>> NARRATOR: Its home is the most beautiful building in Washington, a treasure chest of 144 million items stored on 650 miles of shelves. From handwritten manuscripts of American presidents... >> JAMES HUTSON: Here we have the diaries of George Washington. >> NARRATOR: ...to CAT scans of Stradivarius violins... >> CAROL LYNN WARD-BAMFORD: You can study the inside of it, the air on the inside, the density of the wood. >> NARRATOR: ...a staff of 4,000 works to reveal secrets that had been lost for centuries and preserve them in the digital age. (trilling) And it's all there for you. Now, "The Library of Congress" on<i> Modern Marvels.</i> <font color="#FFFF00"> Captioning sponsored by</font> <font color="#FFFF00"> A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS</font> This library is perhaps the most misunderstood in the world. Each year, hundreds of thousands of tourists enter the Library of Congress Jefferson Building and stand in awe. But after they snap a few photos and get back on the bus, they may leave with the misconception that this is simply where members of Congress get to borrow their books. In reality, it is so much more. >> JAMES BILLINGTON: It's the biggest collection of knowledge in all languages and formats. That is to say, it's the biggest collection of maps, movies, music, as well as books in English. And most of the books are in other languages. So we have books in 470 languages. We serve the Congress and, by extension, the government, but at the same time, the same information is available to the general public. >> NARRATOR: Nowhere else in the world can a researcher view the earliest works of Benjamin Franklin, inspect a first draft musical composition of Mozart or screen the original negatives of classic American films, like<i> Frankenstein.</i> >> LARRY SMITH: If you hold the film up to the light and look through the film, you could see these little white spots where the splices could actually be seen. And only the original camera negative would have so many splices. >> NARRATOR: For historians, pop culture fanatics and the just plain curious, this library has no peer, and its mission is critical. >> STEPHEN NEASE: We are rescuing the United States culture. When you think about it, if this disappears, our future generations will really know more about the Greeks because of stone-tablet technology than they will know about us. And that's what we're trying to change. >> NARRATOR: To accolish ts daunting task, 4,000 library staffers work to sort, categorize, preserve and protect 144 million items stored in a complex of five main buildings. On Capitol Hill, the Jefferson, Madison and Adams Buildings house many collections and most of the staff, who perform tasks from bar coding to copyright registration to preservation. (beep) >> DIANNE VAN DER REYDEN: If we understand how things become damaged, then that helps us to understand how to prevent that damage or repair it later. >> NARRATOR: 30 miles northeast at Fort Meade, Maryland, massive new storage modules house several more million items in climate-controlled stacks 30 feet high, longer than football fields. >> STEVE HERMAN: We have not lost an item yet. >> NARRATOR: 75 miles southwest of the Capitol in Culpeper, Virginia, the Packard Campus for Video and Audio Preservation is now the home of America's motion picture treasures. >> GREGORY LUKOW: These are state-of-the-art vaults. We store original nitrate negatives of some of the greatest classics of Hollywood history here. >> NARRATOR: The heart of the Library of Congress is the Jefferson Building's Great Hall, named after the president who believed the expansion of knowledge was critical to the work of congressmen and the growth of American ideals. Two centuries ago, this building didn't exist. The first library collections were stored in the Capitol itself. During the War of 1812, British troops set fire to the structure, destroying thousands of books. Congress replenished its collection by purchasing Thomas Jefferson's personal library, 6,487 volumes for $23,950. >> BILLINGTON: There was a narrow vote in the Congress whether to buy it or not, because much of the New England delegation said, "Why buy this farmer from Virginia's library, which has books on every conceivable subject?" And Jefferson said that there's no subject on which a legislator in our type of republic may not need to have information on. And his own library contained books in 16 languages. He was studying Arabic in his, in his advancing years. So he had the first English language translation of the Koran, all kinds of things. >> NARRATOR: During the next century, 800 tons of books, maps and manuscripts accumulated and needed a home of their own. Congress built them a palace. >> C. FORD PEATROSS: This building is generally considered the most elaborately-embellished public building in America. And all you have to do to prove that point is look around a little bit. >> NARRATOR: An extraordinary collection of panoramic photos documents the construction of what is now known as the library's Jefferson Building. The $6 million structure was completed in 1897 and hailed as a masterpiece. It was one of the first buildings in Washington to make use of electric light. Every artistic detail has significance. >> PEATROSS: Many of the sculpted figures hold torches of knowledge. Now, that torch, that fire, represents the active mind. It also represents the human imagination. >> NARRATOR: Nearly a century later, the Jefferson Building underwent extensive renovation. Historic paintings damaged by soot were given new life. Technical upgrades were made virtually invisible to visitors. >> STEPHEN AYERS: If you look above, you can see the air-conditioning vents. We cut out the center of one of the rosettes there and we installed an air-conditioning vent. And down lower, you can see where we cut out the center of a rosette and we installed a fire sprinkler in that location. >> NARRATOR: The Jefferson Building today remains the center point of the library complex, housing book stacks, collections and meeting rooms. Adjacent to the Great Hall is the library's core research area, the main reading room. At the Library of Congress, you don't go to the books. They come to you. Why? Because items in the collection are truly treasures, and they're treated as such. Take, for example, the original copy of Thomas Jefferson's Koran. Reaching its home and that of most library collections requires climbing century-old staircases, passing through camera-monitored hallways and unlocking steel-doored vaults designed to protect their contents with state-of-the-art technology. >> MARK DIMUNATION: My vault is temperature-controlled. The light is controlled. The air is filtered. We have alarms for humidity. We have alarms for water. We have alarms for intrusion. We have alarms for things I'm not allowed to talk about. Books like to live in a constant state. They don't like fluctuation. They like it a little colder than humans, and that's just fine. >> NARRATOR: Thomas Jefferson never wrote his name in his books. So how do we know this copy of the Koran actually belonged to him? >> DIMUNATION: What he would do is go and look for a large capital letter that's often printed at the bottom of a page in 18th-century books so that a binder can put the book together. Jefferson would go to the T signature and put his letter J next to it for Thomas Jefferson. So the only way that Jefferson would ever mark his books is this very subtle, very sophisticated, very kind of endearing initial of Thomas Jefferson. >> NARRATOR: The rare book vaults of the Jefferson Building may be considered the library's holiest of holies. Benjamin Franklin's<i> Poor</i> <i> Richard's Almanacks</i> are here, showing his entrepreneurial genius. Franklin needed to outsell an already popular almanac by Titan Leeds. So Franklin predicted the date of Leeds' death. When the date passed, Leeds cried foul, and Franklin laughed all the way to the bank. >> DIMUNATION: Franklin countered by saying that he thought it was horrible that this poor Leeds family was suffering the death of Titan Leeds and here are these people writing in, pretending to be this poor, dead publisher. This goes back and forth, um, whipping up just enough enthusiasm that<i> Poor Richard's</i> <i> Almanack</i> takes hold. And by the time Leeds actually does die, uh, it allows Poor Richard to publish a note saying, "Thank goodness the publishers of that other almanac have finally admitted to the death of Mr. Leeds." >> NARRATOR: The rare book vaults of the Library of Congress contain more than 700,000 volumes. One of the most valued was published in 1610, Galileo's <i> Sidereus Nuncius,</i> or<i> Starry</i> <i> Messenger,</i> containing sketches of the moon as seen through a telescope. >> DIMUNATION: We imagine that he likely drew this while observing, and then went and had this image cut so that it could be printed and included in this publication. And, in fact, what really makes the<i> Starry Messenger</i> such an important publication is that there are multiple images of the moon. >> NARRATOR: In another vault, a scrapbook, famed for its extraordinary collection of personal memorabilia from legendary magician Ehrich Weiss, better known by his stage name... Harry Houdini. >> DIMUNATION: What we're seeing is a note from a 14-year-old Houdini, who has left home to look for work and, as an afterthought is writing his mother to say, "Oh, by the way, I'm on my way to a job. You probably won't see me for about a year. Your truant son." And then, I think, one of only two known signatures in his real name, Ehrich Weiss. >> NARRATOR: Researchers view volumes from the rare book collection in a room adjacent to the vaults, but those who read books from the general collection do so under the watchful eye of a young, clean-shaven Abraham Lincoln in the main reading room. Card catalogs that once occupied the space have been replaced by computerized search systems. >> SHERIDAN HARVEY: Eventually, um, we'd started digitizing, and it took years, um, for people 'cause we had to key it in. We're talking 1960s. And we still have our card catalog. It's just off the reading room, and we still use it all the time, 'cause there are things in it that are not in the online catalog. >> NARRATOR: Books requested by researchers may be retrieved within minutes if housed in century-old stacks of the Jefferson Building. >> HERMAN: There are nine levels. We're on the lowest level. There are eight levels above us. In the original stacks, roughly 90,000 volumes per level, so about 810,000 volumes on the nine levels. And a mirror image-- the same thing on the north side of the building. >> NARRATOR: But other books may travel 30 miles to Capitol Hill from the Fort Meade storage facilities... where forklift operators know exactly where to find or return a single book among millions. >> HERMAN: It's 90 degrees outside today, but in here, it's 50 degrees Fahrenheit, 30% relative humidity, which is really good for paper-based products. We have paper-based products that in a normal environment would probably last about 40 years, and when you put them into this 50-degree, 30% relative humidity environment, their life can be increased about sixfold. >> NARRATOR: Books requested from Fort Meade are delivered twice daily to the Jefferson Building. >> HERMAN: Once the books are found and retrieved downstairs, they are put on this conveyor system, and they come up here. These are actually books that will be taken off, and they will be delivered to the person at their seat in the reading room. >> NARRATOR: It's doubtful that there's a single more beautiful room in the world in which to simply read a book. Thomas Jefferson likely never imagined such a luxurious home for his nearly 6,500 books and the millions more to come. >> PEATROSS: What do I think Thomas Jefferson would think of this building? I think he'd, first of all, think it was a bit much. (laughs) But I think he would grow into it. I think he would think that he'd started a good thing, and how nicely for it all to end up. >> NARRATOR: Actual books make up only 21% of the Library of Congress's collection. Other treasures, from manuscripts to maps to photographs to musical instruments, have a secure home in the library's Madison Building, where scientists race the clock to develop new methods of preserving priceless treasures before they literally fall apart. >> NARRATOR: "The Library of Congress" will return on<i> Modern</i> <i> Marvels.</i> >> NARRATOR: We now return to "The Library of Congress" on <i> Modern Marvels.</i> The Library of Congress is also known as America's library. Its nearly 144 million items are available for viewing in the luxurious reading rooms in Washington, DC, and increasingly online. Each day, thousands of pages and images are scanned and digitized for viewing on loc.gov, the library's Web site, which now makes available more than 15 million items of the library collection. Since his appointment as librarian of congress in 1987, Dr. James Billington has been preparing the 200-year-old institution for the 21st century. >> BILLINGTON: Our 15,300,000 items of American history and culture are not just books. They're not even primarily books. They are one of a kind things. American memory, we call it sometimes, as well as a national digital library. You can get that out to people where they live in the format in which our culture is increasingly, uh, digesting and expressing knowledge. That is to say-- in the digital format. >> NARRATOR: Across the street from the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress is the structure named after James Madison, home to many library collections and research scientists working to use digital tools to solve preservation dilemmas. Every day, 14,000 new items arrive by mail to be sorted for the collection. Some are donated. Others are purchased. >> JOSEPH PUCCIO: In the last fiscal year, 2008, we spent about $18 million and purchased over a million separate items. >> NARRATOR: As home of the U.S. Copyright Office, the library also receives cartloads of material for copyright registration. >> LIZ SCHEFFLER: We get 8,000 to 12,000 pieces of mail every day. This is probably from somebody's garage band. They're going ahead, and they're producing a CD in their basement. They want to copyright their songs. Who knows what the future will be for them? >> NARRATOR: Copyright specialists make sure the names of applicants match those of artists actually listed on the work. For motion picture specialists, that means sneak previews only amount to credit verification. Those who review musical compositions need to know if a string of notes qualifies as a copyrightable tune. >> MELISSA BETHEL: Everyone in this division has a music background. Um, I was a music major in college-- I was a harpist. >> NARRATOR: The Copyright Office processes more than a half million registrations each year, resulting in a catalog-- soon to be digitized-- of nearly 50 million cards. The library doesn't have a copy of every book published in the United States. The Copyright Office keeps records of registration, but not every item. As the heart of the library's collection is material printed or written on paper, from books to manuscripts to maps and photographs, its biggest challenge is to keep the items in pristine condition and avoid something like this. >> VAN DER REYDEN: This is an example of a book, which you can see is in pretty bad condition. It has been infested with, um, what we call bookworms, which are actually larvae, and you can see that the damage goes all the way through the book, and it extends page after page after page. >> NARRATOR: To prevent this librarian's nightmare, specialists in the library's preservation labs work to determine the best conditions for archival storage. Environmental scanning electron microscopes are critical tools in the evaluation process. >> VAN DER REYDEN: We have in here right now-- as you can see in this image-- we actually have a print in here. That's a whole print. And Jennifer is now looking at that print to see what sorts of material she can see. One of the things we're seeing is we're going deep into that print, and we're actually seeing a cotton fiber here. >> NARRATOR: Scientists can change the climate inside the environmental chamber to determine the effects of heat and humidity on the material. Every form of paper has its own comfort zone. The results are then incorporated into real-world storage of the library treasures. Roughly half of the entire library collections-- over 60 million items-- are stored in the Manuscript Division, row after row after row of stacks containing the writings of Supreme Court justices, cabinet members and, of course, presidents. >> HUTSON: Here we have the, uh, diaries of George Washington. This is just a part of our very large collection. George Washington's fairly consistently writing about the weather and the crops. It's a clear morning. The weather cool. Then, it's still clear. And it starts raining. And this is characteristic of most of the entries in the diaries. I'd say you don't have any great travails of the soul or him pouring out his guts really about the agony of some decision he has to make or anything of that sort. Now we're in the Theodore Roosevelt collection. There's a real favorite of mine in here. This is Theodore Roosevelt's diary, and it records a devastating day in Roosevelt's life: the day on which his mother and young wife died, both on the same day. He dramatically puts this black "X" in and says, "The light has gone out of my life." >> NARRATOR: Some of the most valued items in the manuscript collection are not handwritten diaries or letters, but telegrams. >> HUTSON: A telegram from Orville Wright to his father from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, December 17, 1903, describing the first flight. Talks about the average speed through the air was 31 miles per hour, and they were in the air for 57 seconds. And he asks his father to inform the press. >> NARRATOR: Handwritten manuscripts are high on the priority list for scanning, as the digital copies provide archival sources as well as opportunities for viewing on the Internet. >> RONNIE HAWKINS: These are the original documents handwritten by Abraham Lincoln, as well as senators, generals... anyone, any correspondence. What we are doing is we're taking the 204 volumes with all the items that were attached in the 1950s in a book form, and we're going to take those and we are going to digitize those items so they can be presented on the Web and maybe reprinted. >> NARRATOR: Manuscripts in the library's Music Division are also one of a kind historic treasures. Original handwritten compositions of Beethoven and Mozart provide insight into the composers' personalities. >> RAYMOND WHITE: There's sort of a popular view of Beethoven that says his hair was always messy, he had a scowl on his face, he was in a bad mood and in a hurry all the time. And if you want to put that image onto this manuscript, I think you can sort of see it here. I mean, it looks like conventional musical notation, but it's definitely written off in a hurry. We have inkblots here and there. We have Beethoven changing his mind as he goes. >> NARRATOR: Mozart, on the other hand, had a reputation for knowing exactly where he wanted to go. >> WHITE: To look at this manuscript and see how tiny the notes are, how precisely they're written, it's absolutely clear whether the notes are on a line or whether they're on a space. The notations, no matter how small, are extremely legible, and there's almost no corrections or changes or alterations in this score. >> NARRATOR: Should a visitor to the library wish to follow up an inspection of a composer's manuscript with a look at the actual instruments on which it might have been played... they're right down the hall. The Library of Congress has the world's largest collection of flutes, more than 1,700, made from crystal, wood and even solid gold. The instruments, donated by a private collector, include flutes owned by James Madison and Frederick the Great. The Music Division's own holy grail is its collection of six string instruments manufactured by Stradivarius-- three violins, a cello and two violas. Several times each year, they're played in concert. Library historians have had so many requests to inspect the instruments to determine the secrets of their brilliant sound, they performed CAT scans to produce definitive, precise dimensions. >> WARD-BAMFORD: We can study the measurements. We can study the inside of it, the air in the inside, the density of the wood. And while I don't know yet what it has told us, I think we can leave that for scientists and people to study in the future. But as a curator, it gives me a fingerprint. It gives me the exact dimensions. It tells me what's happened to this instrument up until the time of the scan. And then if I scan it in the future, I can see how it might have changed. >> NARRATOR: The Library of Congress is determined to preserve American and world musical history in every form, including recordings. Today, they even perform tests to determine how long your own CD collection will last. Prepare to be surprised. "The Library of Congress" will return on<i> Modern Marvels.</i> >> NARRATOR: We now return to "The Library of Congress" on <i> Modern Marvels.</i> In the preservation labs of the Library of Congress, scientists examine every possible scenario that can lead to the deterioration or destruction of every form of recorded media, from vinyl discs left in less-than-ideal condition to audiotapes that have lost their magnetic coatings. Researchers use accelerated aging to determine how well and how long various forms of media will last. With hundreds of millions of compact discs in private music collections, the CD was a natural choice for an accelerated aging comparison. First, the good news. This CD passed the test with flying colors, losing virtually no data. But this identical disc from the same manufacturer lost everything. Why? >> VAN DER REYDEN: Manufacturers use different components when they make these things, and they change the formulas all the time for various reasons-- for economic reasons, for efficiency reasons and so forth. And they don't tell the consumer when they change the materials necessarily and the composition. And there's no way that you as a consumer could tell the difference. >> NARRATOR: Instruments in the library's preservation lab are able to differentiate data pits, the binary holes in a CD that create sound, from pinholes, defects caused when protective layers of lacquer degrade over time, causing the loss of sound. >> MICHELE YOUKET: In this case, you can see there are a number of different types of defects. The Image-Pro can count them, measure them, gives a distribution here, where you're seeing this count of how many of each size that you have. >> NARRATOR: Nitrocellulose coatings, used prior to 1994, are more prone to data loss than those used on newer CDs. But still, there are no guarantees. >> YOUKET: You can have a CD of roughly the same age and one will have deteriorated very seriously if it has had, say, this nitrocellulose coating, and another one of the same age with an acrylic coating might be in perfect shape. >> NARRATOR: During the past 20 years, Library of Congress scientists have used every form of archival digital storage-- tapes, CDs, hard drives and hard media-- when scanning library collections. In the Division of Prints and Photographs, images are scanned each day using cameras capable of recording up to 88 megapixels, ten times the number of most consumer models. >> MEREDITH RIZZO: The scan normally takes about a minute from writing all the way to completion of the scan. We can roughly get through about a hundred prints a day, sometimes up to 130 negatives. >> NARRATOR: With the longevity of digital archival storage still unpredictable, protection of original sources remains a priority, especially for priceless historic original photographs. Many of the most treasured images are valued because they represent landmarks of technological change. Daguerreotypes mark the transition from sketches to photographs. >> HELENA ZINKHAM: While he was president, Nathaniel Currier harkened back to Andrew Jackson's fame as the hero of New Orleans during the War of 1812. It's a symbolic portraiture. But after he's finished being president, he agreed to let the hot new technology capture his visage. Even though he was frail and feeble-- he's being supported in the chair with pillows behind him-- he was willing to let the world know what he really looked like. >> NARRATOR: This aerial photo of San Francisco following the devastating 1906 earthquake is another gem of the library collection. It was taken by photographer George Lawrence who flew his cameras on kites. >> ZINKHAM: The air currents were sufficient to take his kites up to different heights. He sold the prints, I've read. Uh, they were phenomenal in their day, incredibly popular. He made at least $15,000, which is quite a piece of change in 1906. >> NARRATOR: Other photos are valued because they literally brought about social change. >> ZINKHAM: We have a collection of 5,000 photographs that document child labor in the United States around 1910. It's one thing to read about it. It's a whole 'nother experience to look in those children's faces and think about, is it all right for children to continue to work this hard, this long? These pictures helped to change many of the state laws on child labor or helped to make sure that the existing laws were enforced. >> NARRATOR: Some photos are considered extraordinary for their beauty and their size. This book of images is the largest volume in the Library of Congress. >> ZINKHAM: It's called<i> Bhutan:</i> <i> A Visual Odyssey.</i> I'm gonna get some help to open it, because it's five feet by seven feet. I've been told that it took a football field length of paper in order to print an entire volume. >> NARRATOR: Hidden away in the Prints and Photographs Division are also architectural drawings, including submissions for the design of the Vietnam Memorial. >> ZINKHAM: You can see from how slowly I'm going that this is a very heavy board. It's 30-by-40 inches. And lo and behold, the winning design competition drawing by Maya Lin to build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. This is one of more than 1,400 competition entries that the commission received. >> NARRATOR: On the lower level of the library's Madison Building is the Geography and Map Division, a collection of more than five million maps and 80,000 atlases. Hundreds are considered treasures, but two routinely leave historians and geographers speechless. >> JOHN HEBERT: This map came from Spanish, English and French sources. And when Thomas Jefferson was preparing for his Lewis and Clark expedition, he knew of this map. So, literally, you're looking at a map that Lewis and Clark took with them on the trail and brought back. That's a rarity of itself. But this is a map that actually provides a triptych for the first year of their expedition to the Great Falls in Montana. >> NARRATOR: And the second-most extraordinary map? One that took a total of 39 years to complete, hand-drawn by George Washington, depicting the property he owned in Mount Vernon. >> ED REDMOND: So we have one map that transcends a very active time in American history. This is another way to view George Washington. He is a mapmaker. He is a cartographer, the first mapmaker. >> NARRATOR: In the library's Preservation Department, other maps are given new life with the help of 21st-century technology. This plan for Washington D.C. was hand-drawn in 1791 by architect Pierre L'Enfant. When digitally photographed with spectral imaging technology... (beeping, camera clicking) ...infrared light brings out faded details. >> FENELLA FRANCE: What that does is it brings out a lot of information from the document that we can't see with the naked eye. This is what we see under the infrared. So you can see that wonderful grid of the streets of details of pencil annotations keeps popping out to you. And as we come in here, you can see the president's house. You can see I've just circled some areas here that we want to go in and look at with more detail, which were originally trees and other planned areas. You can see the Congress over here. And we can start to bring out the information that had been lost there. >> NARRATOR: Preserving the nation's historic treasures is a major challenge for the Library of Congress, but new technologies bring new potential every day. The library's sophisticated, ultra-safe storage system for America's classic motion pictures ensures that Frankenstein will truly remain alive. "The Library of Congress" will return on<i> Modern Marvels.</i> >> NARRATOR: We now return to "The Library of Congress" on<i> Modern Marvels.</i> 75 miles from Capitol Hill in Culpeper, Virginia, the Library of Congress' newly completed Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation sits half above ground and half below. Built partially within a former bomb shelter, the building was designed to protect its contents from any catastrophic event. And those contents happen to include the most valuable motion picture artifacts in the world, including 140,000 reels of original nitrate camera negatives and prints from America's first 60 years of moviemaking. >> LUKOW: We're standing in the Library of Congress' nitrate film vaults. 50 of those vaults right behind me here, another 74 on the other side of those doors at the end of the hallway. 124 vaults altogether. Up until about 1951, all theatrical motion pictures that were shown in this country, week in and week out that your parents or your grandparents went to, were actually shot on nitrate film stock. We have the original camera negative of Jimmy Stewart in <i> Mr. Smith Goes to Washington</i> and all the Frank Capra films. And when I say "original camera negative," that means the film that was in the camera when Frank Capra had Jimmy Stewart standing right in front of it. So that's, that's typical of what we have here. Just right here I'm reaching for one reel of film. This is reel three from the original camera negative of <i> Frankenstein,</i> 1931 with Boris Karloff. In fact, reel three is the creation scene, where "It's alive!" is yelled out by Dr. Frankenstein. >> NARRATOR: Nitrate film stock is highly flammable. If a reel starts burning, not even immersing it in water will extinguish the flames because when nitrate burns, it creates its own oxygen. No expense was spared in making the nitrate vaults fireproof. Should a nitrate fire ever start in a film canister, it would be contained to one fireproof shelf. Sprinklers angled from above would cascade water in front of the shelves to prevent the fire from spreading outward. The Packard Campus is the new home of the most precious film negatives and elements donated to the library by most of Hollywood's major studios. Because the vault areas are kept at a constant temperature of 39 degrees Fahrenheit and humidity of 30%, even in the warmest months film specialists are dressed for winter. There are no complaints, considering their everyday access to moviemaking's greatest treasures-- some famous and some relatively unknown. >> SMITH: The film I'm looking at right now is one we consider a jewel in our collection. It's<i> The Great Train Robbery</i> from 1903. It was made by the Thomas Edison Studios. It actually told a story based on a historical fact. It was filmed in New Jersey, and it was one of the biggest hits of early film. It kind of made movies that tell a story a success. This film here is actually a color film probably made between 1905 and 1910, but they didn't have a color process that could capture color on film, so it had to be hand-painted. What I mean by that is it's black-and-white film stock that was, once the film was developed, they would take it to a warehouse assembly line, and women would sit all day with their color ink and a single-hair artist's brush and paint in-- and you can see it here-- the colors, because the title of this film is<i> The</i> <i> Metamorphosis of a Butterfly.</i> It's a French film. >> NARRATOR: The same careful handling that films receive in library collections is also extended to audio. State-of-the-art labs are equipped to make digital copies of every form of recorded sound, from wax cylinders of the early 1900s to vinyl discs, which were replaced by CDs. >> PATRICK SMETANICK: This is a Simon Yorke turntable, and they cost approximately $20,000 apiece. They allow us to have two different tone arms for two different styluses and cartridges for doing AB testing to find out which one we want to be able to use. They also allow us to have a very clean signal going in, plus allowing us to play them back at any number of speeds. >> NARRATOR: Most motion pictures, television programs and audio recordings that have been digitally copied can be viewed or heard upon request at the main library on Capitol Hill via fiber-optic line. But throughout the library system, specialists are continually preparing materials for online viewing with the help of a mammoth computer, custom-designed to distribute information to the entire world. "The Library of Congress" will return on<i> Modern Marvels.</i> >> NARRATOR: We now return to "The Library of Congress" on<i> Modern Marvels.</i> In every department of the Library of Congress, specialists are scanning the library's greatest treasures to make them available online. Many of the newer items are older analog videotapes which need to be duplicated into digital formats. >> JAMES SNYDER: We're doing one particular period in the history of CBS News, their archive, which is 1974 to 1985. And just in that 11 years, we're talking 800,000 cassettes of one type: the three-quarter- inch cassette type. >> NARRATOR: The biggest challenge of being able to make digital copies of videotapes is to have working machines to play them all back. For that reason, Culpeper has become one of the largest collectors of working video and audio machines in the world. When the appreciation of art forms is machine-dependent, it's critical to make sure at least one appropriate machine is able to make a transfer to new digital formats. Packard engineers scour used equipment houses and even garage sales for spare parts to keep outdated machines working. >> SNYDER: We're in the master storage facility here at the Library of Congress in Culpeper, Virginia. And what you see around me, on my left is a bunch of old videotape machines, parts, mounting parts, control panels. On my right are all the boxes for the spare parts, manuals. There are boxes up here. The gray boxes you see are the heads for the old two-inch quad machines. We've got some projection equipment here. We've got lamp houses, we've got rewind tables. You'd be amazed where we find this stuff. >> NARRATOR: All of the newly-digitized material eventually ends up here-- the data center at the library's Packard facility-- in a massive computer system capable of accessing up to 16 petabytes of digital data. That's the equivalent of the storage in approximately 160,000 laptop computers. >> NEASE: What you're seeing with the robotic systems within the tape system, those will grab one of these tapes and they will take it to a playback drive, and that drive will play back the data on that tape. It is a very large jukebox for the people of the United States to play back the past. >> NARRATOR: In April 2009, under the guidance of Librarian of Congress Dr. James Billington, the library's online presence made a major leap into the 21st century with the launch of the World Digital Library-- wdl.org-- a UNESCO project enabling nations to share cultural resources. In its first week, the Web site received 16 million page views. For Dr. Billington, it's an encouraging sign that people of every nation have a hunger to learn about each other. >> BILLINGTON: If more people have more access to more knowledge and creativity and use it in more and more ways, whatever the problems of today, learning about it, studying about it, getting interested in it can always make tomorrow a little bit better than yesterday. Unless you know what happened yesterday, you can't create a new tomorrow. >> NARRATOR: When Thomas Jefferson sold his personal library to Congress, he could never have foreseen that a collection of roughly 6,500 items would grow into 144 million. He could certainly not have imagined an innovation like the Internet that could make that collection available instantly to billions. But he thoroughly understood the long-term purpose of a Library of Congress to serve as a torch of enlightenment. Now in the digital age, that torch will light the world. <font color="#FFFF00"> Captioning sponsored by</font> <font color="#FFFF00"> A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS</font>
