>> next, the documentary "the library of congress." then former louisiana governor buddy roemer announces his candidacy for president. after that, the state of u.s. national parks. now, the feature documentary, "the library of congress," behind the scenes in the world's largest library. ♪ >> the pursuit of knowledge is something progressives, liberals and conservatives, and libertarian's all agree on. they may disagree on how to do it and how much to spend on it, but essentially they are all in favor of accurate information

that lawmakers can use. there is a connection between reading and democracy. >> our institutions were entirely created in the age of print. >> the work in the mind, the search for an formation, the free availability of information in a democracy must be celebrated. i think that comes through very dramatically in the building. >> it started as a small space in the capital where congressman could get in permission. it has grown to eight separate facilities, including the madison building and the atoms building -- adams building. but it's true home is this, the

jefferson building. where there were once only books, the library of congress today features one of the current presidential papers, photos, music, video, and more. >> this is the largest map collection in the world. >> 62 million items in this division operate about 13 miles of shelves. >> this is one of the greatest issue of resources in the world. 14 million pictures. >> we have over 8500 cases, and each case has five doors in it. >> the george washington papers have about 65,000 items. we have the thomas jefferson papers, 27,000 items. >> without them, we could not tell the story of our past. we could not explore the important personalities, the

major events in the history of the country. >> that is what this place does. whether it is books, manuscripts, music, maps, photos, movies, audio -- daymark many of the pivotal events in the evolution of the united states and the world. >> in 1948, just to give you a small snapshot, we acquired one collection. 40,000 glass plate negatives. that is the first photo news agency in america. >> if he spent one minute with each photo in the library of congress, it would take 24 years to see them all. if you spent 10 minutes with each map in the library of congress, it would take you over 100 years to see them all.

and what about bookstacks one day with each book would span over 60,000 years. the jefferson building tells a story of the need for knowledge and the love of books. with its ornate italian renaissance style, it harkens back to european ancestors while also moving forward and featuring elements exclusively american. bill that the end of the 19th century, it reflects a time when americans were saying goodbye to the past and coming into their own as a country. this program features not only the buildings, but also the treasures inside. some of the most exclusive documents, photos, maps, and objects that represent our nation past and present.

♪ >> as we go through this great arch, we go into one of the most magnificent spaces of the library, the great hall. the great hall, and beyond it the main reading room, or two of the greatest spaces in american architecture. if architecture is about space, this is the architect playing at the top of his game. one of the things i feel people get in the library is joy. the colors are joyful. there is a quality of the light on that brilliant white marble and forest of columns. >> i think the upward pull has something to do with it. it is almost a sort of ascendancy.

i think that is part of that experience. there is an elaborate system of ornamentation to the vaults of the ceiling. you have the seasons. you have the muses. you have the senses. you have a series on knowledge and understanding and wisdom. you have figures representing

the performing arts. >> the albert artwork is an indication this building is also about america and it's coming of age. >> all the way through, there are symbols of great printers of the world -- the ciphers of their imprints. one side is all american printers. we have doubleday and harper's to show once again that america is taking its place in the world of letters. >> its a lot to take in -- color and images and writing from both sides. >> minerva presides over the tour% building. she is the guardian of civilization.

she is the goddess of learning and wisdom. she is the patron of the applied arts, work and labor. also of the fine arts, the performing arts. there is not much left. i think that is why the founding fathers like her a lot. as you see her in this mosaic at the top of the stairs leading to the public visitors gallery -- from there, she overlooks the great hall and stands guard in front of the reading room. behind her, the sunlight is breaking through the clouds. it is the somewhat of prosperity, because that is one of the other things she is doing her job well and the nation is prosperous. the arts and sciences and these other things can flourish. the resources that would have gone to war now go to peaceful

activities. >> just before reaching the main reading room, a reminder that knowledge is not always used for good. to race series of merrill's reflecting the turn of the century in which there were painted, both good and bad government are depicted. >> over the door where you enter, you have government represented as everything in balance. in the middle is you're always allegorical female figure. there is a line from the gettysburg address. it is all in balance. government is working as it should. but on the left side you have two murals showing what can happen if government does not do its job. one has a figure of anarchy, a

firebrand. she is holding a burning constitution in one hand. the figure on her right is trying to pry it out of the cornerstones of our institutions. they are also being destroyed by stumbling stones. the tree behind her is dead. everything is wrong. the worst-case scenario is anarchy. beside her, the next a mural is one of crops legislation. the figure is an amalgam. this was the 1890's. this is probably a combination of john d. rockefeller and jay gould and jpmorgan. he is a big player. he has bags of money. he has stuffed the ballot box. his factories are belching away, going full tilt, because somehow he has gotten favors.

there is the money. he is holding it. not just that, he has an open book. he has studied at to figure out how to fool government. opposite him is a poor young laborer with nothing to do. his factories are idle. the wall is falling down. how do you counterbalance that? on the opposite side, on the right of the entrance to the main reading room, you have a figure of good government. it is accomplished through knowledge-based democracy. there, the figure of government has an open book in her lap. she is informed. everything is in balance. she is a very respectable figure versus the one before. on the right is a figure of a young voter with books under his arm. he is going to cast his ballot,

having reformed himself. opposite is a young woman holding and are not with golden grain pouring out of it. she is separating the wheat from the chaff in the selection of elected officials. this figure of government is holding a balanced scale, the kind you can not cheat with. the final mural is government at its best. it produces peace and prosperity, so that arts, literature, and science can flourish throughout the world. >> passed the murals is the main reading room, one of the main places people can come to read and to research. an elaborate system of retrieval allows the books to be brought from the basement up to the reader.

>> and from here, the tentacles of hallways that lead to more and more books. and bhivende all those books, the other treasures. the maps, the presidential papers, the photos and much more. >> the most famous picture is called migrant mother. a 32-year-old woman with seven children had stopped at a camp. the picture appeared in newspapers and magazines and helped persuade people not just that there was desperate poverty in our country but the resilience and strength of the people.

>> but it's not the original shot. she edited out the thumb. >> it bothered her, so that's the sense in which this is a unique copy of the picture as it was taken. >> "migrant mother" is part of a collection of images from a new deal project to capture poverty in rural america from 1935 to 1944. >> can you imagine if, 1944, we're in the midst of a war, the depression is recently passed and the attitude was, who will ever want to look at these sad, old pictures again. the librarian of congress went

over and said, i know there's a lot of photographs, 170,000, but i really feel like if we collect today, contemporary, in 50 years and 100 years, that will be a visual encyclopedia of life in the united states, the good as well as the bad. >> today is the -- this is the library's most popular photo collection. it's also possible to track the country's history in the map division. >> the library's map is the crown jewel of any collection. it is the first document on which the name america appears because the person who made the map named us america in honor of amerigo vespucci.

you can have anyone tell you how did america come to be? we know here, it's on that map from 1570. >> it's the first map that shows the world is round. it was the world's dominant land mass. up to that point of time there was only one sea, between europe and asia. this map says, no, there's a continent in between. the width of south america on this map is within 70 miles of accuracy at the equator and this was supposedly before anyone went to the west side of south america. congress really took an interest in this piece and they agreed to put $5 million toward the purchase of the map and the other half was provided by

private donors. we finally acquired it in 2003. but that map provides us, 500 years later, more questions than we can answer. >> in addition to photos and map, the library of congress has a large book and manuscript division which in total makes up about half the numb of all the items in the library. many are the papers of political figures. >> all documents dealing with political history are not just the official record of acts of a policymaker. we have a whole life approach, birth to death. everything that goes into their whole life. >> that includes the lives of presidents. it was tedy roosevelt's 1903 executive order that accelerated the library's collection of presidential papers. >> what this did was transfer from the state department the papers of four presidents, george washington, thomas

jefferson, james madison and james monroe, as well as some papers of alexander hamilton and benjamin franklin that had been collected and were basically being preserved by the state department. >> those papers of early presidents are the core of today's manuscript division. >> i think people don't realize that, they hear about the presidential library system, amazing buildings built for mostly 20th century presidents. but prior to that, the library of congress is the largest presidential library, having in its collection 23 presidents. >> the presidential papers range from george washington through calvin coolidge. washington's papers include 36 diaries, pocket sized, like a farmer would carry to make records about the weather or plans for growing certain crops. but there are other diaries as well.

the place is to stay were not up to his standards. at one point he said, these houses are just, the entertain is subpar, some 18th century way of saying that. but the reason he gave for that, an interesting reason, he said the people who travel along the road are people who are moving from one place to another so they have all their household goods with them and therefore they don't need to stay at a tavern. the sense that we get from looking at this is a country of people on the move, which was very much a phenomenon of this period and also of decades to come when americans were increasingly moving west. moving from older settled areas, inland, to newer places. he witnessed that. >> being a surveyor, the first president is also highlighted in the library's happen collection.

>> this was made at the creation of alexandria, virginia. this is a rough outline of the proposed town. i would like to turn it over, this is completely in washington's hands. i'd like to show you something unique about this map. >> he started drawing on this side of the map, but he messed up, couldn't fit the coastline on this piece of paper. so he had to turn it over and start again. he was 16 years old. >> it was in a later president's administration that

one of the most famous trips in america and the lives of two young men, meriweather lewis and william clark. >> one of the big advances in the united states' land mass occurred with the louisiana purchase. at that point in time, thomas jefferson had put together the idea of finding out as much as he could about the newly acquired land. the most famous was the lewis and clark expedition. this is the only surviving map that went with them. it provides the information to go through the first year of the lewis and clark expedition. in the maps in our collection, there are a number of annotations that shows they were actually embellishing or adding information. there are also indications of a little bit of blood on it, you

know, so it's an authentic map, one that's quite exciting. several years ago, we scanned it, so it's available on our website, so if a patron wants to come and look at the lewis and clark piece, it's readily available wherever you live, here in the united states or beijing or moscow or london. >> some presidents were careful to leave a legacy of their president, as witnessed by the library of congress itself. others just wanted it all to go away. >> some of the midwest distinct papers are president coolidge. president coolidge, he was often called sullen cal. he was reticent in his public speaking and followed that in his paper as well. this is an era when presidential papers were the personal property of the president and he could do what

he wanted to. he burned almost all of it. the papers we have are actually from some filing cabinets that were in the basement of the white house and were overlooked when he left. they were discovered in the early 1930's, my predecessor wrote president coolidge who was in retirement, wrote a letter requesting the president's permission to go get them. he thought this would be the opening of a long and lengthy period of negotiations. instead, he got back a letter in about 10 days, with two sentences. it said, what you suggested is sensible and you might also talk to my former private secretary to see if there's anything else left. my predecessor couldn't take this for an answer. he wrote a second letter, explaining, thank you, mr. president, but i feel bound to raise certain issues and make sure you understand this, and what about this, i suggest we

deal with this thing and this issue in this way. again, he got back a reply in about 10 days. i'm paraphrasing here. what you suggest is entirely acceptable. signed, calvin sool edge. with that, he took yes for an answer and went and got the papers. it took less than three weeks, and the permission was in 46 or 47 words. >> the collection with the most star power is that of our 16th president. >> the lincoln collection has about 10 volumes before he got to washington. it is the heart of the lincoln written record. we have the first and second gettysburg addresses, the reading copy that's here along with the john hay copy. the second inaugural and second inaugural are both here. the fair weal address at

springfield, an impromptu speech he tried to rewrite on a moving train is here. >> and the emancipation prock clamation. the library of congress houses lincoln's final draft. but on a more personal basis, die irs -- dirists who had accessed to the lincoln family left firsthand accounts of his death. >> in the assassination, where the family was so stricken and when they get back to the white house, the scene is horrific. >> oh, fatal day, oh noble victim, treason has done its worst. the president has been assassinated. is it possible? >> everybody is in tears. a dirist records that. >> when they reach the president's house, tad met them on the portico, where is my pa? where is my pa? he kept repeating.

taddy, your pa is dead, said the doctor. he screamed in an agony of grief, oh what shall i do? my brother is dead, my father is dead? oh, mother, you will not die, will you? if you die, i shall be all alone. >> and this dirist, his children were the playmates of lincoln's children. there's a close connection. >> but not everything in the lincoln papers is serious. >> this is a letter showing a personal side of the lincoln family. this is lincoln writing from the white house on executive mansion stationerry, as you can see, talking to mary about the goat, about nanny, tad's goat had been eating flowers, the dwardener had shooed him away and they took him to the white

house, which is sort of downhill and he was seen chewing his cud on tad's bed, and he disappeared and lincoln is writing to forewarn tad that nanny is gone. >> the presidency of abraham lincoln is another example of where the different divisions of the library of congress interweave to tell the story of the history of the united states. his administration coincided with the popular use of photography and it is said that lincoln was the first president to really tap into this new technology. >> we have first portrait of abraham lincoln, all the way up until a few weeks before his death. it is a very powerful experience, being able to watch the face of the young congressman, and how seriously he aged just during those few years of the civil war before his assassination.

>> besides presidential photographs, the library's collection dates back to the very first days of what is now called photo journalism. >> it's a sad story but there's a man who has been stranded just above niagara falls in the middle of that fast-running water. the photographer was able to make a photograph of him and he drowned soon thereafter. so we're back in the 1840's. it was seen as a tool to capture events as they happened. one of our favorite collections is the first formal news photo agency. he put cameras in the hands of his reporters and news boys and said, bring back what you can. he was able to sell these out

to many newspapers on a subscription basis. from there comes the associated press. there's the national toe toe -- photo company. >> in 1971, when the picture magazine had to close, they called up and said, would you be willing to shelter this collection and preserve it for the future? and we agreed. that's five million photographic negatives and color slides. it was a family magazine filled with aprons and cooking recipes but they had a lot of hard news too. after "look," "u.s. news & world report" generated its photo morgue, so we can cover