My current WIP, Lucy (renamed Born in a Treacherous Time), is complicated. It delves into the life of earliest man with all of its threats and dangers, as well as the inventions of those big brain ideas that changed the world (like stone tools and fire). I’ve read everything available on the topic from my local libraries and online. The big resource I hadn’t yet plumbed was the US Library of Congress. It is the largest library in the world, with more than 162 million items on approximately 838 miles of bookshelves. The collections include more than 38 million books and other print materials, 3.6 million recordings, 14 million photographs, 5.5 million maps, and 70 million manuscripts. It’s had only 13 Librarians of Congress, the current one in that position for almost thirty years. In my case, I sought answers to questions like how did man discover music. How did s/he first organize a system of law? Who was the first person who thought, “I have free time not required to hunt and sleep. I think I’ll draw a picture.”
This is the sort of stuff that keeps me awake at night.
Many of the books are not digitized and none of them can be checked out (by non-Congressional folk) so in my recent trip to visit my daughter in DC, I spent a glorious day researching in this amazing building. You can tour the library as a visitor (which I did on a previous trip) but to use the books requires a library card. They’re easy to get, though you must go to a hidden room down a long hallway in a completely separate building. Once I found the right door, it took only about ten minutes to take my picture, input my data, and print the card.
Before going to the library, I went to the LOC website and ordered the books I wanted with a note informing them of my arrival date. The library staff collected my books and had them ready in the reading room I requested (there are about eight–I think).
When I arrived at 8:30 am, I received a rundown of the rules for using the reading rooms. No purses (though I could fill my pockets with whatever from my purse). No food or drinks, though there was a drinking fountain outside the reading room. The reading rooms aren’t easily accessible. You can see them on the library tour, but to enter them requires a circuitous trip down a yellow hall, up an elevator, and through a guard who makes sure you are approved for entry.
When I finally found the room and checked in with the librarian, he had a rolling shelf full of books awaiting me. Because I wanted to spread them out and compare books over an extended period, they gave me a private area with a long table-like desk with the shelves within reach of my work space. Here are some pictures:
And there I worked for eight hours. From 8:30 when the library opened to 5 when it closed along with a wonderful collection of cerebral fellow researchers. No one talked. No one varied from their task of consuming knowledge. The books I’d selected were amazing. None of them were available in my local libraries, some being original work from the early 1800s when we still had tribes living independent of modern society. When I got stuck, a helpful librarian found the right book for me (in one case, it was on the origins of counting) and had it delivered to my room. When I finished, I had to walk through an airport scanner to be sure I didn’t take anything I shouldn’t. When my daughter picked me up in the front of the building, I couldn’t stop grinning with the sheer fun of uncovering the answers.
What have you done lately that blew you away?
–republished from Today’s Author.
More on research:
How to Virtually Visit a Location You Can’t Drop In On
Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy, and the thriller, To Hunt a Sub. She is also the author/editor of over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, adjunct professor of technology in education, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for TeachHUB, monthly contributor to Today’s Author and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. You can find her books at her publisher’s website, Structured Learning.
Pingback: 14 Websites to Read Free Digital Books – createsmeblog
Pingback: 14 Websites to Read Free Digital Books | WordDreams...
Pingback: 14 Websites to Read Free Digital Books – Today's Author
Pingback: How I’m Doing on Born in a Treacherous Time III | WordDreams...
Pingback: How I’m Doing on Born in a Treacherous Time II | WordDreams...
The LOC sounds awesome. I’ll stick with my local library. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
I love my local library also. Each has its place, don’t they?
LikeLike
Pingback: Writing a Novel: How I’m Doing on Born in a Treacherous Time I | WordDreams...
Pingback: Unconventional Research Sites for Writers | WordDreams...
Pingback: Unconventional Research Sites for Your Writing | Today's Author
So impressed! You, my dear, are the research queen. I bow down to you. 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
I do enjoy it!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Reblogged this on KCJones.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for the reblog, Penney!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you for writing a great blog. Sounds like a fantastic place to visit.
LikeLiked by 1 person
What an amazing experience. I would love to go the Library of Congress 😀
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s a bibliophile’s candy store. What a wonderful day.
LikeLiked by 2 people
So envious, would love to do this too.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s well worth it.
LikeLike
Wow Jacqui, what a fantastic experience to be surrounded in a building with oodles of books – a writer’s paradise. Thanks for sharing that wonderful experience with us. 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
I still grin thinking of it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
No kidding! 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
You love research more than anyone I’ve ever known, I think! WOW!!! I would feel so daunted by a topic like that but I know you’re super smart and you’ll handle it with grace.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Research is what got me started writing. I had a topic I loved, dug into it, wanted to share it, but had to make it palatable. Poof–fiction!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Jacqui, reading your post has blown me away – absolutely wonderful. 😀😀 I savoured every word and picture; I enjoy reading about libraries anyway and then this one, the world’s biggest. Fascinating to learn how it works, the entry system, the help you received. I’m dancing with you after your high of working there for eight hours! The question you posed at the start, when and how did they decide they had time to draw, be creative are questions my husband and I love discussing – never got any answers yet…Last month I met friends in London and we took a cable car ride across the river Thames, wow…that blew me away…amongst our children I was the biggest kid that day!😀😀
LikeLiked by 2 people
It gives real meaning to what we try to teach children: Be lifelong learners. I just can’t get enough.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Cool place, Jacqui. I like the slide show. My latest research was building a mini catapult 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well that’s pretty cool. Sounds like a perfect tool for your world.
LikeLiked by 1 person
What a neat experience. Thanks for the pictures. And your WIP sounds like a great premise!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m nerdy like this. I couldn’t stop smiling for a day afterwards. My daughter thought I was a tad nuts.
LikeLiked by 1 person
🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Jacqui – what an amazing time you’ve been having with your research and checking as much out as you were able to … sounds a great experience. I’ve been in our British Library here – but would love another tour of that … and the same with the Bodleian in Oxford … but I’m going back to that in May next year …
I haven’t any research to do … Kew Archives is another place to research back history … a cousin did that a lot when she was researching Emily Hobhouse, a relative … I’ve written about her earlier this year (February 21st) … and Jenny used the Women’s Library at the London School of Economics …
Your research is somewhat longer ago than that … good luck! Cheers Hilary
LikeLiked by 1 person
But so much of what you write about is research. Do you do that mostly online? I like online, but it’s more challenging to find the right information.
LikeLike
That sounds like a wonderful day.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I can’t wait to repeat.
LikeLike
WOW! Love the building. I would sit in reverence, inhaling scents of all those books and the knowledge inside–not that it might stick. Too much for my pea brain but what an experience. Thanks for the photos. Wow. 😀 ❤
LikeLiked by 1 person
And it’s so quiet! A library that users actually respect that approach. Loved it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Our public libraries aren’t quiet anymore. Too many people doing too many things. Sigh.
LikeLiked by 1 person
And like you, that makes me sigh. The Library of Congress was silent. You could hear footsteps.
LikeLike
The building certainly looks very impressive. I am sure it houses an equally interesting collection.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh it does, and it’s not digital. The only way to reach many of these books is by applying for a (free) library card and going to Washington DC. What fun.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Your photos brought back memories of a field trip my class took to the Library of Congress when I was a kid. It’s such an amazing place.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I never got there as a child, but the experience as an adult touring it and an adult using it was quite different. I think I’m a hands-on learner.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Fantastic post, Jacqui. I have no doubt in your abilities to research every detail – but your own private area? You rate!!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Honestly, I was shocked. They couldn’t have been more helpful.
LikeLiked by 1 person
wow – such interesting and valuable information…I know the library very well..one of the richest places we need to visit..
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m trying to go once a year, but getting to DC is a lot more complicated than it should be!
LikeLike
What an interesting post!
I had hoped to learn that library staff rocketed from stack to client on roller blades, but we can all live in hope. I also noticed that the use of mobile phones was not prohibited, which seemed a sad omission to me. Ban them wherever possible!
I recently had to grapple with the Library of Congress catalogue system in the library I am typing this in right now (University of Edinburgh) and it came close to frying what’s left of my brain. However, I got there in the end.
Your subject matter seems to me very interesting on the one hand and largely unknowable on the other; regardless of how much we read, very much in the realm of speculation. Why did people begin to draw at all, because they had time on their hands or some other reason?
I was reading yesterday about the Hittite Queen Pudehepa, and discovered that the Hittites were the first to come up with a constitution (which protected the rights of women) and also concluded the first known international peace treaty (with Ramses 11).
Good luck with your studies.
LikeLiked by 2 people
It took a considerable amount of brain power and time to figure out how to order the books for my trip. They probably think it’s straight-forward, but as the average IQ in the US hovering around 100 (and the world is slightly lower), a redo of the process might be in order.
Interesting history. I’m often surprised by what has been done and lost in the past, the Mayans and Aztecs being the most obvious examples.
LikeLike
I’ve been in the Library of Congress when I visited DC in April. It is an amazing building. It must be utterly mind blowing to research there.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Did you take the tour? It was amazing. What a wonderful place for a bibliophile.
LikeLike