Library of Congress - Afternoon Tour
Abigail Grotke, Library of Congress, USA
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/911/

Close-Up: LC Tour - PM

Library of Congress curators, folklorists, reference specialists, exhibit designers, and other staff from Library Services, including the director for Public Service Collections, will discuss the collecting and presentation of analog and digital materials related to September 11, 2001. Even in the midst of the initial chaos of the horrific events of September 11, the Library of Congress began collecting materials documenting the attacks. Since that time, the Library has been amassing material through its public service divisions and overseas offices.

On September 7, 2002, exhibition and Web site of selections from this material was opened titled "Witness and Response: September 11 Acquisitions at the Library of Congress." The exhibition exposed visitors to powerful eyewitness accounts and raw public reaction as documented by the Library's collections, while at the same time commemorated the first anniversary of the attacks. In September 2003, the Library of Congress marked its first major digital acquisition of September 11, 2001, materials with the addition to its collections of the September 11 Digital Archive (http://911digitalarchive.org) . The September 11 Digital Archive is a joint project of the City University of New York Graduate Center's American Social History Project and George Mason University's Center for History and New Media.

Examples of the diverse holdings of September 11 materials by the Library of Congress will be shown at this session, along with a discussion of the Library's experience building the collection and some of the professional and ethical issues that arose while doing so.