Some selections are truly historic and rarely heard. They include the only known audio of former American slaves who were interviewed in the 1930s, including one participant who had worked for Confederate President Jefferson Davis. There’s also a cylinder from a talking doll created by Thomas Edison in 1888 that is the earliest known commercial sound recording. It was considered unplayable until last year, after new digital mapping tools were used to reveal its sound of a woman singing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”

The library also is saving Leonard Bernstein’s conducting debut with the New York Philharmonic in 1943 and “A Charlie Brown Christmas” by the Vince Guaraldi Trio from 1970, which introduced millions of people to jazz through the TV soundtrack.

“America’s sound heritage is an important part of the nation’s history and culture, and this year’s selections reflect the diversity and creativity of the American experience,” said Librarian of Congress James Billington, in announcing his final selections.

Though Summer died last week of cancer, her hit single was selected for the sound registry weeks ago, said Matt Barton, the library’s curator of recorded sound. Summer had many hits, but “I Feel Love” rose to the top because it was a breakthrough that would change club music for years to come, according to the library’s citation.

“From the first time you heard it, it was just, ‘Wow, this is very different,’” Barton said. “We hadn’t heard this before. It was enormously influential.”

The registry includes early sounds from hip-hop with Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” from 1979 that is credited with launching a genre and inspiring future artists.

Funk will have its place in the sound history collection with Parliament’s “Mothership Connection” from 1975 with George Clinton’s “Ain’t nothin’ but a party, y’all” on the title track.

Blues singer Bo Diddley is being inducted to the sound registry, too, with “Bo Diddley” and “I’m a Man.”

For Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead, Diddley’s sound was some of the first beats he learned as a little boy, he told The Associated Press. So he was thrilled that sounds of the Dead were being preserved at the same time.

Hart had a hand in helping create the sound registry, pushing for a law in Congress in 2000. He said he didn’t lobby for his own music to be included this year, though he was letting other “lads” in the band know about the honor.

Their music will be represented with the 1977 Barton Hall concert at Cornell University, which has been cited as one of their best performances ever. The recording was hailed for its sound quality.

“The Grateful Dead just touched a nerve, and it’s still relevant in many ways today,” Hart told the AP. “It’s American-based music, but the combination of it, I guess, was the chemical that ignited, the energy that ignited the spirit of the people for many generations.”

One key choice they made was to allow fans to record their concerts live, rather than hiring guards to take away recorders. That helped build an army of “Dead heads,” Hart said, because they could all take the experience they had paid for with them. And every concert was always different.

Hart said he is impressed with his fellow inductees in the library collection.

“These are not just songs,” he said. “These are talking books — thousands of years of evolutions of cultures are in this music. It represents something even greater, the hopes, the dreams … the joy, everything it takes to make up a people are embedded in this music.”

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Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov/

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The participating sites include art museums, science centers, history museums, nature centers and about 70 children’s museums.

New participants include the American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar in Richmond, Va., the New Mexico Museum of Space History, San Francisco’s Children’s Creativity Museum and the World Figure Skating Museum and Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs, Colo.

First lady Michelle Obama and Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, also are helping to promote the effort this year through their Joining Forces initiative to support military families. It comes at an important time for military families and can be a way to welcome military families to new communities as they often relocate, said Navy Capt. Brad Cooper, executive director of Joining Forces.

“A large percentage of moves happen over the course of the summer,” often from one end of the country to the other, Cooper said. Opening access to museums “really just opens up the aperture of what families are able to do in their travels and their vacation time,” he said.

Rocco Landesman, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, said it’s good for museums, too.

“This is both an opportunity to thank military families for their service and sacrifice, as well as a chance to create connections between museums and these families that will continue throughout the year,” he said in a statement.

Last week, the Interior Department announced it would give military families free access to every national park in the country with annual passes. The passes normally cost $80 and provide access to more than 2,000 national parks, wildlife refuges and other public lands.

Obama and Biden also are focused on expanding job opportunities for military spouses and improving military health services and education for military children.

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http://www.arts.gov/bluestarmuseums

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It was 15 years ago — just before the humor prize was created — when DeGeneres came out on Time magazine’s cover and as her character on the sitcom “Ellen” to a record 46 million viewers. The popular show began losing viewers, though, and was canceled a year later. DeGeneres said at the time that ABC caved in to fear and abandoned the show. She faced tough questions over whether the sitcom was “too gay” and if she had torpedoed her career by pushing a “gay agenda.”

“When I’m accused of becoming political, I’m showing love,” DeGeneres told ABC’s Diane Sawyer in a 1998 interview. “How is that political to teach love an acceptance?”

The rejection was enough to send DeGeneres into a deep depression.

“Ellen” paved the way, though, for future shows to also break the taboo of showing gay characters. “Will and Grace” would follow, along with “Glee,” ”Modern Family” and others.

DeGeneres bounced back with movie roles, including as the voice of a lead character in the animated film “Finding Nemo.” She also has a hit talk show now in its ninth season, best-selling books and had a stint as the fourth judge on “American Idol.”

Cappy McGarr, an executive producer for the Mark Twain Prize show and a Kennedy Center board member, said DeGeneres has a special style of observational humor in the tradition of Twain. She also makes people laugh across political lines.

“She’s not just a comedian,” he said. “She’s really a miracle worker. She got the president to dance, the first lady to do pushups and (Republican) Tom Delay to laugh.”

The New Orleans native got her start as an emcee at a local comedy club in her hometown. In 1982, a videotape of her club performance won DeGeneres Showtime’s “Funniest Person in America.” By 1986, she appeared on “The Tonight Show” and became the first female comedian summoned to Johnny Carson’s desk to chat about her performance.

The Mark Twain prize honors people who have an impact on society in the tradition of Samuel Clemens, better known as Twain, as a social commentator and satirist.

McGarr said the Kennedy Center, which awards the prize, is not making a political statement by selecting the trailblazing DeGeneres.

“This has nothing to do with any political issue,” he said. “But she’s brilliantly shined a light on society, and that’s what Mark Twain did.”

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