Photochroms, published primarily from the 1890s to 1910s, are prints that were created by the Photoglob Company in Zürich, Switzerland, and the Detroit Publishing Company in Michigan. The richly colored images look like photographs but are actually ink-based photolithographs, usually 6.5 x 9 inches. You can learn more about them here.

The Library is looking toward the power of crowd-sourcing to help enhance our records about these images:

“Your addition of current place names is much appreciated! Some locations have changed names or even countries since 1900. And, the titles we had to work with from the photochrom publishers based in Detroit and Zurich tended to be English or German versions of the place names.”

(The included image, “Native girls, Marken Island, Holland,” from the Library’s Prints and Photographs Online Catalog and also online at Flickr.)

The “Books and Beyond” series in the Center for the Book launched a Facebook page, which is essentially an online book club, with the recent National Book Festival. (external link)  And now the Law Library of Congress has launched a feed on Twitter (external link).

The purpose of the Twitter feed, according to the Law Library, is “to engage Members of Congress, their staff, other law libraries, students, professors, librarians, and researchers.  … It will also serve as a venue for feedback on our material.”

Stay tuned for more social media-related announcements in coming days.

While the baseball season winds down and the excitement of another World Series chase begins, we’re celebrating the national pastime with a new book, Baseball Americana: Treasures from the Library of Congress (drawing rave reviews in places like Sports Illustrated) and a two-day symposium on baseball at the Library October 2-3, 2009.

Long before TV and the Internet provided coverage of every game and at-bat, Americans saw images of their favorite teams and players in books, newspapers  and magazines.  They saw them on tobacco and candy packages, on sheet-music covers  and in the movies.  People were playing baseball everywhere, and we found baseball everywhere in our rich visual collections.

Images and artifacts from the game are as old as our country and mark its heritage and history–in a children’s book published in Worcester, Massachusetts the same year that that U.S. Constitution was written, in a depiction of Civil War prisoners actively playing in a North Carolina camp, in baseball cards showing the first heroes and stars of the game, in the first Negro League World Series in Kansas City in 1924, in the games we’ve played ourselves in sandlots and fields around the country.

As a member of the Library’s Flickr pilot team, I’ve enjoyed watching that community discover and enjoy baseball pictures they’d never seen before.  To make selections for the book, my co-authors and I also had fun poring through thousands of images to find even more rare surprises. Why is Babe Ruth lying unconscious on the field? It’s not what you might think.  We put the Babe and a sampling of 22 other photographs from the book into this week’s new Flickr set.  Enjoy!

To see more historic baseball resources at the Library, visit the America’s Pastime page and a resources page here.  You can also purchase the Baseball Americana book and other baseball-related items in the Library’s online shop.

1. Attend!  It’s tomorrow (Sept. 26) from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. EDT on the National Mall (between 7th and 14th), rain or shine.  If it’s the former, don’t worry!  We have huge tents for the author pavilions, many of which are even bigger than they have been in previous years.

2.Visit the National Book Festival website and get all the 411 you need.

3. Check the schedule of author pavilion presentations and book signings, along with the site map (PDF link), and make your battle plan ahead of time.

4. Visit our new NBF website that’s optimized for mobile devices, both before you come and on the grounds.  Just type in www.loc.gov/bookfest and it will automatically show you the mobile-ready version.

5. Sign up by tomorrow to receive text alerts.  Just send BOOK to 61399.

6. Listen to our podcast interviews with 2009 NBF authors, and archives from previous years.  (Also available on iTunes.)

7. Watch webcasts of every single author presentation at the National Book Festival.  This year’s webcasts will begin to be posted by mid- to late-afternoon tomorrow.  Archives from previous years are also available, with many also on iTunes U and YouTube.

8. Follow the action on Twitter (@librarycongress).  Use the hashtag #nbf to see what we and everyone else are saying.  All tweets with the #nbf hashtag will be shown in real time on large monitors in the Library of Congress Pavilion.

9. If you’re in D.C. tomorrow and are on Twitter, come be a part of our first-ever “Tweet-Up” at 3:30 p.m. at the Library of Congress Pavilion.  (PDF site map here.)  I’ll be there talking about the Book Festival and some of the things we’re doing with social media, and hopefully scores of fingers will be madly tweeting away.

10. Become a fan of us on Facebook, either the Library’s main page or the new Books and Beyond page, where we’re marking the 2009 NBF by starting a virtual book club.

11. Watch C-SPAN’s coverage tomorrow.  Starting at about 9 a.m. EDT, they will show the authors program from the NBF gala reception.  Slated to speak are David Baldacci, Judy Blume, John Grisham, Annette Gordon-Reed, and Julia Alvarez.  Then at around 10 a.m., they will broadcast live all day from the festival.

12. Check out the NBF website at washingtonpost.com.  Among the highlights are transcripts of three online author chats.

The NBF is special to me for more than one reason.  First, it’s something on which a huge team of talented folks including me work intensively for about five or six months every year.  It’s hard to describe the thrill of watching this labor of love be enjoyed by more than 120,000 people. I walk the grounds watching author presentations, working with the media, and listening for comments people make about the great time they’re having.  But my anniversary of coming to work at the Library coincides with the Book Festival, so it’s an extra-special celebration for me.  (Three years and counting.)

But enough about me.

One popular attraction has been a huge vinyl wall in the Library of Congress Pavilion on which people could write about their favorite books or authors.  This year, though, we’re going high-tech.  We want to encourage everyone who’s “tweeting” as they walk the grounds to use the hashtag #nbf.  Your tweets and everyone else’s (including yours truly) will be featured in the LOC Pavilion (link is a PDF map) on a large monitor displaying those messages in real time.  So send your Twitpics, your author encounters, your 12-second videos or any other thoughts to share them with your fellow book-lovers.

This week also marked another first for us, an additional nod to those who access the web by means other than a computer: We launched a version of the National Book Festival website that is optimized for mobile devices (AKA a “Wireless Application Protocol,” or WAP site.)  We think this will be especially helpful on Festival day itself.  When you visit http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/ from your mobile device of choice, the site automatically adjusts to a simple and less bandwidth-intense version.  You can still get all the author presentation and book-signing schedules, maps, directions, and other important information.

And as previously mentioned, you can get up-to-date information by text message by sending the word BOOK to 61399.  (Standard messaging rates may apply.)  You will be able to find out how to get specific information, such as pavilion schedules and schedules for individual authors.

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.

Here’s the lighthouse at Llandudno, Wales.

Thanks to Michelle Springer of the Library’s Office of Strategic Initiatives for this item!