Archive for 2016 (165 posts)

Pic of the Week: Glad Tree Tidings

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Library of Congress patrons and staff gathered in the Great Hall to celebrate the holiday season. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Library of Congress patrons and staff gathered in the Great Hall to celebrate the holiday season. Photo by Shawn Miller.

As is our tradition, the Library of Congress has once again decorated the Great Hall with a tall tree for the holidays, full of lights and ornaments for the enjoyment of visitors. I’m not sure exactly how tall, but it takes staff using a small cherry picker to put together and decorate the tree. Set amidst the magnificence of the Great Hall, the tree veritably glows with a festive, holiday spirit.

If you’ve had the chance to visit the Library and enjoy the tree, make sure to follow us on Instagram at @librarycongress and post your own photos tagging the Library as well. There, you can also check out a great time-lapse video of the tree being put up!

We at the Library of Congress wish you and yours a merry Christmas and wonderful holiday season!

World War I: Lubok Posters in the World Digital Library

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(The following guest post is by John Van Oudenaren, director for scholarly and educational programs at the Library of Congress.) By the time the United States entered World War I in April 1917, the European powers had been fighting for more than two-and-a-half years. U.S. troops joined their British, French and Belgian allies in battles […]

Highlighting the Holidays: Under the Mistletoe

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The holidays are full of many traditions – gift giving, sending cards, singing and cooking. Also kissing. If ever there was a time to pucker up, it’s in December, underneath the mistletoe. Washington Irving wrote in the 1800s, “young men have the privilege of kissing the girls under [mistletoe], plucking each time a berry from […]

Witnesses to History

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(The following was written by Barbara Orbach Natanson, head of the reference section in the Library’s Prints and Photographs Division, and featured in the November/December 2016 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM. You can read the issue in its entirety here.) The Library’s documentary photograph collections provide a rich, visual record of the […]

What Do You Go to the Movies For?

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This year’s entries to the Library of Congress National Film Registry, 25 in all (bringing the grand total of films of cultural, historic or aesthetic value to be preserved for posterity to 700), will fulfill many of our reasons for going to the pictures: “I go to the movies to be terrified.” – Well, we’re […]

Rare Item of the Month: Mary’s Treasures

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(The following is a guest blog post written by Elizabeth Gettins, Library of Congress digital library specialist.) This month, in honor of Mary Todd Lincoln’s birthday on December 13, we will depart from our literary theme and look at some of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division’s “special collections.” While these items are not […]

10 Reasons You Should Want To Be A Junior Fellow

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(The following is a guest post written by Kaleena Black, program manager for the 2016 Junior Fellows Summer Intern Program.) Are you thinking about applying to the Library of Congress Junior Fellows Summer Intern Program, but aren’t quite sure? The program is a 10-week paid fellowship for undergraduate and graduate students who will work full-time […]

Pic of the Week: Pulling Strings

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Luthier John Montgomery inspects the strings on the 1697 “Castelbarco” cello made by Cremonese master Antonio Stradivari, one of five Stradivari instruments originally donated to the Library by Gertrude Clarke Whittall in 1935. According to her bequest, the instruments would be played from time to time, as they were intended. To that end, she established […]

World War I: On the Firing Line With the Germans (1915)

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(The following post was written by Mike Mashon of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division and originally appeared on the Now See Hear! blog.) During the centenary observance of World War I, we’ve been prioritizing the preservation of films in our collection pertaining to the conflict. Foremost among these is a film called “On […]