawn or
sunrise), Dhuhr (high noon), ‘Asr (afternoon),
Maghrib (sunset) and Isha (evening).
Qiblah compasses help thedevout in their worship.
They are simple to use. The outer ring of
the base on the Library’s qiblah compass
is inscribed in black with the names ofscores of cities and regions throughout
the Islamic world. One, located at about
5 o’clock on the dial, is written in red:
Qustantiniyah, or Constantinople (today’s
Istanbul), the capital of the Ottoman Empire.
The compass allows users to locate
the correct direction by adjusting thebottom end of the needle to the placeor city where they are located anddetermine the direction of the Ka’bah
using the outer point of needle.
Many of these instruments were elaborately
decorated. The inside lid of the Library’s isbrilliantly illustrated with an image of theGreat Mosque and the Ka’bah, encircled bya ring of pink flowers and green leaves.
The base features a more rudimentary
image of the mosque and Ka’bah as well asfour images of mihrabs — sacred alcovesin a mosque that indicate the direction of
the qiblah. The mihrabs on the base depict
the four Sunni schools of Islamic thought:
the Shafi’i, Maliki, Hanbali and Hanafi.
The outer lid is decorated with adelicate, circular floral motif encircled
by gold-hued bands, all on a green
background. Those designs — floral
patterns and green and yellow hues
— are a hallmark of the Edirnekaristyle rooted in Edirne, Turkey. Artisanslearned those techniques in workshops
located in Edirne and Constantinople.
The Geography and Map Division holds
many historical scientific instruments. This
brilliantly decorated, meticulously crafted
instrument, however, represents the firstqiblah compass acquired for the collections— a fascinating and practical device thathelps the faithful find their way to worship.
—Cynthia Smith is a reference specialist in
the Geography and Map Division.

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9CURATOR'S PICKS
ALL-STARSELECTIONS
To mark the Midsummer Classic,
we chose favorite baseball items
from the Library’s collections.

NATIONAL AUDIO-VISUAL CONSERVATION CENTER

RARE WORLD SERIESFOOTAGEThis was a home run of a discovery. A
relative of a Library employee found eightcans of film in the rafters of a neighbor’s
garage. Further exploration revealed that
one can held a Kinogram newsreel featuring
a prominent story on Game 7 of the
Washington Senators’ victory over the New
York Giants in the 1924 World Series — theonly footage of the game known to exist.

PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISIONTHE EARLIEST KNOWNBASEBALL CARD

The Brooklyn Atlantics dominated New
York baseball in the early 1860s, winning
championships in 1861, 1864 and 1865.
Photographer Charles Williamson made thisteam portrait in 1865. The Atlantics mounted
the image on cards and handed them out
to fans and to opposing teams — an act ofswagger that let opposing teams know who
was king of the diamond. The card today isconsidered the earliest known baseball cardin existence.

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MAGAZINE

MANUSCRIPT DIVISION

BRANCH RICKEY’S SCOUTINGREPORTS
The papers of longtime baseball executive
Branch Rickey include some 1,750 scouting
reports from the 1950s and ’60s. In thereports, Rickey analyzed the skills of bothcurrent and up-and-coming players,
including future Hall of Famers such as Hank
Aaron, Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax. In a
middling review of Roberto Clemente, Rickey
praised Clemente’s “perfect” form at theplate but bemoaned a lack of speed andinstincts. Clemente went on to become one
the great players in baseball history.

ARTHUR MANN PAPERS/MANUSCRIPT DIVISIONMUSIC DIVISION‘TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALLGAME’

The best-known of all sports songs got its
start on the New York subway, where Jack
Norworth jotted down the lyrics in 1908.
Albert Von Tilzer set the words to music,
launching a century of “root, root, root for
the home team” singalongs at ballparks
across America. Norworth and Von Tilzer
submitted this sheet music of the song to
the U.S. Copyright Office at the Library for
copyright on May 2, 1908.

THE JACKIE ROBINSON
STORYJackie Robinson broke baseball’s color line
in 1947, a historic moment in the history of
the game and the nation. Three years later,
he starred in his own biopic, “The Jackie
Robinson Story.” This copy of the script, partof the papers of sportswriter Arthur Mann,bears the signature of Robinson and co-star
Ruby Dee and Mann’s sketches of Dodgers
general manager Branch Rickey and Clyde
Sukeforth, who played a key role in bringing
Robinson to the team.

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TECHNOLOGY▪ Audio preservation
specialist Bryan Hoffa
digitizes a recording
made on a metal
master disc in one of
the Library’s audio
preservation labs. Shawn
MillerMETAL MUSIC
Library preserves historicalsounds on over 200,000 ofthese rare master discs.
Today, we can swoon to the rich tones ofElla Fitzgerald’s voice or Louis Armstrong’s
blazing trumpet at the press of a button
on our phones. While it’s easy to take for
granted, the sounds of decades past reach
us today as the result of ever-evolving
recording science and innovation.
Thanks to a generous donation from the
Universal Music Group (UMG) in 2011, theLibrary holds more than 200,000 historicalmaster recordings of songs from iconic
artists like Fitzgerald and Armstrong, as wellas the Andrews Sisters, Bing Crosby, Guy
Lombardo, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and manymore.
The collection contains both released
and unreleased music of the 1930s and1940s from the Decca Records label,
etched on metal discs used in the record
manufacturing process. These nickelplated metal discs contain the negative andpositive images of an audio recording, whichwere once used to press shellac-based 78
rpm records for public sale.
In that era, recording artists played live in

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MAGAZINE

the studio, and the sounds they made were
captured by cutting grooves into a blank
wax disc from which master (negative)
and mother (positive) metal discs werethen derived. The mother was a nickelcoated copper disc that could be played
like a conventional commercial record. The
mother’s negative impression, called thestamper, was used to press the records soldin stores.
The masters from this particular period are
unique, not only because the process ofmetal mastering evolved before midcentury,
but also because the discs themselves areplayable — if you have the right equipment.
These masters can now be played onmodern equipment with two pointed styli,
allowing us to hear decades-old live-instudio performances with exceptional detailand clarity.
As Librarian of Congress James H. Billington
noted when the masters were first donatedto the Library, too much from this era ofAmerican music has been “lost due toneglect and deterioration.”In the safety of the National Audio-VisualConservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia, theLibrary’s experts now preserve both theserare metal masters and the exceptionalmusical heritage they hold.
—Sahar Kazmi is a writer-editor in the Officeof the Chief Information Officer.

MY JOBRob Friedrich leads a team ofworld-class audio engineers.
Describe your work at the Library.
I work at the National Audio-VisualConservation Center (NAVCC) in Culpeper,
Virginia. I head the Audio Preservation Lab,
where I am responsible for leading thetechnology and establishing workflows topreserve the nearly 4 million items in the
Library’s Recorded Sound Collection.
My daily duties are managing a great
team of audio engineers who preserve
unique audio recordings that range
from the late 1880s to the cutting-edge
technologies of today. I also work closelywith industry experts to keep up withtechnologies and techniques to ensure ourpractices meet the highest standards.
How did you prepare for your position?
I was preparing for a career in recordingfrom early childhood and didn’t evenknow it. I was a violinist from age 6through college and beyond. From myearliest age, I always was drawn to thehigher fidelity of brilliant recordings,
which led me to where I am today.
After my university studies in performanceand music history, I got an internship in acommercial recording studio in New York
City while also performing professionally. I
was very fortunate to learn from the finest
producers and engineers in the studio.
After years as a commercial recording
engineer and performing musician, I wasoffered a position as a recording engineer
for the world-renowned Telarc recordlabel based in Cleveland. There, I further
developed my skills, producing world-classrecordings of globally known artists ranging
from Dave Brubeck to the Philharmonia to
Philip Bailey. Working for a record label thatdemanded production excellence taughtme the value of preserving recordings.
I am honored to have won two
Grammy Awards and a Latin Grammy
for my engineering work, with fourother Grammy nominations.
What have been your standout
projects here at the Library?
Leading the upgrades to and buildout of theaudio preservation studios at the NAVCC has
been inspiring. Knowing we are preserving
the Library’s great collection at the highest

SHAWN MILLER

standards and creating new capabilities
has been tremendous. There have beenquite a few “firsts” during these projects
that now put us in a position to preserve
collection items we could not before.
I am currently leading the buildout of
our listening theater, which will allow
the public to experience extraordinary
immersive sound. Immersive audio is a 3D
experience that is created with multiple
speakers above and around the listening
position. It’s going to be amazing!
What are your favorite collections
items at the Library?
My favorite collections are the ones weare working on currently. There is muchformat and content variety to learn
from preserving each collection. Eachcollection needs to be planned for andcan create technical challenges thatare welcomed — it’s what we do!
Among the firsts was the preservation of
professional analog multitrack items in
the Les Paul collection. Paul was not only
a great musician but also a pioneer in thedevelopment of multitrack recording.
We now are working on the Universal Music
Group lacquer and metal master discs
collection, which features great recordings
ranging from classical to pop with artists
such as Jascha Heifetz and Bing Crosby.

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13

SAVING

THE

SOUND

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MAGAZINE▪ An original recording of“Someday You’ll Know”
from the collection ofsound recording pioneer
Les Paul. Shawn Miller

DS

OF HISTORY

Library
specialists work
to preserve our
audio heritage.
BY WENDI A. MALONEY
In the dimly lit studio, just after thebacking band starts, Mary Ford’ssmooth voice cuts in: “Put your sweet
lips a little closer to the phone, Let’spretend that we’re together, all alone.”The sound is so vibrant it’s easy to
imagine yourself in the Quonset HutStudio in Nashville, Tennessee, where Ford
recorded “She’ll Have to Go” in 1962.
The sense of immediacy deepens as
record producer Jim Foglesong interrupts:“Once again, please,” he says, ending

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15

▪ Audio preservation
specialist Melissa
Widzinski cleans adamaged lacquer
disc using a turntableequipped with a
specialized arm. Shawn
MillerTake 1. On Take 3: “Hold it a second.
Joe, the bass is just a little bit too hard.”
Take 8: “Mary … move in just a touch.”preservation studios engineers operateon NAVCC’s sprawling campus in thefoothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

In 2024, Ford’s voice emanates not from
Nashville, however, but from a speakerin Culpeper, Virginia — one of six in acustom-designed multitracking studio at
the Library of Congress’ National AudioVisual Conservation Center (NAVCC).

He should know. He joined NAVCC in2011 having won three Grammy Awards,
including a Latin Grammy, as an audio
engineer for the Telarc label. He now
supervises a staff of specialists whotransfer audio from fragile or obsolete
formats to preservation-quality digital files.

Audio design engineers fabricated the studioto preserve the vast collection of guitar
virtuoso and sound recording innovator
Les Paul, a pioneer of multitracking.
In 1962, Paul and Ford were spouses,musical collaborators and major mid20th-century hitmakers. Paul listenedin the control room as Foglesong guided
Mary and the band through takes.
The new multitrack studio is NAVCC’s
most technically complex audio studioto date. Its infrastructure enables
engineers to capture and package
multiple elements of a multitrack work
for access in a library cataloging system— a new capability at the Library.
But the studio is not alone in
number or sophistication.
“We have some of the best specifications
you’re going to find,” Rob Friedrich,head of the Audio Preservation Lab,
says of the 20 support rooms and audio

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MAGAZINE

Along with studios, Friedrich and his staff
have developed an array of cutting-edge
sound preservation labs at NAVCC, where
they work hand-in-hand with curators,archivists and librarians to acquire, preserveand share America’s sound heritage.
Preserving the Library’s audio collection
is no small feat: At nearly 4 million andgrowing, it is the nation’s largest. It spans
experimental recordings etched into wax
cylinders in the 1890s to the most recent
achievements in digital sound recording.
A trip to NAVCC’s subterranean storage
vaults — once used by the Federal
Reserve to safeguard billions in cash —brings home the almost mind-boggling
range of formats and genres.
“We have commercial albums andsingles in every format — 78s, 45s,
cassettes, reels, CDs,” recorded
sound curator Matt Barton says. “Wehave hundreds of thousands of radiobroadcasts. Recordings of sound effects.
Environmental recordings, you name it.”
On ceiling-high shelves in one vault, CD
box sets of the Beatles sit next to the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra. There’s amusic-box recording of “Amazing Grace.”
Commercial LPs feature Billy Taylor,
the Beach Boys and, for fans of dragcar racing, “The Big Sounds of Drag.”
In another vault, master recordings ofAndrés Segovia, Lawrence Welk and Bing
Crosby are etched into 16-inch lacquer
discs. Even after all of this time, they giveoff a scent, despite the chill. The vaults
are kept at low temperature and humidity
to slow down degradation of materials.
In other vaults, the NBC Collection contains
upward of 40,000 hours of radio broadcasts▪ Sound lab supervisor
Rob Friedrich removes adisc from the Library’s
Lomax Collection. Shawn
MillerJULY/AUGUST 2024 LOC.GOV/LCM

17

shelves of perforated racks and afan. The door closes, and the lacquerdries completely within minutes.
In another lab, preservationists use special
ovens to bake tapes that have absorbed too
much moisture from the air, causing theirlayers to separate. Once heated overnight,“It’s essentially like dehydrating them,pulling the moisture out,” Widzinski says.
In one unusual instance earlier this year, atape had too little moisture, not too much.
A French radio performance of composer
Gunther Schuller’s music arrived in
the Audio Preservation Lab looking
like ... not audiotape. A hockey puck?
A blob? No one could say for sure.
To rehydrate the solidified brown mass,
audio engineer Bryan Hoffa placed justenough water in a round plastic bucket —the kind home-improvement stores sell — tocover the bottom. He wedged an empty
reel inside the bucket above the water,
topped the reel with a flange, then set thetape on the flange and closed the lid.
Within 24 hours, the water vapor had
rehydrated the tape. When Hoffa plays thedigitized file now, the sound resonates.
“This is the creative process,” Friedrich saysof Hoffa’s seemingly simple yet carefully
considered approach — he spent months
doing research before treating the tape.
▪ NAVCC's multitrack
studio is its mosttechnically advanced todate. Shawn Miller

from 1935 to 1971. Master recordingsin the Universal Music Group collection
showcase Ella Fitzgerald, Bill Monroe
and Jascha Heifetz, to name a few.
Often, before a collection proceeds
to a studio for digitization, items
have to be stabilized. In one lab,
specialists wash lacquer discs, themost vulnerable of formats.
“They constantly undergo a chemicaldegradation process called exudation,”
explains audio engineer Melissa Widzinski.
It leaves a white haze that, over time,
can cause irreparable damage.
To clean a disc, she places it on a turntable.
Its arm has a small brush and cleaning
fluid, applied as the disc revolves. A waterrinse follows. Then, a tiny vacuum threads
through each groove picking up moisture.
Next, the disc goes into a cabinet with

18

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MAGAZINE

In other labs, optical-assisted technology
extracts sound from wax cylinder
recordings. In one space, a system
dubbed IRENE uses a tiny ultra-highresolution camera to image grooved
discs that are too fragile or damaged toplay with a stylus. Afterward, softwaretranslates the images to sound.
“There were some hundred Les Pauldiscs that we could not have transferredwithout IRENE,” Friedrich says.
Given the size of the Library’s soundrecording collections, sound preservationists
have to balance time-intensive methods
with expanded research access.
Engineer Ryan Chroninger transfers
audio cassettes — the variety popularin the 1980s — at high speed.
To qualify, the tapes must be in goodcondition. “They don’t have to be bakedor spliced or have any other kinds ofrepairs done to them,” Chroninger says.

In two studios, he operates up to
eight decks simultaneously at two- tofour-times normal cassette playback
speed and can transfer the A and theB sides of tapes at the same time.
In another studio, 16 vintage reelto-reel tape machines transfer 32
hours of recorded sound in a single
hour. Friedrich jokes the room is his“magnum opus” for production speed.
As in Chroninger’s studios, tapes have to
be good quality. Engineers just finisheddigitizing the enormous NBC Collection. Yearsearlier, it was transferred from disc to tapeat the Library, making it a known quantity.
The studio’s decades-old reel-toreel machines operate as if they were
new thanks to NAVCC’s “amazingly
knowledgeable” maintenance specialist,

Travis Thatcher, Friedrich says.
Maintenance engineers have expertly
restored all kinds of legacy playbackequipment, including a 16-track playerthat captured some of Paul’s hits.
Now, his artistry lives on in high fidelity
at the Library of Congress. And in thestudio built to preserve it, other uniquemultitracks — music of Liza Minnelli,
Max Roach, the Gershwins — can bepreserved for future generations.

▪ Ryan Chroninger
digitizes multiple
recordings
simultaneously using
vintage reel-to-reel tapemachines restored at
NAVCC. Shawn Miller“It’s because of the Les Paul
collection,” Friedrich says. “We’re ina position to do it now. We’ve neverbeen able to do that before.”—Wendi A. Maloney is a writer-editor
in the Office of Communications.

JULY/AUGUST 2024 LOC.GOV/LCM

19▪ A historicalmicrophone in the
Library of Congresscollections. Shawn Miller

CAPTURINGTHE
AIRWAVES
Collections preserve the history ofradio broadcasting.

BY MATT BARTON20LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MAGAZINEThe date was Nov. 2, 1920, and Americans —a small number of them, at least — gathered
to listen to a broadcast of the returns in
the race for the White House between
Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox.
Harding won quite easily, and the more
historic event, it turned out, was thebroadcast itself by KDKA in Pittsburgh.
Though individuals and businesses
had experimented with occasionalscheduled broadcasts in the 1910s, theKDKA broadcast of the 1920 election
results today is considered the firstcommercial radio broadcast in history.
Few recordings from that first generationof radio survive. Indeed, because oftechnical problems such as amplification
and recording length, few suchrecordings were even made. But muchof what did survive lives on in the vast
collections of the Library of Congress.
The Library holds nearly 4 million soundrecordings, ranging in date from the1880s to the present and in every
description and format. That number
includes radio recordings dating fromthe 1920s to modern days — a vastand unique repository of history andculture that still delights and informs.
By 1935, a reliable system for archiving andprerecording radio programs was available.
The Presto Corporation developed cutting
lathes that could record live programson 16-inch lacquer-coated aluminum
discs, capturing 15 minutes of audio perside. Using a bank of lathes, an operator
could record continuous programmingby moving from one lathe to the next.
Performers could appraise their own work,and should a sponsor, the government,
audience members or others object, therecordings provided evidence of what
actually had been said and done.
Not all programming was recorded, andnot all of what was recorded survived. Still,
an amazing number of recordings madefrom 1935 on still exist. The largest single
component of the Library’s radio holdings,
the NBC collection, contains some 170,000
discs, holding over 40,000 hours of NBC
broadcasting from 1935 through the 1960s.
In the pretelevision era, radio offered
every kind of programming eventuallyavailable on TV. And radio pioneered
many forms and genres we now take

▪ From top: a radio
station's extensive record
library; the "tomato can"mic used in the firstradio broadcast, by KDKA
in 1920; KDKA's chiefannouncer, H.W. Arlin.
Prints and Photographs
Division; The Lantern

JULY/AUGUST 2024 LOC.GOV/LCM

21

22

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MAGAZINE

for granted: news, sports, music,
comedy, soap operas, game shows, talkshows, variety programs and more.
In the NBC collection, listeners can relive
the drama of the days leading to World War
II — the first announcements of the Pearl
Harbor attack and live coverage from every
theater of the war through V-E and V-J Days.
There are historic sports broadcasts:
Joe Louis defeats Max Schmeling in
the Fight of the Century; Yankees great
Joe DiMaggio makes his World Series
debut in 1936; the great racehorse
Seabiscuit charges to victory.
There’s the hilarious “feud” between
comedians Jack Benny and Fred Allen andthe original version of the long-running“Guiding Light” daytime drama series. There
are the passionate debates on “America’s
Town Meeting of the Air,” in which leading
journalists, government figures and ordinary
people debated the issues of the times.
And there are other collections. The
holdings of CBS and ABC programming,
while not as large, contain many significant
broadcasts. In two days of CBS coverage
from May 1945, at the end of World War
II in Europe, conflicting reports reveal
people dancing in the streets in celebrationeven as bitter fighting continued in theabsence of official confirmation of theGerman surrender. ABC broadcast a fourpart, four-night dramatic reading of John
Hersey’s account of the Hiroshima bombing
and its aftermath, aired less than two

weeks after it first appeared in print.
In the 1950s, television took over many ofradio’s specialties. Still, radio remained avital source of news, often providing thefirst broadcast coverage of major events
as well as long-form coverage of them.
Coverage of the 1962 March on Washington,
for example, is particularly deep, withinterviews by Studs Terkel of marchers for
WFMT radio and hours of coverage fromNBC and the Educational Radio Network,
or ERN, the forerunner of today’s NPR.
The collections of many of radio’s key
innovators and most exceptional talents
are another strongpoint. These include
Mary Margaret McBride’s interviews withgreat authors such as Zora Neale Hurston,
Graham Greene, Erskine Caldwell, S.J.
Perelman and P.L. Travers, creator of “MaryPoppins”; the sports interviews and playby-play of Bob Wolff and Al Wester; thesocially aware supernatural programs ofArch Oboler; the unique youth reporting of
the Children’s Express news agency from1975 to 2001; and the Latin American News
Service of the 1980s, to name just a few.

▪ Above: Historicalbroadcasting equipmentfrom the Library's
collections. Shawn Miller
Opposite, clockwisefrom top left: Radio
drama innovator Arch
Oboler; the "first ladyof radio," interviewer
Mary Margaret McBride;
Irna Phillips, creator of"Guiding Light"; and abroadcast of "America's
Town Meeting of the Air."
Prints and Photographs
Division; The Lantern

Radio’s obituary has been written manytimes in the 100-plus years it has been on
the air and in our ears. Yet, these recordings
remain part of a living broadcast tradition,a heritage that is here for all to enjoy.
—Matt Barton is a recorded soundcurator at the National AudioVisual Conservation Center.

JULY/AUGUST 2024 LOC.GOV/LCM

23

AROUND THE LIBRARY

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

24

6.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MAGAZINE

1. Actor and author
George Takei speaks to
1. Workers install a new,
local school groups atstate-of-the-art casethe Library on May 10.
for the Gutenberg Biblein theGreatThai
HallDanceof the2.
SomapaJefferson performs
Building inin
Company
November.
the
Coolidge Auditorium
on May 23 to mark2. Jorie Graham,
Asian American Pacificrecipient of the RebekahIslander Heritage Month.
Johnson Bobbitt NationalPrize
for Poetry,
3. Visitors
minglereads
withselections Libraryfrom herwork
costumed
staff“Fast” on Dec.
6. Fantasy
members
duringBook Night on May 16.
3. Students join Librarianof Geri
CongressCarla
4.
Halliwell-Horner,
Haydenin the
Great
Hall
aka
GingerSpiceof thetoexaminethe Nicolay
Spice
Girls, tours
thecopy Readingof the Gettysburg
Main
Room on
AddressMay
8. on the 155th
anniversary of Lincoln’s
5.
Elli Kimof the Asian
historic
speech.
Division shows Library
4. A Christmas
tree
collections
items
toshinesin theGreat
Hyundong
Cho,
the Hallon Dec. 12.
Republicof Korea’s
ambassador to the
5. A visitor examines
United States, on May
items from the Stephen
20.
A. Geppi Collection of
Comicsand ofGraphic
Arts
6.
LibrarianCongressondisplayin theGreat
Carla
Haydeninterviews
Hall on Nov.
actressand 9.
authorWhoopi Goldberg in the
6. International Monetary
Coolidge Auditorium on
Fund Managing Director
May 10.
Christine Lagardedelivers the eighth
annual Kissinger Lecture
ALL PHOTOS BY SHAWN MILLER
on foreign policy,
sponsored by the Kluge
Center, on Dec. 4 in the
Great Hall.
ALL PHOTOS BY SHAWN MILLER

NEWS BRIEFS
Library Reveals Lineup
For National Book Festival

Office of Communications
Wins Silver Anvil Award

The Library announced the lineup of authors
for the 2024 Library of Congress National Book
Festival, set for Aug. 24. The festival’s theme,“Books Build Us Up,” explores how reading
connects us and informs our lives. It’s throughbooks that readers can develop strong bonds
with writers and their ideas — relationships that
open the entire world, real or imagined, to all.

The Library of Congress communications teamhas won one of the highest awards in its field— the Public Relations Society of America Silver
Anvil Award — for organizational excellence inits communications and outreach on behalf ofthe national library.

The lineup features, among many others,
authors such as James Patterson, historian
Doris Kearns Goodwin, Sandra Cisneros, Casey
McQuiston, Abby Jimenez, Erik Larson, Rebecca
Yarros, Grammy-winning vocalist Renée
Fleming and children’s author Meg Medina,
the national ambassador for young people’s
literature.
The festival takes place from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.
at the Walter E. Washington Convention Centerin Washington, D.C. Doors will open at 8:30 a.m.
The festival is free and open to everyone.

MORE: loc.gov/item/prn-24-048

The Anvil Awards honor the best strategic
public relations campaigns and organizational
excellence that set the highest standardsof the industry. The Library’s Office ofCommunications won for excellence, best inhouse team in government.
Case studies from the award nomination
focused on the Library’s communications
campaigns for the National Recording Registry,collaborations with artists and celebrities
such as Lizzo and the office’s success inraising awareness of the nation’s libraryand its flagship programs to new audiences
nationally. The title of the entry was “Success
Off the Shelf: The Library of Congress Office ofCommunications.”

Reading Ambassador
Launches Video Series

Centers for the Book
Choose ‘Great Reads’

National Ambassador for Young People’s
Literature Meg Medina launched a new videoseries — “Let’s Talk Books!” — that features
beloved children’s and young adult authors,illustrators and graphic novelists.

The 56 affiliated Centers for the Book of the
Library of Congress have chosen books, called“Great Reads,” that will be recognized at the
Library of Congress National Book Festival on
Aug. 24.

Primarily meant for families and children aged
9-12 and for librarians and educators, thisdynamic 18-segment series is part of Medina’s“Cuéntame!: Let’s Talk Books!” platform, which
encourages children and their families toengage in conversations about books.

Every year since 2002, these Library affiliates
have chosen a book to celebrate at the festival
in the Library’s Roadmap to Reading program —a vast space at the festival where every centerhas a table to promote its book choices as wellas its state or territory.

The series features notable literary figures
such as Rita Williams-García, Gene Luen
Yang, Cece Bell, Jarrett J. Krosoczka, Sabaa
Tahir and many others. In each video, theguests discuss a book of their choice andtheir path to a writing career and offer advice
for young learners. The video series and its
corresponding promotional clips will drop two
at a time monthly on the Library’s YouTube
channel through Dec. 10.

The Center for the Book has affiliates in each of
the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto
Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa,
Guam and Northern Marianas. These affiliates
carry out the center’s mission of promoting
books, reading, libraries and literacy, as well as
their local literary heritage.

MORE: loc.gov/item/prn-24-042

MORE: loc.gov/item/prn-24-041

JULY/AUGUST 2024 LOC.GOV/LCM

25

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The intricate filigree, faux pearls
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Proudly proclaim your love of
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Refresh your spirits the literary
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▪ Order online: loc.gov/shop ▪ Order by phone: 888.682.3557

26

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MAGAZINESUPPORT▪ President Joe Biden
greets Steven Portnoy
at the White House
Correspondents
Association dinner. WhiteHouse Correspondents
Association

TREASURES OF
SIGHT AND SOUND
ABC radio correspondent
recognizes importance ofsaving audiovisual heritage.
ABC News Radio national correspondent
Steven Portnoy has dedicated over two
decades to network news, including
seven years covering the White House.
His passion for preserving cultural heritage
led him to become a Friend of the Libraryand support the National Audio-VisualConservation Center (NAVCC), recognizing
the profound impact of audiovisual content
on shaping the American experience.
“From the earliest films and wax recordings
to today’s TikTok videos and podcasts,
audiovisual content stands as a signatureemblem of our culture,” Portnoy says.
“What we have collectively heard andseen has shaped our shared experience
as Americans and informed how we havegoverned ourselves for over a century.”During a visit to the NAVCC campus lastyear, Portnoy was thrilled to witness
technicians working to digitize the
NBC Radio archive, facilitating efficient

access to the audio for researchers andproducers alike. Another highlight of thevisit: viewing the oldest color videotape
in existence, a May 1958 Ampex recordingof President Eisenhower dedicating
NBC’s then-new Washington facility.
Prior to his current work at ABC,
Portnoy reported for CBS News Radio.
For his final project with CBS, he wrote
and produced a three-hour radio
documentary on the 1948 murder of CBS
News correspondent George Polk, which
recently won the National Headliner Awardfor best radio network documentary.
Portnoy emphasizes the significance ofusing archival audio to bring forgotten
stories to new audiences. “The processopened my ears to the idea that there
are countless, long-forgotten storiesof the 20th century that we can bringto new light for listeners today byleveraging archival audio,” he says.
When asked what he’d tell someone
who doesn’t know about the Library,Portnoy says, “It’s more than justbooks. It’s everything. And it’s agenuine national treasure.”

MORE INFORMATION
Support the Library
loc.gov/support

JULY/AUGUST 2024 LOC.GOV/LCM

27

LAST WORD
CHUCK D
Being on WBAU with Hank Shocklee and Flava
Flav played a pivotal role in your early career.
Can you say more about those early days?
All those hours Hank and Flav and I spent in
the WBAU studio were just a part of Public
Enemy’s origin. It was also the wherewithalof Bill Stephney that made it all work, alongwith what we were doing with Spectrum
City and, later, Andre Brown (aka Doctor
Dre, who went on to host “Yo! MTV Raps”). It
was like the meeting of the hip-hop minds,
laying a foundation that will never leave us.
You’ve said you originally put together
1984’s “Public Enemy #1” on two tapedecks and a Roland 8000 drum machine.
How has hip-hop or your approach toit changed as technology changed?
Right now, AI is mind-blowing. Hip-hop has
always made music out of technology, outof recordings and turntables manipulated
to make new sounds no one ever
heard before. So, AI puts us right backat square zero, where we’re creating
through technology again. It’s something
I believe we have to learn to dance withinstead of trying to negate or eliminate.
“Fear of a Black Planet” was the second
hip-hop record added to the National
Recording Registry. What did thatmean for you and Public Enemy?
I was humbled by its achievement. “Fearof a Black Planet” was our statement
about the hip-hop we saw and heard
around the world when we toured. It’s ourdissertation of rap words and beats.
You recently became a member of the
National Recording Preservation Board. Whyis the board’s work important to you?
It’s important for people who love the music
and the art to be a part of recognizing thework of artists who may not be known
to someone outside of that industry
or genre. As part of an art form that is
historically misunderstood, I’m honored to
be able to be a voice for it on the board.

28

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MAGAZINECOURTESY OF CHUCK D

You’re an author, film producer, radio
host, recording artist, visual artist
and activist. You’ve been calledan icon and a revolutionary. Whatwould you like your legacy to be?
I’m just a service person to the arts. And
I would like to be a part of making sure
all the people around me get their due.
—Chuck D is a founding member of theseminal hip-hop group Public Enemy.
Through his work with Public Enemy,
he is a member of the Rock & Roll Hallof Fame and a recipient of the Grammy
Lifetime Achievement Award. He also isa member of the Library of CongressNational Recording Preservation Board.

▪ A display of vintage
audio equipment at the
Library’s National AudioVisual Conservation Centerin Culpeper, Virginia. Shawn
MillerOFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS
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