On May 8, experience the vibrant intercultural tapestry of Jewish and Islamic musical traditions from Spain and North Africa.

From the eighth century onward, Southern Spain—known as al-Andalus—became a vibrant crossroads of faith and culture. Jews, Muslims, and Christians cultivated rich traditions in the arts, sciences, and music under the rule of Muslim caliphs. The region saw remarkable advancements in fields such as trigonometry, astronomy, surgery, pharmacology, and architecture, reflecting a spirit of intellectual exchange and mutual inspiration. Following the Inquisition and their expulsion from Spain, Jews and Muslims carried the Andalusi legacy of shared heritage across North Africa and the Mediterranean, where its influence continued to evolve for centuries.

Multilingual and Cosmopolitan

At the intersection of Arabic, Hebrew, Ladino, and Spanish cultures, the music of al-Andalus embodies the cosmopolitan spirit fostered by centuries of intercultural exchange. Its origins are often attributed to the ninth-century virtuoso ‘Ali ibn Nafi’, known as Ziryab, an accomplished oud player and vocalist who was invited from Baghdad to the court of the Umayyad Amir ʿAbd al-Raḥmān II (r. 822–852). In Córdoba, Ziryab established a musical conservatory that became a hub for the development of the classical Nuba tradition, shaped by contributions from the city’s diverse communities.

The Nuba (plural: Nubat) are structured song suites based on specific melodic modes and rhythmic cycles. Each Nuba defines both a scale and a set of compositional rules guiding melodic and rhythmic expression. Tradition holds that there were originally 24 Nubat, each corresponding to an hour of the day—an elegant fusion of musical theory and daily life.

Bringing Tradition to Life

The New York Andalus Ensemble is a multiethnic, multifaith group that brings the rich musical legacies of al-Andalus to the contemporary stage. Performing in Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish, and Ladino, the ensemble draws on a wide-ranging repertoire spanning from the ninth century to the 1960s. Featuring a choir and a diverse array of traditional and modern acoustic instruments, the group is led by ethnomusicologist and multi-instrumentalist Dr. Samuel Torjman Thomas.

Dedicated to rekindling the cosmopolitan spirit of medieval Córdoba, the ensemble will perform at the Library on May 8. The program will include selections from various nubat—the classical Andalusi song suites—as well as multilingual pieces that reflect the integrated nature of Arabic, Hebraic, and Spanish musical traditions. Additional repertoire will feature Ladino (Judeo-Espagnole) songs and Arabic “Sha’bi” (folk) music, reimagined through modern stylizations.

Performers include Dr. Samuel Torjman Thomas (oud/vocals), Prosper Lankry (vocals), Diana Sophia (vocals), Jeremy Brown (violin), Dror Shahaf (percussion), and Jeremy Smith (percussion).

Musical Traditions Preserved in the Library in Congress

How have these traditions survived? The oldest sources we have are written ones: manuscripts documenting the poems, songs, and communal performances, including several preserved within the African and Middle Eastern Division. You don’t just have to read about it, however, you can also hear these sonic traditions as they were passed down for generations at the Library’s American Folklife Center.

In 1968, Abraham Pinto donated recordings of Moroccan Jewish liturgical music recordings to Library. Musicologist Edwin Seroussi will focus on this collection in his May 8 lecture to further unpack how libraries, archives, and recording technologies allow for this window into the past.

Other significant collections of Ladino and Andalusian recordings at the Library were made by Henrietta Yurchenco, a pioneering American ethnomusicologist, and Paul Bowles, an American writer and producer who recorded Arab, Berber, and Sephardic music in Morocco from 1957 to 1989.

In the 20^th century, many Jews from North Africa, the Balkans, Turkey and Greece for whom Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) was their native tongue immigrated to the United States.  Publications like Libro de embezar/The Book to Lean How to Speak, Read and Write from Spanish-Jewish Language published in 1937 helped these immigrants learn useful phrases and prepare for US citizenship. The African and Middle Eastern Division is home to numerous materials, highlighting this lesser-known heritage of Jewish Americans.

These programs are part of the African and Middle Eastern Division’s series on new research on African and Middle Eastern religious cultures made possible through the generous support of the Lilly Endowment, Inc.

Interested in learning more?

Delve deeper into Jewish and Islamic musical traditions from al-Andalus through the following resources at the Library of Congress:

• 16^th Century Hebrew Books at the Library of Congress
• African, Jewish, and Middle Eastern Studies: Digital Resources at the Library of Congress
• American Folklife Center Collections Research Guide: North Africa
• American Folklife Center Collections Research Guide: Jewish Culture and Traditions
• Medieval Islamic Science: A Resource Guide
• Musical Soundscapes of Morocco: From Africa to America: Lecture by Professor Samuel Torjman Thomas
• Cheikh Hamed bel Hadj Hamadi ben Allal Ensemble, recordings and photos from the Paul Bowles Collection

(The following is a post by Jonathan Loar, South Asian reference specialist, Asian Division)

The Library’s Asian Division is pleased to announce the digitization of the Hindi and Urdu editions of “Hindostan,” a propaganda newspaper for South Asian prisoners of war (POWs) held in Germany during World War I. The Asian Division is notable for having nearly complete runs of this pro-German newspaper, which was published in Berlin from March 1915 to August 1918. A total of 159 issues of the Hindi and Urdu editions are now freely available in the South Asian Digital Collection.

The “Hindostan” camp newspaper was part of a unique experiment involving the German Foreign Office, propaganda efforts, and prisoners held at Halbmondlager, or Halfmoon Camp, in Wünsdorf near Berlin. Not long after the start of the war, Germany had established Halbmondlager in December 1914 for a few thousand mainly Muslim soldiers captured from the British, French, and Russian armies. Halbmondlager also housed a separate sub-camp called Inderlager, or India Camp, for a smaller group of several hundred Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim prisoners from British India. The camp’s purpose was to create the setting for delivering pro-German propaganda, with a mix of special provisions and good treatment designed to inspire sympathy for the German cause in the war. (Read more on this topic, including how the architecture of Halbmondlager reflected wartime propaganda, in “Jihad and Islam in World War I,” which is part of the Library’s Open Access Books collection).

For the prisoners held at Halbmondlager, the German Foreign Office’s Nachrichtenstelle für den Orient (Information Center for the Orient) published the POW camp newspaper called “El Dschihad,” or “The Jihad,” with wartime news and articles, albeit from a pro-German perspective. The newspaper had multiple editions reflecting the languages spoken at the camp: Arabic, Georgian, Russian, and Turko-Tartarian. (The Library of Congress has some issues of the Russian edition, too). One of the underlying themes throughout the multiple editions was the German desire to convince the POWs of Germany’s support of their religious and nationalistic struggles.

To that end, the Nachrichtenstelle für den Orient also published the POW camp newspaper in Hindi and Urdu for the South Asian POWs. However, it changed the title to “Hindostan,” a common name for India in both South Asian languages. The idea for this change of title, according to scholarship, came out of the Berlin Indian Independence Committee (IIC), an organization of South Asians in Germany who supported Indian nationalist efforts and cooperated with the German Foreign Office. This was part of the German strategy to stoke the anti-British sensibility of the POWs captured while fighting on behalf of British India’s colonial government. The mastheads of both editions featured the first line of the Urdu poet Muhammad Iqbal’s popular nationalist poem: “Sāre jahāṃ se acchā hindostān hamārā,” or “Better than the whole world is our India.” And the Hindi edition’s masthead added the Sanskrit slogan “Bande mātaram,” or “I praise you, the Motherland” to signal German support for the anticolonial movement in India.

What would POWs find in the pages of the “Hindostan” camp newspaper? Many issues carried news from the battlefields, typically with emphasis on the victories of the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Ottoman Empire) and the disarray of the Allied Powers (United Kingdom, France, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the United States). Frontpage articles from issues in 1915 and 1916 profiled Germany’s new and devastating weaponry (e.g., large artillery, submarines, zeppelins) to convey its military might. World events like the sinking of the RMS Lusitania and the fallout of the Russian Revolution appeared in the pages of “Hindostan” in May 1915 and January 1918, respectively. Other types of articles included those portraying Germany in a positive light and those aiming to turn POWs against the colonial government in British India. For example, the lead story of the May 31, 1916 issue laid out Germany’s material assistance to wounded soldiers accompanied by a photograph of a former soldier and amputee working at a machine shop; the same issue’s front page also reported on the lesson to be learned from Japan’s rise to power in the years before the war in contrast with India’s continued state of subjugation to British control.

Halbmondlager and its camp newspaper were part of a German experiment in wartime propaganda, the goal of which was to convince the POWs to reenter the war and fight with the Central Powers against the Allied Powers. Notably, the Muslim prisoners at Halbmondlager were allowed to read religious texts, observe holidays, and pray in a wooden mosque—in addition to the connections to the outside world provided by the “El Dschihad” and “Hindostan” newspapers. The experiment, though, was not successful, as scholarship estimates only around 2,000 Muslim POWs, including several dozen South Asian POWs, went back into battle. As the war continued, Halbmondlager became one of the wartime sites of German anthropological research on the prisoners and their cultural practices and languages. For more on Halbmondlager and Indian soldiers during World War I, please see the Further Reading Section at the end of this post.

The German Foreign Office published “Hindostan” in its Hindi and Urdu editions from issue one dated March 3, 1915 to issue eighty-four dated August 21, 1918. Most issues were two pages, while some issues, especially toward the end of its run, were four pages. The rate of publication varied between every few days and every two or so weeks. In terms of production, the newspaper was not set in type but rather handwritten and reproduced with photolithography. Different handwriting styles are evident across the issues in both editions.

Please note that the Asian Division’s collection has some gaps. The Hindi edition is missing issues 2, 24, 68, 77, and 81, while the Urdu edition is missing issues 2, 41, 68, and 81. It is hoped that the online accessibility of these nearly complete runs will inspire and assist additional research on the history of South Asia and World War I. For questions about “Hindostan” and any South Asian materials at the Library of Congress, please feel welcome to reach out through Ask a Librarian.

Further Reading:

Ahuja, Ravi. “The Corrosiveness of Comparison: Reverberations of Indian Wartime Experiences in German Prison Camps (1915-1919)” in Heike Liebau, Katrin Bromber, Katharina Lange, Dyala Hamzah, and Ravi Ahuja, eds., The World in World Wars: Experiences, Perceptions and Perspectives from Africa and Asia. Leiden: Brill, c2010.

Chhina, Rana T.S. India and the Great War. New Delhi: Centre for Armed Forces Historical Research, United Service Institution of India, 2015.

Chhina, Rana and Dominiek Dendooven. India in Flanders Fields. New Delhi: Centre for Armed Forces Historical Research, United Service Institution of India, 2017.

Das, Santanu. 1914-1918: Indian Troops in Europe. Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing, 2015.

Kumar, Ashutosh and Claude Markovits, eds. Indian Soldiers in the First World War: Re-visiting a Global Conflict. New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2021.

Loar, Jonathan. “Hindostan: A Propaganda Newspaper for South Asian POWs in Germany during World War I.” 4 Corners of the World: International Collections at the Library of Congress. Posted on March 7, 2019.

Roy, Kaushik. Indian Army and the First World War, 1914-18. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Roy, Franziska and Heike Liebau and Ravi Ahuja, eds. When the War Began We Heard of Several Kings: South Asian Prisoners in World War I Germany. New Delhi: Social Science Press, [2011].

• See especially in this volume Heike Liebau’s essay “Hindostan: A Camp Newspaper for South-Asian Prisoners of World War One in Germany,” pp. 231-249.

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This is a joint guest post written by the staff of the Latin American, Caribbean, and European Division in memory of Mario Vargas Llosa.

The world lost a towering literary figure this week. Nobel-prize winning Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa passed away on April 13, 2025, at the age of 89. Widely known for his work in fiction, he was one of the most prominent members of Latin American Boom of the 1960s and 70s. His most well-known works include La Ciudad de los Perros (The Time of the Hero) (1963), La casa verde (The Green House) (1966), and La guerra del fin del mundo (The War of the End of the World) (1981). He also wrote short story collections, including Los jefes (The Leaders) (1959), and essays. His books have been translated into more than thirty languages, and in addition to the Nobel Prize, he has received numerous other awards such as the Leopoldo Alas Book Prize, the Ritz Paris Hemingway Award, the Rómulo Gallegos Prize, and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize.

The mission of libraries is to preserve contributions to arts, culture, and history for future generations. The Library of Congress has achieved this goal with Mario Vargas Llosa. The Library holds a recording, Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa reads from his work and is interviewed by José Miguel Oviedo, of the author reading from his then unpublished manuscript of La tía Julia y el escribidor (Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter), which at the time of the recording had a different title. Alongside this recording, we included a short biography that situates his work among the renown luminaries of the world. His range of writing itself is impressive – from historical novels and comedies to murder mysteries and literary criticism. As a true testament to his skill as a storyteller, several of his novels have been turned into films.

To learn more about publications by and about Vargas Llosa, you may wish to immerse yourself in the Handbook of Latin American Studies (HLAS) annotated bibliography. An example is the entry for La tía Julia y el escribidor (1977): “A hilarious exercise of self-conscious intra-textuality in which the author exorcizes the demons of the writer. A study in the making of a writer…. Biographers may consider the work as the author’s sentimental education and rites of passage into the career of writer. A fascinating document, as well, of camp art and popular soaps or radio novels…. Fascinating also as satire and social commentary” [HLAS contributor Djelal Kadir]. The 1982 translation, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, is also described in HLAS: “‘Admirable’ translation by Helen Lane of this semi-autobiographical novel. According to Julie Jones, Vargas Llosa ‘justifies the incorporation of melodramatic material in serious literature by arguing that melodrama is real, is human’” [HLAS contributor Margaret Sayers Peden].

Vargas Llosa was featured at the Library of Congress in many ways throughout his lifetime:

• as part of the Great American Translators segment of the Behind the Book series in 2021: Great American Translators Edith Grossman and Mario Vargas Llosa
• as the subject of a 2017 episode on La Biblioteca podcast: Listening to Mario Vargas Llosa
  
• at the 2012 National Book Festival: Mario Vargas Llosa: 2012 National Book Festival

In 2016, the Library of Congress recognized Vargas Llosa as part of the Living Legends project, initiated in preparation for the bicentennial celebration of the Library of Congress in 2000. The program honored individuals who have made significant contributions to America’s diverse cultural, scientific, and social heritage. You can watch the presentation here: Mario Vargas Llosa: Living Legend Award Ceremony.

The Embassy of Peru has opened a book of condolences, which is available at its headquarters (1700 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20036) for those who wish to express their condolences for this immeasurable loss. Que en paz descanse.

As the Library celebrates the world of words, poetry, and books for National Poetry Month, the Latin American, Caribbean, and European Division joins the festivities by releasing the new batch of unpublished recordings from the PALABRA Archive for online streaming.

The PALABRA Archive is a collection of audio recordings of 20th and 21st century poets and writers from Luso-Hispanic and U.S. Latino communities reading from their works. The collection now has over 850 recordings and continues to grow with new recordings by contemporary authors. With the fifty audios from this release, close to 600 recordings from this repository will be available digitally, making more than half of the collection available for remote users.

This new group of published recordings includes the voices of towering 20^th century literary figures such as Spanish poet Carmen Conde (1907-1996), Catalan playwright Eduardo Marquina (1979-1946), Brazilian author Ivan Ângelo (1936- ), Mexican writer Fernando del Paso (1935-2018); and contemporary figures such as Spanish novelist Munir Hachemi, Costa Rican writer Daniel Quirós, and award-winning Argentine writer Selva Almada, the latter considered one of the most powerful voices in Argentine and Latin American literature and the most influential feminist of the region.

From the Caribbean, new voices include the poets Roberto Fernández Retamar (1930-2019), and Roberto Valero (1955-1994), as well as Dominican writer and poet Fredy Gatón Arce (1920-1994), and philologist, lawyer, and poet Lupo Hernández Rueda.

In addition, this release includes a number of unique recordings that were done as part of a recent collaboration between the Library’s Hispanic Reading Room and Letras Latinas (the Literary Program at the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame) highlighting Afro-Latino poets in the United States. The initiative made possible the recording of a group of six U.S.-Latino poets of African descent, four of whom are part of this newly released group: Afro-Boricua poet Raina León, Dominican-American poet Jasminne Mendez, Panamanian-American poet Darrel Alejandro Holnes, and Afro-Latina poet Yesenia Montilla.

Click here to see the complete list of newly available recordings. We hope you enjoy our new digital treasures!

PALABRA has been curated by the Library of Congress Hispanic Reading Room since its founding in 1943 and continues to add the voices of contemporary literary figures. Throughout its history, writers such as Nobel Laureates Gabriel García Márquez, Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, Miguel Ángel Asturias, and Juan Ramón Jiménez have been recorded for the collection, as well as other noteworthy figures like Jorge Luis Borges, and Julio Cortázar.

The following is a guest post by Abdulahi Ahmed, Reference Librarian in the African Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division

On September 5, 2024, the African & Middle Eastern Division hosted a captivating lecture by Dr. Mohamad Hajji Mukhtar, a distinguished professor from Savannah University. The event titled “The Rise and Expansion of Islam in Somalia”, provided attendees with an enlightening journey into a lesser-known chapter of Islamic history.

The arrival of the Islamic faith in Somalia marked a turning point in the history of the region, influencing, not only religious practices, but the social, political, and cultural landscapes as well. Situated at a crossroads between the Arabian Peninsula and the broader Indian Ocean trade routes, Somalia was uniquely located to engage with Muslim traders and scholars from the earliest days of Islam. The region’s proximity to the cradle of Islam, its flourishing southern port cities, such as Mogadishu, Marca, Barawe, and its powerful Islamic sultanates, rendered it a natural conduit for the spread Islam from the south to the north.

Dr. Mukhtar’s lecture further delved into the actual diffusion of Islam among the nomadic Somali-speaking clans of the Horn of Africa. By highlighting how Islam spread through these communities, he emphasized the unique cultural and religious dynamics shaping this process.

Furnishing the audience with a rich tapestry of novel historical insights, Mukhtar shed light on the resilience and adaptability of Islamic traditions in the diverse environments of the Somali region.  He thus provided attendees with a clearer understanding and appreciation of the complexities and nuances of Islamic history in that part of the world.  The Library of Congress collects books on Somalia in a variety of languages which include: Somali, Chimwiini (language of Barawe), English, Arabic and Italian.

The lecture was part of the African and Middle Eastern Division’s series on new research on African and Middle Eastern religious cultures made possible through the generous support of the Lilly Endowment, Inc.

Further Reading:

Abdurahman Abdullahi, 1954-, The Islamic movement in Somalia: a study of the Islah movement, 1950-2000.  London, United Kingdom: Adonis & Abbey Publishers, [2015].

ʻAydarūs, ʻAydarūs ibn ʻAlī, 1894-, Hādhā kitāb Bughyat al-āmāl fī tārikh al-Ṣūmāl. s.n., s.l., 1954.

Lewis, I.M., Saints and Somalis: popular Islam in a clan-based society. Lawrenceville, N.J.: Red Sea Press, 1998.

Mohamed Hussein Moallin, 1964-, Taariikhda culimada Soomaaliyeed.  Leicester: Looh Press, July 2021.

Najjār, ʻAbd Allāh, al-Islām fī al-Ṣūmāl.  [al-Qāhirah]: al-Majlis al-Aʻlá lil-Shuʼūn al-Islāmīyah, Lajnat al-Taʻrīf bi-al-Islām, 1973.

Qādirī, Uways ibn Muḥammad, Mawlid al-sharfān fī madḥ Sayyid wild ʻAdnān ; wa-yalīh, mawlid al-nashr al-ʻāṭir fī madḥ al-Sayyid Abd al-Qādir.  Miṣr: Shirkat Maktbat wa-Maṭbʻat Mūṣafʹa al-Bābī al-Ḥalbī.

Reese, Scott, Renewers of the age: holy men and social discourse in colonial Benaadir. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2008.

Vianello, Alessandra, Kapteijns, Lidwien, Kassim, Mohamed (eds).  ‘Stringing coral beads’: the religious poetry of Brava (c.1890-1975): a source publication of Chimiini texts and English translations. Leiden; Boston: Brill, [2018]

(This post is by Nevila Pahumi, Reference Librarian for Modern Greek in the European Reading Room.)

Greek Independence Day is upon us! On March 25, 1821, this sunny Mediterranean nation declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire. Although the road to achieving full independence would be long and arduous, the cause and the suffering which accompanied it garnered great sympathy and support across Europe and the United States through the movement known as Philhellenism. The Library of Congress holds a wealth of primary and secondary sources in multiple formats in the study and recognition of this historical achievement. This blog post introduces readers to some of them.

The roots of Greek independence go back to the European Enlightenment and the French Revolution. The fight for independence came after centuries of Ottoman rule and oppression, and some of its loudest supporters were in the West. The heroes of the Greek Revolution are a good starting point for those eager to learn more about this history. This biographical sketch of Rhigas Velenstinlis, the so-called protomartyr of the Greek Revolution, provides background into the intellectual underpinnings of the modern Greek Enlightenment in the late 1700s.

Rhigas Velenstinlis (Greek Ρήγας Βελενστινλής) was an intellectual who travelled to Vienna in the 1790s to publish revolutionary texts and organize a revolutionary movement in cooperation with patriots living in Vienna. He also intended to ask the French General Napoleon Bonaparte for support. The Austrian authorities eventually arrested him for inciting rebellion against the neighboring Ottoman Empire. The French Revolution (1789-1799) had stirred up fervor and unrest in young people like him, and he was ultimately executed.

A decade later, a new generation of rebels would pick up Rhigas’ fight, seeking support in Russia. Alexandros Ypsilantes was an army general who organized the Philike Hetairea (Friends Society, founded in 1814 in Odessa) to lead the fight for independence which began in Moldavia in late February 1821. As the fighting intensified and Ottoman troops committed atrocities, Western supporters—American, British, French, and German—flocked to Greece and took their voices to the press.

In America, the new city of Ypsilanti, Michigan, took on the name of the Greek hero Dimitrios Ypsilantis, a younger brother of Alexandros. In Great Britain, sympathizers addressed Parliament and the press, offering testimonies of the fighting and the plight of the Greek people to stir up public support. The following image is a depiction of one such address published in Scotland in 1822, following the massacres on the Greek island of Chios.

While the stories of male heros Rhigas and Byron were very compelling, the Greek Revolution was also shaped by courageous and brave women led by Laskarina Bouboulina. This recent Greek acquisition entitled Gynaikes kai Epanastase (Women and Revolution) by Vasilike Lazou tells their stories.

The fighting ultimately stopped in 1829, and Greece became independent in 1833. But scholars and artists have not stopped their commentary on the Greek Revolution. In fact, new works have continued to be published since. And Greeks themselves have also carried their celebratory traditions abroad and into communities where they have made a new life.

Among the unique holdings surrounding Greek independence, the Library holds an impressive selection of visual and audio materials attesting to the historical nature of the celebrations across time and space. For example, the Recorded Sound Reference Center in the Library’s Madison building holds recorded portions of a speech given by Assistant Secretary of State A. A. Berle during Greek Independence Day ceremonies on March 25, 1942. Berle can be heard discussing current political and social issues pertaining to Greece. Interested listeners are advised to make an appointment ahead of time at the Recorded Sound Reference Center. The Science and Business Reading Room, in the Library’s Adams Building, holds a collection of World War II Greek Independence Day pamphlets, which also must be requested in advance.

Finally, the Prints and Photographs Reading Room and the American Folk Life Center possess their own Greek Independence gems. Among them is a digitized collection of images of Greek Independence Day celebrations in Lowell Massachusetts on March 25, 1988, held in the American Folk Life Center. This next image of a cheerful (if not unruly) chorus of children clad in Greek costume is among the most adorable of the set of twenty five pictures.

Whatever part of this occasion has made you curious: whether it is the tragic Rhigas, the dashing Byron, or the feisty Laskarina Bouboulina and her band of women warriors, feel free to come to the Library, and will help you learn more. Happy Greek Independence Day!

(This post is by Nevila Pahumi, Reference Librarian for Modern Greek in the European Reading Room.)

February 9 marks International Greek Language Day. In celebration, this blog post discusses modern Greek and the Library of Congress’ modern Greek collections.

Modern Greek (Νέα Ελληνικά) dates to the Renaissance. It is derived from Byzantine and ancient Greek, and emerged following the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. Greek scholars sought refuge in the West, especially in Italy, where the Renaissance revived the Latin and Greek classics. This trend persisted through the Enlightenment, influencing the thinking of European elites and, in time, colonial and early republican-era American ones as well.

During the centuries of Ottoman rule, Greek dialects were spoken throughout the mainland, the islands, and in parts of Anatolia. This paved the way for Demotic (Dimotikí) or vernacular Greek to emerge as one of the two dominant forms of modern Greek in the 1800s and 1900s. Although Demotic was spoken widely, during the Greek Revolution (1821-1832) Greek intellectuals maintained that Katharevousa (Καθαρεύουσα), a purer form of the language which incorporated elements of ancient Greek, was better suited for study and official purposes (Katharevousa comes from the Greek verb katharizo, to cleanse). A linguistic clash developed which often turned violent. One case involving the Greek Orthodox Church and Queen Olga led to widely publicized street riots in Athens in 1901, when a vernacular translation of the New Testament was published. After more than a century and a half of debate, Demotic Greek was proclaimed the official language in 1976. Estimates vary, but today modern Greek is spoken by some 13-25 million people worldwide. The majority live in Greece and in Cyprus. Other users (whether speakers, readers, or writers) of modern Greek comprise the global Greek diaspora. Greek is spoken by heritage communities of varying size and age in Australia, Europe, North and South America, and Turkey. The Greek communities of Australia and the United States are the largest outside of Greece.

The Library of Congress has been collecting Greek materials (ancient, Byzantine, and modern) since its beginnings in the early 1800s. Books related to Greece, like the now-digitized Grecian history: from the original of Greece to the end of the Peloponnesian War, which bears Thomas Jefferson’s signature, came into the Library as part of his private collection. Building on this foundation, language and history form the strongest disciplines in the Library’s modern Greek holdings, most of which were published after Greek Independence (1821) and are distributed throughout the general and special collections. Although books and bound periodicals account for most items, the Library also collects in other genres including bound atlases, manuscripts, maps, motion pictures, music scores, prints and photographs, and sound recordings.

The treasures shown below illustrate the age and range of Greek materials held at the Library of Congress. The first two items, one a Renaissance manuscript, the second a modern playbill, are both held in the Library’s Rare Book and Special Collections Division. The third, a comic book adaptation, will soon be added to the general collections.

Konstantinos Lascaris’ grammar book Erotemata: Epitome ton Okto tou Logou Meron (Summary of the Eight Parts of Speech) is the first book printed in Greek. Its use of ancient Greek signifies the revival of classical learning during the Renaissance. Lascaris was a Constantinopolitan-born Byzantine Greek scholar who was captured and imprisoned by the Ottomans in 1453. He was able to escape to Rhodes and Crete, where he copied and collected Greek manuscripts. He subsequently fled to Milan, where he then published the Erotemata in 1476.

The following image is the Playbill cover page for Zorba, the 1968 Broadway musical adaptation of the beloved 1964 film Zorba the Greek and of the 1946 novel by the famous Greek novelist Nikos Kazantzakis.

The final image is the cover page of one of the twelve newly arrived Greek adaptations of The Dreamtime Duck of the Never Never comic series by Don Rosa. Once it is cataloged, this comic book will become part of the Library’s general collections.

Americans who grew up in the 1960s and the 1970s likely associate Greek identity with Zorba the Greek, while younger cohorts probably think of films like the 2002 My Big Fat Greek Wedding and its 2016 sequel, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2. Both films are in the Library’s Moving Image Research Center.

Whatever your taste, or whatever your field of interest, we hope that you have enjoyed this post on modern Greek and the Library of Congress’ modern Greek holdings. Happy International Greek Language Day! For any questions about our holdings, feel free to explore the Library’s home page.

(The following is a post by Elli Kim, Korean reference librarian in the Asian Division)

When reflecting on South Korea’s most notable achievements, one often considers its remarkable economic development—commonly referred to as the “Miracle on the Han River”—and the Korean Wave (Hallyu), which has brought various facets of Korean culture, including cuisine, dramas, films, and music to the cutting-edge of global culture. But an even more significant accomplishment is that South Korea distinguished itself as one of the few newly independent countries to successfully transition to a parliamentary democracy in 1987. After four decades of authoritarian rule, South Korea’s shift to democracy in 1987 was the culmination of a resilient struggle since the April Revolution of 1960.

Central to this movement was the concept of the minjung (民衆 “common people”) as a driving force for historical progress toward democracy in South Korea. While representing a broader alliance of students, intellectuals, religious leaders, workers, and politicians, minjung became the embodiment of the counterhegemonic resistance against authoritarian regimes. Thus, the South Korean democratization movement is synonymously referred to as the minjung movement.

Within the Library of Congress, the Asian Division’s Korean collection holds unique materials related to the Minjuhwa Undong South Korean Democratization Movement (SKDM). Of particular interest is a grouping of posters from the 1980s that are invaluable historical artifacts from this period of the minjung movement. These posters not only played a pivotal role in amplifying collective action of that era, but they also offer rare insights into how the movement’s agenda, objectives, and strategies unfolded within South Korea’s complex geopolitical landscape during the Cold War.

This blog post will delve into the role of the undongkwŏn (“counterhegemonic force”)—those who were the creators of these posters—and explore the key issues they addressed, including minjung, minjok (民族 “ethnic-nation”), anti-Americanism, class conflict, and the pursuit of unification during the democratization movement in the 1980s.

Undongkwŏn, the Creators of the Minjuhwa Undong Posters

During the zenith of South Korea’s democratization movement in 1986-87, numerous minjuhwa undong posters were displayed in public spaces to inform and mobilize citizens, despite the military regime’s strict surveillance. These posters were primarily produced by the undongkwŏn (運動圈, literary meaning “sphere of the movement”), which means those who were leaders and participants in the democratization movement. While students, intellectuals, and dissident politicians had been leading the democratization efforts since the April Revolution of 1960, it was in the 1980s that the term undongkwŏn gained a specific connotation referring to the practitioners of the movement. Historian Namhee Lee defined the undongkwŏn as a “counterhegemonic sphere,” emphasizing their role in leading and fighting against authoritarian regimes. The posters in the SKDM collection visually capture how the undongkwŏn articulated their objectives of democratization and communicated with the broader social groups.

Kwangju Uprising

Ideological Divergence in the Undongkwŏn

This discourse not only shaped the ideological landscape, but it also set different objectives and strategies of the democratization movement. By the late 1980s, two distinctive groups among others in the undongkwŏn came to the forefront: National Liberation (NL) and People’s Democracy (PD). The NL group prioritized national liberation and the reunification of the Korean peninsula, understanding the division of Korea as the principal contradiction stemming from South Korea’s semi-colonial status under U.S. imperialism. Anti-Americanism was widely embraced in the movement. Eventually, the NL movement divided into the Chuch’esa sangp’a (主體思想派, abbr. Chusap’a) group, which officially embraced North Korea’s Chuch’e ideology, and the non-Chusap’a group, which distanced itself from Chuch’e ideology. The NL group actively focused on the unification movement, often adopting 1948 as a symbolic starting year for their reunification aspirations.

In contrast, the PD group, inspired by global Marxist-Leninist movements, perceived South Korea as a fully capitalist society and prioritized class struggle against global capitalism as the fundamental task. This divergence in priorities—national liberation versus class struggle—led to distinct strategies within the democratization movement, with each group’s ideological vision shaping their unique approaches toward achieving democracy.

Taejabo (Big-Character Posters)

Minjung Art

For instance, the poster on the right above depicts what looks like two farmers or workers from North and South Korea intertwined to break the barbed wire fence—a symbol of the division of the peninsula. This woodblock print expresses the aspiration for reunification. The poster on the left illustrates a person wearing traditional Korean clothing and a mask, dancing with flags advocating unification, evoking the spirit of traditional Korean performance. These posters consolidated national identity and solidarity of the minjung by combining artistic expression with the Minjung Art movement.

Conclusion
In an era of media restrictions and censorship, democratization movement posters functioned as a powerful grassroots medium. They helped consolidate the ideas and objectives of democratization movements. The posters in the SKDM collection offer an intriguing way to understand how the undongkwŏn addressed their agenda and spread its objectives to the minjung.

The Minjuhwa Undong collection is part of the Korean Rare Book Collection and can be accessed in accordance with the Asian Reading Room’s rare book policy. For reference inquiries or appointments, please contact Korean reference staff via the Ask a Librarian service. For more details about this collection as a whole, please consult this research guide dedicated to materials on the South Korean Democratization Movement.

Further Reading

Cho, Hŭi-yŏn and Pak Hyŏn-ch’ae. Hanʼguk sahoe kusŏngchʻe nonjaeng. 4 vols. Sŏul Tʻŭkpyŏlsi: Chuksan, 1989.

Lee, Namhee. The Making of Minjung: Democracy and the Politics of Representation in South Korea. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007.

Park, Sunyoung, ed. Revisiting Minjung: New Perspectives on the Cultural History of 1980s South Korea. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2019.

Sŏ, Yu-ri. It’al kwa pyŏni ŭi misul: 1980-yŏndae minjung misul ŭi yŏksa. Seoul: Somyŏng Ch’ulp’an, 2022.

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(The following post is by Troy Smith, Nordic Area Reference Librarian in the European Reading Room. All translations are his own.)

In 1820, the Danish physicist Hans Christian Ørsted (1777–1851) watched as an electric current moved the needle on a magnetic compass. In other words, he observed that electricity generates a magnetic field. The discovery of electromagnetism made Ørsted famous throughout Europe and would pave the way for the magnetic telegraph and more advanced forms of communication technology.

The Library’s Rare Book and Special Collections Division recently acquired a unique set of the first edition of Ørsted’s collected and posthumous writings, Samlede og efterladte Skrifter. What makes this set special is that the author presented it to his daughter Sophie Dahlstrøm, whose birthday is today (January 8). Sophie was married to the lawyer F. C. E. Dahlstrøm, who had served as secretary to her uncle Anders Sandøe Ørsted, the future prime minister of Denmark. The inscription on the flyleaf in the first volume of the Library’s copy reads: “To my dear Fr. Dahlström and Sophie Dahlstrøm born Ørsted from the most heartily affectionate H. C. Ørsted.”

This acquisition fills a gap in the Library’s general collections, which have no contemporary editions of Ørsted in Danish. Furthermore, his humanistic writings were nowhere to be found in the original Danish anywhere in the Library until now. Above all, this particular set of Ørsted’s Samlede og efterladte Skrifter belongs in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division because it augments a remarkable collection already held there: The Jean Hersholt Collection of Hans Christian Andersen. Jean Hersholt was a Danish-American film actor who, with his wife Viva, amassed an outstanding array of Andersenian books, manuscripts, letters, and art objects. As a way of showing thanks to his adopted country, Hersholt donated the collection to the Library of Congress in 1951. (The Catalog of the Jean Hersholt Collection of Hans Christian Andersen can be downloaded from HathiTrust.)

But what does the fairytale author have to do with the physicist, besides being contemporaries in the vibrant cultural milieu that was Golden Age Copenhagen? One might assume that each belonged to a different “culture.” (The twentieth-century British author C. P. Snow would use this term to describe the division between the sciences and humanities in the title of his famous book, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.) In the first half of the nineteenth century, however, humanists and scientists frequently engaged with each other and each other’s work. Not only was Ørsted the author of poems and philosophical treatises; he was also a fatherly mentor to Andersen and the first to truly appreciate what his young friend had achieved with the early volumes of his fairytales. Andersen had hoped to win lasting success with his 1835 novel Improvisatoren (The Improvisatore), but, as Ørsted rightfully predicted, “Improvisatoren has made you famous, the fairytales will make you immortal.” In turn, the biographer Dan Ch. Christensen has recognized the influence of Ørsted’s thought on such fairytales as “The Ugly Duckling,” “The Bell,” “The Shadow,” and “The Drop of Water.” So inseparable were Ørsted and Andersen that they were known as the “big” and “little” Hans Christian, respectively; although the gangly Andersen towered over Ørsted, the older friend had a larger local reputation.

Thus, any book inscribed by Ørsted would complement the Hersholt Collection of Hans Christian Andersen, but this copy of his Samlede og efterladte Skrifter has a more intimate connection to the fairytale author through one of its dedicatees, Sophie Dahlstrøm née Ørsted. For most of the 1820s and until 1832, Andersen regularly celebrated Christmas with Ørsted’s family at the residence of A. S. Ørsted. Here Andersen would make his distinctive paper silhouettes and collage books for H. C. Ørsted’s daughters, Karen, Mathilde, and Sophie. In addition to four paper silhouettes, the Hersholt Collection also contains a Billedbog (picture-book) that Andersen made for Jonas Drewsen, the grandson of his friend A. L. Drewsen, and this item has been digitized and is available through the link above.

Sophie performed housekeeping duties for Uncle Anders, whose wife (also named Sophie) had died tragically at the age of 36. This work brought Sophie into contact with her uncle’s secretary, Dahlstrøm. After falling in love with Sophie, Dahlstrøm successfully proposed to her when she was at the then-marriageable age of 16. What he did not know at the time was that Andersen had been trying to work up the courage to propose to Sophie himself. Thanks to his reticence, Andersen had to endure the sight of the loving couple when he was invited, as was customary, to read his fairytales aloud to the family circle. As he recalls,

They were both so happy. I took her hand for the first time. Two times I pressed it, and I was in a fine humor; I think it showed completely, for I did not suffer and was infinitely calm. Now I am at home, I am alone—alone! As I always shall be! By this Christmas I would have certainly said to her what never could have been good for her! Now I will never marry, no young girl grows for me anymore, day by day I become more of a bachelor! Oh, I still walked among the young yesterday, this evening I am old. God bless you, dear, beloved Sophie; you shall never know how happy I could have been with a fortune and with you.

If Andersen was welcomed into the Ørsted homes as the author of famous fairytales, his lack of affluence meant that he might not have been accepted as a suitor to the family’s daughters. The despairing lament by Andersen quoted above is by no means unusual, as he often complained that he did not have enough money to support a family and would remain unmarried for the rest of his life. But if Andersen and Sophie were separated in this world, his global reputation as one of the most widely translated authors of all time means that they will be forever united in memory. Now, with the acquisition of Sophie’s copy of her father’s Samlede og efterladte Skrifter, the Library of Congress has augmented the Hersholt Collection with an item that recalls an important episode in Andersen’s life story.

(Quotations and episodes from Ørsted’s life are drawn from Christensen, Dan Ch. Naturens tankelæser. En biografi om Hans Christian Ørsted. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanums Forlag, 2009.)

(The following is a post by Charlotte Giles, South Asian Reference Librarian, Asian Division)

The Library of Congress is well known for its unique and rich collections. What is often hidden are those who share their expertise and knowledge with the institution to make these holdings visible to the larger world. This blog, 4 Corners of the World, hopes to highlight the background and work of some of these individuals. This post is part of a short series of interviews (listed in the “Further Reading” section), which allows us to capture a piece of the institutional knowledge and history of Library employees who contribute to the International Collections, especially those who often work beyond the public eye. While staff work is what allows researchers to conduct research, their presence in the Library is also foundational to the creation of the culture at the Library. The Library of Congress’ story and history is comprised of those from within and beyond North America.

Dan Paterson is one such individual. Dan has worked for the Library since 2003, first as an intern out of graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin, then for a not-to-exceed contract position in the Preservation Division, and now as a book conservator with the Conservation Division. Dan’s extensive knowledge of and experience in the conservation of various styles of books ensures the long-term accessibility of the Library’s collections for generations to come. His passion for and interest in the book as a material object and source of information results in a thoughtful approach to repairs and preservation. My interview with Dan gives a glimpse into the exciting work done by the Library’s conservators to ensure our collections will be accessible for future researchers.

Charlotte: Let’s start our discussion with how you got started on this path and what led you here.

Dan: After I graduated from college, I tried to figure out what I was interested in. I lived in Hungary for three years teaching English. I ultimately decided that I wasn’t interested in pursuing teaching. My entry into libraries happened when I got a job at the Newberry Library in Chicago. I worked in the reading room as a page [a page is responsible for the organization and shelving of materials].

While I was there, I went to a talk by the conservator who had just returned from a fellowship at the Bibliothèque Nationale in France. I was amazed by their work. At that point, I wasn’t aware that book conservation was something one could do. I reached out to that person to get as much information as I could and to learn about how to get into the field.

I started taking prerequisite courses at night like chemistry. I was not inclined towards science, but these classes were necessary for the graduate programs I was interested in. I also took several bookbinding classes to build up a portfolio for graduate school.

Charlotte: What led you to working with books in particular?

Dan: I was immediately intrigued with book conservation. But one of the things I liked immediately about books was the three dimensionality and the functionality of it. And the fact that you would treat an object [e.g., a book or manuscript] and then send it back to a reading room or the stacks for somebody to use. I liked this as an added layer of challenge. It had to withstand some kind of use afterwards.

Charlotte: Were most of the materials you were working with at the Newberry Library traditional Western style books or were you also looking at some Asian book formats?

Dan: They were all Western materials. I think they were all Western materials in graduate school as well.

Charlotte: Turning to your time in graduate school, please tell me about the program you did and the types of required coursework.

Dan: I went to the University of Texas at Austin for a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science, with an advanced certificate in preservation and conservation studies. You had to take all of the preservation and conservation classes for the certificate and then the library classes as well to graduate. The University of Texas program was only for books and paper. Unfortunately, this program no longer exists.

For the certificate program, the core classes were very specific to us. We had three “book labs”. One was learning different structures and making models of them. Book lab two was a continuation of that. In book lab three we began to do repairs on rare materials and to make more complex models of Western materials. The European book was a big component of that class.

Charlotte: It sounds like the program was Western-centric? Has this changed?

Dan: There is more emphasis on exposing students to other book traditions. But in practice I don’t think there is usually the opportunity to study non-Western books in-depth. People I know or have met coming out of American graduate programs in the last 10-20 years who are interested in non-Western materials, have been good at seeking out specific training opportunities. They’re tailoring their education towards being able to work on those materials. It wasn’t until I came to the Library that I worked with non-Western materials. The very first project I was given was a Tibetan book, which influenced me greatly.

Charlotte: After graduate school, what led you to the Library of Congress?

Dan: Graduate programs in conservation require you to do a nine to 12-month internship. The Library was my first choice. A mentor from the Newberry Library came here for her internship so I was always interested in doing something similar. I applied and was accepted. At the end of the internship in 2003, the directorate was hiring a three-year “not-to-exceed” contract position to work in conservation. It was good timing. After that, I’ve stayed ever since.

I wanted to come here because I wanted to see the variety of collections and to be exposed to as many different materials as possible. I didn’t want to leave.

I transitioned to a permanent conservator position. This was a chance to do more of what we would call single item treatment. Items are selected by curators and reference staff because they can’t be handled, or maybe they’re going to be digitized. This type of treatment has a different set of concerns and circumstances, and is a little more treatment intensive. This kind of position was always the goal.

Charlotte: What does a typical day look like for you? How much time do you spend researching potential treatments?

Dan: My days are usually somewhat predictable in the sense that I know what I’ll be working on, especially if something has to be returned by a particular date. But beyond that there is a lot that I have to determine or decide as far as what I think the best course of action will be for each treatment. For example, right now, I am working on a book of hours [a Christian prayer book] in preparation for an exhibit. I know that this has to be done by a certain period of time. I am coming in and starting my day working on that for at least a couple of hours. At the moment, this involves cleaning parts of the book and preparing it for sewing.

The research aspect is trying to figure out what the best binding structure is going to be. This includes researching how books of hours were typically bound originally. I’ve also been doing a lot of reading about recent treatments, recent rebinds of books from similar time periods, how to increase the flexibility of the opening of the book, thinking about what I can take from that research and how those other cases may or may not work for this book. Most of the things that I work on are not tied to hard deadlines.

There’s always a certain level of thinking about what this will look like and how this will function at the end of the treatment, and how to get to that point. You’re making sure you have all your ducks in a row before you get too far down a certain road and then maybe having to backtrack.

I have a Tibetan book that I haven’t started yet. I’ve taken a lot of photographs of it and talked to people at other institutions about how they might approach this book.

There are also a lot of projects that are the bread and butter of book conservation, mostly Western books that are somewhat similar to each other. For example, we do a lot of board attachments because it’s a common problem when, with the deterioration of the materials, the front board falls off a book after 300 years of use. There are multiple strategies for how to reattach those depending on the size of the book, the condition of the leather, how much intervention you’re willing to do, and the desired aesthetics at the end.

All conservators have multiple projects that we’re working on at one time. This is in part because sometimes you need to step away from things in the short term, for drying time or things like that. You can’t work all day long on the same project because there would be big gaps in your time and it’s better to fill those in with other things.

There are nine staff in the book lab, plus a few interns. Some are designated as liaisons to different divisions, and some who work full time on digitization. For me, I cover the Asian Division and Rare Books and Special Collections Division.

Charlotte: Getting into some more specific questions regarding some of the common repairs that you do, could you talk about some of the fibers and threads you use when repairing binding?

Dan: For Western books, we use almost exclusively an unbleached linen thread, and it comes in different weights, different thicknesses, and different numbers of strands. We make that determination based on the condition of the object. We also talk about swell. It’s the thickness of the spine after you treat the book, and the spine gets thicker because of the sewing; [e.g.] how much swell you’re going to get from different kinds of thread. Historically Western books were also often sewn on cord supports which give that distinctive look of raised bands on the spine. Those cords are then usually attached to the cover boards, underneath the leather and form the basis of the attachment between the text block and the cover.  Another factor is if the paper is brittle. If so, we might consider different options that don’t involve thread at all.

East Asian books, particularly Chinese and Japanese books, would have been sewn with a softer thread, such as silk. We do keep threads like these on reserve. We also use a lot of cotton floss since that tends to be softer. If we use the unbleached linen that we use for Western bindings, it’s too stiff and too hard for items with something like paper covers.

Charlotte: Earlier, you mentioned a Tibetan item as one of the first Asian books you worked on. Could you tell me a bit about that?

Dan: It was from the Rockhill Tibetan Collection of Rare Materials. It was loose-leaf. It did not have any boards that went with it. I made new covers for which there is already an established method. I was somewhat following what had been done for other volumes from [the] Rockhill [collection]. I did a bit of cleaning and a bit of mending. I also made a box for it. The fact that it was [in] a loose-leaf format, and was always intended to be a loose-leaf format, was eye opening for me. It made a very strong impression.

Charlotte: Does the Library tend to be conservative in our treatment plans? Are we creative? Are we leaders in the field?

Dan: I feel like we’re given a lot of latitude to develop a treatment plan that is best for the object and to think creatively. I think we’re leaders in the field. From my experience, conservators from outside institutions are usually interested in what we’re working on. We do a lot of information sharing. That comes from being encouraged to do that sort of thing, and I think that sharing is very much valued here.

Charlotte: You’ve spoken about the Rockhill Tibetan Collection. Beyond this, could you give an example of an Asian book project you have worked with and one you are currently engaged in?

Dan: For the first one – the Yongle encyclopedia in the Chinese Collection – it was significant for me to work with all those volumes. This project was challenging because of the size of the collection, binding, and the historical significance of the collection The volumes are in a unique and specific binding style, a “wrapped-back structure”, of which there are very few examples that have survived. Often, as with Western books, it was common for books to be rebound over the centuries. Some of those were not rebound, or they were rebound in that same style. That was a large project that required a lot of preparation and background research. There were four of us doing treatment. The last volume was the hardest one.

Charlotte: What was one particular issue that needed treatment?

Dan: On major issue was that the covers of every single volume were detached. There was a lot of historic damage that occurred to the books. They were involved in a fire during the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901). Some damage was related to that, and some was simply due to the inherent vice of the silk covers weakening through use and age. Many volumes had gotten wet causing losses in the text block. Once we got a working method down, it became a lot more manageable. The push to complete the conservation was the need to get the items ready for digitization.

Charlotte: What about an example of an item that you are currently working on?

Dan: I have two Tibetan books that I’m still thinking about for the treatment. They’re very unusual because most of the time, the Tibetan book structure is unbound and it’s a loose-leaf format. Both are in sections, and they have a specific sewing structured that I need to learn more about. And generally, they’ve been through a lot. Their condition is not great.
As I mentioned earlier, there are people that you can reach out to for insight and ideas. In this case, I’ve talked to a conservator who’s at Indiana University, who’s worked extensively with Tibetan materials. He has a wealth of experience, and he’s been really helpful. He’s the first person that I’ve talked to who has seen other examples of this style.

Charlotte: Could you give an example of a South Asian item – past or present?

Dan: I worked on a number of textbooks bound in a Western style that involved a lot of paper repair. They were very brittle. The insect damage on them is due to the humid environment they came from, leading to the deterioration of the paper.

Charlotte: Given that you do such specialized work that requires researching, testing, and planning, could you talk about tools? Do you have to make your tools?

Dan: We do, or if we don’t make them, we modify them. But we do make a lot. Right now, I’m working with buffalo horn. I’m shaping it and trying to make it really thin and flexible. The rough piece of horn was given to me by a colleague in Hong Kong. I’m following the design and shape of her tool to make mine. Tool “copying” like that is also very common in conservation.

Charlotte: I have so many more questions I could ask, but I’ve taken enough of your time. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me.

Want to learn more about the Asian Collections, which staff like Dan Paterson contribute to every day? Please contact a reference librarian via the Ask-a-Librarian service. Please also check out the blog dedicated to Preservation at the Library, “Guardians of Memory: Preserving the National Collection.”

Further Reading

The following are other interviews conducted by Charlotte Giles in this series.

“A Long and Dedicated Journey Through Libraries: An Interview With Phong Tran” (May 8, 2023)

“Thirty Years of Cataloging the South Asia Collection: An Interview with Shantha Murthy” (November 29, 2022)

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