Home Publications College and Research Libraries Back Issues 2001 March March 2001 Vol 62 No 2 Conaway book review

College and Research Libraries
March 2001, Vol. 62, No. 2

Book Review

Conaway, James. America’s Library: The Story of the Library of Congress, 1800–2000. Foreword by James H. Billington; Introduction by Edmund Morris. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Pr., in association with the Library of Congress, 2000. 226p. $45, alk. paper (ISBN 0-300-08308-4). LC 99-058751.

James Conaway’s history of the Library of Congress focuses on the thirteen Librarians of Congress who have served our national library for the past two hundred years. The accomplishments of each are examined in the context of contemporary historical events. The first Librarian of Congress, John James Beckley (1801–1807), appointed by Thomas Jefferson, served concurrently as clerk of the House of Representatives. His dual career ended with his death on April 8, 1807, when he was succeeded by Patrick Magruder (1807–1815), the second Librarian of Congress, also appointed by Jefferson. During the presidency of James Madison Magruder continued the dual role of clerk and librarian. In the course of an attack on Washington by the British during the War of 1812, the Library of Congress was totally lost to fire. The library survived due to the purchase of Jefferson’s private collection of 6,487 volumes for the price of $23,950 in the winter of 1814.

Magruder’s successor, George Watterson (1815–1829), appointed third Librarian of Congress by President Madison, was the first librarian charged with serving in the position without taking on the additional duty of House clerk. A political activist, Watterson matched wits with General Andrew Jackson and lost when Jackson won the presidency. President Jackson appointed the fourth Librarian of Congress, John Silva Meehan (1829–1861), a former publisher with a more pleasing personality than his predecessor, who served under nine presidents, from Jackson to Buchanan. The apex of his tenure was the designation of the Library of Congress, along with the Smithsonian Institution, as the official depositories for copyrighted works in 1846. The nadir came five years later, in 1851, when fire destroyed 35,000 volumes, including two-thirds of the original Jefferson collection purchased in 1814.

Appointed the fifth Librarian of Congress by President Abraham Lincoln, John G. Stephenson (1861–1864) spent most of his tenure as a colonel in the Union army. He is remembered best for bringing in as his principal assistant, Ainsworth Rand Spofford (1864–1897). When Stephenson resigned from his position at the end of December 1864, Lincoln lost no time in appointing Spofford (1864–1897) as the sixth Librarian of Congress on New Year’s Eve that same year. Serving under nine presidencies, from Lincoln through the second presidency of Cleveland, Spofford saw the Library of Congress through its metamorphosis from legislative resource to national cultural institution. Under legislation signed by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1870, the Library of Congress became the sole depository for copyrighted works, a role previously shared with the Smithsonian. The magnificent Library of Congress edifice that today graces the Washington landscape was Spofford’s brainchild.

President William McKinley appointed John Russell Young (1897–1899) the seventh Librarian of Congress. Young is remembered for presiding over the opening of the then new Library of Congress and for increasing its international holdings. He died in office in January 1899. Young’s successor, also appointed by McKinley, was Herbert Putnam (1899–1939), who served under eight presidents, from McKinley to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Putnam’s forty-year tenure surpassed that of any other Librarian of Congress. His administrative acumen was put to the supreme test as he cared for the library’s treasures during World War I. Before and after the war, Putnam acquired major collections elevating the Library of Congress to one of the world’s great libraries.

Appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt, Archibald MacLeish (1939–1944) is remembered for his administrative reorganization of the ever-burgeoning Library of Congress and for inspiring the library staff throughout the trying years of World War II. One of MacLeish’s most valuable contributors was his appointment of Luther H. Evans as head of the Legislative Reference Service and later chief assistant librarian. In June 1945, about six months after MacLeish’s resignation, President Harry S. Truman appointed Evans (1945–1953) to serve as the tenth Librarian of Congress. During Evans’s tenure, the Library of Congress collection grew to almost 32 million items, including current acquisitions of remarkable quality. He resigned in the summer of 1953 to the newly elected President Dwight D. Eisenhower and assumed the position of director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

President Eisenhower appointed L. Quincy Mumford (1954–1974) as the eleventh Librarian of Congress. Mumford, who served under five presidents, from Eisenhower to Gerald R. Ford, was the first professionally trained librarian to be nominated in the 154 years of the library’s existence. He saw the library through two decades of unprecedented growth in both holdings and staff. Moreover, he requested and received an increase in annual expenditures from $9.4 million to almost $97 million. The James Madison Memorial Building of the Library of Congress, which was not be completed and open to the public until 1980, was his brainchild.

Appointed by President Ford, Daniel J. Boorstin (1975–1987), the twelfth Librarian of Congress, was the grandson of Russian Jewish immigrants. A distinguished writer, lawyer, and historian, Boorstin championed the role of the book in the diffusion of knowledge and was instrumental in President Jimmy Carter’s signing of legislation in October 1977 that created the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress. Boorstin officiated at the opening of the new Madison Building in November 1981 during the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

The thirteenth and current Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington (1987 to present) was appointed by President Reagan, and to date has served under three presidents, from Reagan to William Jefferson Clinton. An authority on Russian history, Billington has brought a global perspective to the challenges of administration of the nation’s great library and has worked tirelessly to find new ways to widen access to its treasures, including the American Memory digitization project.

James Conaway, author of eight books and former Washington editor of Harper’s, has written an extremely fascinating account; however, the lack of references proves a serious drawback to researchers who want access to the source of facts and quotations. A bibliography of more than one hundred and fifty items and a good index serve to soften the blow. Conaway’s very readable prose is unfortunately replete with passages illustrating the lamentable fact that the previous grammatical taboo of split infinitives is now widely accepted and practiced. The result of a collaborative venture between Yale University Press and the Library of Congress, the volume itself is beautifully conceived and designed with a pleasing type font, plenty of white space, and sharply focused black-and-white and color illustrations, including photographs, maps, political cartoons, and reproductions of artworks.

Conaway’s two-century history of the Library of Congress will be a popular addition to other works on the Library of Congress’s history, including David C. Mearns’s The Story Up to Now: The Library of Congress, 1800–1946 (Library of Congress, 1947), and a complement to the exquisite coffee-table book American Treasures of the Library of Congress (Abrams, 1997).—Plummer Alston Jones Jr., Catawba College.