48 THE CAPITOL DOME
Summer Brown Bag Series Features Library of Congress
T
he 2017 edition of the U.S. Capitol Historical Soci-
ety's annual August brown bag series focused on the
history, decoration, and collections of the Library of Con-
gress. e well-attended series began with a pair of lectures
detailing the location of the Library: Janice McKelvey dis-
cussed the Library's various locations in the U.S. Capitol,
and Tom Hoban covered the construction and decoration
of the Jefferson Building. Both McKelvey and Hoban work
as or with docents at the Library, as does the final speaker of
the series, Lynda Cooper. Cooper focused her talk on Elihu
Vedder's mosaic of Minerva in the Jefferson Building.
Two additional talks from subject specialists detailed
certain areas of the Library's collections. Stephen Winick
spoke about—and played samples from—the American
Folklife Center Archive, while Jeffrey Flannery discussed
the Manuscript Division and showed diverse examples from
that part of the Library's Collections.
Earlier in the summer, USCHS hosted a book talk by
Carl Adams, author of Nance: Trials of the First Slave Freed
by Abraham Lincoln. e book, written for a teenage audi-
ence but of interest to all students of history, details the life
of Nance Costley, who sued for her freedom in court and
was eventually represented by Abraham Lincoln. A second
book talk, in July, featured two authors giving a tag-team
presentation: David Waldstreicher and Matthew Mason
took turns presenting excerpts from the writing of John
Quincy Adams and contextualizing it, as they do in their
recent book, John Quincy Adams and the Politics of Slavery:
Selections om the Diary. ey noted that Adams used his
diary to rehearse ideas, record meetings, and more, rewrit-
ing and referring back to it later.
Several of the August talks were captured by C-SPAN
and have been broadcast. ey are available online. Go to
https://www.c-span.org/ and search for "Capitol Historical
Society" to find these and other USCHS programs. All of
our history events are free and open to the public.
Stephen Winick played samples om the American Folklife
Archive.
An audience member seated near a C-SPAN camera asks a
question at the August 23 lecture.
Jeffrey Flannery's talk included the surprisingly complicated
answer to the question "What is a manuscript?"
Tom Hoban used classisc methods to illustrate his presenta-
tion.
