Dec. 27, 2023 – For Librarian Rebecca Vernon, taking the time to answer reference questions is just part of her job – but a rewarding part. 

“It’s a pretty good feeling when you can find the answer someone’s been looking for,” she said. 

So when a patron, Steve Springer, brought in a particularly tricky question, she was happy to help. 

He was looking for help translating pamphlets he’d picked up in South Korea while stationed near the Demilitarized Zone in the U.S. Army in the 1960s. 

Once he got home, he put them away and didn’t think about them for nearly 50 years. But in 2022, he pulled them out and decided to see if he could learn more about the documents he had kept all those years. 

So he reached out to the library – always a good starting place when tackling a research project. Rebecca contacted many different organizations as she tried to help but kept hitting dead ends. But she didn’t give up, eventually submitting a reference request to the Library of Congress. Elli Kim, the Korea Reference Librarian at the Asian Reading Room at the Library of Congress, wrote back. 

Not only was she able to summarize the documents, she said they were important, and something the Library of Congress would be interested in preserving in their collection. The papers were propaganda pamphlets, some produced by South Korea to be sent into North Korea, some produced by the North to be sent South. 

Steve ended up donating the papers to the Library of Congress, along with other materials he had kept from his Army service, including photographs, film, and his own biography, which will be included in the Library of Congress Veterans History Project. 

“It started as a such a small thing, and it really expanded. This is kind of like true friendship. It was such a great experience.” Elli said. “This really shows how local public libraries and the Library of Congress can have a great collaboration together. We discovered historically important documents, and now we can bring this material to the Library of Congress, and researchers across the country can access this information.” 

Steve was impressed with Rebecca’s efforts. 

“I thought, ‘What perseverance! What kind of a person does that for someone?’” Steve said. “People tend to think all librarians do is straighten books, and that’s not true. The experience was very positive, and I felt good about how it ended up.” 

Steve said he was gratified to know his papers, kept so long in storage, could be part of something bigger. 

“I’m glad it found a home where it can live on,” he said. “I was really happy to do something with them that might mean something to somebody, someday.” 

Rebecca agreed. 

“It was pretty neat to have them say these documents are important, and we are interested in them,” she said. “It can be rare that things that are important to us are also important to a library or museum.”