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| Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress |
National Library Week already? And here I am, without a gift. Though there is this, one of my favorite library vignettes, from my memoir "You Were Never in Chicago." The only additions I remember, 20 years after the incident, are that the book I was working on was "Hatless Jack," we were staying at The Willard, a grand old DC hotel a block from the White House, and that night I took a sheet of their deluxe Willard stationery and wrote Mrs. Creighton a letter, telling her how my son wanted to drop her name as his library clout.
The value of knowing people, the grease that connections can provide, is central to the Chicago experience — we learn it without being taught. I didn't have to lecture the boys on the importance of contacts; it's instinctual, inborn. The family was in Washington, DC, on vacation, and for an afternoon I slipped away to do some research at the Library of Congress while Edie and the boys saw the sights. When they came to meet up with me, at the end of the day, I wanted to show Ross the Main Reading Room — it was so beautiful, a gilded dome, a marvel of arches and stained glass, a Victorian glory of murals and friezes and statuary, and Ross is such a lover of books, I knew he would be delighted to see it. So I took him up to the guard — you have to be a registered researcher to enter the Library of Congress, which I was. Ross wasn't, but I figured: the kid's seven years old.
"Can I slip this boy in for a moment to look at the Reading Room?" I asked, nodding hopefully, displaying my Library of Congress ID card. I'm sorry, the guard said, only researchers are allowed in the reading room. "But I am a researcher!" insisted Ross, thumping his chest and stepping up to this rent-a-cop. "I'm researching James Monroe. And I always take good care of my books and papers." The guard, of course, didn't budge, and as we turned away, Ross said to me, in a whisper, "Dad, do you think it would help if we told him I'm friends with Mrs. Creighton?"
Mrs. Creighton was the librarian at Greenbriar Elementary School in Northbrook.
That attitude — I know people, I'm in with all the librarians, cut me some slack — is a very Chicago attitude, and reassured me that while my sons had not been born within the borders of the city, and might be growing up in the leafy suburban paradise of Northbrook, but they were becoming Chicagoans nonetheless."Can I slip this boy in for a moment to look at the Reading Room?" I asked, nodding hopefully, displaying my Library of Congress ID card. I'm sorry, the guard said, only researchers are allowed in the reading room. "But I am a researcher!" insisted Ross, thumping his chest and stepping up to this rent-a-cop. "I'm researching James Monroe. And I always take good care of my books and papers." The guard, of course, didn't budge, and as we turned away, Ross said to me, in a whisper, "Dad, do you think it would help if we told him I'm friends with Mrs. Creighton?"
Mrs. Creighton was the librarian at Greenbriar Elementary School in Northbrook.
"Registered researcher"?
ReplyDeleteSo much for "the People's Library". Always nice to see access to taxpayer funded institutions limited to a select few
You sign up, state your reason for using the library, and they issue you a card. Not elitism as I understand it, but far be it from me to tell you what to get ruffled over.
DeleteThat is gorgeous. I don't know if the policy has been changed, or if you were hoping for a more extensive visit for Ross than this allows, but the LOC website states that the main reading room may be "glimpsed" by the hoi polloi after obtaining a timed-entry pass to enter the building.
Delete"The Library of Congress welcomes visitors to walk onto the floor of the grand Main Reading Room. Usually reserved for credentialed researchers, this special access offers visitors a glimpse inside one of Washington’s most beautiful spaces.
The Main Reading Room is available to view on the first floor of the Thomas Jefferson Building every Tuesday – Friday, 10:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. Visitors are also welcome to view the space on Thursday evenings from 5:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m."
That photo of the Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress shows what a stunner the place is. Okay, as a library space alone, it's wildly inefficient (hey, we could jam three times that amount of desks in there by minimizing all that wasted walking-around space and jamming desks into straight rows), but it does convey the idea that every book known to Man and written by him has gotta be in here someplace. (That central desk looks more like a speaker's podium. Perhaps they offer Saturday morning readings of "Green Eggs and Ham.")
ReplyDeleteI've walked the halls of the Houses of Parliament in London and they're built in the same manner, huge spaces with intricate detailing and paintings everywhere, to catch the eye and show the size of the building more effectively than just endless anonymous columns and arches. I have to admit that when I first saw the column photo here, it reminded me of one of the many CGI renderings of grand fictional palaces and other-worldly living spaces in a typical Star Wars film. Perhaps this was one of their inspirations.
Speaking of libraries, there's a fascinating one about an arson fire in 1986 at the Los Angeles main library; unsolved mystery as to who set it and lots of fascinating info about libraries and librarians. The Library Book
ReplyDeleteSusan Orleans is the author
ReplyDeleteThe suggestion that Mrs. Creighton would wield enough influence to get Ross into the Reading Room is very funny, but it's all too true to life as well: my father's clout in the police force was his aunt, Sister Leo Clare, then principal of Aquinas High School on the South Side.
ReplyDeleteWe don't want nobody nobody sent.
ReplyDeleteMy late buddy went to Georgetown in the Sixties, and he used to do his research there. He said that kids from all over the country used to fo there to write papers during spring break. But when my wife and I tried to get inside.in the Nineties, we were denied access to the main Reading Room. There is an upper level, a balcony of sorts, that runs around the sacred main level, and we had a very nice time there.
ReplyDeleteThe upper level was quite ornate in its own right, and there was a sizeable exhibit about the youth of George Washington, and the manner in which he was educated. My wife has a memory like a steel trap, because even though mine is also very good (too damn good... I need the anti-Prevagen so I can forget), I don't remember a single thing about that exhibit. Mostly I bitterly recall not being allowed to see what we wanted to see. And we weren't eight, either. More like 48. (SG)