>> From the Library of Congress in Washington DC.
>> Hello everyone, my name is Kathy [inaudible] from the Library of Congress.
Thank you for joining us today, we are pleased
to be piloting a new outreach endeavor for the Library of Congress.
Using webinars to convene subject matter experts with you our audience.
This five part series will focus on our latest exhibition entitled Echoes of The Great War
with American Experiences of World War 1.
Cheryl if you would go down one screen, I want to go through some housekeeping items.
Once the session begins you'll hear the presenter.
You will be able to communicate via chat and we look forward to your active participation.
The session will be recorded and posted to the library's website within the week.
And this program will last approximately 30 minutes with time
for questions and answers at the end.
So a little bit about our program, Cheryl if I can have you go down one more screen.
Thousands of visitors to the library over the last three months have taken a deep dive
into the library's World War 1 resources by attending a gallery [inaudible].
With this presentation by a library specialist about the expedition.
Today's session is an overview to that exhibition and our speaker is Cheryl Regan.
Cheryl examined the making of the library's World War 1 expedition
and provides highlights from the show.
Cheryl Regan is a senior exhibition director in the interpretive programs office.
This is the office that started the developing the Library
of Congress's exhibition and related programs.
In her 25 years with the library she's developed becoming exhibitions including those examining
the life and work of Sigmund Freud, Lewis and Clark and 100 years
of western exploration and many many more exhibitions.
So without further ado I would like to hand things over to Cheryl.
>> Hello everyone and thank you for joining us on this webinar.
Just a word before we begin, about this exhibition in particular,
I just want to talk a little bit about exhibits at the Library of Congress.
We aim to develop and produce exhibitions that showcase the holdings of the institution
and at the heart of every exhibition is the firm commitment
to show the visiting public what the nations library holds and what it preserves.
The scale and approach can vary significantly,
small displays can be drawn from specific collections.
But we also do big sweeping, somatic or historical surveys
and that's what we'll talk about today.
I hope that visitors leave here feeling that they have made some personal connection
to what they have, to something they have seen on view
and understand the importance of preserving the past.
So I'm going to play just a brief clip that was made inside the exhibition
so that you have a sense of the grandeur of the space and where the exhibition
and what it specifically looks like if you are unable to make it to Washington DC.
So at this point we opened on April 4th, 2017 and approximately 355,000 people have come
through the doors to this exhibition.
It's on the 2nd floor of the Thomas Jefferson building historic structure.
Its space is approximately 3,600 square feet.
And it's important for me to convey to you today is the breadth
of the collections of the Library of Congress.
So we have posters, newspapers, we have maps, we have photographs, sheet music.
These newspaper headlines, diaries, documents that people that are well known
to you have written and those that you would have never heard of.
And that's important I think in the sort of historical sweep and it's also important
for this exhibition because we literally have the largest collection of material
that is related to World War 1 and the American experience in the world.
So when I'm talking about a collection here I'm talking about collections
and those collections number in the hundreds of thousands.
Going back to the slides.
I will just move on to the next one here.
So you know there are things that we think about with this every exhibition,
we assess our audience, what do they know.
In this case what do they know about World War 1 and we know that audiences know,
especially in this country know very little about World War 1.
They know some key events, they know it was bad,
but they don't really know, you know sort of the full scope.
The volume of material in this collection, how do you decide what you show?
And it's important to display a variety of media here at the library,
people don't know exactly what the Library of Congress is, it's the nation library.
And it's more than a repository of books and so the exhibits gives us a chance to examine that
and to show the visiting public what it is that we, what we do collect.
And the primary messaging, do the materials on display really speak for themselves?
Do they speak to the message that we want to convey about this war
and this upheaval was important to the American public in how we dealt with it.
So you could see that the space, 3,600 square feet sounds like a lot but,
really when you're putting together an exhibition you have
to think about the physical space.
And in our case we can't attach to the walls, we can't attach to the ceiling,
we can't drill into the floor, it's a hard accoustic space meaning
that it's a marble space.
And so the exhibit is divided into four sections.
It's framed by a prolog and a epilog at the beginning and end.
But the two main rooms of the exhibition you can see in the center of this plan.
Which looks, is looking sort of down on the exhibit space.
And one of the things that we knew that we wanted to do was
to frame the exhibit with a time-line.
We get into the war as United States, you know close to the end really.
We're only fighting in the last six months.
We don't enter the war, which starts in 1914 but we don't enter until 1917.
And so a timeline with historical events frames the exhibition and gives people a sense
of what was happening in the war before the United States enters.
But the visual impact of the timeline is using newspaper collection that was assembled here
or was assembled and is here, so it's a 400 volumes of newspapers
that document every single day of the war from beginning to end starting in 1914.
And so we see better headlines that they would have seen in the United States at the time.
So it's, I liken it to the Twitter feed of the era
because this is information people were getting.
And it adds in the immediacy to the war, I think that you wouldn't really get any other way.
And so this is again a timeline on both sides
of the exhibition aisles that's framed the exhibition.
And we begin with the section arguing over war
which again is essentially a prolog to the exhibition.
The debates that was by no means clear that everyone thought we should get into the war.
So it was debated back and forth.
But there are touchstones that people do know, they know about the sinking of the Lusitania
and this poster enlist which was issued in 1915 didn't any other word except enlist.
You know we're not in the war at this point but they want people to enlist overseas
because of the horror of the Lusitania when so many lost their lives.
We pair that with a newspaper, again these banner headlines are amazing
and really come into their own in this era.
And we can see what people were learning at the time,
the newspapers were issued many times a day,
so that news as it was breaking people were getting different headlines.
This in itself did not can tell us showing the war as belligerent,
although many people were volunteering to fight overseas and engaging in humanitarian efforts.
This is 1915 and again we would not join until 1917.
But when we do join it's really full boar and the primary sections
of the exhibit are over here and over there.
And over here which probably if we had more space would be a larger space than the
over there section because of the amount of material we have about the mobilization of war.
Talks about that and the government agencies that sought
to shape public opinion, private industry.
What was happening with labor unions as they geared up for war production.
Home front volunteerism which serves to unprecedented hype and bond drive
that were used to finance the war.
Ramping up for war, we had a very small standing army before we entered the war and the ramp
up was incredible, we were drafting forces that would eventually number in the millions.
This was a turbulent time for this country domestically,
issues of the era will be surprisingly familiar to people coming
to visit the exhibition on site and online.
Americanization, we were a nation of immigrants.
In fact in 1917 one out of every three citizens either was foreign born
or had a parent that was foreign born.
Nearly 1/5th of the Army had been born abroad, this is, this is a pamphlet that was issued
by the Committee for Public Information, the propaganda on the US government.
And it was issued many many languages and demonstrates clearly,
you know that we were a nation of immigrants this publication was in German, Spanish.
In the next rotation of the exhibit we'll have Italian, Portuguese,
I'm still trying to locate Swedish in the general collection but,
again speaks very clearly to the immigrant experience.
Censorship and surveillance, this was the time that The Espionage Act was passed
in 1917 and The Sedition Act in 1918.
It's the time of government surveillance but also grass roots surveillance.
There was no centralized intelligence gathering mechanisms, so the government depended
on the vigilance and in some cases vigilantism of its citizens.
This is a photograph that was taken in Baraboo Wisconsin and it's documenting the burning
of German textbooks, high school textbooks in the middle of the street.
Women. During the war stepped into roles that men had occupied.
And as they were, men were deploying overseas they were taking jobs in the emissions factory
and other types of factories and as in the field, as agricultural workers.
It was also a time of civil unrest.
This is still the period of the great migration.
African Americans served in record numbers in what was originally, rigidly segregated military
and they experienced discrimination and racial violence.
And there was racial violence as, as people moved from the south taking jobs
that again were vacated by soldiers deploying.
And this is the silent protests document of photographs, documenting a parade that happened
in New York as a result of the riots in East St. Louis.
So in the exhibition and actually in its online component you can see not only these photographs
but instructions from the NAACP, you know issuing instructions to let,
to let participants know what to expect and how to conduct themselves during this protest.
The other primary section is over there, you can see we have this love of the word over
and have used it throughout this exhibit.
Over there looks at this great war which it was termed at the time,
great meaning vast and incredibly expansive.
The war was the first large scale military struggle fought among highly
industrialized countries.
Mass production capabilities, networks of railroads, new rapid firing weapons contributed
to the deadlock on the European's front lines.
But it in comparison to the other nations engaged in three years of grueling warfare.
The United States faced combat mostly during the last six months.
But we focused again on the American experience
because that's the story we can best tell it in this exhibition.
And we devote a case in the exhibition
and considerable material to moving the US Army overseas.
This was a massive effort, you know moving two million men across, across the ocean.
And it was really something that had never been done before.
This exhibition has given us the opportunity to showcase the Library
of Congress veteran history project.
An incredible project that the library has undertaken for a number of years
and they collect and preserve and make accessible to personal accounts
of American war veterans so that future generations may hear directly from veterans
and better understand the reality's of war.
They begin their collections with World War 1 and move
up into the present conflict, conflicts that are going on.
But, they have approximately 1,000 collections as related
to World War 1 and that number is growing.
So this is Vincent Cornelius Reed we have his diary in the exhibition.
Another diary is the Veterans History Project is Irving Greenwald's diary.
He was a printer from New York and drafted into service.
And private Greenwald really has captured our imaginations and our hearts with his diary,
which chronicles his experience from the day of deployment to training,
to being on the front lines and he was
in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive and suffered injuries there.
So this is really the beginning of that campaign,
which was the deadliest battle in US history.
And the diaries really heart stopping because you see at the end of September the pages start
to be blank, so what happens to Private Greenwald.
He picks up again when he is in the hospital recuperating in October of 1918.
Close to the end of the war.
As I mentioned earlier there are names you would completely recognize in the exhibition
and so giving people touchstones of what they recognize and the surprises
for what they don't recognize and what they can learn
in the exhibit is something we always strive to do.
But George Patton was a figure in this war and lieutenant colonel at this time,
so we have his papers here at the library.
And feature his diary, again in the Meuse-Argonne campaign.
And then the names you don't know, Dorothy Kitchen O'Neal was a hut worker.
And actually very helpfully she, she identifies herself here in her own scrapbook.
There you can see that she's named herself Dorothy Kitchen at the time.
A hut worker was, worked in entertainment and recreation, these workers helped boast the moral
of recovering patients in the hospital.
And she was stationed in France.
Her letters home are amazing though she contracts the Spanish Flu on the ship overseas
and her, fellow nurses, nurses that she's knows actually die on board ship.
She recovers, but she again her letters home are wonderful and sort
of describe what's happening in the camps and in the wards.
I slipped this slide in here because music was incredibly important and media
in general incredibly important during the war.
This was the last singing war.
This is before the advent of broadcast radio
and probably no other song captures the spirit of the war like over there.
And the sheet music covers are wonderful in this exhibition, as are the posters.
Again going back to an immigrant population where a lot
of people could not read and write in English.
The visual was so important and conveyed messages that, you know bolstered patriotism
and participation in a way that only, only the visual could do.
And so you see that in sheet music covers and posters,
pamphlets across the board during the war years.
And also footage which we include a lot of in documentary footage,
news reel footage that would've been shown in movie theaters at the time.
Also training footage that would have been shown to soldiers preparing for war.
The exhibition closes with the section World Overturned, there it is again, over.
The last section really asks questions, you know what was the impact of we owe those veterans?
These questions will be addressed in upcoming webinars in more depth.
But I do want to make the point that in the current rotation and the exhibition
because it is up until January 2019 and we are a paper repository we have
to rotate materials in and out of the exhibition.
That by the time exhibition closes, 600 items will have been on view
and we will put those materials and add them to what is already existing online.
So you can see the full exhibition really online, you will be able to access the films
that are on exhibit, the impact film, again with the scholars discussing different issues
about how the war effected the United States.
The timeline and exhibition programing that's coming up,
we have a wonderful program that's coming up in November of this year for Veterans Day.
And I am going to .
>> Actually Cheryl we'll hold off on that slide.
>> Okay.
>> Do that at the end of the program.
Thank you for an unbelievable whirlwind tour of online of the exhibition.
We had some brief questions came in
and your colleague Naomi has been answering some of them through text.
But some that I want to bring up to the forefront.
>> Okay.
>> Matthew, Matthew asked the question is the character writing on the.
[ Inaudible Comment ]
>> It is. It is in fact we have that poster in three iterations, one in Portuguese,
one in Chinese and one in English.
So Portuguese will make the next rotation.
>> Okay, thank you.
[ Inaudible Comment ]
That you may have and we'll get to them.
Get them quickly as we can.
[ Inaudible Comment ]
Kylie asks a question about newspapers.
And do we have newspapers that talk about the Black Tom explosion in the collection.
[ Inaudible Comment ]
>> I can in fact I have a colleague that was very interested in that in particular
because she comes from that area in New Jersey.
We looked in the, I mentioned when were talking about the timeline
about this 400 volume collection that we have where we, we've combed through it to look
for newspaper headlines and she illustrates events that are on the timeline.
And in fact the Black Tom explosion is one of the events on our timeline and you can look
at that on this timeline online as well.
And so we were looking for the big banner headlines
because primarily the 400 volumes are draw specifically from New York papers
and we thought this would be big news in New York and it was,
it was but we didn't find you know it was on like page four and five.
So that was the surprising thing about looking through this collection.
Which was assembled Auto Spangler for the New York Historical Society,
so this is a one of kind assembly of newspapers that are being digitized right now
and will be added to chronicling America before the exhibition comes down in 2019,
hopefully by fall of 2018 they may be digitized and online.
But again a tremendous resource and I think that the eye opening thing,
looking through for particular events is that this is what people knew at the time.
And so this isn't looking sort of back with hindsight and saying ah yes
so many people perished from the Spanish Flu.
There would be little pockets of, you know describing what happened in this town
or that town or in this camp or that camp, but there wasn't sort of this big banner headline,
millions die which you know, I think I was naively expecting to happen.
>> That's okay thank you for that.
A question came in from Janet and Naomi answered it by pointing her to ask a librarian
and so I'm going to take control for a second just so I can show our audience how
to get access to some of the answers that they have in regards to the collection.
So bare with me one second while I bring up the,
Cheryl do you see my Library of Congress homepage?
>> I do.
>> Terrific.
So for our audience I just want to point out I went to the top navigation and I get a drop
down menu, there is an option to ask a librarian and verily you can get to ask a librarian
from every page of the library's website and you field through you'll see
at the top here in ask a librarian.
And you can get answers to specific topics
and services related specifically through ask a librarian.
So we do ask that if you have a very topic specific question
that we use the ask the librarian form.
The expectation is that you will get a reply back in five business days.
And then we also had a question come in about how
to access materials from the library's website.
There is a [inaudible] of resources available at loc.gov.
We have programs that we have conducted with our [inaudible] about how to access specific formats
in relation to the collection and I'll make sure that I get a link
out to you before we end this program.
But you can do all sorts of kinds of research
through the digitized collections of the library's website.
So I just want to point out not everything that the library has is digitized
and not everything is freely available given constraints to copyright.
But there are many of these listed.
The benefit of these kind of programs that Cheryl can walk us through in talking
about something that shows contents with specifics and focus on exhibitions
that we definitely need a deeper dive in terms of the World War 1 collection.
So I am bringing up, there is a World War 1 web page, it is a topic page
and you'll find a lot of resources.
There was a question that also came in about the,
the veteran history project and access to the diaries.
We do have a program coming up with the veterans history project.
That's our next episode with the September 25th, it's called over here
over there [inaudible] veteran of World War 1.
So we do invite you to go ahead and [inaudible] that kind of program.
So I am going to turn the presentation back over to Cheryl.
If you would go under share Cheryl and collect your PowerPoint's then we'll bring that back up.
>> Okay. I hope.
>> You can do it.
>> Application.
>> Go up to share you see file, edit, share, go to share.
Go to application and select PowerPoint.
>> Naomi's here to save the day.
>> Terrific, thank you very much.
So while she's pulling that together I do want to get you some of the links that I promised
for what future upcoming webinars.
I have just added the links to that, in addition to the September 25th over here over there,
we have in October Woodrow Wilson's [inaudible]
which will become our presenter from our manuscript division.
And then in November, on November 28th we'll have somebody from our printing photographs.
[ Inaudible Comment ]
And you guys are waiting for me to give you the presenter back why it didn't work okay sorry
about that.
So now you should be able to go to share.
So, let's see here, I'm just going to get caught up.
So we have time for about two more questions.
Let me see what happened while I was sharing my screen.
>> Can I add something.
>> Yeah please do.
>> So the, we're the largest library in the world and what happens with exhibits and I think
that Cathy you really hit, the nail on the head when you said that it was a deep dive
and gives you sort of this curated look at a particular topic
and that's why these big exhibitions are so important to the institution.
But they also have grown the collections two, two collections have come
in just as a result of the exhibition.
People didn't really understand sort of what it is that we were collecting here
and there was a collection that came to the Veterans History Project which will be featured
in the next rotation of the exhibition, a really wonderful collection, the Sumner Collection
and then we just received from a generous donor a collection of African American soldiers,
images on postcards that you could, the soldiers would contact with going to a photo studio
and get a small packet of post cards to send home.
And so this was really, this was a key part of the collection that or a key component
that seemed to be missing in our collection, these images of African American soldiers.
So I'm hoping that there are more collections that come
to the library as a result of the exhibition.
Hello.
>> Okay I was speaking with my microphone muted apologies.
We have another question that came in from JK
and the question asked had the US entered the war earlier would it have been possible
that the other allied nations that have been more willing to agree to [inaudible] 14 points.
>> That is a great question and I urge this participant to tune in on October 24th
to Sahr Conway-Lanz's talk on Woodrow Wilson because I can't, I can't answer that.
But he is the custodian of the Woodrow Wilson papers here at the library
and one of the curators and his [inaudible] for the exhibition.
And he has been doing a lot of thinking about Wilson's 14 points
and you know how and when we entered the war.
So October 24th, sign up for that webinar.
>> Thank you Cheryl.
Okay so I want to thank you Cheryl for a phenomenal presentation and I want
to thank our audience for joining us today, we had about 40 people join us for this [inaudible]
so thank you for you active participation.
We do encourage you to sign up for the rest of the series.
September 26th will be a presentation from Owen Roberts
and then our veterans history project entitled over here over there [inaudible]
with the veterans of World War 1.
So we will make this recording available as soon as humanly possible and again thank you
for joining us and this is the end of our program.
Cheryl thank you for bringing up that slide and if you wouldn't mind
to our audience I would love your feedback.
As I mentioned before this is a pilot program that we're doing and being able
to connect a subject matter expert with our audience assistance may not be able
to come to the library and visit us.
So this is a three second survey, please take a moment to fill that out and thank you very much.
>> Thank you.
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.
No comments:
Post a Comment