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By: Erin Allen
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I spent several days in New York City. The holiday season was in full swing, with several holiday markets around town, lights and decorations adorning street posts and buildings and Rockefeller Center nearly completely decked out – the Christmas tree was up but not yet decorated. One of the things I …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Erin Allen
Imagine, military historian Kevin Hymel writes, if George Washington or Ulysses S. Grant had carried a camera and photographed war as he experienced it. How important would those images be as documents of history? Gen. George S. Patton, the brilliant but often-troublesome U.S. Army commander of World War II, did just that during his campaigns …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Erin Allen
(The following is an article in the November/December 2014 issue of LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine. The issue can be read in its entirety here.) Nathan Dorn, the Law Library’s curator of rare books, highlights five favorite pieces from the Library’s Magna Carta exhibition. Statutes of England “Intricate colored-pen work graces this 14th-century miniature …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Peter Armenti
Emily Dickinson was born 184 years ago today. To celebrate, the Library of Congress invited poetry lovers this Monday to enter “A fairer House than Prose” with a marathon reading of Emily Dickinson’s poems and a special display of Dickinson materials from its Rare Book and Special Collections Division. The event, held in Room 119 …
Posted in: From the Catbird Seat
By: Erin Allen
The Library of Congress featured prominently in November news with the opening of a special exhibition and the celebration of a special individual. On Nov. 6, “Magna Carta: Muse and Mentor” opened with much fanfare, featuring the 1215 Magna Carta, on loan from Lincoln Cathedral in England and one of only four surviving copies issued …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Kelly Buchanan
When you visit the Library of Congress you are likely to hear or read about the loss of collections to fires, first in 1814 during the War of 1812 and then later, on Christmas Eve 1851. Unfortunately, a number of other countries have also suffered losses of parliamentary or national library buildings and important materials …
Posted in: In Custodia Legis
By: Jennifer Gavin
Many larger-than-life figures have served as the Librarian of Congress. As the Library once again plays host to that seminal document affirming the rule of law, Magna Carta, today we shine a spotlight on the man who was Librarian of Congress when the great charter first visited the Library – Archibald MacLeish. MacLeish, before his …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Betty Lupinacci
This week’s interview is with Gabe Horchler, section head of the Law Section of Library Services’ Acquisitions & Bibliographic Access Directorate, U.S. Programs, Law & Literature Division. Gabe is in charge of cataloging all new law titles. He and his staff have also been instrumental in helping with our reclassification project for which we are …
Posted in: In Custodia Legis
Library of Congress Commemorates Irving Fine World Premiere Performances, Lecture, Symposium and Film December 2-6, the Library of Congress, home to the Irving Fine Collection, commemorates the 100th anniversary of the birth of this important American composer, whom Aaron Copland described as “the greatest of us all.” The weeklong celebration includes panel discussions, a lecture, …
Posted in: In The Muse
By: Betty Lupinacci
Black Friday! A day of shopping and a day off for me. It didn’t used to be such. When I worked in a D.C. law firm, we all worked Black Friday (as well as most Saturdays, Monday holidays, Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve and, during tax season, quite a few Sundays). As my friends were …
Posted in: In Custodia Legis