This year, libraries and cultural institutions around the nation are celebrating America’s 250th birthday. The 225-year-old Library of Congress is almost as old as the country itself, and this year, we’ve joined forces with the Smithsonian Institution to find new stories about America’s founding in our treasure trove of records and artifacts.
The collaboration, called Revolution Crossroads, is exploring how advanced technologies can surface new connections in history. Staff are working to expand the promise of artificial intelligence (AI) to surface relationships, stories, and context—using some of the nation’s founding digital treasures as a testbed.
Today’s post celebrates vibrant, ripe, and nutritious summer produce, both homegrown and store-bought, through items in the popular graphic arts and poster collections in the Prints & Photographs Division.
On July 1, the Library of Congress will host the fifth of six webinars featuring the 2025 Literacy Awards Program winners and honorees. This webinar will feature Successful Practices Honorees whose work exemplifies Honoring Storytelling and Building Literacy Skills.
During her first U.S. tour, Cuban-Swiss violinist, vocalist, composer, and bandleader Yilian Cañizares visited the Library of Congress for a performance and an exploration of music manuscripts from the Music Division's collections. Through works by Cuban composers and women composers whose artistic journeys resonated with her own, we discussed musical influences, creative expression, and the connections that link artists across generations.
This post was authored by Vincent Coltellino from the Library of Congress. Vincent leads the Library’s synthetic DNA data storage initiative, which investigates the feasibility of synthetic DNA as a high-density, scalable, and durable medium for storing the Library’s digital collections. During his first year at the Library, he established a contract with the University of Washington designed to critically analyze the processes required to implement DNA data storage technology on the Library’s digital collections. This partnership has yielded critical lessons that have been relayed to the greater DNA data storage community and a novel contribution to America’s Time Capsule in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
June 16th, the day of commemoration of author James Joyce, calls for a certain shade of blue. Not just any blue, but that blue. The iconic cover of Ulysses. This Bloomsday, we follow the color rather than the character and discover it has a story of its own, a hue as intentional and exacting as Joyce himself.
Cartoonists at Work
The Prints & Photographs Division holds tens of thousands of cartoon drawings in our collection, including powerful political cartoons and stars of the Sunday funny pages. Today’s post will feature photographs of the cartoonists who made these panels, giving us a glimpse into their creative processes.
This post by Vincent Coltellino from the Library of Congress describes the 2026 Designing Storage Architectures for Digital Collections (DSA) meeting. The event is a venue for broad discussions of digital storage advancements, challenges, and solutions. On March 9-10, 2026, the Library hosted its 20th iteration of this collaborative (and now international) meeting.
The Library owns many groundbreaking books from medicine’s past, some of them illustrated with images that make us glad we live in the 21st century. Topics range from anatomy and herbals to childbirth and Native American medical knowledge.
