A Boston Public Library card is one of the items chosen to be sealed in a National Millennium Time Capsule on January 21 and locked in a secure, climate-controlled room at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., for the next 100 years. The card was suggested by historian David McCullough, who urged its inclusion because BPL was “the first library to let readers take books home.”
The time capsule, designed to give the U.S. president in 2101 an idea of the culture and values that Americans in the 20th century shared, is part of a project spearheaded by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and the White House Millennium Council.
At a December 6 ceremony in the rotunda of the Archives building, Clinton opened a special time-capsule exhibit that showcases all of the artifacts, which also include a cell phone, a Hubble space telescope photo, a microchip, a recording by Louis Armstrong, children’s drawings, and books by both Hillary and Bill Clinton.
Posted December 11, 2000.