Physical aspects of a document, such as stains on a World War II-era telegram in the K. C. Emerson Papers, can sometimes add details to the story it tells, or leave you wondering.
In honor of Pride Month, the recently acquired personal papers of best-selling Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, essayist, literary critic, and teacher Mary Oliver (1935-2019) are now open to researchers in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division.
Wallets and their contents are sometimes contained in collections of personal papers, and can provide clues about their owners, based on what they carried with them and the times in which they lived.
William Wilgus was one of the most accomplished civil engineers of his time. Today two manuscript collections document his sweeping career, one at the New York Public Library and another at the Library of Congress, which opened for research in 2023. Documenting incidents such as a fatal 1907 train accident in the Bronx and the 1915 flooding of New York’s massive Ashokan Reservoir, the two collections tell a story of progress and loss, and of memory and honor.