This is a guest post by Betty Lupinacci, now the supervisor in the Processing Section of the Law Library Collection Services Division.
I love summers at the Library of Congress.
That’s when, for ten weeks, the Junior Fellows take over the collections and fill the place with enthusiasm and a thirst for knowledge.
Once again the Law Library was fortunate to have a stellar participant in one Johnathan Trotman. He is a recent graduate of James Madison University where he majored in International Affairs. John inventoried some of our foreign legal Gazettes gifted to us by the United Nations’ Dag Hammarskjold Library. The project involves comparing items from this collection to our existing holdings and filling in whatever gaps we may have had.
So far this summer over 11,000 items were added to our permanent collection.
During his inventory work John discovered several pieces of legislation involving environmental laws that we did not own. He presented two of these documents at the Junior Fellow Display on July 24th.
He kept his audience engaged with his research on green turtle legislation in Seychelles and deforestation laws in Papua New Guinea.
I highly recommend such a program to any institution. It injects a sense of rejuvenation into the workplace and gives us the opportunity to meet those whom I’m sure will be the leaders of tomorrow.