This is a guest post by Lavonda Kay Broadnax, digital reference specialist in the Library’s Research and Reference Services Division. Thanksgiving is a holiday that evokes thoughts of food and history. Many items in the Library of Congress’ collections capture the intersection between food and history, but the most notable may be an 1881 cookbook […]
Over on our “Now See Hear!” blog, we’ve been featuring a special series of posts celebrating the 30th anniversary of our National Film Registry. Each year since 1989, the Librarian of Congress has selected 25 films of cultural, historic and/or aesthetic importance that showcase the range and diversity of American film heritage to increase awareness […]
This is a guest post by Mike Mashon, head of the Moving Image Section of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. He writes about the first of many films based on Mary Shelley’s novel “Frankenstein,” published 200 years ago this year. The post is republished from the division’s blog, “Now See Hear!” Rarely […]
The following guest post is by Jeff Shotts, executive editor at Graywolf Press, publisher in association with the Library of Congress of the anthology “American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time” by U.S. poet laureate Tracy K. Smith. Regular, daily poetry programming on the airwaves has not only been saved, it’s been revitalized. American Public […]
This is a guest post by Ryan Reft, a historian in the Manuscript Division, to mark the 100th anniversary of the signing of the armistice ending World War I. “Everything for which America has fought has been accomplished,” wrote President Woodrow Wilson on Nov. 11, 1918, in a statement addressed to his “fellow countrymen.” The […]
This is a guest post by Ena Selimovic, a winner of this year’s National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest, which recognizes outstanding book collecting by college and university students. The Library co-sponsors the contest with the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America, the Fellowship of American Bibliographic Societies and the Grolier Club. Selimovic is working on a […]
This is a guest post by digital library specialist Elizabeth Gettins. “In a civilized and cultivated country, wild animals only continue to exist at all when preserved by sportsmen.” —Theodore Roosevelt A new finding aid for the Theodore Roosevelt Hunting Library is now available from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. Roosevelt (1858–1919), a […]
And now for something completely different. On November 8, Jer Thorp, the Library of Congress Innovator-in-Residence, will take over the @LibraryCongress Twitter account to host a #SerendipityRun. What’s a #SerendipityRun? Let’s ask Jer: #SerendipityRun is an experiment in collaborative serendipity. During the run, we’ll see how far and wide we can range across the Library’s […]
This is a guest post by Michelle Krowl, a historian in the Manuscript Division. Students of the Civil War are fortunate that so many Americans of the era were literate, and during the war made good use of their ability to read and write. Soldiers wrote to loved ones with stirring sentiments of patriotism, observations […]
This is a guest post by Lauren Algee, senior innovation specialist with the Library’s Digital Innovation Lab. What yet-unwritten stories lie within the pages of Clara Barton’s diaries, the writings of civil rights pioneer Mary Church Terrell or letters written by constituents, friends and colleagues to Abraham Lincoln? With the launch of crowd.loc.gov, the Library […]