A list for the New Year

I happened upon the official web site of the U.S. Library of Congress this evening.

Okay, okay, so it maybe wasn’t such an accident - I am nerdy enough to actually spend an hour drooling over their lists of collections, what of it? Never mind what you think of my sick-day Internet trolling habits! Herewith, my latest list, which I am brilliantly labeling…

Stuff I’d like to see at the Library of Congress:

·         The James Madison Papers

·         American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Folklore Project, WPA Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1940

·         The Hannah Arendt Papers

·         The Frederick Douglas Papers

·         Letters of Delegates to Congress

·         The whole Quotation Book Collection

·         The whole of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division

·         The odd nooks and crannies of the Fiction Collection

·         The American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Printed Ephemera (in part, I admit, because it includes the word ‘ephemera’)

·         Broadside Song Collection

·         Miniature Book Collection

·         Reserve Storage Drama Collection

·         And others…

Here’s how I see it: I camp out in the Main Reading Room with my list (and more lists to be drawn up as I actually, you know, look at the collections) and a seat pillow while Library of Congress functionaries keep me supplied with hot tea, chocolate bon-bons and the occasional alcohol wipe, lest I transfer choco-prints to the rare books.

Think they’ll do this for me?