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Archive: September 2017 (17 Posts)

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

Rare Book of the Month: ABCs Through the Centuries

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

This is a guest post by digital library specialist Elizabeth Gettins. September is traditionally known as the month that all children return to school after summer vacation. To mark this tradition, the Rare Book and Special Collection Division’s book(s) of the month are two hornbooks: a wood hornbook and an ivory hornbook. Today’s children would likely …

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

World War I: Immigrants Make a Difference on the Front Lines and at Home

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

This is a guest post by Ryan Reft, a historian in the Manuscript Division. By 1910, nearly a third of the United States’ 92 million residents were either born abroad or the progeny of parents who immigrated to America. The idea of “hyphenated Americans”—citizens who identified as Polish-American or Italian-American, for example—discomforted many native-born citizens. …

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

Trending: Let’s Celebrate Comics!

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

Did you know that today is National Comic Book Day? To celebrate, we are sharing a contribution by Michael Cavna of the Washington Post to the September–October issue of LCM, the Library of Congress magazine. The entire issue, available here, showcases the Library’s collection of some 140,000 comic books. Cavna, an Eisner Award-nominated columnist and …

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

Pic of the Week: Library and Military Service Academies Collaborate on Collections Access

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

The Library of Congress and the U.S. military service academies signed a cooperative agreement this week to provide researchers with enhanced access to the institutions’ collections and grow representation of service members in the Library’s collections—including the Veterans History Project. The three-year agreement, which took effect on September 18, provides greater access for Library researchers …

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

Free to Use and Reuse: Adolph Metzner Civil War Drawings

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

This is a guest post by Julie Stoner, a reference librarian in the Geography and Map Division. It was first published on “Picture This,” the Prints and Photographs Division’s blog. We’re highlighting the subject of Stoner’s post—Civil War drawings by Adolph Metzner—in our “free to use and reuse” feature on the Library’s home page. The …

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

New Online: James K. Polk Papers

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

This is a guest post by Michelle Krowl, a historian in the Manuscript Division. “Twelve months ago this day, a very important conversation took place in Cabinet between myself and Mr. Buchanan on the Oregon question. This conversation was of so important a character, that I deemed it proper on the same evening to reduce …

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

Trending: Congressional Black Caucus Takes Center Stage

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

This week, thousands of people from around the country will gather in the vast Washington, D.C., Convention Center to take part in a decades’ old tradition: the annual legislative conference of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Foundation. From September 20 to 24, participants will hear from approximately 100 hundred speakers, including many members of Congress, …