Friday, April 11, 2008

Forget the cherry blossoms ...

... now there's a real reason to go to Washington, D.C.

I have one quibble with the reporter's reaction:

I doubt that I would have felt these transformations with the same force had I just tried to read the faded ink on Jefferson's rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, protected behind glass at the Library of Congress.

Glass or no glass, there is magic in the seeing the old works in the original. I still remember vividly trips to the National Archive and the Huntington Library, and one other place whose name I've forgotten, but which had a first printing of the Principia.*

Still, the new electronic displays sound like a lot of fun, and hyperlinking is always nice to have available.

I could not agree more with this:

I'm not keen on the name it has given its project: "The Library of Congress Experience."

Yes. That word should have been banned as a proper noun once Jimi departed.


* Which, careful long-time readers will know, I am now delighted to pronounce as prin-KIP-ee-uh. Hard Cs rule.

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