In this post, we'll feature a Botkin Lecture classic: Barry Jean Ancelet, Professor Emeritus at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, speaking on Theory and Practice of Folklore in Cajun & Creole Louisiana. As usual, this blog features videos of both the lecture and an interview with Barry Jean Ancelet. As you'll hear John Fenn say in introducing our speaker, we have presented many eminent colleagues in the Botkin series, but few of them have made as significant an impact on the documentation, public awareness, and revitalization of their chosen areas of interest as Professor Ancelet has for Cajun and Creole culture in Louisiana. Even fewer of them have been officially knighted by the government of France for their efforts. Those are just a few of the reasons we're delighted to present his lecture in our series.
On the afternoon of February 28, 1844, President John Tyler and roughly 400 guests were enjoying a cruise down the Potomac River on the new US Navy warship USS Princeton, when the mammoth, 13-ton naval gun on board, known as the “Peacemaker,” exploded. The disaster came close to costing the president his life, but instead it led to his marriage.
Maya Cade, CCDI Scholar-in-Residence and creator and founder of the Black Film Archive, will lecture on tenderness in Black film and share her updated website.
The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress is pleased to announce the appointment of Jeremy Greene as Distinguished Visiting Scholar. Greene began his time at the Kluge Center in January 2024. Greene, MD, PhD, is the William H. Welch Professor of Medicine and the History of Medicine, Director of the Department of …
Season 5 of America Works, a podcast from the American Folklife Center (AFC) celebrating the diversity, resilience, and creativity of American workers, is now available on loc.gov/podcasts. In this post, Nancy Groce, AFC Senior Folklife Specialist, explains what we will hear in Season 5, focused on African American workers.
*** Registrations will be available starting at 10 a.m. EST on Wednesday, January 17, 2024*** The Library of Congress is transitioning to a new event registration service called “Etix,” and starting tomorrow (January 17, 2024) at 10 a.m. EST you can register for February-June Concerts from the Library of Congress events. The easiest way to …
The Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) AudioVisual Working Group partnered with a consultant and accessibility firm on a project to enhance accessibility in open-source desktop applications for the digital preservation community. This blog post provides information on the applications tested, the issues found, and the technical guidelines and community recommendations to come out of this research.
On January 10, 2024, “Headlines and Heroes” published a blog post highlighting new stories about technology and inventions during the Gilded Age. Although we are proud to enhance discoverability of the Library’s Chronicling America newspaper collections, the blog post lacked appropriate citations. After considering concerns raised with the post, the Library made the decision to …
Every year on January 1, a new class of creative works enters the public domain in the United States. This year, a variety of works published in 1928, ranging from motion pictures to music to books, joined others in the public domain. The public domain has important historical and cultural benefits in the lifecycle of copyright. Here we highlight a selection of works entering the public domain in 2024.
“Greetings and Hearty Good Wishes for the New Year from Frances Benjamin Johnston” reads this combination business card, greeting card, and 1904 calendar from photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston. In 1904, Johnston was thirty years old, had a home photo studio in Washington, D.C., at 1332 V Street, and was already well-established in the capital city. …
