The Library's annual new acquisitions showcase last week was a crowded, noisy, upbeat afternoon of discovery and explanation. Conversations buzzed and overlapped; staff experts and curious viewers leaned over display tables from opposite sides, heads together, talking loudly to be heard, gazing down at maps, manuscripts, records, artifacts and things you couldn’t have known existed.
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett argued last week that preserving the Constitution depends not only on the courts but also on American citizens, urging them to maintain a culture of respect for the rule of law. “Respect for the law, reverence for the Constitution, really begins with American citizens. It’s really more of a trickle up than a trickle down,” said Barrett during a lecture on March 12 to a packed audience in the Coolidge Auditorium.
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett headlined this year's National Book Festival, promoting her book "Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and the Constitution," in an onstage conversation with festival co-Chairman David Rubenstein.
Cassandra Gardner started working for the Library while still in high school. She never left and, forty years later, is retiring this month. Next year, she says, she'll look for a parttime job "for travel and casino money" because "life is too short not to enjoy yourself."
During World War II, the Office of War Information recorded news and American propaganda onto 16-inch discs which were then broadcast domestically and overseas. The Library acquired tens of thousands of these discs after the war and has been working to preserve them ever since. Colin Hochstetler, a Library Junior Fellow, talks about his work with these time-capsule discs in this question-and-anwer session.
Angela Napili is a senior research librarian at the Library's Congressional Research Service. In this Q&A, she says she's had a charmed life, inluding getting out of the Philippines after Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law and settling in San Francisco. An adventurous sort, she's an excellent photographer and National Park Service volunteer, often working at the Washington Monument. Ask her about her award-winning squirrel photo!
Chaeli Cantwell is a producer in the Multimedia Group, where she produces videos for the National Film and Recording registries, as well as reporting and producing videos from some of the the Library's most fascinating collections, including those of J. Robert Oppenheimer and George Gershwin.
Ashley Dickerson is the acquisitions and cataloging librarian for Finland and the Baltic states. She tells us about her deep expertise with Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republics, along with her love for new restaurants, archery and power lifting.
U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón's final lecture last week in the Coolidge Auditorium was a love letter to poetry to libraries and librarians. Her lecture, titled “Against Breaking: On the Public and Private Power of Poetry,” framed poetry as a shared, not solitary, experience and as a celebration of humanity’s range of voices and perspectives.
