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.)

A few weeks ago the head of our Music Division called to inform me that the third recipient of the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song would be Sir Paul McCartney.  I’m fairly certain that they heard my reaction in the office next door.

This was not an easy thing for me to keep under wraps as we put the pieces in place for our announcement.  Paul McCartney is only my favorite musician of all time.  (It took a while, but eventually he surpassed Mozart.)

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington, who made the selection, said, “It is hard to think of another performer and composer who has had a more indelible and transformative effect on popular song and music of several different genres than Paul McCartney.”

Or put more succinctly by The Washington Post, “Macca rules!” (external link)

McCartney joins music legends Paul Simon and Stevie Wonder as fellow honorees.

The Gershwin Prize “celebrates the work of an artist whose career reflects lifetime achievement in promoting song as a vehicle of musical expression and cultural understanding.”  You can read more about it here.

The Prize will be bestowed next spring, and keep your eye out for an all-star tribute concert thereafter on broadcast television.

But sometimes, more is more, as Walt Disney found out after he created Mickey Mouse  in the late 1920s and had trouble finding a home for Mickey’s first two cartoons (“Plane Crazy” and “The Gallopin’ Gaucho”), which were silent, before scoring a solid hit with the musical talkie “Steamboat Willie.” 

“You can run any of these pictures and they’d be dragging and boring, but the minute you put music behind then, they have life and vitality they don’t get in any other way,” Disney once said.

The Library of Congress today opens “Molto Animato!” an exhibition celebrating the winning combo of animation and music, in its Music Division Performing Arts Reading Room in the James Madison Building (101 Independence Ave., S.E., Room LM113, Washington, D.C.) The exhibition will be on view through next March 28 and will be open from 8:30 a.m. – 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Featured items include a pen-and-ink brush drawing of conductor Leopold Stokowski by caricaturist Miguel Covarrubias; the score from “Bambi,” with music by Frank Churchill and Edward Plumb and lyrics by Larry Morey; John Alden Carpenter’s manuscript piano score for “Krazy Kat: A Jazz Pantomime”; and the movie poster for “Walt Disney Pictures Presents Aladdin.”

Also on view will be items from the Library’s Art Wood Collection of Cartoon and Caricature, the David Raksin Collection of film scores (You can view excerpts, including the cartoons, from his scores for “Giddyap” and “The Unicorn in the Garden”) and the Howard Ashman Collection, including the draft script of Disney’s animated film “The Little Mermaid” and audio of Howard Ashman singing Disney movie songs of his own composing.

Let’s face it: sometimes silence is golden, but “Fantasia” wouldn’t have been nearly as fantastic without the power of music.  Here’s Mickey, in “Fantasia,” dressed to enact “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” a symphonic poem by composer Paul Dukas.

Generations of former kids who learned their ABCs on PBS will be celebrating today’s 40^th anniversary of the show “Sesame Street.”  (external link)

The Library’s been a fan right along! In April 2000, for example, when the Library of Congress celebrated its bicentennial, Big Bird was named a Living Legend by the Librarian of Congress.

In 2006, Elmo was our guest at the National Book Festival, along with his animator, Kevin Clash.  Elmo was also invited to the White House then.

And “Maria” (Sonia Manzano) appeared at the National Book Festival in 2004.

Of course, the many books, films and music that have come out of the hit series can be found in the Library’s collections.

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!”

I guess I should not have been surprised that this 87-year-old man was every bit as funny and incisive as he always has been.  He spun terrific yarns, was always quick with a quip, and he did it all without a single notecard.  The crowd was in stitches almost the entire time.  I saw people literally doubling over–you don’t see that too often.

The webcast of his talk, which included a lot of comments about the books he has written, is now online.

My favorite parts were the Shakespearean soliloquies that he recited verbatim, from memory.  What did you like most?

Dr. Richard E. Cytowic of George Washington University Medical Center will deliver the talk, “Wednesday is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia” at 6:15 p.m. Friday, Oct. 30 in the Members’ Room on the first floor of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building at 10 First St. S.E. After the talk, he’ll sign his book on the topic.

Doors open one hour earlier! Don’t miss it!

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.