Now You Can Peruse Carl Sagan’s Stuff

A collection featuring Carl Sagan paraphernalia is open to the public at the Library of Congress.

by Julie Leibach, on November 21, 2013

  • Carl Sagan

  • Drawing of “The Evolution of Interstellar Flight,” by Carl Sagan (c. 10-13 years old). Sagan envisioned the future of spaceflight, from the American capture of German V-2 rockets, to a Soviet-American joint venture to the moon on a nuclear-powered rocket, to the discovery of life on Venus and the creation of a concept called Interstellar Spacelines. From The Seth MacFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Anne Druyan Archive, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress

  • One of Carl Sagan’s college notebooks. From The Seth MacFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Anne Druyan Archive, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress

  • In 1975, Carl Sagan wrote to Neil deGrasse Tyson, then a senior at The Bronx High School of Science in New York City. Sagan suggested that, given Tyson’s resume, he could engage in real astronomical research as an undergraduate if he chose to attend Cornell University, where Sagan worked. Sagan offered to meet with Tyson when he visited Ithaca. From The Seth MacFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Anne Druyan Archive, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress

  • Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan’s letter (page 1 of 2) to Warner Brothers’ production team on October 6, 1995, regarding plans and details for the film that became “Contact,” starring Jodi Foster. From The Seth MacFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Anne Druyan Archive, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress

  • Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan’s letter (page 2 of 2) to Warner Brothers’ production team on October 6, 1995, regarding plans and details for the film that became “Contact,” starring Jodi Foster. From The Seth MacFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Anne Druyan Archive, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress

  • Comedian Seth MacFarlane and Ann Druyan look at items from The Seth MacFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive during the official opening last week. (Neil deGrasse Tyson is in the background.) MacFarlane provided funding for the collection. Photo by John Harrington

Adults who love Carl Sagan can now search through his stuff. Last week, the Library of Congress announced the official opening of The Seth MacFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, a 595,000-piece collection that chronicles Sagan’s multifaceted life. There are items from his decades as an established scientist and science communicator—book drafts, NASA and academic files, and correspondences with colleagues, for instance. Other nuggets reflect his earlier years, before “Carl Sagan” became a name tied to the cosmos. There are scholarly notebooks from college, for instance; open one up and you might find a page of equations and cursive notes. His birth certificate made it in, too. And then there’s what some would perhaps consider the pièce de résistance: a cartoon depicting what a young Sagan envisioned as the trajectory of human spaceflight, sketched when he was between the ages of 10 and 13. “I think all of us were charmed by that drawing,” says Connie Cartledge, a senior archives specialist at the Library and the team leader for the project. “It’s just such an amazing item, that a young boy was thinking these types of thoughts about the future of interstellar flight.”

As one of the Library’s larger collections, the Sagan archive took a comparatively short time to organize, according to Cartledge. Her 14-person team started tackling the contents—delivered in 798 boxes the size of filing cabinet drawers—in late winter 2012. As the team puts the finishing touches on the archive, hard-copy files are now open to the public. Archivists are also working on a digital collection (the completion date has not been finalized).

While overseeing the endeavor, Cartledge was struck by Sagan’s busy life. “You would just look at messages and reminders that his staff would send him,” she says, “[and] it was amazing how many projects that he had going and what a high energy person he must have been.”

Meet the Writer

About Julie Leibach

Julie Leibach is a freelance science journalist and the former managing editor of online content for Science Friday.

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