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!

Included in the first round are Junot Diaz, Rickey Minor, James Patterson, George Pelecanos, Nicholas Sparks and David Wroblewski–with more to come.  And they’re all free for the listening!

You can read more about the National Book Festival here, and don’t forget to follow us on on Facebook and on Twitter (@librarycongress), which explains the hashtag at the beginning of this post.  (Digression: Is it a coincidence that hashtags appear to make a hash of the English language?)

In a first for the Library, you can also sign up to receive text/SMS message alerts by texting BOOK to 61399.  (Standard messaging rates apply)

But that’s not all!

Today the Library announced that authors James Patterson, George Pelecanos, Nikki Grimes, Marilynne Robinson, Sharon Creech, Daniel Silva and W. Ralph Eubanks have signed on for the ninth annual festival, to be held on the National Mall from 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. As always, the event is free and open to the public.

In addition to this amazing lineup of more than 70 authors — the full list is available here–this year’s book festival will feature many social-networking features, including updates through Twitter and Facebook. To receive up-to-the-minute information for this year’s event, such as author activities, day-of-event details and much more, follow the library on Twitter (@librarycongress, hashtag #nbf) or become a fan of the Library on Facebook (www.facebook.com/libraryofcongress). There will be new podcasts of interviews with festival authors available free of charge on the Library’s website (www.loc.gov) and on iTunes U (link here, opens in iTunes).

Want your own copy of the National Book Festival Poster, by author/illustrator Charles Santore? It’s here. For more information about this year’s National Book Festival, click here.

You nation’s Library has millions of stories to tell, so we’re trying to tell them as many places and to as many people as possible–whether on our own website or elsewhere.  And now you can add another biggie to the list: iTunes U.

For those who don’t know, iTunes U is an area of the iTunes Store offering free education audio and video content from many of the world’s top universities and other institutions. (The iTunes application is needed to access iTunes U, and is a free download from www.apple.com/itunes.)

The Library’s iTunes U page launched today with a great deal of content, with much more to come.  (Link here, opens in iTunes.)  A nice bonus, for those in the know, is that the content is downloadable and even includes materials such as PDFs.

As always, it’s also available in the Library’s own corner of the web.

So as long as people keep finding new ways to get information, we’re going to keep finding ways to get it to you!

Well, you can come in person, of course, to the National Book Festival on Sept. 27, 2008, from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on the National Mall in DC.  But if you just can’t wait that long, our longtime charter sponsor, The Washington Post, has begun to schedule online chats with National Book Festival authors.

The first three have been scheduled, and are as follows:

Bob Schieffer (CBS newsman and author), Monday, 9/15 at 2 p.m. EDT

Arthur and Pauline Frommer (noted travel writers), Tuesday, 9/16 at 10 a.m. EDT

And Alexander McCall Smith, (prolific writer of fiction and nonfiction), Friday, 9/19 at 11 a.m. EDT

You can follow the links above and start submitting your questions now, or anytime up to and even during the chats.  We expect to be able to announce at least a couple more in the days leading up to Sept. 27.

(By the way, two years ago we did about six author podcasts. In 2007 we doubled that. This year, I expect we’ll get pretty close to, if not more than, 20! To subscribe in iTunes, go here.)

The 2008 National Book Festival author podcasts are now available via iTunes. (HUZZAH!) The direct subscription link is here (link opens in iTunes).

The 2007 National Book Festival podcasts have also been posted, but for some reason, I wasn’t able to get a direct link for those. If you have a burning desire to hear those, however, you can search iTunes for “2007 National Book Festival,” and it will pull up the subscription link. UPDATE: Here is the link for 2007 (link opens in iTunes).

I know, many of you are saying, “It’s about time.” Unfortunately, in the government, these things aren’t always as easy as flipping a switch. But we’re firmly committed to our march deep into Web 2.0 territory!

As always, you can also access all the NBF podcasts on our own site and download them or listen to the streams here.

And don’t forget, the 2008 National Book Festival is Saturday, Sept. 27, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. — free and open to the public! (If you listen to any of the podcasts, my apologies in advance for beating that particular message into the ground.)

The subscription link is here.

I’m a bit of a perfectionist, so I have to disclose that I have been doing my own audio engineering (with practically zero training) on new equipment.  The good news is that the new equipment should significantly increase our capacity to do podcasts.  The bad news is that the first few I recorded weren’t quite so, um, “polished” as more recent ones.  There is a bit of “clipping” in parts, and I sometimes sound like I’m speaking into a coffee can.

Please bear with it, though.  I’ve found every one of the authors with whom I’ve spoken fascinating, and there are some great ones yet to come.

Among the changes:

? The homepage now features a dynamic graphic at the top for navigation to some of the most popular subsites, such as American Memory and THOMAS. There are enhanced content areas, including spotlights on the work of the Library, and quick links to popular topics (which were determined by some of the areas more frequently searched by users).

? You?ll notice our ?widget? in the lower-left still includes our RSS feeds and a link to this blog, but we have now added a link to a separate podcast page and?something I?m especially excited about?email updates. Users will now be able to sign up to receive email alerts on a host of topics, from the general to the more specific.

? Finally, we have also launched the next phase of our lifelong literacy campaign in conjunction with the Ad Council. You can see three versions of a new television spot here. What do you think of them? And coming soon, on the same site at Literacy.gov, we will be offering a reading-based ?Storybook Adventure? for young people?although speaking from a slightly older demographic, I think it?s a lot of fun too!

It?s all just in time for the 20th anniversary of the 13th Librarian of Congress, Dr. James Billington.

As of this writing, there are now podcasts from David Baldacci, Ken Burns, Carmen Agra Deedy, Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Shelia P. Moses, and you can expect at least half a dozen more, for a total number of podcasts that will be more than double that of last year.? You can subscribe to the podcast feed at this link so that you don?t miss a single one!

Look for great, new features on the NBF Web site in coming days.