Georgette Magassy Dorn has been an exceptionally influential scholar, creator, and manager of information about Latin America and Spain and Portugal and their far-flung colonies throughout the world. She received her early higher education at Creighton University and Boston College, and earned her PhD from Georgetown University in Washington, DC. She served as Chief of the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress from 1994 to 2018, as well as Curator of the Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape (AHLOT), now known as The Palabra Archive. From 1969 until her retirement in 2018, she was instrumental in enlarging its collection, from 282 recorded authors to 790 at the time of her retirement. She also taught classes on the history of Latin America at Georgetown University, from 1982 to 2002. Her many honors include the Order of Queen Isabella from Spain, which is awarded to foreigners who promote the research and dissemination of Spanish culture, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Conference on Latin American History (CLAH).
The following interview was conducted on July 9 and 10, 2022 by Barbara A. Tenenbaum, former (and first) Mexican Specialist in the Hispanic Division of the US Library of Congress.
Barbara: Tell us something about your background and life before you came to the Library of Congress.
Georgette: I was born in Budapest in 1934. My father, Gabriel Magassy, was a prominent physician who at the young age of 31 was Director of the National Social Security Hospital in Balatonkenese, Hungary, on the northeast shore of Lake Balaton.
Hungary managed to stay out of World War II until March 1944 when German armies marched into Budapest. I was in a Catholic boarding school then, and my father came and to get me. Hungary became a Nazi satellite, and my father was called to serve in the army and then reassigned to a military hospital. My mother took me and my two younger brothers to the Austrian border just as the Russian armies advanced into the eastern part of the country. By the end of the year, we had managed to join my father on a mobile hospital train heading west. After what seemed an interminable journey, the hospital train came to a stop in Osterode am Harz near Braunschweig, Germany, and we found ourselves in a displaced persons camp, where, in addition to Hungarians, there were many other Central and Eastern Europeans. When the war in Europe ended in May 1945, our camp became part of the British Occupation Zone. My father then worked for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). My father got in touch with my maternal uncle Dr. Alejandro Carlos Gyorko, a well-known dermatologist in Las Palmas, Canary Islands, Spain, who was the Director of a sanatorium for people with leprosy (Hansen's Disease).
My father proceeded to Buenos Aires in 1947 and passed all his medical exams to work as a physician. The family followed him in 1950. I completed my secondary education at a convent school in Buenos Aires, where I also learned English. Some of the nuns were Irish, so I developed a Gaelic accent! My brothers and I perfected our English by watching American movies with the subtitles covered over. We always wanted to go to the United States, which we managed to achieve in 1956. My father had to do a one-year internship in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, so he could take his medical exams In the United States. My younger brother and I enrolled in Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, where I met one of my most memorable mentors, Civil War historian Frank Byrne. After I finished my bachelor's degree at Creighton, I was awarded a fellowship to Boston College, where I completed an MA in history and met and married my husband. He then went to Georgetown Medical School in Washington, DC, and we moved there.
Barbara: Did you always want to work at a library or as a historian? Tell us something about that journey.
Georgette: When I arrived in Washington, DC, I worked first as an editor at the School of Languages and Linguistics at Georgetown University. There I met José Manuel Hernández, at that time the Associate Dean of the School of Languages and Linguistics, who suggested that I apply for a position at the Library of Congress. I began to work there in 1963 because of my language skills. Just by accident, I met Donald J. S. Stewart, then Editor-in-Chief of the Handbook of Latin American Studies (HLAS), on the streets of Washington. It turned out that he lived a block from me on the same street, in Glover Park. He introduced me to Howard Cline, Chief of the Hispanic Division at the library, and the following year, Dr. Cline recruited me to work for him on researching Spanish land grants in New Mexico for the US Justice Department, and also to work on his ethnohistory projects.
I became head of the Reading Room in 1964, and when Francisco Aguilera retired in 1969, I became Curator of the Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape (AHLOT), a position I held until my own retirement in 2018. Cline and Aguilera were wonderful mentors to me throughout. Cline was always supportive of women in the workplace and in the Hispanic Division. During my beginning years there, I translated a Spanish manuscript, “The Indian Tribes of Texas” by José Francisco Ruiz, published by Yale University Press. In the mid 1970's, I followed Dr. Cline's advice and began work on a PhD at Georgetown, which I completed in 1981. I then taught in the History Department at Georgetown, from 1982 to 2002. During those years, I taught the first courses on Women in Latin American History, and one on Race, Class, and Gender in Latin America. Along the way I came to know Dolores Moyano Martin, who Cline hired to work at HLAS as Assistant Editor and who became Editor in 1976.
Barbara: Can you tell us something more about why you chose to work as a librarian and a historian?
Georgette: You know, looking back on my life, I've always wanted to do historical research and have always been involved with libraries. I just love to read, and I love books. I remember studying at the Biblioteca del Congreso de la República Argentina when I was a teenager at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. When I came to work at the Library of Congress of the United States, it was an extraordinary place. Although my work in the Hispanic Division and my teaching at Georgetown were very important and meaningful to me, I feel that my most lasting contribution remains my effort to vastly increase the Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape (AHLOT) from 232 poets and prose writers in 1969 to 790 over the course of my association with it. Either personally or by proxy, I recorded approximately 500 individual authors at the sound laboratory at the Library of Congress, or abroad.
I have many favorite writers, all of whom I cherish. Among them are José Donoso, Mario Vargas Llosa, Jorge Luis Borges, Carmen Laforet, Nicanor Parra, Pablo Neruda, Jorge Amado, Eraclio Zepeda, Homero Aridjis, José Emilio Pacheco, and Julio Cortazar. The collection of Hispanic literature on tape is known today as The Palabra Archive, and it is headed by Catalina Gómez, whom I trained as curator. When Cole Blasier became Division Chief in 1988, he hired Iêda Siquiera Wiarda as the first Brazilian and Portuguese Specialist and then hired you [Barbara A. Tenenbaum] as the first Mexican Specialist, enlarging the division.
In addition, I did research on the history and culture of the Hispanic world, throughout my career. I published articles and bibliographies, presented papers at the American Historical Association, and at the Seminar for the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM), LASA, the International Institute of Iberia-American Literature, the International Congress of Americanists (ICA), and other such conferences.
I participated in conferences in the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, Latin America, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Hungary, Sweden, and Poland. I traveled to Honduras to organize its Congressional Reference Service, and traveled to Spain many times. In 1994, I solicited funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the “Handbook.” Later, I met with the head of the Fundación MAPFRE in Spain, Ignacio Hernando de Larramendi, a Basque nobleman, who donated the funds to convert the Handbook to digital format and make it available for open access. Thanks to MAPRE's generosity, we managed to digitize the first 50 volumes in just two years.Footnote 1 Along with Librarian of Congress James H. Billington and a group of donors, I traveled to Spain to foster relations with several other institutions. As head of the Reading Room until 1973, and as Chief of the Hispanic Division after 1995, I established relations between the United States and foreign libraries and institutions, and with foreign embassies in Washington as well. Tracy North, as Social Sciences editor of the Handbook of Latin American Studies, published The Hispanic Members of Congress 1820–1995, and also worked with me on The Spanish-American War of 1898, one of the library's most popular websites. Katherine D. McCann, Humanities editor of the Handbook of Latin American Studies, created and oversees the Handbook of Latin American Studies website.
Barbara: What was it like to work at the Library of Congress? You eventually became Chief of both the Hispanic and European Divisions [now conjoined].
Georgette: As Chief of the Hispanic Division from 1994 to 2018, I raised funds and oversaw the automation of the Handbook of Latin American Studies, with Katherine McCann and Tracy North as its co-editors. During my years as Chief, I also greatly increased Hispanic Division funds. I have to talk now about some of the wonderful people I worked with over the years. Through my work on HLAS, I met and worked with Don Stewart and Dolores Martin, who became a close friend. Among my cherished coworkers, I want to mention Everette Larson, a scholarly and indispensable reference librarian, who served in that capacity from 1973 and later became Head of the Reading Room. He helped enormously with what is now The Palabra Archive, creating a chronological list of writers.
Some of our former interns have gone on to become librarians who hold important positions of their own. Melissa Guy interned with us after completing library school and is now the head of the Nettie Lee Benson Collection at the University of Texas, one of the best Latin American collections in the world. Jesús Alfonso Regulado, from Spain, is now the Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Collections librarian at the State University at Albany, New York. Hortensia Calvo is the head of the Latin American Library at Tulane University. Miguel Valladares is Head of foreign area collections at the University of Virginia, while Fernando Acosta Rodríguez is currently the Latin American/Iberian/Latino Librarian at Princeton University.
Some of my former students have also gone on to great things in other fields: Christopher McMullen, joined the US Foreign Service and became ambassador to Angola; David Dressing became head of the Latin American collection at Notre Dame (before his untimely passing); and Douglas Brinkley is a well-known author on US presidents.
I hired numerous fellows and interns, and my team and I found residences for many famous visiting scholars. Some of the prominent scholars who became good friends are Magnus Morner, John J. Johnson, John Wirth, James Scobie, David Rock, Susan Socolow, Murdo McCloud, William F. Sater, Richard Greenleaf, Donna Guy, John TePaske, Karen Racine, Gustavo Cobo Borda, Leslie Bethell, Germán Arciniegas, Antonine Tibesar, and Benedict Warren. Gonzalo Quintero Saravia, a Spanish historian, recently published a prize-winning book about Bernando de Gálvez, and in 2021 the United States-Spain Council awarded its prize, the Order of Isabel la Católica, to the Hispanic Division for making Gonzalo's work possible at the Library of Congress.
Barbara: Most of your generation of female scholars didn't marry or have children. What was it like raising four children, working full-time at the Library of Congress, and teaching at Georgetown?
Georgette: My primary job outside the home was always the Library of Congress. Even though we worked hard at the library, we worked only eight and a half hours a day, with a great deal of regularity. I knew how to budget my time, so I could take care of the children. My husband, although a practicing physician, made it a point to go to the children's after-school athletic activities, and that helped. Of course, my parents lived nearby as well. I didn't start teaching at Georgetown until later in my career when the children were well on their way. If my career had been solely academic, it would have been harder for me.
Barbara: You wrote your PhD dissertation on Lisandro de la Torre, an Argentine politician. What led you to study him?
Georgette: My original focus as a scholar was on progressive politics in the United States. However, when I decided I wanted to get a PhD, my adviser at Georgetown suggested that I switch to Latin American History, given my language proficiency and my work at the Library of Congress. I naturally gravitated to Lisandro de la Torre, who was a member of the Democratic Progressive Party of Argentina, a deputy in the lower house of Congress and later a senator, and twice presidential candidate for the Democratic Progressive Party. Sometimes I think it's a shame that few study that group of leaders today.
Barbara: How do you think the Library of Congress has changed during your years there? What has been the effect of the digital revolution on the Library?
Georgette: Of course, the Library has changed—how could it not after 50 years? The digital revolution has brought great and mostly positive changes for the entire academic world. For example, anyone can access the Library catalogue now and see what it contains. For the largest library in the world, that is very significant.
At the same time, scholars don't have to spend months and months here. We do miss out on their presence and getting to know them and learn how they think. James Billington, who was the Librarian during the changeover, understood the virtues of interacting with actual sources. He really wanted to institute a plan whereby significant sources would be presented online with commentary in seven fundamental international languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Russian, Chinese, and Hindi. Yet, despite the wonders of the digital revolution, scholars still have to come to the Library of Congress to see and interact with that which will never be digitized.
In fact, only a small number of books are digitized now. I get this question all the time. When will all the books be digitized? That will never happen. The cost alone would be prohibitive. And the Library cannot duplicate without permission works covered under copyright law. On the other hand, the Library has digitized all the papers of the US presidents from George Washington to Herbert Hoover. Also, the Library has digitized a great many historical photographs, like those in the US Civil War collection. The collection of baseball cards has also been digitized. The works of one-third of the recorded authors in the Palabra Archive have already been digitized and are available online.Footnote 2
The Hispanic Division itself has taken to digitization quite rapidly. It has its own web page, with links to other important digital pages including the Spanish-American War, the Mexican Revolution, Hispanic-Americans in Congress from 1825 to 1995, and many others. And, of course, HLAS is produced and available online.
Barbara: One of the perks of working at the Library was meeting some major figures in many disciplines. Can you tell us something about that experience?
Georgette: Oh yes, we saw many important writers over the years. Just think of the HLAS Board. Franklin Knight, of Johns Hopkins, who served as president of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), was both very knowledgeable and lots of fun. Sometimes the Reading Room was a treasure trove of distinguished thinkers. Mario Vargas Llosa was a visitor. In our work on The Palabra Archive, we had help from the various embassies and universities in Washington, which allowed us to meet and record spectacular writers like José Donoso, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, Mexican environmentalist Homero Aridjis, and Octavio Paz. When former President of Mexico Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado came to the Library to deliver the Kissinger Lecture, he was very pleased to see how many of his books were part of the Library's collections. King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía of Spain came to the Reading Room. Their son, Prince Felipe, now king of Spain, came often to the Hispanic Division while a student at Georgetown. The poet Alastair Reid was a great friend of the Hispanic Division and lots of fun, as was the excellent translator Gregory Rabassa.
Barbara: Where do you think the Library stands with regard to the writing of scholarly work? Is it still relevant? And having done both, do you think teaching and library work are parallel fields in the writing of history?
Georgette: What a strange question! Of course, the Library of Congress and all scholarly libraries are still relevant, and perhaps even more so than ever before. We have to keep in mind that not every book will be digitized, particularly those written in eras long past. Books written in foreign languages take a long time to get published in translation and do not appear in Library collections at the same frequency. And a book can be an entire world in itself, with beautiful painted images and designs. Unhappily, colors in those books, colors in images originating in microfilm, sometimes don't reproduce well. The Library has a fascinating Prints and Photographs Division, where many images relating to Spain, Portugal, and Latin America can be found, and this treasure: nine of the ten designs for a never-published illustrated Popul Vuh, drawn by Guatemalan printmaker Carlos Merida. Also at the Library is a magnificent digital collection of the work of José Guadalupe Posada; luckily, his black-and-white images come out very well. Does seeing them online diminish their enduring uniqueness?
There is a tendency among scholars to diminish the importance of librarians in their field. This is a grave mistake. For one thing, libraries are very useful in finding material that somehow didn't make it into the catalogue—you'd be surprised how many items that includes. Funding scholars to travel to a library for research also gives them the opportunity to meet with other researchers and share analyses and techniques. There can be no history without libraries and their collections, and the Library of Congress has, and always will, lead the way. I should add here that one of our major accomplishments during my tenure as Division Chief was our pivotal assistance to Librarian James Billington in the acquisition of the important Jay I. Kislak pre-Columbian collection of artifacts, manuscripts, and books. Our Mexican Specialist, Barbara A. Tenenbaum, prepared a catalogue of those artifacts, and parts of the Kislak Collection are on permanent display in the Jefferson Building.
Some non-scholars believe that libraries are basically for the general public. That idea may be true for local libraries, even at the state level. The Library of Congress, however, is a different kind of library. It was originally conceived as primarily a library for the use of legislators to research the history and practice of laws in different environments, to provide resources to help in fighting wars, and so on. The list of purposes is endless. With President William McKinley's designation of Herbert Putnam as Librarian of Congress in 1900, Putnam undertook an ambitious acquisitions strategy in all fields of knowledge and instituted bold programs, transforming the institution into the de facto national library. The move from the Capitol to the then newly finished Jefferson Building in 1897 helped make Putnam's vision a reality. Until 1932, when the National Archives was established, the Library of Congress was the primary repository of the private papers of US presidents, from George Washington to Herbert Hoover. The Library holds such disparate materials as the papers of the writer Bernard Malamud, hundreds of baseball cards, and a plethora of cookbooks. I think teaching inspires and directs, and libraries provide source material. They go hand in hand.
I always taught a class on women and one on race in the history of Latin America, and the field is going in my direction now. I think we will see much more work on and from indigenous peoples throughout the hemisphere. The stories of marginalized peoples will be more intensively studied, if only to shed light on majority cultures, as well as for their value as ends in themselves. For example, everyone is so excited by the 1619 Project, which tells the history of slavery, but there were enslaved Africans in the Americas well before then. Look at the history of Florida, for example, or at the expedition of Álvar Núñez de Cabeza de Vaca in the Southwest, in which slaves and former slaves figured prominently considerably before that date. I hope there will be much more work done on peoples from Latin America in the United States. And, of course, I look forward to a unified history of the United States from Virginia and Massachusetts to Alaska and Hawaii and the territories, beginning with Puerto Rico. I hope to see the field move in that direction.
