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By: Katie Rodda
Although the majority of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) Music Section’s collection deals with classical music, we also have a wide array of materials dedicated to the great American art form–jazz. In this blog post, I will detail some of the special format materials in our collection that jazz …
Posted in: NLS Music Notes
By: Erin Allen
(The following is a guest post by Michelle Krowl, a historian in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division.) Could George B. McClellan have become the seventeenth President of the United States? It certainly appeared to be a possibility as Abraham Lincoln assessed the military and political landscape of the United States in the summer of …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Trevor Owens
The following is a guest post from Euan Cochrane, Digital Preservation Manager at Yale University Library. This piece continues and extends exploration of the potential of emulation as a service and virtualization platforms. Increasingly, the intellectual productivity of scholars involves the creation and development of software and software-dependent content. For universities to act as responsible stewards …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Erin Allen
Last week, the Library of Congress opened the exhibition “American Ballet Theatre: Touring the Globe for 75 Years,” which highlights the dance company’s distinguished history and its collection here at the Library. Shortly after the opening, ABT alum Sue Knapp-Steen (1969-1974) stopped by to view the exhibition and reminisce on her time as a professional dancer …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Trevor Owens
While a fair amount of digital preservation focuses on objects that have clear corollaries to objects from our analog world (still and moving images and documents for example), there are a range of forms that are basically natively digital. Completely native digital forms, like database-driven web applications, introduce a variety of challenges for long-term preservation …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Trevor Owens
The following is a guest post from Julia Fernandez, this year’s NDIIPP Junior Fellow. Julia has a background in American studies and working with folklife institutions and worked on a range of projects leading up to CurateCamp Digital Culture in July. This is part of a series of interviews Julia conducted to better understand the …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Karen Fishman
Listen! What do you hear? Walking around the streets of a city, if you aren’t listening to music or talking on the phone, you can hear the city speak – snippets of conversations, traffic, planes, sirens – familiar sounds of work and play, or the “voice” of the city. Tony Schwartz, born August 19, 1923, …
Posted in: Now See Hear!
While most people associate Louis Braille with the system of reading and writing for the blind, many are not aware he was also an accomplished organist and musician. There is good evidence he created the Braille code for music first and language second. But whichever came first, the literary or the music code, we’re just grateful …
Posted in: NLS Music Notes
By: Trevor Owens
The following is a guest post from David Gibson, a moving image technician in the Library of Congress. He was previously interviewed about the Library of Congress video games collection. The discovery of that which has been lost or previously unattainable is one of the driving forces behind the archival profession and one of the …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Erin Allen
The sun truly never sets on collecting at the Library of Congress. At any given hour, somewhere on the planet, an employee is acquiring material to add to the world’s largest library. Scattered across 11 time zones, from Brazil to Indonesia, the Library’s six field offices acquire hard- to-get publications from developing nations for its own collections and …
Posted in: Timeless