Last year my family and I had the pleasure of visiting Washington, D.C. I was simply amazed at the beauty of The Library of Congress. If you go to Washington and you haven’t seen it, by all means, go see it!

In the gift shop I ran across a book entitled, The Oxford Guide to Library Research by Thomas Mann. Being a High School Media Specialist (librarian) I am always looking for good books on “library research”. I turned the book over to find out more about the author and discovered that he was the Research Librarian there at The Library of Congress. “Wow”, I thought, “This would make a nice souvenir of my visit!”.

I approached a sales associate and asked her if she knew Dr. Mann. She said that she didn’t but that she knew he had been in the store before. On a whim I asked her if she thought it would be possible to get him to autograph the book. She said she didn’t know but that she’d try. An excellent try it was! A few minutes later Dr. Mann came in and autographed my book.

My visit to the LOC was already great and the autograph was the icing on the cake! Thanks to a very kind sales associate for her effort and to Dr. Mann for taking the time to autograph it!