Libraries Nationwide Commemorate
September 11 with Programs, Exhibits
Libraries in Washington, D.C., New York City, and across the nation offered special programs and exhibits on the one-year anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Georgia Higley of the Library of Congress Serials Division discussed newspaper coverage of the disaster as part of LC’s “Witness and Response” exhibition. The library is also sponsoring a “Summon the Heroes” concert series that will continue into October, with Tom Paxton and Suzanne Vega among the featured performers. The District of Columbia Public Library, with the cooperation of the Newseum, has mounted an “America Under Attack” exhibit and distributed flag lapel pins to everyone who checked out a book on September 11.
New York Public Library has launched a program of “Poetry After 9/11,” which will run through September 21 and feature writers from an anthology of New York poets by the same title. September 11 readings took place at the New Amsterdam branch, one of those closest to Ground Zero. Queens Borough Public Library hosted public-television crews at several branches to record the memories and expressions of library patrons. Brooklyn Public Library sponsored “Writers and Poets Consider the First Anniversary of the September 11th Tragedy,” with Sharon Olds, Philip Levine, Harvey Shapiro, and many others.
Chicago Public Library is hosting “The September 11 Photo Project,” a grassroots initiative that started in a SoHo storefront last October. The exhibit features more than 5,000 photographs taken in Lower Manhattan before, during, and after the attacks. The American Library Association in Chicago, along with DCPL, LC, and some ALA state chapters commemorated the day by showing the American Libraries video documentary Loss and Recovery: Librarians Bear Witness to September 11, 2001.
Posted September 16, 2002.
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