Library of Congress

Evening all,

Like architecture? Go to the Library of Congress. Like art? Check out the Library of Congress. History your thing? Library of Congress! Culture? LoC. Oh, and do you like books? Definitely check out the Library of Congress.

We had a choice of a tour either yesterday or today as part of our fellowship. I went today and there were only four of us!!!! Ah, the benefits of a small group! I wasn't sure what we could be doing there for six hours, but now I see that I could be there for days on end, ten hour days, and still not get maxed out. Simply amazing!

Three buildings, 5.5 acres, 400+ miles of stacks of books and that's only what's there at the LoC and not in off site storage. They get 20,000 new books per day for consideration. 4000+ librarians. We started with a tour of the main building for all it's art, sculpture, paintings, history (no Dan Brown stuff - but some National Treasure 2 tidbits) and a look at the main reading room. Later in the day they walked us down to fill out paperwork to get our LoC reader cards so we can now actually get INTO the reading rooms and look at the books. They had advance warning we were coming so when we arrived for our little personal virtual tour through the Library via the web we had a folder with our name on it full of goodies. Each folder was the same, but they read through our bios from the TriangleCoalition website and had a few books for us personalized for what we teach. On my folder was a 2009 NSTA Biology Teacher's Handbook - a nice new slick research based teaching tool. The other text simply said "Geology: Blackwell" on the oldish looking leather-bound cover. I checked the publication date to find that they were trusting me to thumb through an 1833 copy of "An Introduction To Geology Intended To Convey A Practical Knowledge Of The Science And Comprising The Most Important Recent Discoveries With Explanations Of The Facts And Phenomena Which Serve To Confirm Or Invalidate Various Geological Theories". 1833. No white gloves, coffee in hand and several large platters of homemade cookies there on the table! Simply Amazing!! The head Science librarian (been at that post for 43 years!) baked cookies and regaled us with tales of her tenure and then had lunch with us.

After lunch we not only got our reader cards (can't check books out unless you're a certified researcher or you work for Congress) and then got a bit more touring in. The 1980's building, Madison I believe, is not so nice. Still cool, but not as amazing as the Art Deco (to the teeth!) of the second building and the grandeur of the first, the Jefferson.

So if you find yourself in our nation's capital with limited time, or wondering where to go for a vacation, look no further than the Library of Congress. They even have cool basement tunnels for getting from one building to the other! Check it all out! http://www.loc.gov/index.html

Pictures to come, soon.

Off to a 4-H National conference on Climate Change tomorrow up in MD. I've got to go do some reading now to prepare. More later...

-Jonathan