The following is an article featured in the March-April 2014 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM, now available for download here. You can also view the archives of the Library’s former publication from 1993 to 2011. Athena Angelos, image researcher for many Library of Congress publications, discusses the process of visual reference work. How […]...
As major league baseball prepared to celebrate what it thought was the sport’s centennial in 1939, it relied on a 1907 Mills Commission report that credited Abner Doubleday as the game’s inventor. The commission had accepted a personal account from Abner Graves that placed Doubleday in Cooperstown, N.Y., where he supposedly spent the summer of […]...
The Library of Congress National Book Festival, as you’ve no doubt heard, is going to a new place in 2014 — the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. — on Saturday, Aug. 30 from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. As always, it will be free and open to the public, courtesy of the […]...
(The following is a guest post by Audrey Fischer, editor of the Library of Congress Magazine.) As the Library of Congress prepares to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with a new exhibition (opening June 19), it’s worth remembering a moment in history when the specter of […]...
March news headlines included a variety of stories about the Library of Congress. Of particular interest was a 10,000-item milestone – with the addition of a set of priceless manuscripts from the Walters Art Museum of Baltimore to the online Library-cosponsored World Digital Library, which now holds more than 10,000 items following its 2009 launch. […]...
March came in like a lion with lots of interesting posts in the Library of Congress blogosphere. Check out this selection: Inside Adams: Science, Technology and Business Carl Sagan, Imagination, Science, and Mentorship: An interview with David Grinspoon Guest blogger Trevor Owens interviews astrobiologist David Grinspoon, who knew Carl Sagan as a child. In Custodia […]...
(The following is a guest post by Cheryl Fox, Library of Congress Archives collection specialist in the Manuscript Division.) Solomon Northup’s account of his kidnapping in Washington, D.C., sale to a plantation owner in Louisiana and subsequent escape was first published in 1853, the year he regained his freedom. The Library of Congress Rare Book […]...
The Librarian of Congress and the National Recording Preservation Board have released this year’s choices for the prestigious National Recording Registry — and as always, it’s a veritable sonic smorgasbord of terrific stuff, from many genres. The selections are made to ensure the preservation for posterity of sound recordings with cultural, artistic or historical merit. […]...
Nearly two centuries after its publication, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is as popular as ever. Fox TV has a hit on its hands this season with its retelling of the 1820 short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by American author Washington Irving (1783-1859). The new drama series—one of many with supernatural themes—premiered Sept. […]...
An interesting essay by Helen Rittelmeyer. African literature has done a great deal to form the conventional wisdom about the cultural side of colonialism, that conventional wisdom being that African societies used to be communitarian, spiritual, and close to nature, but then these virtues were eroded by contact with the individualistic, calculating, and earthly-minded West. This generalization has...
(The following is guest post by Mark Hartsell, editor of the Library of Congress staff newsletter, The Gazette.) Persian first gained prominence a thousand years ago, a language of literature, poetry and folklore that connected people across vast stretches of Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The Library of Congress today opens “A Thousand Years of the Persian Book,” the first […]...
I am obnoxious to each carping tongue Who says my hand a needle better fits, A Poets pen all scorn I should thus wrong, For such despite they cast on Female wits: If what I do prove well, it won’t advance, They’l say it’s stoln, or else it was by chance. – Anne Bradstreet, 1678 […]...
(The following is a guest post by Guy Lamolinara, communications officer in the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress.) The number of organizations dedicated to eradicating illiteracy, raising time spent reading and increasing reading proficiency is legion because the problems are legion. These groups can be found throughout the world, including the […]...
Timur Vermes, a German ghostwriter, penned a nationally best-selling novel satire about Hitler. Originally published in 2012, MacLehose Press is finally releasing the English translation of Vermes' literary debut, Look Who's Back ( Er ist wieder da ), next week. Read more... ...
On this day in 1985, at 9 a.m., Libby Riddles became the first woman to win the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. She finished in 18 days, 20 minutes and 17 seconds. March is Women’s History Month, and this year’s theme is “Celebrating Women of Character, Courage and Commitment.” Riddles certainly fits that bill. Often […]...
Here is my take on Afropolitanism Abstract Since the end of the Cold War and, in particular, the demise of apartheid in South Africa, there has been a sustained debate about African identity. There seems to be a consensus among scholars of African culture that the conventional notion of African identity that was conceived in opposition to the West is anachronistic. But what then constitutes the new...
The Library of Congress’s poetry blog, From the Catbird Seat,” has run a few posts on Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey’s second-term project, “Where Poetry Lives.” For her project, Trethewey has joined NewsHour Senior Correspondent Jeffrey Brown for a series of on-location reports in various cities across the United States to explore several large societal issues, through...
(The following is a guest post by Lisa A. Taylor, liaison specialist with the Veterans History Project.) Disabled combat hero, veterans’ advocate, politician, woman. U.S. Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) is many things, most strikingly, a person who has not only survived but thrived. Her story is among thousands of other women veterans’ stories in the […]...
“12 Years a Slave” won the Oscar for best picture at this year’s Academy Awards. The film, based on the 1853 memoir of Solomon Northrup, made history as the first movie from a black director (Steve McQueen) to win the film industry’s highest honor in 86 years of the awards ceremony. In his memoir, […]...
(The following is a guest post by Matthew Barton, curator of recorded sound in the Library’s Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division.) Last year, the Library of Congress acquired the first of more than 10,000 radio interviews conducted by Ron Barr, founder and host of radio’s Sports Byline USA. The interviews date from 1988 […]...