Archive for February 2017 (20 posts)

Join the (Twitter) Party!

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literacy_twitterparty(The following is a guest post by Guy Lamolinara, communications officer in the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress.)

The Library of Congress Literacy Awards program is having a party. The party is on Twitter and it will recognize the importance of promoting literacy and all those individuals and organizations dedicated to increasing the population of readers worldwide.

You are invited to participate in a Twitter Chat about the Library of Congress Literacy Awards on Wednesday, March 1, from 2 to 3 p.m. ET. Follow @LibraryCongress and use the hashtag #PromoteLiteracy to join the conversation.

Please let us know if you are planning to participate and which Twitter handle you will use. Please also feel free to share this information with your networks and anyone interested in literacy.

The chat is an opportunity to find out how others are working to increase literacy. You can make some new contacts and join in the overall celebratory atmosphere.

The Library of Congress Literacy Awards program is currently accepting applications for prizes of $150,000 (Rubenstein Prize) and $50,000 each (International and American prizes). The deadline is March 31, so there is still time to apply. For more information, go to read.gov/literacyawards/.

Bring your success stories, as well as questions, to the party! We look forward to hearing from you.

“Roots” – Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of an African-American Saga

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(The following post is written by Ahmed Johnson, African American genealogy specialist in the Library’s Humanities and Social Sciences Division.) I’d like to begin with a story – a personal story. I remember being in a sociology class at Hampton University and discussing the government’s unfulfilled promise, in the aftermath of the Civil War, to […]

Pic of the Week: Dance Battle!

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A performer competes in a “dance battle” in the Coolidge Auditorium on February 22 during a Homegrown Concert Series event of the American Folklife Center. Dance battles are an urban dance tradition that celebrate individual talent while helping to keep diverse forms of urban musical and dance expressions alive. In the Coolidge, pairs of dancers […]

Freud Collection: The Opening of the Eissler Interviews

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(The following post is by Louis Rose, executive director of the Sigmund Freud Archives since 2015. It is the last of three weekly guest blogs by current and former executive directors of the Sigmund Freud Archives (SFA), an independent organization founded in 1951 to collect and preserve for scholarly use Sigmund Freud’s personal papers. The […]

World War I: Wartime Sheet Music

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The following post was written by Cait Miller of the Music Division and originally appeared on the In the Muse: Performing Arts Blog. Piano transcriptions of large-scale works, marches, sentimental ballads, and other examples of parlor music are well documented in the Music Division’s sheet music holdings; and from the late 19th century through the early […]

Rare Book of the Month: W.E.B. Du Bois’ Brownies

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(This is a guest post by Elizabeth Gettins of the Library’s Digital Conversion Team.) This month’s rare book honors William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois, born Feb. 23, 1868. It features one of his most beloved creations, The Brownies’ Book, a serial published in 1920 and 1921. It is digitally presented here—22 back-to-back chronological issues. […]

Highlights of the Sigmund Freud Papers

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(The following post is by Harold P. Blum, M.D., executive director of the Sigmund Freud Archives 1986-2013. It is the second in a series of three weekly guest blogs by current and former executive directors of the Sigmund Freud Archives (SFA), an independent organization founded in 1951 to collect and preserve for scholarly use Sigmund […]

World War I: Online Offerings

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(The following was written for the March/April 2017 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM. You can read editions of past issues here.) With the most comprehensive World War I collections in the nation, we are uniquely equipped to tell the story of America’s involvement in the Great War through our website. Today we launched a […]

Literacy Award Winner First Book CEO Discusses Marketplace Innovation

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(The following is a guest post by Guy Lamolinara, communications officer in the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress.) Demonstrating a pioneering approach to increasing literacy levels is a key component in a successful application for a Library of Congress Literacy Award, and First Book fulfills that criterion through its marketplace innovation. […]

Love in the Ex-Slave Narratives

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(The following is a guest post by Sabrina Thomas, a research specialist with the Library of Congress’s Digital Reference Team.) Finding stories of love within the narratives of ex-slaves shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, for the millions of men, women and children who endured atrocities and injustices under the institution of slavery, the […]