Archive for the ‘john adams’ Category

Wednesday, July 4th, 2012

Signers’ Libraries on LibraryThing

Did you know that in addition to the libraries of more than 1.5 million members from around the world, LibraryThing is also home to the libraries of (so far) 19 Signers of the Declaration of Independence? The Legacy Libraries project started with a Signer (Thomas Jefferson), and we’ve continued to add to our “collection” over the past few years. You can see the status and source notes we’ve found so far for all 56 Signers here. Of the 19 that have been entirely or substantially added to LibraryThing already are four of the five members of the committee responsible for drafting the Declaration:

  • Thomas Jefferson (Virginia), 5,597 cataloged
  • John Adams (Massachusetts), 1,741 cataloged
  • Benjamin Franklin (Pennsylvania), 3,747 cataloged
  • Roger Sherman (Connecticut), 105 cataloged*

    • The other Signers represented on LibraryThing so far:

  • John Hancock (Massachusetts), 91 cataloged
  • George Clymer (Pennsylvania), 41 cataloged
  • Elbridge Gerry (Massachusetts), 326 cataloged
  • Button Gwinnett (Georgia), 12 cataloged
  • Stephen Hopkins (Rhode Island), 91 cataloged
  • Richard Henry Lee (Virginia), 503 cataloged
  • Thomas Lynch, Jr. (South Carolina), 38 cataloged
  • Thomas McKean (Delaware), 49 cataloged
  • Lewis Morris (New York), 113 cataloged
  • Robert Treat Paine (Massachusetts), 550 cataloged
  • George Read (Maryland), 13 cataloged
  • Caesar Rodney (Delaware), 13 cataloged
  • George Taylor (Pennsylvania), 35 cataloged
  • John Witherspoon (New Jersey), 988 cataloged
  • George Wythe (Virginia), 369 cataloged

    • All told, the Signers’ libraries added so far include 14,421 titles. You can check out the top books shared among the Signers’ libraries here. Top five:

  • Commentaries on the Laws of England by Sir William Blackstone
  • A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America by John Adams
  • The Spectator by Joseph Addison et al.
  • Euclid’s Elements
  • Virgil’s Poems

    • If you’re signed into LibraryThing, see what books you have in common with Signers of the Declaration of Independence on your Legacy Libraries stats page (just choose Advanced options and compare the Signers to you). Here’s my list, or see Tim’s.

    Browse the information we’ve collected so far about the other Signers’ libraries here; updates and new information is always appreciated; drop me an email anytime or post a message in the group! We’re always collecting new sources and adding new books for these libraries, so every little piece is welcome.

    Another key Founding-era library on LibraryThing is that of George Washington, who was otherwise engaged in July 1776. You might have seen one of his books in the news recently.

    Beyond the Signers are the broader Libraries of Early America; we’ve found data on more than 1,250 pre-1825 libraries so far, with more added regularly. Or there are the libraries of Mayflower passengers (one of my favorite groups to work with at the moment).

    We’ll be continuing to catalog additional libraries, and to enhance the tools we use to analyze, display and share this material with the world, so stay tuned!

    * The fifth member of the committee, Robert R. Livingston of New York, left Congress before the Declaration was signed. His library on LibraryThing is in progress. Also still to be added is the library of Charles Thomson, the secretary of the Continental Congress when the Declaration was signed.

    Labels: jefferson, john adams, legacies, legacy libraries

    posted by Jeremy @11:32 am 0 Comments »
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    • Friday, April 4th, 2008

    What Books Do You Share with Hemingway?

    Some updates from the Legacy Libraries front: yesterday saw the completion of the largest LT-Legacy catalog to date, that of Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway’s library (compiled by Dr. James D. Brasch and Dr. Joseph Sigman of McMaster University, and provided online [PDF] through Boston’s John F. Kennedy Library) included more than 7,000 titles (7,411 to be exact). A small team of dedicated Thingambrarians has been entering them since 4 January: many thanks to nperrin, who initiated the project; spookykitten (who added about 2,450 books); christiguc (2,350); Rullakartiina (1,350); and jjlong (1,200). Amazing work for a three-month period!

    You can read more about the Hemingway effort at this talk thread; they’re looking for tagging assistance and offer some suggestions for where to read more about Hemingway and his books. It’s a fascinating and very wide-ranging collection, so if you have some time to browse through it, do.

    Much removed from Hemingway’s library (so far removed, in fact, that they share no books at all) is the library of British scientist James Smithson (1765-1829), the man responsible for the creation of the Smithsonian Institution. His books were included in the bequest he made to the United States, and they now reside in the vault of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries’ Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History (digital gateway). There are currently 113 titles in the catalog; a few more will follow (I’m told that eight more books from Smithson’s library were recently found in the Library of Congress and are now making their way back to the Smithsonian).

    I worked with the Smithsonian’s Martin Kalfatovic and Suzanne Pilsk on this project, and Martin has a post up on the SI blog about the addition of Smithson’s library. As one might expect, most of the books in Smithson’s collection are scientific tracts, but the catalog also includes some cookbooks, travel accounts, reference works, &c.

    Hemingway and Smithson have been added to the “Overlap with Legacy Libraries” section of your stats page (introduced here).

    We’ve also been continuing to enhance John Adams’ LT catalog since its unveiling; through the wonderful assistance of Boston Public Library staff we’ve been able to make transcriptions of much of John Adams’ fascinating marginalia widely available for the first time (see what he thought, for example, of Mary Wollstonecraft’s An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution) – his copy of the book contains more than 10,000 words written in the margins! I’ve also been adding comments from JA’s diary and other writings about specific authors or works; that’s going to be an ongoing process, but it’s at least underway.

    You can keep track of progress on the various Legacy projects by clicking here.

    [Update: Thingamabrarian spookykitten reports that the cataloging of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s library (322 books now held at Princeton) has also been completed. So you can now satisfy your curiosity and see how many books Fitzgerald and Hemingway share.]

    Labels: dead people, john adams, legacies, special libraries

    posted by LibraryThing @2:09 pm 1 Comment »
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    • Tuesday, March 11th, 2008

    We’ve added Paul Giamatti’s library!

    LibraryThing has added the library of John Adams, the second president of the United States, played by Paul Giamatti in the upcoming (March 16) HBO miniseries John Adams.*

    We’ve also added a new team member, Jeremy Dibbell (jbd1), the motive force behind the I See Dead People[‘s Books] group, dedicated to answering the question “What books do I share with Marie Antoinette and Tupac Shakur?” Jeremy, who works at the Massachusetts Historical Society, has become a “historical consultant” to LibraryThing. It’s an unpaid job, but signals our support for his work. If he can get some people to talk about topics like this, or needs airfare to deliver a talk on it, we’ll help out. The rest of this blog post is by Jeremy…

    I am pleased to announce the LibraryThing debut of the library of John Adams, the second president of the United States. Thanks to the staff at the Boston Public Library we were able to batch-import** the books from John Adams‘ personal collection, now housed at the BPL.

    I’m not quite finished enhancing the records … with notes, reviews, tags, transcriptions of Adams’ marginalia and links to digital scans of the Adams books*** … but since this week is a big one for John Adams fans we wanted to announce the catalog even if it’s not entirely operational yet. Call it the beta version.

    In case you’re not up on your Adams events calendar, this coming Sunday (16 March) is the premiere of the mini-series based on David McCullough’s John Adams, with Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney starring as John and Abigail. HBO has arranged a tie-in marketing campaign with the US Postal Service which is highlighted at poweroftheletter.com: among other things, first class letters will be postmarked with a special cancellation in March containing a 1765 quote from JA: “Let us dare to read, think, speak and write.” One of my favorite Adams lines, and entirely appropriate not only for the mail, but also for our efforts here.

    Beyond the virtual, there are two upcoming two physical exhibits of Adams letters and other manuscript materials. At the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston****, “John Adams: A Life in Letters” will be open to the public from 8 March through 31 (Monday through Saturday, 1-4 p.m.). And at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY, “My Dearest Friend” will run from 5-30 April in the Frederick Ferris Thompson Memorial Library.

    John Adams read widely, and was famous for responding (sometimes quite sharply) to the texts as he read them (check out his “40 Most Heavily Annotated Books“). I’m really delighted that we’ve been able to work out a way (using WikiThing) to make his transcribed annotations available – they’re wonderful to read, and complement the digital scans of the books very nicely.

    Plus, as an added bonus, you can compare Jefferson and Adams’ libraries (here) and see the impressive number of works our second and third presidents (also probably two of the best-read) had in common. Right now it’s at 218, but that number is sure to creep upward as more combinations are made.

    Much more to do, so I’m going to get back to editing. Stop by and browse awhile when you have a chance, and stay tuned: the BPL recently announced plans to take their excellent “John Adams Unbound” exhibit on the road, so in case you missed it in Boston you may still get a chance to see the show.

    *Giamatti as John Adams is growing on me. But nothing will beat his performance in Sideways. [Tim]
    **Incidentally, we’ll be offering batch-importing of MARC records to all members soon. [Tim]
    *** You’ll also see some books currently in the catalog published after President Adams died in 1826. Those were added by his descendants, and are in the process of being removed from his LT catalog. Records for those books will remain available through the BPL’s John Adams Library site.
    **** Where I am an Assistant Reference Librarian in “real life.”

    Labels: dead people, jeremy dibbell, john adams, offbeat, paul giamatti

    posted by LibraryThing @12:56 am 0 Comments »
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