The Library’s Science, Technology and Business Division is an excellent addition to our growing social-media family.  The very name of the division should tell you that it is chock full of wonderful stories and discoveries.  (Not incidentally, they also have some of the most amazing curators and reference specialists around.)  I myself have cribbed from their Everyday Mysteries website for blog fodder.

Jennifer Harbster and Donna Scanlon will be guiding you through the wonders of their corner of the Library.  Both of them have already been contributing guest posts to this blog.  They’re calling the new blog “Inside Adams.”  I’ll let them explain their moniker.

“Inside Adams” represents another step forward in bringing our stories and collections to you in new ways, but it also comes along with some work behind the scenes that can now usher in additional blogs.  We now have an aggregation page that features our blogs in a single place, along with recent posts, most-commented posts, and a handy list of our social media sites.

Check it out and let us know what you think.

And congratulations to Jennifer, Donna, and everyone else at ST&B.  “It’s a blog!”

Sprawled on the lawn, curled up on the sofa, sitting on the steps in the piazza — they’re communing with a great author, or a funny author, or an author who’s telling them how to cook or knit or fix something in their life that’s broken. Some of them are reading poetry.  Some of them are reading it on e-book devices.

There are millions of them, all scattered around.  One book to a person, one person to a book.

Saturday, more than 120,000 of them are projected to be on one lawn, in one city, at one time: on the National Mall at the Library of Congress National Book Festival in Washington, D.C.  It’ll happen from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., rain or shine — free of charge.

YES.

More than 70 major authors will speak about their writing before happy crowds in pavilions dedicated to Fiction & Fantasy, History & Biography, Mysteries & Thrillers, Children, Teens & Children, and Poetry & Prose. The authors will also sign books for their fans.

Families can enjoy the literacy-promotion activities of the state and territorial Centers for the Book in the Pavilion of the States; kids can enjoy activities and presentations planned just for them in the “Let’s Read America” pavilions. The “Digital Bookmobile” will be there.  The Library of Congress will showcase its Library of Congress Experience and social-networking activities, including this blog , its Flickr page and its Facebook page. The whole thing will be on Twitter (@librarycongress, hashtag #nbf).  Also, our website for the book festival is a great place to plan for this feast, complete with fresh podcasts from more than a dozen of this year’s authors. There’s a Young Readers’ Toolkit there, too. And the day of the book festival, webcasts of many of the author presentations will be available on the festival website.

Here’s a tip — this “Lollapalooza” of the book world is going to open with a flourish. A team of young people’s authors, fronted by the irrepressible National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Jon Scieszka, will launch the new read.gov website that promotes reading and literacy for all ages as the festival opens at 10 a.m., in the Children’s pavilion.  You won’t have to be a kid to get a kick out of this one: The new site will premiere a serial story, with the first (completely zany) chapter to be read by Scieszka from the stage.  It’s titled “The Exquisite Corpse Adventure,” and to find out what happens next — this story will unfold every two weeks for a year — you’ll have to go to read.gov.

But to find out what the coolest event is in Washington D.C. is on September 26, 2009, you’ll have to go to the National Mall between 7th and 14th streets.  Wear comfortable shoes — and prepare to be swept away!

The Web Services team here at the Library (who are doing some simply amazing things) has given the blog a fresher look and new functionality. First, there’s a cleaner, more aesthetic look to it, and I like how the collections are now highlighted in the banners.

In the sidebar, we’ve added links to our archives.  Hard to believe we’ve been at this for more than two years now!  There’s also a new box called “Find Us on the Web,” which links to the growing number of social-media sites on which we have a presence.

Among other changes, they’ve upgraded to the newest version of WordPress, which makes it a lot easier for us to bring posts to you.  And “under the hood,” there’s one especially significant change: The new back-end supports multiple users, which means the door is now open to additional blogs on LOC.gov.

I usually don’t show any ankle, but I’m excited to report that the Library has approved the addition of a second blog!  I won’t give any more away than that for now, but it will be launching soon, and I want to give it its full due at that time.  But I think you’ll enjoy it.

So what do you think of the changes?

Unfortunately for the blog, I wear many hats in my current position, which far too often push blogging down the list of priorities.  So I’ve decided to get some help, because there are too many interesting stories around here for one person to try to tell.

I’m pleased to announce that Jennifer Gavin, the senior public affairs specialist in my office, has signed on as a co-blogger.  Before coming to the Library in 2007, she held a number of jobs in public relations.  She has also had a long career as a journalist, writing for several outlets including the Associated Press.

I’m personally a big fan of her writing, her tone, and her sense of humor, and I hope you will be too.

“Library of Congress” was too long as a user name, so in the spirit of Twitter itself, we’ve been truncated.

As I’ve been alluding for some time, we are on the cusp of many more forays into the Web 2.0, and I hope to bring more announcements soon (most likely weeks, not months).  We are going to be pushing some incredible content out to the world in new ways and in new spaces — just a smattering of the millions and millions of digital resources we have online, of course, but presented with the fantastic interactivity of these new Web tools.

We also hope it will be an enticement for folks to check out the vast treasure trove of free resources at LOC.gov.

Robert is also working on a more in-depth piece on the Flickr project, which I’m eager to see.  It’s always great when the HD camera comes out!

While I’m at it, in recent days and weeks, there has been a lot of Web 2.0 momentum building here at the Library.  I’m confident that this will soon lead to new ways in which we will reaching out to user communities and making the Library’s yummy goodness even more widely known and accessible.

An excerpt:

LG: What?s been the most memorable part of your job, since becoming Director of Communications?

MR: Wow, where to start? Every day is memorable in its own way, and every day there is the stimulation of learning or experiencing something new.

But one day that sticks out was when we showed some of our ?top treasures? to a video crew. Some of those will be on display for visitors beginning next April, but at the time, it was a rare opportunity for me. So here I was looking at original drafts of, say, the Emancipation Proclamation or the Second Inaugural address, both in Lincoln?s hand, and I was surprised at the emotional response they provoked in me. I hope it doesn?t sound corny, but there was something very deeply moving about seeing such beautiful and important words, which changed the course of our history, written in the hands of the great figures who wrote or spoke them. Moments like that really help to connect past and present, and in unexpected ways.

Thanks for your interest, Lisa!

When you give a talk at the Library of Congress, they don?t pay you with money. They reward you something far more valuable. Your compensation is to have their researchers dig whatever gems you would like to see out of their collection of 134 million items.

Click through to find out what the self-described ?retro geek? got to see during his visit here.

We used the Library of Congress?s 207th birthday (an odd number, I know) to launch this blog, so we thought tomorrow’s milestone would be a good reason to help some of our Law Library colleagues get in on the blogging game.

Actually, we’ve been discussing this for a while, as the Law Library folks have been one of the earliest groups at LOC to take an active interest in blogging. Because we anticipate an institution-wide policy to allow the creation of additional audience-specific blogs, some of our own the legal eagles will be guest-blogging a couple of posts in this space to get their feet (or talons?whatever eagles have) wet.

I will be publishing two LLOC-related posts today by Andrew Weber of the Law Library. (And no, his middle name is not ?Lloyd.?) So if you?re a lawyer or you have an interest in the topics, join the fray!