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Archive: June 2016 (5 Posts)

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Summer Looking Challenge–Touring the Collections with Azure Allure

Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson

As summer gets into full swing, I’m recalling how much I enjoyed my public library’s summer reading club challenges when my children were younger (shout-out to all the public libraries that run summer reading clubs for children and adults!). One thing I loved about the challenge was the “randomizer” techniques library staff designed to inspire …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Land and Lives Turned to Dust

Posted by: Jeff Bridgers

In the 1930s, agricultural practices that replaced native prairie grasses with cash crops such as wheat and corn, combined with overgrazing cattle by ranchers, turned out to have devastating consequences for farm families, centered initially in Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle. An extended multi-year drought prompted wind erosion that sent topsoil blowing black-dust clouds across the …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Roll Call Photographs: Glimpsing Congress and Capitol Hill, 1988-2000

Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson

The following is a guest post by Arden Alexander, Cataloging Specialist in the Prints & Photographs Division. The U.S. Congress has always been a popular research topic for Prints and Photographs Division patrons. The recently processed Roll Call Collection offers a wealth of photographs that pick up where our other collections leave off, covering the …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Children in the Flower Field

Posted by: Jeff Bridgers

And I should not have to remind you that little time is given here to rest on a wayside bench, to stop and bend to the wildflowers, or to study a bird on a branch— –from “The Parade” by Billy Collins As June builds up to summer’s start, lengthening sunny days mixed with some warm rain bring wildflowers’ …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Anything to Get the Shot: Precarious Positions

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

Photographers sometimes get into the most precarious positions to get that perfect shot. The humorous drawing (below left) was apparently part of the White House News Photographers Association banquet in 1923, perhaps poking fun at the contortions necessary to snap an elusive photo. (The unidentified photographer whose head has been pasted on was perhaps one …