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Archive: February 2013 (12 Posts)

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Inquiring Minds: Exploring Jefferson’s Universe

Posted by: Erin Allen

Mark Dimunation stands in a vault near the rare-book reading room and eyes a dozen volumes on a half-filled shelf, each bearing a small green ribbon. “It’s been a little slow,” says Dimunation, chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, as he scans the titles. The books all were drawn from the “Thomas …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Leading a Library with a Long, Long Legacy

Posted by: Jennifer Gavin

You’ve heard, no doubt, about the Great Library of Alexandria, Egypt, which was destroyed in a fire back in antiquity. (There are still debates about who torched it and why. We’ll probably never know.) You may also have heard that the national library of Egypt – the Bibliotheca Alexandrina – was rebuilt in an architecturally …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

A Whale of an Acquisition

Posted by: Erin Allen

“Moby Dick,” Herman Melville’s tale of high-seas adventure, heroic determination and the power of man, has been heralded as one of the greatest novels in the English language. Now, perhaps it can be given the same commendation in picture writing. 🙂 🙁

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

National Book Festival: Save the Date, Take the Survey

Posted by: Jennifer Gavin

There’s news on two fronts for you book-lovers out there: first, the 13th annual Library of Congress National Book Festival will be held on the National Mall between 9th and 14th Streets on Saturday, Sept. 21, 2013, from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and on Sunday, Sept. 22, 2013 from noon to 5:30 p.m., rain …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

The Feminine Mystique at 50

Posted by: Erin Allen

(The following is a guest post by Audrey Fischer, editor of the Library of Congress Magazine.) It’s been 50 years since pioneering women’s rights activist Betty Friedan stunned the nation with her controversial book, “The Feminine Mystique.” In what became known as a manifesto, Friedan urged women to eschew the cult of domesticity and address …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Last Word: Author Robert Caro on LBJ

Posted by: Erin Allen

(The following is an article from the January-February 2013 issue of the Library’s magazine, LCM, featuring an excerpt from an interview with historian and author Robert Caro about Lyndon Baines Johnson.) LCM: You’ve spent more than 30 years researching and writing about Lyndon Johnson, with a final volume yet to be published. What aspects of …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

A Very Special Kaye

Posted by: Erin Allen

Danny Kaye was many things and, at the same time, a one and only: a live performer who combined comedy, song and dance in an utterly unique way; a celebrity humanitarian, one of the first; an actor with big box-office hits; a conductor of classical music who couldn’t read a note. A Library of Congress …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Save the Sounds

Posted by: Gayle Osterberg

During one of my first visits to the Library of Congress’s Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation, one of the division chiefs there pointed out  the 35 mm projector in the theater. He commented that the sound of 35 mm film being fed through a projector is an “endangered sound.” My furrowed brow and quizzical look …