Librarians of Congress: Protecting America’s Treasured Books
by Karen Leggett Abouraya
In its 237 year history, the United States has had 43 presidents. But in almost the same amount of time, there have been only 13 Librarians of Congress – which gives you a clue about how long many of them served! John Beckley was the first, appointed by Thomas Jefferson in 1802 and only staying in office for five years before he died. At the time, the salary of the Librarian of Congress could not exceed two dollars a day.
Patrick Magruder, of the Montgomery County Magruder family, came next. President Andrew Jackson named John Meehan, who served for 32 years in the middle of the 19th century. Ainsworth Rand Spofford lobbied for the job – which was indeed frequently given to a political friend of the President – and stayed for 33. Herbert Putnam was the first experienced librarian to hold the job, staying for 40 years.
One of the most famous Librarians of Congress was Archibald MacLeish, nominated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939. At the time, opponents accused MacLeish of having pro-Communist leadings. He was also opposed by the American Library Association because he was not a professional library administrator. The same fate awaited Daniel Boorstin in 1975 – but both MacLeish and Boorstin were confirmed by the Senate. MacLeish only held the job for five years before he became an assistant secretary of state in 1944, but it was he who made the Library a “permanent repository of the American intellectual and cultural tradition, believing that librarians must play an active role in American life, particularly in educating the American public to the value of the democratic process,” according to Library records.
In 1987, President Ronald Reagan nominated James Billington, who had been director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center at the Smithsonian and remains Librarian to this day. On many occasions, Billington has hosted the director of the new library in Alexandria, Egypt, Ismail Serageldin. Together they formed the World Digital Library to expand non-English and non-Western content on the Internet and to contribute to scholarly research – and they also shared a moment recently at the Library of Congress to talk about “Hands Around the Library: Protecting Egypt’s Treasured Books,” the story of protesters who held hands around the Alexandria library to protect it from vandals during the 2011 revolution in Egypt.
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Karen Leggett Abouraya, author of “Hands Around the Library: Protecting Egypt’s Treasured Books,” is an award-winning journalist and former news program host on WMAL Radio. A past president of the Children’s Book Guild of Washington, D.C., her reviews of children’s books and other articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, International Educator and Washington Parent. She is married to Egyptian-American Tharwat Abouraya and has traveled frequently to Egypt, especially to Alexandria – her husband’s hometown and the site of the ancient and modern libraries.
