From the Beautiful to the Bland: Amazing Treasures at the Library of Congress

Organized by ALSC’s Special Collections and Bechtel Fellowship Committee, a group of eight guests were treated to a presentation of some of the rare wonders for children at the Library of Congress (LC) while in Washington, DC, for the 2019 American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference.Our guide was Dr. Sybille A. Jagusch, chief, Children’s Literature Center in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. She manages the collection of 600,000 children’s items, acquires and purchases items for the collection, arranges lectures, plans and executes exhibitions with printed guides in many cases, and is open to sharing (as she did for us) delightful items that were once handled by children from the United States as well as the rest of the world.