Labor Day weekend starts in a few hours so I thought I would feature a photograph of the Adams Building (then known as the Library of Congress Annex) while it was under construction. Funds for the construction of the building were appropriated in 1930, with an additional appropriation in 1935. It was mentioned in in …
The title of our blog post this week is “Sun Spots this Summer?” so we are highlighting one of the architectural grilles that resembles a sunburst design. These grilles typically disguise the Adams Building’s ventilation system and are visible throughout the building. This one is a bit hard to spot (no pun intended!), since it …
Blog post about one of the quotes from the murals in the Science and Business Reading Room in the John Adams Building and features a detail from one mural.
I can remember when I headed down to my local library and looked through the card catalog to find information. I even remember classes in high school on how to use the card catalog. Nowadays, many library users have never heard of a card catalog and if they see one, they might think it’s an interesting old …
In honor of Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month our Pic of the Week features Lee Lawrie’s sculptural relief of the Hindu God Brahma on the bronze doors of the John Adams Building. When we first launched Inside Adams, Donna Scanlon wrote about Our Bronze Doors, which symbolize the history of written word. During my college years, I …
Our Pic of the Week features one of the walls in the center room of the Science and Business Reading Room that houses the massive National Union Catalog Pre-1956 Imprints set. I bet many of you are asking, “What is the National Union Catalog?” Commonly referred to as the NUC or Mansell (Mansell is the …
Today’s Pic of the Week features a version of the Great Seal of the United States as a floor medallion in the entrance lobby of the Adams Building. It has been slightly modified, but has the requisite 13 stars, olive branches with 13 leaves and 13 olives, and a bald eagle.
This week we are featuring two photographs of the public entrance to the Science and Business Reading Room taken over thirty years apart. I found the Science Reading Room image (left), as I was browsing through an old pamphlet box of historical material about the Library. We believe it was taken sometime in the late …