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Archive: October 2014 (4 Posts)

Silver stylized owl with radiant circles around its head, surrounded by a gold frame

Arachnophilia: Celebrating Spiders on Halloween

Posted by: Jennifer Harbster

Spiders have been spinning their webs across the planet for hundreds of millions of years.  Without a doubt, we have forged a special relationship with these eight-legged wonders. One can find pictographs of spiders on the walls of the ancient site of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, as well as references to spiders in mythology, creation …

Silver stylized owl with radiant circles around its head, surrounded by a gold frame

Harry Houdini’s Rare Magic Books

Posted by: Jennifer Harbster

The following is a guest post authored by Elizabeth Gettins, a Digital Conversion Specialist for the Library’s  Rare Book and Special Collections (RBSC). She has worked on multiple RBSC digital collections through the years such as the Kraus Collection of Sir Francis Drake, the Miller NAWSA Suffrage Scrapbooks and the Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana …

Silver stylized owl with radiant circles around its head, surrounded by a gold frame

Expanding the Capitol’s Dome

Posted by: Ellen Terrell

The United States Architect of the Capitol has embarked on a massive project to restore the Capitol’s dome that is slated to take years and cover the dome with scaffolding.  This project inspired me to write a series of posts using the Library’s collections to explore a few of the firms and people who worked …

Silver stylized owl with radiant circles around its head, surrounded by a gold frame

Climate and Wildfires in the 21st Century

Posted by: Jennifer Harbster

If you live west of the Mississippi, then you are no stranger to living with the threat of wildfires. Generally speaking, the western half of the country is more fire prone, compared to the more industrialized East, with large tracts of forest and grasslands on state and federal lands–national forests, state and national parks, and …